Audio recordings of sermons and services can be found here.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 11, 2011
Scripture:
In this Advent sermon series so far we have considered the importance of Jesus of Nazareth having truly been a human being like us and what it means for us to confess him as God Incarnate. Those topics are vitally important for Christians, yet there is at least one more thing that we need to consider for our answer to our theme question of who we are waiting for to be anywhere near complete—not that it can be complete in three short sermons of course. Almost from the very beginning Christians have called Jesus “Savior.” We heard them doing that in our reading from Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth just now. Many of us can recite those lines by heart, probably in the King James version. They are the angel’s announcement of the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. The angel says “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Clearly Luke sees Jesus as a Savior, and so has the Christian tradition nearly from the very beginning.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 4, 2011
Scripture:
Last Sunday afternoon my son Matt asked me what I had preached on that morning. I said it was the first part of a sermon series titled “Who Are We Waiting For?” He replied “How can you stretch an answer that is one word into three sermons?” I replied: “Experience.” Then I explained that while “Jesus” is the answer to this series’ title question, that answer is actually quite complex. Today we get into some of that complexity. In Part 1 of this sermon series titled “Who Are We Waiting For?” I insisted at considerable length that before Jesus was anything else he was a real human being. That is true, and it is important; but for the Christian tradition it is not a complete answer to the question of who Jesus is for us. It is not a complete answer to the question “Who are we waiting for?” Jesus was a human being, yes; but the Christian tradition has said almost from the very beginning that, while not ceasing to be a human being, Jesus was also much more than a mere human being. Almost from the very beginning the Christian tradition has said that Jesus of Nazareth was God Incarnate, God become human. What are we to make of that contention? Does it have any meaning for us? To those questions we now turn in this second part of our Advent sermon series.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 27, 2011
Scripture:
It’s Advent, that season of the church year in which we anticipate and prepare for the birth of Christ. Recently one of our number said something at our Sunday morning adult education forum that suggested to me something that it might well be worth spending some time on this Advent season. He said that he had been struggling recently with the question of just who this Jesus is. That is, after all, one of the central questions—perhaps the central question—of the Christian life. Jesus himself put it to his disciples. Jesus asked his disciples who people were saying that he is. They gave various answers. Then he asked them: “But who do you say that I am?” Mark 8:29 We are anticipating and preparing for his birth, but who is he anyway that we should make such a big deal out his getting himself born? Who do we say that he is? That question is so important for Christians that I decided that I would do a three part Advent sermon series on the question “Who are we waiting for?”
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 20, 2011
Scripture:
I imagine that most of you are familiar with the Star Wars movies. In the first of those movies to be made (which turned out to be the fourth movie in the series—go figure) the rebels who are fighting the evil empire have some success in defeating the military forces of the empire, destroying its “Death Star,” a fearful weapon that had destroyed the home planet of some of the rebels. The title of the second movie to be made (which turned out to be the fifth movie in the series—go figure) is “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.” The demonic empire doesn’t back down and roll over in the face of the threat from the forces of liberation. It fights back—hard. The rebels pay a steep price for their resistance to the forces of empire.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 13, 2011
Scripture:
So. Another parable of Jesus. Jesus taught in parables, which can be really annoying of him. Don’t you sometimes wish that he’d just come out and tell us directly what he means? Why do we have to dig meaning out of obscure parables? And why do those parables so often have things in them that so puzzle or even shock us? Well, whatever the reason, that’s what Jesus did. He told parables, and we have no choice but to try to figure them out.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
Nov. 6, 2011
Scripture:
OK. So it wasn’t a summer vacation, it was a fall vacation. And it was as much sabbatical or study leave as it was vacation. Still, what I want to do this morning is tell you about a couple of things I did during my time off in October and say a bit about what I think it might mean for us here at Monroe Congregational UCC. After all, I intended this time off to be, and as I said, it was sabbatical time as much as vacation time; and I actually did a good deal of study and thinking while I was away. Specifically I want to tell you about two speakers I heard, one of them actually a couple of days before my time off began and the other during my time off. Both of them had things to say that I think suggest a couple of emphases that we may want to adopt as we seek to be church and to follow God’s calling as we go forward together in this place and time.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 9, 2011
Scripture:
