Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
We all have excuses for not being active in our faith, don’t we? I hear them a lot, “Oh, Pastor, sorry we weren’t there on Sunday, but the boys had a football game.” Most of the excuses can be summarized in a statement that literally means “Pastor, we won’t be able to help at that service…
Posted by dwhetter |
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in which of us. Amen
In our Gospel text last week we read the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. You remember that, don’t you? That is the story that all of us find extremely unfair, because as someone pointed out, Jesus seemed to be advocating for a form of socialism…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
All my life I have resisted authority figures. I think it is because I am a child of the 60’s. You remember those days, don’t you? Or, if you are too young to remember them, you surely have read about them. The theme of the 1960’s was resistance. We resisted everything in those days. We resisted…
Posted by dwhetter |
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in which of us. Amen
As we have listened to Jesus these past few weeks, he has offered parables about what the kingdom of heaven is like. In both of the previous two weeks, he has offered us a way to imagine the kingdom and then has followed it up with an explanation of each of the…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
As I prepare for my sermon this coming Sunday, I have decided that the theme of the week will be “Life isn’t fair!” Our Gospel text is Matthew 16:1-20 and our Old Testament text is Jonah 3:10-4:11. Both texts focus on how unfair God’s ways are. In the Jonah story, Jonah just wants to die because…
Posted by dwhetter |
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in which of us. Amen
So, let’s begin by having a little refresher from last week. Jesus had been teaching his disciples about his church that is the ekklesia, or the gathering of those who follow in his ways. Remember a few weeks ago, we heard Peter, before all the other…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
If you remember, last week I wrote about how Jesus taught his followers to live together in a healthy and honest community. In our text last Sunday, Jesus offered his way of dealing with the conflict that will inevitably creep into all communities, even communities of faith. On paper, Jesus’ way of dealing with…
Posted by dwhetter |
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in which of us. Amen
A few months after my father died, my youngest sister announced that she was pregnant. That news brought some real joy into my family again. And then a few months later when she announced that they had found out the baby was a boy and they decided to…
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
In our Gospel text for this Sunday (Matthew 18:15-20), Jesus offers his followers a way of dealing with conflict in the church community. It is a formula that many of us don’t like because, if truth be told, most of us would prefer to ignore conflict, and if we have to deal with it, we would rather deal with…
Posted by dwhetter |
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in which of us. Amen
With all of our modern technology, there really is no need for maps anymore, is there? Now, Jill and I have a GPS in our car so we often use it, but I still like to use good old fashion maps sometimes, particularly when I am traveling on long trips to…