Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 26, 2004
Scripture:
We all love the Christmas stories, don’t we? We love the star of Bethlehem. We love the Wise Men. We love the shepherds and the angels and the lambs. We love most of all Luke’s story of a baby born in a stable and laid in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn. Christmas is about these stories for us. We cherish our memories of hearing them when we were children and perhaps of reading them to our own or other children ourselves. They are part of who we are, and we love them.
But in Matthew’s Gospel there’s another Christmas story that we rarely hear. It isn’t pretty and sweet, it’s brutal and ugly.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 24, 2004
Maybe for the first time in our history, the United Church of Christ has a theme this year, an identity that we are finally sharing with the world: "God Is Still Speaking." We quote Gracie Allen, of all people: "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." God is still speaking. Revelation is not closed. It didn’t end with Jesus. It didn’t end when the Bible went to press. As our Congregationalist ancestor in the faith John Robinson told those others of our direct spiritual ancestors the Pilgrims as they left Europe for a new world in 1620: God has yet more light and truth to break forth from God’s holy word. printTitle("A Christmas Eve Meditation");
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 19, 2004
Scripture:
This Advent season we’ve been waiting for the coming of God in the person of Jesus. We’ve talked about a couple of the many, many ways that we need God to come into our lives and into our world. We’ve talked about the nature of Christian waiting itself. We’ve done special things in our service-lit candles, one more each week with a special litany and prayer. We’ve sung special hymns about the coming of Jesus. We’ve read special scripture passages about a promised future king and a transformed world of peace, justice, and wholeness for all people. All in all quite a buildup.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 12, 2004
Scripture:
Are we there yet? Daddy, are we there yet?
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 5, 2004Scripture:
Today is the second Sunday of Advent. It is also the first Sunday since our denomination, the United Church of Christ, began running a television commercial as part of the larger God Is Still Speaking campaign. Last week I told you that during Advent I want to address the question: Where do we need God to come into the world and into our lives? This week something happened in that God Is Still Speaking Campaign that I know most of you have heard about and that drove home for me one way in which we need God to come into the world today, and that’s what I want to talk to you about this morning.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 28, 2004Scripture:
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and you may have noticed a few changes this morning. We did include a children’s time in this morning’s service. That’s a big change for us and a wonderful thing, but it’s not one of the changes I’m talking about. I’m talking about smaller changes. The flags above the church door are a different color. They’re purple now. For the last five or six months they’ve been green, mostly. We have a fancy, preprinted bulletin cover. It’s mostly purple too. And the Advent wreath is set up. Most of its candles are purple too.
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and you may have noticed a few changes this morning. We did include a children’s time in this morning’s service. That’s a big change for us and a wonderful thing, but it’s not one of the changes I’m talking about. I’m talking about smaller changes. The flags above the church door are a different color. They’re purple now. For the last five or six months they’ve been green, mostly. We have a fancy, preprinted bulletin cover. It’s mostly purple too. And the Advent wreath is set up. Most of its candles are purple too. Why all the purple? Well, in Christian liturgy, purple is the color of waiting, of anticipation, of expectation. Advent is a season of waiting, of anticipation, of expectation. So the color of Advent is purple. Advent stretches from the fourth Sunday before Christmas-today-through Christmas Eve. It is a time of preparation for Christmas. It is a time of anticipating the birth of Christ. And because for us Christians the birth of Christ represents the coming into the world of God Incarnate, God made human, Advent is, for us, a time of waiting for God. It is a time of waiting for the unique coming of God into the world and into our lives that we celebrate at Christmas. I’ve been thinking about Advent a lot over the past few weeks, and a question popped into my head that somehow just won’t go away, namely: Where to we need God to come into the world today? So I’m going to devote my sermons this Advent to that question. Where does the world need God today? Where do we as a congregation need to God to come into our lives? Where do people generally need God to come into their lives? Where do I need God to come into my life? These are some of the questions I hope to address in my sermons during Advent. So when I read the lectionary passages for this first Sunday of Advent, I approached them with these questions in mind. And bang! Right off the bat, in the very first reading, I was hit with one perhaps obvious but nonetheless profound answer to my