Every week in our worship service, after we have received and prayed over the offering, I turn to the congregation and say: “And now I invite you to turn to your neighbor and share that greatest of all of God’s blessings. The peace of Christ be with you.” I know that some of you like that part of the service, and some of you don’t. That’s OK. One thing I’ve learned in my years of pastoring this congregation is that nothing we do, and nothing we change, in how we do worship will be popular with everyone. But have you ever stopped to wonder why I call the peace of Christ the greatest of all of God’s blessings? None of you has ever asked me why I call the peace of Christ the greatest of all of God’s blessings. Indeed, none of you has ever asked me what the peace of Christ is. Still, whether these questions have occurred to you or not, they’re really important questions; so this morning I’m going to try to answer them anyway. And I’m going to try to do that using our passage from Philippians that we just heard. It doesn’t use the phrase “the peace of Christ,” but it does use the phrase “the peace of God.” They’re the same thing, which I hope to explain in a moment.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 2, 2011
Scripture:
Today we have as our focus text part of the version of the Ten Commandments that appears in Exodus. There’s a slightly different version in Deuteronomy, but the one in Exodus is the one most people know and the one most people mean when they refer to the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are a really big deal. Never mind that they’re only the first ten of 613 laws in the Torah. They’re the ten people know or at least have heard of. They’re the ten that a great many people think express a basic, universal, absolute morality. They’re the ten that a lot of people, or reasons that escape me, want to mount on the walls of courthouses. So understanding the Ten Commandments is a pretty important thing both within Christianity and in our society in general.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 25, 2011
Scripture:
The last couple of times that Manny has served as lay leader he has mentioned the name Kierkegaard. Søren Kierkegaard was a 19th century Danish theologian whose work is important for, among other things, laying a foundation for the existential theology that Paul Tillich and others would pick up and develop further in the 20th century. Every time I read the passage from Philippians that we heard this morning I think of one of Kierkegaard’s major works that has the title Fear and Trembling. I’m sure Kierkegaard got that phrase from our Philippians passage, from Paul’s statement “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”. The book to which he gave that title is mostly about the story from Genesis of Yahweh’s instruction to Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a holy sacrifice. The connection between the line in Philippians that gave Kierkegaard his title and the story of the sacrifice of Isaac may not be readily apparent, but Kierkegaard clearly thought that there was one, and so do I. Maybe that connection will become clearer as we take a closer look at what “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” might mean for us.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 11, 2011
Scripture:
On September 11, 2001, extremists who claimed to be acting in the name of Islam but who were actually betraying several core principles of Islam attacked the United States of America. They brought down the two skyscrapers of the World Trade Center in New York. They crashed an airplane into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Another plane they had hijacked, that they apparently intended to crash into either the Capitol Building or the White House, crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers overpowered the terrorists. The United States responded with a massive military invasion of Afghanistan, the country’s whose Islamist government we believed (with some but not solid justification) had harbored the terrorists as they planned and trained for their breathtaking act of terrorism. The United States then responded further with a massive military invasion of Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorists attacks. Today, ten years later, American troops are still engaged in combat in those two countries, especially in Afghanistan where we are bogged down in an unwinnable war that has no end in sight. The United States responded by passing laws and adopting supposed security measures that severely restrict the valued civil liberties of all Americans.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 4, 2011
Scripture:
Paul’s relationship to the Jewish law, that is, the law of Moses contained in the Torah, is, shall we say, complex at best. Mostly he thinks that salvation doesn’t come through the law at all, but through grace. Still, he thinks that in some way the law still has value. In the passage we heard from his letter to the church in Rome Paul tells what he thinks the law is really all about. He says basically the same thing that Jesus said about it. Paul puts it this way: “The commandments, ‘you shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal: You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “love your neighbor as yourself.’” Romans 13:9 For Paul, and pretty much for Jesus too, all the laws of moral living come down to only one, love your neighbor as yourself. Love is the measure of all law. Love is the measure of all moral living. What morality demands is not mechanical obedience to specific moral rules, not even the Ten Commandments.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 28, 2011
Scripture:
On March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador, the capital of the Central American nation El Salvador, was celebrating the Eucharist in a hospital chapel in San Salvador. As he lifted the host, the body of Jesus Christ, he was gunned down, his blood mixing with the wine of the sacrament, the blood of Christ. Twenty-nine years later, in 2009, the government of El Salvador admitted its responsibility for Archbishop Romero’s murder. Archbishop Romero is not yet officially a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, although that process is under way; but the people of Central America already call him Saint Oscar. The powers of his time and place murdered him because he spoke out as an advocate for the poor and against the oppression practiced by the government of his country. He was murdered because he witnessed in his words and his life to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 21, 2011
