Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 25, 2005

Scripture:

Well, here we are. On Christmas Day. We don’t often get to worship together on Christmas itself, so being here today with my church family is a special joy for me; and I hope it is for you too. Christmas is of course a day of great joy for all Christians. Christ is born! Praise the Lord! Christmas is indeed "good news of great joy for all the people," as Luke’s angel tells the shepherds. Luke 2:10 On Christmas the Word of God indeed became flesh and loved among us. John 1:14 The Psalmist of Psalm 98, which we heard this morning, of course didn’t know about Jesus. He, or she, lived centuries before Jesus. Still, Psalm 98 is an appropriate Christmas text for us, especially verses 1 and 4:

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 11, 2005

Scripture:

We have arrived at the third Sunday of Advent. For us this year it will in effect be the last Sunday of Advent, even though technically we still have one more to go.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 4, 2005

Scripture:

The great UCC Hebrew Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann has taught us to think about Hebrew Scripture in terms of major "trajectories," as he calls them, major images and themes that run across the diverse books of the Hebrew Bible. One of those trajectories or themes, indeed one of the Bible’s major trajectories or themes, is return from exile. Our readings from Isaiah and Psalm 85 this morning are part of that theme.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 27, 2005

Scripture:

Some of you probably know the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. It’s a modern classic. It is a story of two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who are waiting for a character named Godot. They wait, and wait, and wait, but Godot never shows up. The play is an allegory of the human experience of the absence of God.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 20, 2005

Scripture:

There’s a very well-kept secret about the Roman Catholic Church that I want to tell you about.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 13, 2005

Scripture:

I’ve said this before, but much of the time Jesus’ parables, especially the parables that the Gospel of Matthew attributes to him, leave me saying: "Huh?" Or worse. Sometimes they leave me saying "No way!"

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 6, 2005

Scripture:

For the most part, I don’t much care for the Book of Joshua.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 30, 2005

Scripture:

First of all let me say again what a pleasure it is for me to be here this morning. Over the last two years that my wife has served as your pastor I have gotten to know some of you at least a little bit.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 23, 2005

Scripture:

It has long struck me as interesting, and a bit odd, that Jesus’ Great Commandment enjoins us not simply to love our neighbors but to love them "as yourself." What does that mean, "as yourself."

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 16, 2005

Scripture:

I’ve got a confession to make. I have misled you. Throughout my three and a half years as your pastor, I have told you again and again that the distinction that so many people, and so much of the church, make between religion and politics is false. And it turns out that I’ve been wrong about all that. So this morning I come before you to make a correction, to retract what I’ve said before, to set the record straight.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 9, 2005

Scripture:

It’s something of a cliché to say about Bible stories that we find something new in them every time we read them.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 2, 2005

Scripture:

Most of you know that this is our regularly scheduled Communion Sunday, the first Sunday of the month. You may not be aware that this particular first Sunday of the month is World Communion Sunday, a Sunday designated by the ecumenical movement to commemorate the unity of the church, invisible as it may be, around the Lord’s Table.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 25, 2005

Scripture:

Every Sunday morning, if you come in here through the front door, you pass by two images of the UCC seal, one on each side. That seal contains the UCC motto: "That They May All Be One."

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 18, 2005

Scripture:

I don’t know about you, but I really like getting presents. Yet for all that, there’s one free gift that someone wants to give us because that someone loves us; and while might want to receive it, we don’t want it to be free. That’s what Matthew’s parable of the laborers in the vineyard is about.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 11, 2005

Scripture:

Most of you have probably seen the bumper sticker: "Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven."

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 4, 2005

Scripture:

It sure is easy to get the idea these days that Christianity is all about rules. So many churches have so many rules. They’re usually rules against something, and they most often have something to do with gender or sex.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 28, 2005

Scripture:

This is the last of the sermon series I’ve been doing this summer on my favorite Bible verses, Romans 8:38-39. In those verses Paul tells us that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have examined various parts of that claim in the four previous sermons in this series. Now, as we close this series, we need to examine Paul’s radical claim that truly nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 21, 2005

Scripture:

Whether it’s been known as First Congregational Church of Monroe, Monroe Congregational Church, or Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ, this church has always done things a bit differently.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 14, 2005

Scripture:

In the verses that are the focus of this five-part sermon series, Paul tells us that nothing in all creation, not even life itself, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Last week I talked about the ways in which the love of God is made known to us in Jesus Christ. Yet Paul doesn’t say just "Christ Jesus." He adds a modifier. He says: "Christ Jesus our Lord." Why?