question about where the world needs God today. That’s the passage from the second chapter of Isaiah, the famous swords into plowshares passage that appears also in virtually identical form in the fourth chapter of Micah. It is one of my absolute favorites in all of Scripture. You’ve heard me quote many times when prayers for peace are offered during our prayer time after the sermon. I used Micah’s version of it as one of the Scripture readings in my ordination service. I think it is one of the most powerful and one of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture, and it certainly addresses the question: Where do we need God to come into the world today? Let’s take a closer look at it. In form it is, in the Isaiah version, a prophecy of the prophet Isaiah about the future of the Jewish state of the day and of its capital city Jerusalem. It is a vision of all the people of the earth streaming to Jerusalem and to the Temple of Israel’s God for instruction in God’s ways. Isaiah tells us that when all the people are instructed in God’s ways, there will be no more war. Rather than resolve conflicts through war, people will submit their disputes to God for arbitration: “He [that’s God] shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples….” It is a vision of the people discerning God’s will together and then working to do God’s will in the world. When the people do that, they will have no more need for weapons: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” The instruments of war will be transformed into the instruments of peaceful cultivation so that all may be fed in peace. There will be no more war: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” The faculties of the world’s military academies will be out of work, for there will be no more need to learn the ways of war. Maybe they can find work wielding those plowshares and pruning hooks. In any event, this passage is Scripture’s promise of a world at peace, a world in which the military does not have first claim on our human talent and our material treasure because people have come to their senses, turned to God, and repudiated war. It sounds like a pipedream, and maybe it is. But I have to tell you this morning that in my opinion there is no more pressing issue in the world today than the issue of war and peace. Saving the environment comes close; but if we can’t get war under control, we won’t need an environment because we won’t have a future. War and military expenditures threaten to eat us alive, and by “us” I mean us Americans. We are currently engaged in a war that many of us believe is unjustified and unjustifiable. That’s perhaps a matter of opinion, but let me give you some statistics on American military spending that are not a matter of opinion that you may not be aware of. This year, 2004, American military spending in the Defense Department and Energy Department budgets was projected to $400,100,000,000.00-4.1 billion dollars. That amount is 50.1% of the discretionary spending over which Congress has control. It is nearly one half of all global military spending. It is six times the military expenditures of Russia, which ranks No. 2 in such spending worldwide. It is more than the expenditures of the next 25 largest military spenders combined. At this rate, our country’s military spending just during the course of this sermon will be more than $11,387,175.00. That’s your money and it’s my money. It’s all of our money, more than any of us will ever see in a lifetime, probably more than everyone in this room combined will ever see in a lifetime, spent on war in only 15 minutes. Now, maybe those numbers don’t shock and appall you as much as they shock and appall me. Maybe you’re saying: All that military spending is necessary because we live in a dangerous world. Isaiah’s vision is nice, but it is indeed a pipedream. Maybe God will bring it about some day. After all, you just said we’re waiting for God; but we can’t do it. While we wait for God, we have to armed and dangerous so that the other armed and dangerous people in the world won’t mess with us. In the world’s terms that argument makes sense. This morning, however, let me ask you to hear me out as I try to present another point of view, one that I think is more faithful to the Bible’s vision of a world without war. We are followers of Jesus Christ whose birth we are now anticipating, and being followers of Jesus Christ has consequences. The major consequence is that we are called to follow his way in the world and not to follow the way of the world. Jesus’ way was the way of peace, it was the way of swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. He preached nonviolence. He did not preach passivity, however. He preached creative, assertive, but always nonviolent resistance to evil. The Church of the Brethren, one of whose local churches my wife Jane serves in Wenatchee, puts out a bumper sticker that reads: “When Jesus said love your enemies, I think he meant don’t kill them.” Self defense may or may not be justifiable in Christian terms, but the massive spending that we do on the military, spending that is so massively disproportionate to any conceivable threat we face, does not reflect any legitimate need for self defense.. Maybe we can accept military spending for self defense. We cannot accept the military spending we are presently doing. That spending forces us, metaphorically at least, to turn plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears. It is the opposite of Isaiah’s vision, and