Scripture:
So. Transformation has become something children’s toys do, even if I can’t make them do it. Robots turn into trucks, and vice versa. One thing becomes something else. The something else has the same parts as the first thing, they’re just arranged differently, so they look like something else. I guess a lot of kids think Transformers are really cool. When you Google Transformers you learn that Transformers isn’t just a toy, it is an “entertainment franchise.” The Transformer phenomenon began with toys, but it has spawned movies and all sorts of promotional items. Transformers, it seems, are big business.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 14, 2011
Scripture:
How many of you remember the late great comedian Flip Wilson? I loved Flip Wilson and all of the crazy characters he created. One of the tag lines that some of those characters used, especially the sassy young woman Geraldine, was “The devil made me do it.” The way Wilson, or rather Geraldine, said it made it a great line, a sort of cheeky acknowledgement that may she shouldn’t have done something, but she was going to enjoy it anyway because it wasn’t my fault. As she said, the devil made me do it.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 7, 2011
Scripture:
The passage that we heard from Isaiah is one of those passages from scripture that just makes me sit up and shout: Of course! That’s the problem! That’s the problem with American culture. That’s the problem with American politics. Not the part that talks about David. That part doesn’t say much to me, but verse 2 of Isaiah 55 is, for me, one of most penetrating pieces of social analysis I have ever read anywhere. That verse asks the rhetorical question “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” That verse so nails the fundamental disorder of American culture and American politics today that I want to talk about it today even though it actually is from the lectionary readings from last week not this week. Given the events of this past week I just couldn’t pass it up.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 31, 2011
Scripture:
Do you wrestle with God? I do. I wrestle with God all the time. Maybe that’s why I so identify with Jacob in the story we just heard from Genesis. It’s a pretty strange story when you think about it. Jacob is on a journey of some sort with his two wives and eleven children. Yeah. Two wives, who happen to be sisters. So much for the supposed biblical conception of marriage that we hear so much about from people who oppose the right of same gender couples to marry. Jacob separates himself from his family and lies down for the night. A character first identified only as a man wrestles with Jacob all night as Jacob is trying to sleep. There are some strange lines about blessings and names. The man tells Jacob that he will no longer be called Jacob but will be called Israel, a name that means “strives with God.” We are given to understand that the figure who wrestled all night with Jacob who is first identified as a man is actually no one less than God.
Marci Weis
July 24, 2011
Scripture:
Let me first say that I had written a different sermon to share with you all today. The sermon I was going to give was on forgiveness and how I approach that word, how I have lived with that word, how I have struggled with that word. But that changed for me yesterday. I woke early to a beautiful sunny Pacific Northwest day and spent the first half hour of that day snuggled with my ten year old daughter on the couch. Today she is going off to Girl Scout resident camp for a week and those moments of holding her were simple and deep treasures. Afterwards she asked if she could make muffins for breakfast and so as she worked very independently in the kitchen, baking, I went to get the morning paper.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 17, 2011
Scripture:
Heaven is where God is, right? God lives in a place called heaven. It’s located ? up there somewhere. God lives in heaven and looks down on earth. Occasionally God may send an angel to earth to do something. Like in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” where God sends the angel Clarence to earth to talk Jimmie Stewart out of killing himself. God may intervene on earth in other ways too, but mostly God is in heaven. At least, isn’t that we all, or at least most of us, thought at some point in our lives? It certainly is a common image in traditional Christianity. Heaven is some place that isn’t the earth, and that’s where God is. We want our souls to go there after we die so we can be with God. That’s where God is, in heaven, so we need to go there if we are going to be with God.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 10, 2011
Scripture:
There isn’t very much about Jesus that is annoying, but there is one thing. It’s his habit of putting almost everything he had to say in the form of a parable. He said some things quite directly—love your enemies, love your neighbor as yourself, and so on. But mostly when he was talking about the Kingdom of God, which is mostly what he talked about, he did it in parables. A parable is a little story that is designed and intended to make a point of some kind. Some of his parables have become really well known—the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and so on. Mostly in the Gospels we just get the parable, and we’re left to our own devices to figure out what it means. But in a few places the Gospels give us interpretations of one of Jesus’ parables, and we have one of those places this morning.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 3, 2011
Scripture:
It’s happened before, and it has happened again. I give a sermon one week that makes a point the I believe to be valid, then a lectionary reading for the following week seems directly to contradict what I said the week before. It’ll drive you nuts, frankly. I mean, you think you’ve understood something about the Gospel of Jesus Christ then POW! The Gospel slaps you upside the head with something that says “I don’t think so! I think you got that one wrong!” Or at least that’s sure what it sounds like when you first read that next week’s passage. Here’s what it is this time: Last week I gave a sermon the gist of which is that grace is not cheap. Grace makes demands on us. I quoted that last line of the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” to sum up the point: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.” I said that when we truly understand God’s grace we really have no choice but to respond with transformed lives, with lives that more fully reflect God’s grace, God’s love in the world. And I can’t speak for you, but for me that’s not easy. It’s really, really hard. I don’t do it very well, and that failure produces a bit of guilt, sort of like the guilt Paul was expressing in the passage we heard from Romans. The good I will is not what I do. Perhaps that’s an issue in your life too. Still, I don’t deny that the grace of God makes demands on me, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ requires a response; and that response isn’t always easy. Then we get Matthew 11:28-30, and I say Really? Are you really going to contradict what I told them last week so soon? Is that necessary? Really? My yoke is easy, and my burden is light? Really? And I think: That’s sure not what I told them last week. I think: What am I supposed to do with this mess? Well, since I’d decided to preach on this text from Matthew I pretty much had to come up with something to do with it. Here, for what it’s worth, is what I managed to come up with.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 26, 2011
Scripture:
So we just heard everyone’s favorite Bible story, right? I mean, don’t you just love it? God tells Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God. And Abraham, we are to believe, is perfectly willing to do it. He’s perfectly willing to lie to his son and say nothing to his wife in order to do it. Abraham, the legendary ancestor of three great faith traditions that are named the Abrahamic faiths after him—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—has no problem obeying what he takes to be the voice of God telling him to kill his son. “You want me to kill my son, the son of my old age, the son through whom you have promised to make me the ancestor of many nations? Sure. No problem. I’ll get right on it.” And he does. It paints a lovely picture of God and of our ancestor in faith Abraham, doesn’t it? God is bloodthirsty. God’s knowledge is limited, since God doesn’t know how much Abraham is willing to do in order to be faithful to God. Abraham is willing to commit infanticide. Wonderful stuff. It just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling all over. I’m sure we all love it. And yet. And yet somehow I’m getting the sense that you don’t love this story. Let me see a show of hands. How many of you love this story? (If anyone raises their hand say something like I want to talk to you afterwards.) How many of you hate this story? Hmm. I guess you don’t love this story. Go figure. Who knew?
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 19, 2011
Scripture:
In the beginning was Tiamat, the goddess of the oceans and of chaos. She mated with Apsu, the god of fresh water, and gave birth to the gods, who gave birth to other gods. The gods became noisy and unruly, and Tiamat plotted with Kingu, her husband, to kill them. The gods learned of their plan. They commissioned the god Marduk to kill Tiamat. Marduk killed Tiamat. He used her body to make the watery deep and the dry land. Then the gods killed Kingu, and from his blood they made human beings to serve the gods as their slaves.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 12, 2011
Scripture:
I don’t know about you, but it has taken me a long time to come to appreciate the significance of Pentecost. I’ve known the story of Pentecost for many years of course. We just heard it. The story is set fifty days after Passover, on a Jewish feast day called Pentecost. Jesus’ disciples, being faithful Jews, are gathered together to celebrate. Then, with a sound like a violent wind and the appearance of tongues as of flame, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the very Spirit of God, descends upon them. It gives them the ability to speak foreign languages that they couldn’t speak before. It reminds me of an old joke. A woman breaks her hand and says to her doctor Doc, will I be able to play the piano after my hand heals? The doctor says yes, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that. The woman says That’s strange. I couldn’t play it before I broke my hand. These disciples couldn’t speak any language but Aramaic before the Holy Spirit descended upon them, but afterwards they could. They can speak essentially all of the numerous languages of the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and of Rome. They are so giddy with enthusiasm, so literally inspired, that is, in-Spirited, that people thought they were drunk. Peter has to tell the crowd that had gathered no, they aren’t drunk, “for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.” Which always makes me want to add Give us time. We’ll get there. We’re just not there yet because it’s too early. It’s a remarkable story, a wonderful story.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 5, 2011
Scripture:
So Christianity is all about eternal life, right? Christianity is how you get eternal life, right? By believing in Jesus, right? I mean, it says so right in the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” And we all know what eternal life is, right? Eternal life is our soul’s everlasting life with Jesus and God in heaven after we die, right? So that’s what Christianity is, believing in Jesus so that you can spend forever blissfully in heaven. It says so right here, in John 3:16.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 29, 2011