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 7, 2005

Scripture:

In the verses that are the focus of this five part sermon series, Paul tells us that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Last week I talked about the nature of that love and said that it is a love that wants only what is best for us, God’s human creatures. How do we know that it is true? For us Christians, the answer to how we know that God is a God of this kind of love lies in Paul’s phrase "in Christ Jesus." Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 31, 2005

Scripture:

In the verses that are the focus of this five part sermon series, Paul tells us that nothing in all creation, not even death itself, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Last week we focused on God. I was even so bold as to suggest that the fact that even this God will never let us go is very good news indeed.

Yet I don’t think we have to go that far afield to find a god whose inseparable presence with us is not exactly good news. I think of the God of the Hebrew prophets who, on the one hand, demands justice for the poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalized but who, on the other hand, judges with severity and punishes with wrath that inflicts further suffering even on those same poor, vulnerable, and marginalized ones in God’s zeal to execute judgment against the nation’s unfaithful elite. I don’t know about you, but if that’s who God is, I’d want everything in all creation to separate me from that terrible deity.

That, I think, is why Paul didn’t say simply that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from God. He put qualifiers on the word God in these magnificent verses. The first qualifier, and the one I want to look at today, is the phrase "the love of." That from which nothing can separate us isn’t just God, it is the love of God. This phrase is really what makes Romans 8:38-39 good news. Let’s take a closer look at it.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 24, 2005

Scripture:

Those of you who have been regulars here for a while have heard me say on many occasions that my favorite verses in all of Scripture are Romans 8:38-39. So I decided that over the next six Sundays I will preach five sermons on these two verses, taking a different aspect of them each time, exploring it, turning it over and around, seeking to delve more deeply into its meaning. For the rest of the summer, you’re going to get more of Romans 8:38-39 than you probably ever thought you wanted. There will be five sermons because it seems to me that these two verses break down into five major subjects. I will give a sermon on each of these five. The first and most fundamental one, and the subject of this sermon today, is: God.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 17, 2005

Scripture:

Where is God? This question haunts us.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 10, 2005

Scripture:

There’s a lot we don’t know about Jesus of Nazareth; but there is one thing of which we can be pretty certain: Jesus spoke in parables. If you want to understand what he has to say, you’ve got to decipher the parables.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 3, 2005

Scripture:

A fine pastor I know once told me that every preacher has one great sermon that she or he preaches again and again. One theme that I know recurs in my preaching is that being a faithful disciple of Christ isn’t easy.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 26, 2005

Scripture:

We are people of faith. Faith is what distinguishes us from people who have no faith. Since having faith is a central part of our identity, it ought to be pretty important to us to know what faith is. I don’t mean what the specific content of the Christian faith is. I mean: What do we mean by the word faith?

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 19, 2005

Scripture:

Some of the statements that the Gospel writers attribute to Jesus just leave us shaking our heads. Some of them just don’t seem to make sense.

Other statements attributed to Jesus make sense, but they leave us shaking our heads anyway because they seem to contradict everything that we think we know about Jesus. Our passage this morning has one of those too, Matthew 10:34, which reads: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have come to bring not peace but a sword."

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 12, 2005

Scripture:

There is a question about one of the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith that keeps recurring among us. I have preached on it many times, and you, quite properly, keep asking me about it. That question is: What does it mean when we say that Jesus Christ died for us? I want to talk about that question some more this morning.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 5, 2005

Scripture:

Just now we welcomed five new friends into formal membership in our church; and so today I think it is appropriate to ask not only what God requires of us, as our Scripture passages do, but also: What does the church require of us, of each one of us.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 29, 2005

Scripture:

I know that some of you have a problem with one of the things I often say around here. Well, actually, some of you have lots of problems with lots of the things I say around here; but this morning I want to talk about just one of them. I am a universalist. That means that I believe that through the cross of Jesus Christ all people, without exception, are saved.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 15, 2005

Scripture:

Our two Scripture readings this morning are two of my favorites. One of my favorite parts of the Pentecost story from Acts, a part that strikes me as Pentecostal comic relief, is the line "but some thought they were drunk on new wine" and Peter’s reported response that this couldn’t be the case because it was only nine o’clock on the morning.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 8, 2005

Scripture:

I don’t know if this story I’m going to tell you ever actually happened exactly this way or not, but I know that this story is true.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 1, 2005

Scripture:

Last week I told you of my belief that God’s truth can be found in non-Christian spiritual traditions as well as in Christianity. So I was pleased to be reminded this week when I read the passage in Acts from this week’s lectionary readings that one of the lines from that reading that is truly foundational for my own faith and spirituality is actually a quote from a non-Christian and non-Jewish source.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 24, 2005

Scripture:

I have a confession to make that I suppose as a Christian pastor I really should keep to myself; but then I don’t like keeping things from you that affect my pastoring, so here goes. The Gospel of John sometimes drives me straight up nuts!