of Jesus’, the one whose birth we can’t wait to celebrate. That’s my take on it. I ask you at least to consider it. Now, whether you agree with me about these things or not, this discussion begs one very important question: What does it mean to wait for God? Waiting can mean a couple of different things. It can mean sitting and doing nothing. When we sit in a doctor’s waiting room waiting to be called in for our appointment, we’re probably doing nothing except perhaps reading some two or three year old magazine article about something we aren’t really interested in. We wait until the doctor acts and calls us in. Sometimes it feels like we wait forever, but usually we just wait. But I don’t think that’s what waiting means in the Bible. God does not call us to passivity. God does not call us to inaction in the face of injustice, in the face of policies that deny the Kingdom of God, that are grounded in fear and not in trust in God’ vision of peace and abundant life for all God calls us to active waiting. God calls us to lives devoted to helping prepare the way, to prepare for the promised day and to help in its birthing. We need God to come into the world and into our lives, but we can’t wait for God to do it. God needs us to act. God calls us to act. We need us to act, live in trust and hope the way God calls us to live. Our waiting for God must be active, assertive, nonviolent waiting, waiting that prepares the way, that furthers the coming of the promised day. We need God to come into the world and bring us peace. In this Advent season we wait for the coming of God into the world. What are we prepared to do about it? Amen. Why all the purple?
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
DATEScripture:
Today is another one of those, for us any way, relatively minor special Sundays on the church calendar that we don’t pay a lot of attention to. Recently we’ve had Reformation Sunday and All Saints Sunday. Today we have Reign of Christ Sunday. It used to be called, and in some quarters still is called, Christ the King Sunday, but we politically correct UCC types don’t like the term king. It is exclusively male, and it smacks of domination. So we’ve changed it to Reign of Christ.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 14, 2004Scripture:
One of the great things about being a pastor is that I get to spend a significant amount of time studying scripture, reading great books on theology and spirituality, thinking about big, important things, and calling it work.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 7, 2004Scripture:
To us, death is real. I doubt that that statement comes as a surprise to anyone, except perhaps the surprise that I would actually get up here and bother to say it. I’m sure everyone in this room, or if not everyone then nearly everyone, has experienced the death of a loved one-a parent, spouse, partner, child, or a grandparent or other relative or beloved friend.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 31, 2004Scripture:
Today is Halloween. I expect to spend the evening having small children in supposedly scary costumes--they will be truly scary if they include masks of the Presidential candidates, but never mind--ringing my doorbell and driving my poor dog stark-raving nuts. I may turn off all the outside lights and all the upstairs lights, that can be seen from the street, and spend the evening hiding out downstairs in the interest of Jake’s emotional well-being, such as it is.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 24, 2004Scripture:
I told you last Sunday that when I read the lectionary texts for that week there wasn’t a thing in them that I wanted to preach on. I ended up preaching on the one that I didn’t want to preach on most. So imagine my delight when last Monday I read the lectionary texts for this week and found as the Gospel reading Luke’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. It’s one of my favorite Gospel passages. I love it. I was very excited about having a chance to preach on it.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 17, 2004Scripture:
Some of you share my dislike of the parable [of the persistent plaintiff], but I imagine others of you are wondering: What’s Sorenson’s problem? After all, it’s just a parable about praying, and certainly praying is a good thing and a big part of the Christian life. Indeed, prayer is all that, but my problem is that the parable so often is taken to say more than that. People take it to mean essentially what a license plate frame I saw this past week said: "God answers knee-mail." That is, the parable is taken to mean, in a very simplistic, mechanistic way, that if you pray persistently for something, God will give it to you.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 10, 2004Scripture:
Do you think of yourself as living in exile? I imagine most of you don’t. In [the] modern sense of exile, we’re not exiles; but there’s another way of looking at exile, a Biblical way that may suggest a different answer to the question of whether or not we’re exiles.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 3, 2004Scripture:
In our Gospel reading this morning Jesus tells us that if we have faith even the size of a tiny mustard seed we’d be able to say to a mulberry tree be uprooted and transplanted in the sea, and it would obey us. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read that I was overcome with joy. You see, I have long harbored a secret passion for uprooting mulberry trees...