Scripture:
As most of you know, I used to be a lawyer. Some of you accuse me of still thinking like a lawyer from time to time, but I guess that’s better than having you accuse me of not thinking at all. I don’t deny having been a lawyer, nor do I apologize for it. It’s not as bad as some of you think. You know how in courtroom dramas some lawyer is always jumping up in the middle of a trial and yelling Objection! In trial work there are rules about what are proper questions and what aren’t proper questions, and when you think your opposing counsel has asked an improper one you stand up, say objection your honor, and state the grounds of your objection, that is, you say what you think is wrong with the question that has just been asked. One of those possible objections is “assumes facts not in evidence.” (I’ll bet you didn’t know you were going to get a lesson in evidentiary law here this morning, did you. Consider it a bonus.) “Assumes facts not in evidence” is a valid objection when a question makes an assumption that hasn’t been proved or that you can’t expect the person of whom the question is asked to share. The classic example is the question “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” The question assumes that the person of whom it is asked either is beating his wife or has done so in the past. A question that makes an assumption like that forces the person answering it to accept the assumption, and that is improper. Objection, we say. Assumes facts not in evidence.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 22, 2011
Scripture:
So last Sunday standing here in this pulpit I had a lot of fun making fun of Christians who believe that only Christians are saved and that everyone else goes to hell forever. I really do believe that that way of understanding Christianity, common as it has been and in some circles still is, is, as I said last week, incompatible with a God of love and just doesn’t make any sense. So imagine my chagrin when I saw what was in the lectionary for today. John 14, including John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Those lines sure make it sound like I was wrong last week, don’t they. They make it sound like the people who say that only Christians are saved are right, doesn’t it? Jesus is the way, and the only way a person can come to God is through Jesus. Sure sounds like that’s what Jesus is saying, doesn’t it? I can assure you that most Christians over the course of most of Christian history have read those lines exactly that way, that is, as limiting salvation to Christians. They have taken “come to the Father” to mean be saved and “through me” as meaning through believing in Jesus. If that is the only way to understand these lines then maybe those Christian exclusivists, those Christians who say that only Christians are saved, are right after all. That’s not a very happy prospect, at least not for me; but if the lines “I am the way” and “No one comes to the Father except through me” mean what Christians have mostly thought they mean, I guess that’s how it is.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 15, 2011
Scripture:
Nota bene: This sermon begins with a spoof, a parody of how I imagine a conservative evangelical pastor reacting to Rob Bell. My actual view of the matter follows. TS
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 8, 2011
Scripture:
He’s just not about to believe it. Thomas doesn’t believe it. Yes, the others who said they have seen the risen Lord were his friends. Yes, they like he had left the lives they had known to follow Jesus. It’s not that he doesn’t trust them exactly, but Jesus was dead. That he knew. That was a fact. Perhaps Thomas had witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus, or perhaps he’d seen Jesus’ body after it had been taken down from the cross. Or maybe people had just told him that Jesus was dead. If so, that at least was something he could believe. People die. That’s a fact. The Romans crucified people, that was a fact too. Thomas had no doubt that Jesus was dead; but that he was alive again? That was too much of a stretch for Thomas. That one he couldn’t believe. He knew what it would take to make him believe. Let me see and touch him, wounds of the crucifixion and all. Then I’ll believe, he said. Only then will I believe.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 1, 2011
Scripture:
They had been wrong. Obviously, they had been wrong. They said “we had hoped that we would be the one to redeem Israel,” but they were wrong. He’d lost. He hadn’t redeemed anybody, much less the whole nation. The authorities had crucified him as common criminal. They’d been wrong about him. They were disappointed. They were disillusioned. Their hopes had been dashed. They had been wrong, so they were going home. Back to Emmaus, back to the way their life had been before Jesus. He was supposed to be the Messiah, but they knew what a Messiah is, and the Messiah doesn’t get himself crucified by the Romans. The Messiah raises an army filled with righteous anger and drives the Roman occupiers into the sea. Jesus hadn’t done that. Worse, he hadn’t even tried to do that. He meekly let them arrest him. When his followers tried to use violence to defend him he wouldn’t let them. He went and got himself crucified, which is very un-Messiah-like behavior. So they’d been wrong, and now they were going home. Yes, there was that thing the women said about seeing angels who said that he was alive, but there was no way that could be true. Dead people are dead, not alive; and there was no doubt that Jesus was dead. They were done with him, about whom they had been so wrong.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 24, 2011
Scripture:
He wasn’t there. The tomb was empty. He had been there, but the tomb was empty. He was dead, there was no doubt about that; but the tomb was empty. Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ faithful disciple, had gone to the tomb to do what was customary for one who had died. She went to put spices on the body, a sign of respect perhaps; or in Mary’s case perhaps an act of deep love. She couldn’t do it because the tomb was empty. Mary came to the only conclusion she could, that grave robbers must have taken Jesus’ body. “They,” as John puts it, had taken his body; but surely Mary knew that that didn’t really make sense. Jesus’ grave cloths were still there. They were of linen, and they were valuable. Surely grave robbers would have taken the cloth, which was the only thing of any monetary value in the tomb. Beyond that, there was the matter of the stone. There had been a great stone closing off the entrance to the tomb. It would have taken more than a grave robber or two to move it. Yet it was moved, and the tomb was empty.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 22, 2011
Scripture:
This week, in our Holy Week services beginning last Sunday, I have focused in my meditations on the symbols of Holy Week. Now, for our Lutheran and other friends who have joined us here this evening, don’t worry that you haven’t heard those meditations. You don’t need to have heard them to follow this one. So far I have talked about the symbol of the donkey on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem and about the symbol of the table of the Last Supper. This evening we come to Good Friday, and the central symbol of Good Friday is, of course, the cross on which Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, died. Like the other symbols of Holy Week the cross is, on the most basic level, a physical object. It is a most terrible and fearful physical object. It was an object the Romans used not only to execute people. They used it as their form of execution especially for political prisoners, for people they feared could stir up the masses against them. They used it in very visible, public places. Crucifixion is a terrible, horrible way to die, and when the Romans executed someone they wanted everyone else to see the condemned not only dying but suffering horribly as he died. They wanted everyone to see so that they would think twice about daring to defy Roman power. As a physical object the cross is an instrument of terrorism every bit as horrible as a bomb exploded in a public market place. On that level of meaning the cross is an abomination, a crime against humanity. On that level of meaning we should despise the cross, we should hide the cross, we should have nothing to do with the cross.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 21, 2011
Scripture:
We, many of us at least, are used to thinking about symbols in connection with Communion. We know—at least in the Protestant tradition we know—that the bread and the wine of Communion aren’t really the body and blood of Christ even if the New Testament stories about the Last Supper have Jesus say “This is my body. This is my blood.” We know that the bread and the wine are symbols of the presence of Jesus Christ with his people as they gather to remember him and what he did, and does, for them. So you might expect a meditation in a Maundy Thursday service on the meaning of the symbols of the bread and the wine of the Last Supper. Tonight, however, I don’t want to talk about the bread and the wine. I want to talk about another symbol from the Last Supper. I want to talk about the table.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 17, 2011
Scripture:
It’s the beginning of Holy Week, that most sacred week of the Christian year, when we enter Jerusalem with Jesus in triumph, share his last meal, weep at his cross, and only then rejoice in his glorious resurrection. Let me ask you something: Have you ever noticed how each of those central events of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life has an object at its center? Well, each of them does. Today, on Palm Sunday, it’s the donkey that Jesus rides into Jerusalem. Mark just calls it a colt, but trust me on this one, it’s a donkey. More about that donkey in a second. For Maundy Thursday one central object is the table. More about that on Maundy Thursday. On Good Friday the central object is of course the cross. For Easter it is the empty tomb. Each of the named days of Holy Week has an object associated with it.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 10, 2011
Scripture:
In his efforts to introduce people to a non-literal way of thinking about the Bible Marcus Borg tells of an American Indian storyteller who prefaces his recounting of his people’s creation myth by saying “I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I know that this story is true.” That’s how I feel about the story that we just heard of Jesus, or rather God through Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead. I don’t know if it happened that way or not, but I know that this story is true. Did this amazing thing really happen as a matter of fact, as a matter of history? I don’t know. Maybe. It’s hard to believe, but I do know that the supernatural is present and active in the natural world and that Jesus had a very intimate relationship with God, with the supernatural; so I don’t deny the possibility that it really happened as a matter of fact, as a matter of history. Yet whether the raising of Lazarus really happened isn’t the important question for me, and I hope it isn’t the important question for you. The important question about this story, and really about any Bible story, isn’t whether or not it is factual. The important question about this story, and really about any Bible story, is: What does this story mean for us? Borg says we should ask why did the early Christian community tell this story, and why did they tell it this way? Good questions. So let’s dive deeper into John’s story of Jesus and Lazarus and see what meaning this story of the early Christian community might have for us.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 3, 2011
