Psalm 51:1-10 Exodus 32:7-14 1 Timothy 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-10 Ben Weaver owned the only department store in Mayberry. He also owned a lot of property. He was probably the wealthiest man in town due in no small measure to his …

Philemon 1:21 Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 1 Luke 14: 25-33 Last month, there was an observance of a most dubious event: the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slave ship to the colony of Virginia. To be perfectly accurate, …

Psalm 112 Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 Luke 14:1, 7-14   Two startling revelations made it into the news this week: Kim Kardashian-West revealed that when she was younger she became addicted to fame and money and Miley Cyrus concluded that after …

Isaiah 58:9b-14 Psalm 103:1-8 Hebrews 12:18-29  Last week I departed from my usual preaching style to clarify some misrepresentations of a resolution from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Churchwide Assembly in Milwaukee August 5-10. The resolution approved by the …

My father was an only child, but his father had four brothers and a sister so there was a crowd at family reunions. The one I remember most took place in the summer of 1964. I remember the date because …

Genesis 15: 1-6 Psalm 33: 12-22 Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16 Luke 12: 32-40 43 years ago, one of the first classes I took in seminary was on the varieties of ways houses of faith communicated their message. I chose to …

I have been making preparations to retire this fall and one of the required steps was filling out a lot of paperwork regarding the pension plan that I have been a part of for over 37 years. So it was …

You probably have heard the old saying, “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” Consider one of my nieces in Canada. She has had some health concerns and was finally diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. No …

When I was in my third year German class in high school, I had to read “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka in German. It was not cheerful stuff. To oversimplify, the novella is about a guy who wakes up to …

For the last few weeks, the gospel lesson has been what we have come to call The Sermon on the Mount. When I was in seminary we had to preach in front of our peers, the faculty and be recorded …

Contrary to your favorite, millionaire televangelist, prophecy has nothing whatsoever to do with predicting the future. John Dominic Crossan illustrated the point by warning that you shouldn’t pitch your tent in the middle of I-10 because you might get run …

I was living in Canada in the fall of 1977 when both Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby died in August and October respectively. As December approached that year, someone commented that we could have neither a Blue Christmas nor a …