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 26, 2004Scripture:
I know I’ve preached about hope before, but it is something with which I struggle so hard these days that I decided I needed to preach on it again. Maybe you don’t need to hear a word about how hope is possible in our world, but I do; and since I don’t get very often to hear anyone else preach a word I need to hear, I’m left to do it myself.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 19, 2004Scripture:
I once heard someone say: "Show me your checkbook and I’ll tell you what you believe in." How we relate to money is in fact a matter of faith. It is a spiritual matter.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 12, 2004Scripture:
Sometimes God just doesn’t make sense, the God, that is, that Jesus tells us about in his parables. Jesus’ parables are often his way of telling us about who God is, and those parables about who God is sometimes leave us saying: "Huh?" The more I thought about the two parables in this morning’s lesson, the more I thought: "Huh?"
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 29, 2004Scripture:
As most of you know, Jane and I were married--to each other--here in this church yesterday. My beautiful new wife, The Rev. Jane Sorenson, formerly Jane Ostby, is here with us this morning. As many of you know, this is my second marriage. I was married to my late first wife Francie for thirty years. We did "’til death do us part," and Jane and I have committed to each other before God that we will do the same. So I am taking this occasion today to talk to you about marriage. It is something I know a good deal about, not because I have studied it but because I have lived it for over half of my life. So please bear with me. It is a rather important topic for Jane and me today..
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 22, 2004Scripture:
Do you ever feel hopeless? I do. It’s easy enough to do these days.
Rev. Jeffrey Spencer
Recently of Tolt Congregational Church
August 15, 2004Scripture:
We come to our Gospel lesson picking up in the middle of a discussion Jesus is having with his disciples. Since chapter 9, Jesus has been heading toward Jerusalem to confront the principalities and powers with his truth. He knows the consequences of this action. He knows that he will be killed. And, needless to say, this knowledge is stressing him out a little.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 8, 2004Scripture:
We come here every Sunday morning--well, I come here most every Sunday morning and some of you come here some Sunday mornings, because we are people of faith. Together we are a community of faith, part of the ecumenical Christian community of faith that is itself part of the larger community of people of all faiths. As Protestant Christians we are part of a tradition that teaches that it is in faith that we are put right with God. Faith is very big with us, but if someone who was outside of that faith--any faith--asked you what the word faith means, what would you say?
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 1, 2004Scripture:
One of my favorite movies is Field of Dreams. For those of you who don’t know the movie, it’s about one Ray Kinsella, an Iowa framer and ex-hippie who builds a magical baseball field on part of his corn field in response to a mysterious voice that only he can hear. As a result of the lost corn production, he nearly loses his farm. At the end of the movie the character Terence Mann--James Earl Jones--assures Ray (Kevin Costner) that he and his family will not lose the farm because, as Ray’s precocious daughter Karen has already assured him, people will come from all over to see the magical ball field and the glimpse of heaven it provides. They will come, James Earl Jones says in that incomparable voice of his. They will come, not really knowing why; and they will pay for admission to the field giving no thought to the money, "for it is money they have and peace they lack."