Scripture:
So today we come to the final sermon in my series on the temptations of Jesus. The theme of the series is that the story of the devil’s temptations of Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew is about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. We can think of those stories as being, on the one hand, about Jesus struggling himself with his identity and his mission. On the other hand we can think of them as a being about what Jesus being the Son of God means for us. In the first, introductory sermon in this series I said that the third temptation, the temptation in which the devil offers Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” introduced the question of rule into the question of what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. I said that the third temptation tells us that Jesus being the Son of God is about ruling, about some kind of reign, but it isn’t about ruling the way we see it done on earth. It is about the reign of God, what the Gospels call the Kingdom of God, or sometimes in Matthew, the Kingdom of Heaven, which means the same thing.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 27, 2011
Scripture:
This morning we continue our sermon series on the temptations of Christ. We’ve come to the second of the three temptations. In that part of the story the devil takes Jesus to “the pinnacle of the temple” in Jerusalem and dares him to throw himself off. The devil cites the text of Psalm 91:10-12 about God’s angels lifting us up “so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” We heard the choir just sing more of the text of Psalm 91 in the beautiful anthem “Eagle’s Wings.” It makes a beautiful anthem, but did you ever “dash your foot against a stone,” or stub your toe on the leg of the dining room table? Kind of makes you wonder about that text, doesn’t it? But I digress. In our story Jesus throws scripture right back at the devil: It is also written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Notice: Even the devil can quote scripture, so beware of devils quoting scripture for demonic purposes. But I digress again. The important point for our purposes this morning is only that Jesus resists this temptation. In my introductory sermon on the temptations two weeks ago I said that this temptation introduces the question of salvation into the question of what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. I said that this temptation story tells us that Jesus being the Son of God has something to do with salvation, since it is a temptation to do something from which only divine power could save you; but it isn’t about Jesus’ salvation, it is about our salvation. That is the assertion that I want to pursue further this morning.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 20, 2011
Scripture:
Last Sunday I gave a sermon on Matthew’s story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The theme of that sermon was that the story of the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness is about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. The temptation story comes immediately after the story of Jesus’ baptism in which the voice of God says of Jesus “This is my Son.” Then in the first and second of the three temptations the devil’s first words are “If you are the Son of God,” which scholars tell us can also be translated “Since you are the Son of God.” So Matthew seems pretty clearly to be talking about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God, or so I believe and so I asserted in my sermon last week. As I wrote and gave that sermon last week I kept thinking that because I tried to say something about all three of temptations in Matthew’s story I couldn’t say very much about any one of them, yet they all have multiple layers of meaning. There’s a lot of depth in the story of Jesus’ temptation by the devil, so I decided to return to the temptations. Today I want to talk more about the first temptation, the temptation to turn stone to bread. In my sermons for the next two Sundays I will delve more deeply into the second and third temptations. In our Lent supper and discussion series that started last Tuesday we are exploring the question of what it means for us to live as Christians today. In these sermons I want to explore what the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness has to say to us as we examine that question.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 13, 2011
Scripture:
We Christians have a lot of titles for Jesus. One of those titles comes up in the reading we just heard from Matthew. It’s the title “Son of God.” We know that in a very real sense we are all sons and daughters of God, but when we Christians call Jesus the Son of God we mean something more than he is a son of God the way we all are sons and daughters of God. The Christian faith confesses that Jesus has his origins in God in a different way than we do, in a timeless, cosmic way. That’s what those stories of his virgin birth and of him being the Word of God made flesh are all about. He arises so directly from God, he has such a strong and intimate connection with God, that he is for us the eternal Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, become human.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 9, 2011
Scripture:
In the Christian tradition Lent is a time of fasting. That’s why we have that tradition of giving up something for Lent. Fasting is an ancient and universal spiritual tradition. It is practiced to take a person’s mind off of worldly things and put it onto spiritual things, the things of God. Lent with its tradition of fasting and deprivation is supposed to be a time of introspection, a time of personal soul searching, a time of confession and thus a time of drawing closer to God. The emphasis in Lent tends to be very personal, focusing our attention on the state of our spirits and the health of our souls.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 6, 2011
