The facilitator of the session asked us to raise our hands if any of us personally knew people who had died of an opioid drug overdose.
Everyone present raised a hand…
Sermons
Through Acts
Among the books I’d just piled onto the bookshelf in my office was a slim volume with Tutu’s name inscribed in the spine. Fetching it from the shelf, I held in my hands a book entitled “Crying In the Wilderness: The Struggle for Justice in South Africa.”
When I opened the book, something fell from the pages onto the floor of my office.
I picked it up and examined it.
Our Christian Faith
Sean told me that the splits that I saw in the post and beam were called “checking.” He said it was totally normal and nothing to worry about… The wood changes as it dries, but not sufficiently to undermine structural integrity of a house.
And then he told me something else – something quite amazing…
To Grow
Stick the word “gospel” in front of the word “truth” and you get something that is undeniably true.
The gospel truth.
But I maintain that gospel truth is not the truth of fact. It is not the truth of law.
The Gospel, DOES arrive at a real and powerful truth – I affirm this. But I suggest that the gospel arrives at this truth by way of description, not prescription.
Poor in Spirit
…it is easy enough to cite data that objectively demonstrates that there are more Christians in the world than followers of any other religion… But even if this is true, it would be a mistake, I think, to ignore the fact that other religions (even if we don’t practice them) play an important role in our lives in the 21st century.
Immediate Importance
At approximately 3:30 p.m. on June 24, 2002, two men in plain clothes stormed the offices of The Analyst newspaper in Monrovia, Liberia. They grabbed the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, a man named Hassan Bility and forcibly pulled him out into the street.
To Be Recognized
To re-cognize someone, is to re-know them.
Let’s say you know someone, and then something happens, and you discover that you know them again, in an altogether new way…then you re-know them.
The Kairos of Baptism
The Greeks, it turns out, had two words for time.
One word was Chronos.
And the other word was Kairos.
What is the difference?
Consider the moon…
A Place at the Table
There was a time when my beard was long enough to braid — a time, actually, that coincided with the time when my daughter was the right age to enjoy doing that… “Daddy,” she would say “let me braid your beard.” Sometimes she would braid beads into my beard and I would come out looking a bit like Captain Jack Sparrow.
Christmas Eve in SINGapore
I’m afraid I forgot, in the heat of the moment, to push “record” on my device, so this sermon only exists in text form and no audio. This is sad because we all sang so nicely together! Oh well. I hope you enjoy it anyway… Rev. Mark When I was a kid – about the […]