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 25, 2004Scripture:
Every Sunday, as a regular part of our worship service, we say the Lord’s Prayer.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 18, 2004Scripture:
Last week’s sermon was prompted by the Monroe Pastors Fellowship statement on marriage. Today I want to continue to explore the interplay between Scripture and our experience in connection with two other contemporary issues in the life of the church, namely, the role and place of women in the life of the church and the issue of the language we use to talk about God, together with the relationship between those two issues.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 11, 2004Scripture:
I suspect by now many of you have seen this, the Monroe Pastors’ Fellowship Statement, titled "Why It Matters--Local Pastors Speak Out!" Although the statement never says so in so many words, it is intended as a statement against same-gender marriage and in support of keeping marriage the monopoly right of heterosexual couples. Now, I’m not going to preach on same-gender marriage this morning, at least not directly. I am, however, moved this morning to preach in opposition to this statement at a deeper level than the specific issue of same-gender marriage. This statement signed by twenty pastors in this town (in which there aren’t more than maybe 30 who are active) is, in my opinion, based upon and expresses such unsound theology and such bad history that I must speak out against what I believe to be its profound errors and in favor of a different, and I am convinced, better and more faithful vision of our religion and the Scripture upon which it rests.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 4, 2004Scripture:
On our secular calendars, today is Independence Day, our nation’s major political holiday. It is the day when we celebrate our independence and our freedom as Americans. The last two Sundays I have spoken to you not of political freedom but of Christian freedom. I made the points that Christ frees us from law and strict moral codes and that this freedom comes with strings attached, that it is not license. Rather, it calls us to an ethic of love.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 27, 2004Scripture:
Last week I told you that the Christian faith is about freedom and not about law and rigid rules. Now, I've made my point about Christian freedom around here before; and I've gotten from some of you a common and perfectly understandable reaction: If God doesn't require us to follow sets of rules, like the Ten Commandments for example, then there's no reason for us not to do whatever we want. Now recall that at the end of last week's sermon if said: Just a minute! Not so fast!
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 20, 2004Scripture:
Let me ask you a question. How many of you grew up thinking that to be a good Christian you had to obey some set of rules, that being a Christian had a lot to do with living by a list of dos and don’ts, mostly don’ts?
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 13, 2004Scripture:
We’ve talked about this before, but it is an issue that is so central to the way Christianity is usually understood that it keeps coming up again and again. We all, I think, have some understanding that Christianity is about forgiveness. Put another way, central to our faith is the notion that somehow, in some kind of way, it is in and through Jesus Christ that we get into right relationship with God. Christianity has usually understood forgiveness to be what is needed to put us in right relationship with God, and it is in Jesus that we find forgiveness.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 23, 2004Scripture:
As at least most of you know, our church is a member of the United Church of Christ, the UCC. The UCC was formed only in 1957. The Fifties were, among many other things, a time of wide-spread optimism on our country. True, there was the nasty business of the Cold War and arms race with the Soviets; but in a sense the presence of a clearly identified and easily vilified enemy only contributed to our sense of optimism. We were the good guys, they were the bad guys, and in the end our goodness would prevail over Communist evil.
The Fifties were also the heyday of Christian ecumenism, the movement for Christian unity.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 16, 2004Scripture:
I know that it’s dangerous to express any kind of generalities about people. People are so diverse, our personal stories and our life circumstances are so varied, that it is virtually impossible to say anything that is true of anyone. That being said, I’m now going to violate my own rule against making blanket statements about all people.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 9, 2004Scripture:
As many of you know, over the past few months, as our position as an Open and Affirming church has become publicized in this community, I have been called upon on several occasions--three separate occasions, actually--to explain or justify that position by fellow Christian pastors who do not share our vision of a God who loves and accepts all people, specifically gay and lesbian people, just as they are.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 2, 2004Scripture:
That’s quite an interesting pairing of Scripture readings we just heard. First was Psalm 23, just about everybody’s favorite Psalm. Then we heard a passage from the book of Revelation. If the reaction to Revelation when we studied it a while back, of the folks who regularly attend our Sunday morning education forum is any indication, Revelation is as unpopular among us as Psalm 23 is popular.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 25, 2004Scripture:
This morning's Gospel reading comes from the Gospel of John, as do many of the lectionary Gospel readings during the Easter season. To be perfectly honest, I cringe a little bit whenever I see that the lectionary is giving me a Gospel lesson from John.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 18, 2004Scripture:
The 20th century produced two giants of Protestant theology--Karl Barth and Paul Tillich.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 11, 2004Scripture:
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 10, 2004Scripture:
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 4, 2004 (Palm Sunday)Scripture:
It seems that religious authorities always have as much trouble as Alan Greenspan with what the Fed chairman once called "irrational exuberance." Of course, exuberance is probably not the first adjective that comes to mind when you think of a bunch of Congregationalists;
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 28, 2004Scripture:
There aren’t very many stories that appear in all four of the Gospels in the New Testament. There is a story of a woman anointing Jesus with costly perfume in each of the four Gospels. The fact that there is an anointing story in all four Gospels, should tell us that this is an important story.