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 17, 2005

Scripture:

I imagine you’ve all seen the bumper stickers: "Where Will You Spend Eternity?" And: "If you think there is no hell, you’d better be right." They tell us something about what popular Christianity among us has become. Let me ask you all something: How many of you grew up believing that Christianity is mostly about whether you go to heaven or to hell when you die?

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 10, 2005

Scripture:

Many of my favorite Bible stories are in my favorite Gospel, the Gospel of Luke. Among a great many other wonderful stories and parables, Luke has my favorite Resurrection story too. That’s the story of the Walk to Emmaus.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 3, 2005

Scripture:

This last Holy Week there was a sort of a mini-revival of Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ. Gibson was cropping up on news channel programs crowing about how he had bypassed the Hollywood establishment to make this movie that had, so he claims, revived Christianity yadda yadda yadda.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 27, 2005

Scripture:

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 24, 2005

Scripture:

One of the things I keep telling folks here at this church, and maybe the others of you have heard it before too, is that the great Bible stories aren’t just about things that happened to other people a long time ago in a place far away.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 20, 2005

Scripture:

It can’t be! I mean, how could it happen? Just five days earlier the crowds hailed him as the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 13, 2005

Scripture:

Ezekiel’s story of the valley of the dry bones is one of those Bible stories that I can’t hear without wanting to sing.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Oh hear the word of the Lord!

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 6, 2005

Scripture:

We all understand fear of the dark.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 27, 2005

Scripture:

Jesus met the woman at the well. I suppose we all know the story, at least the part about him telling her about her five husbands and how she’s not married to the man she lives with now. It’s the stuff of folk songs, or at least a Peter Paul and Mary song that many of us know.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 20, 2005

Scripture:

The year is 1517. The place is Wittenberg, Germany. A young university professor, who is also an Augustinian monk, posts a document on the Castle Church door.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 13, 2005

Scripture:

Last week, on Transfiguration Sunday, I talked to you about mountaintop or peak experiences. Peak experiences are a real rush, but the life of faith doesn’t take place only on the mountaintop. Mostly, it takes place down here in the valley, in our ordinary lives.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 6, 2005, Transfiguration Sunday

Scripture:

Peter doesn’t get it. I mean, he never gets it.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 30, 2005

Scripture:

Last Monday as I was driving down Kelsey Street here in Monroe I found myself behind a Jeep Cherokee with several bumper stickers and other symbols affixed to the rear window and the rear bumper. Of interest for my purposes this morning was the juxtaposition of a couple of bumper stickers with another symbol above them in the back window. One bumper sticker was the Christian fish symbol. Another proclaimed: "Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven." These bumper stickers loudly proclaimed the vehicle’s owner’s status as a self-avowed Christian. Above these Christian bumper stickers, taking up the whole back window of this stations wagon were two crossed American flags.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 23, 2005

Scripture:

These are dark days.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 16, 2005

Scripture:

On December 26, 2004, just off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, far below the surface, the earth moved. A huge earthquake shook the ground. The massive wave of energy the quake released moved the ocean deeps, creating a huge wave, a tsunami of almost unimaginable force. The huge wave crashed ashore first in Sumatra, then in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and other nations as far away as the east coast of Africa. In what seems like no time at all, a huge number of lives-something over 150,000 at last count-were snuffed out. A million or more people lost their homes. Entire towns were wiped off the face of the earth. It is a disaster of almost unimaginable magnitude.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 9, 2005

Scripture:

This morning’s Gospel lesson is Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. All four Gospels recount how John baptized Jesus. That apparently undeniable historical fact was a problem for the early church.

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 2, 2005

Scripture:

Today we celebrate Epiphany Sunday. Actually, it isn’t technically Epiphany until next Thursday, January 6; but never mind. We’re marking it today. It is the day in the church year when we commemorate the visit of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus as told in Chapter 2 of Matthew. An epiphany is an appearance of God, and we call this day Epiphany because it marks the first appearance of God in Jesus Christ to the Gentiles in the persons of the Wise Men.