Tag: Mortality
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Figuring It Out As We Go – A Sermon On John 12:20-36 For Tuesday In Holy Week
On Palm Sunday I told you that Holy Week would be a week of conflict, confrontation, and choices. I told you that again yesterday. Any guesses on what I’m going to say today? In case you missed it the first two times let me say it again. Holy Week is a week of conflict, confrontation, Read more
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What Troubles Your Soul? – A Sermon On John 12:20-36
Here’s my question: What troubles your soul today? What is the hour from which you want to be saved? Now before you answer, let me explain what I am asking about. I’m asking about more than just something that upset you or didn’t go your way. I am asking about more than an inconvenience, interruption,… Read more
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Mortality And The Fragility Of Life – An Ash Wednesday Sermon On Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
We live in a tension between the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. And we work pretty hard at denying, ignoring, forgetting, outrunning, and overcoming those twin realities. But they are always there. They are always present to us in the same way the ashes with which we will be marked were already… Read more
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Yesterday’s Palms, Today’s Ashes – An Ash Wednesday Sermon on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Several years ago someone said to me, “One day I finally realized people were not spending nearly the amount of time thinking about me as I was spending thinking about them thinking about me, and wondering what they saw when they looked at me, what they said about me, and what they Read more
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Welcome to the Human Race – An Ash Wednesday Sermon, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
A couple of years ago I was talking with a women who is and has been for many years my therapist, counselor, mentor, and teacher all rolled into one. I told her that I worked really hard to always get it right, to have the answer, to always know what to do, to speak the Read more
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Taking Ourselves More Seriously than God – An Ash Wednesday Sermon, Mt. 6:1-6, 16-21
“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your father in heaven.” (Mt. 6:1-6, 16-21; Ash Wednesday) Don’t sound the trumpet when you give alms. Don’t pray standing on the street corner attracting attention to yourself. Don’t show off by your fasting. Read more
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Ash Wednesday – Finding our Place in Death
At some level we all look for and try to create our place in life – a place where we belong, are accepted, liked, recognized, approved of, wanted, loved. To not find this place is in some way to face the reality of death, to be isolated and alone. And while we know death is Read more
Interrupting the Silence 