And yet the versions of the story in Mark, Matthew, and John all have an element in them that I used to find very disturbing and hard to deal with, an element that made we want to write the story out of my personal canon, made me wish it just weren’t there.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 21, 2004Scripture:
Some weeks, when I read the lectionary selections for a coming Sunday, I can’t help but exclaim: Who dealt this mess! I mean, some weeks the passages seem so obscure, or so unpreachable for one reason or another, that I struggle to come up with anything meaningful to say out of them. This week, I didn’t have that problem.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 14, 2004Scripture:
I don’t know about you, but I spend an awful lot of time being dissatisfied, and I can’t figure out why.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 7, 2004Scripture:
Two weeks ago, when I talked to you about Mel Gibson’s movie "The Passion of the Christ," I told you that dying wasn’t the purpose of Jesus’ life, it was the consequence of his life. It is very clear in the Gospels that Jesus could have avoided crucifixion by denying his mission, by shutting up, by refusing to be faithful to his call.
We have a perfect example of that truth in today’s Gospel lesson.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 29, 2004Scripture:
I suspect that we’ve all heard today’s Gospel reading before. The story of the temptation of Christ in the desert is one of the most familiar in the Gospels. It contains one of the Gospels’ most memorable lines: "Man does not live by bread alone." Luke 4:4. The story and some of the lines are familiar. And yet I wonder how seriously we take this story.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 22, 2004Scripture:
There’s an event coming up in the life of our community, of our society, that I feel compelled to talk to you about this morning even though it hasn’t happened yet. This coming Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, Mel Gibson’s movie "The Passion of the Christ" opens in theaters. Jewish leaders have expressed significant concerns that it will lead to a rise in anti-Semitism, a real danger whenever certain aspects of the Gospel stories are taken as historical fact. The entire movie appears to me to be a highly problematic undertaking for a great variety of reasons. Still, I of course have not seen the movie. It isn’t out yet. So I can’t really preach about this movie. I can, however, give you a few words of caution about Biblical epic movies generally that may be helpful, and I can tell you about some of the promotional materials that are being used to hype the movie.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 15, 2004Scripture:
Most of us here are old enough to remember the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That movement was characterized by, among other things, a couple of powerful songs that the protestors would sing as they marched or engaged in acts of peaceful civil disobedience in defiance of the immoral laws and practices of segregation.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 8, 2004Scripture:
In the movie Wayne’s World there’s a scene in which Wayne (played by Mike Myers of Austin Powers fame, or infamy if you prefer) and Garth (played by Dana Carvey) have gotten backstage passes at an Alice Cooper concert.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 1, 2004Scripture:
The last couple of weeks we’ve taken a look at aspects of who Jesus was. Two weeks ago we saw that he was a miracle worker, and we talked about how we can be miracle workers too. Last week we saw him as the great liberator, and we talked about how we are being liberators too. Today we see another aspect of who Jesus was. In the Gospel passage from Luke we see that Jesus was a truth teller. He was a truth teller even when his listeners didn’t at all like the truth he had to tell.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 25, 2004Scripture:
Last week we talked about miracles. I told you that Jesus was, among other things, a miracle worker; and I talked about how we can be miracle workers too. The question of who Jesus is, however, never goes away.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 18, 2004Scripture:
There has been a great deal of ink spilled in recent years over the question: Who was Jesus really? Well, one thing seems clear. Whatever else he may have been, Jesus was a miracle worker.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 4, 2004
Epiphany SundayScripture:
They knew because they saw a star. Matthew tells us that "wise men from the East" came to Jerusalem looking for the newborn Christ because, as they said, "we have observed his star at its rising...."