Scripture:
Have you ever noticed how in the Bible the first reaction people have when they encounter a particularly direct manifestation of God is fear? There are tons of examples. In Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus, for example, angels appear to the shepherds, the “glory of the Lord” shines around them, and they are terrified. The first thing the angels say to them is do not be afraid. In Mark, when Jesus comes walking on the water to his disciples in the boat, the disciples are terrified, and Jesus has to tell them not to be afraid. We see the same dynamic in our story this morning of the Transfiguration. In that story, when the three disciples who went up the mountain with Jesus hear the voice of God speaking from a bright cloud they fall to the ground and are “overcome by fear.” Jesus has to tell them to get up and not to be afraid. In all of these stories and a great many more throughout the Bible someone—God, or an angel, or Jesus—has to tell the people who see a powerful manifestation of God not to be afraid. Throughout the Bible there seems to be something frightening about God or about any powerful manifestation of God.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 27, 2011
Scripture:
Sometimes Jesus can sound downright foolish, can’t he. We hear him say “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.” He says God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field in beauty, so don’t worry about it. He seems to be saying, indeed I think he is saying, let God take care of those mundane things. He says “strive first for the kingdom of God…and all these things will be given to you as well.” And we, or at least I, say: Really? I can just go out and do good deeds and work without pay for just causes and God will see that I have food, water, clothes, and presumably the other basic necessities of life as well? My immediate reaction is: I don’t think so! I know that some people, like Shane Claiborne, whose book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical we are reading in the once a month Monday book group, tell stories of that happening, but it certainly isn’t how life works in my experience of it. Certainly those of us who have the responsibility of providing for others, for our family or other people who are dependent on us, would be ill advised to take Jesus’ words here literally, quit our jobs, and go off like Don Quixote tilting at windmills leaving it up to God to feed, clothe, and house our children. Can Jesus, or Matthew on whom we are relying on here for Jesus’ words, really be telling us to do that? Maybe so, but if that’s the only lesson in these words I doubt that any of us are going to take them very seriously.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 20, 2011
Scripture:
It seems pretty clear, doesn’t it. Jesus says: Do not resist an evildoer. Turn the other cheek. Give your cloak also. Go the extra mile. Love your enemy. At least since Christianity capitulated to the lure of imperial power in the fourth century CE Christians have done a really lousy job of following those directives of the one they nonetheless claimed as their Lord and Savior, but the directives themselves are pretty clear. Don’t resist. Turn the other cheek. Love those who persecute you. Simple. Direct. Unambiguous.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 13, 2011
Scripture:
Some churches seem to have nothing but trouble. In some churches people quarrel. In some people think too highly of themselves, exhibiting an arrogance that is unbecoming to any church bearing the name of Christ. Some lose hope for their own future and fall into despair, denying the power of the Holy Spirit to bring new life. Church trouble comes in many different forms.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 6, 2011
Scripture:
So we’re the light of the world, are we? We just heard Jesus say that we are, but when I read that line I was frankly a bit confused. You may recall that in the passage we had from Matthew just a couple of weeks ago about Jesus calling the first disciples Matthew presents Jesus as the great light shining on those who sit in darkness. I thought that meant that he is the light of the world, and I said so in the sermon I preached on that text. Now we have Jesus saying that we’re the light of the world. So I found myself struggling with how to understand both Jesus and us as lights to the world. Frankly, I found myself struggling with how I could be a light to the world at all. I mean, I’m just a guy not that different from any other guy. I don’t feel like much of a light to the world. Most of the time I feel pretty dull, and perhaps you do too. We’re all just folks, right? How can we be a light of the world?
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 30, 2011
Scripture:
We all, I suppose, have our favorite Bible passages, and those few lines that we just heard from Micah make the short list of my all-time favorites. So do the Beatitudes, which we also just heard, but this morning I want to talk about the passage from Micah. I love those lines. I’ve loved them for as long as I’ve known about them. I love them so much I used them in my ordination service. I get a sort of warm, fuzzy feeling inside every time I hear them. Now, most of you know me. You know that I’m not the type who’s going to be satisfied just with warm, fuzzy feelings; and I’m not about to let warm, fuzzy feelings go unexamined. Maybe I should, but I don’t; and I won’t. So when this passage came up in the lectionary this week I started to wonder what it is about it that I love so well. Why does it seem to touch me so? When I asked myself those questions the first thing that popped into my mind was: Because these requirements are easy. They aren’t impossibly difficult, like Jesus’ command to love our enemies or to be perfect as God is perfect. They don’t demand that some people pretend to be somebody they aren’t, like Leviticus’ blanket condemnation of same gender sexual relationships. They don’t demand rote, mechanical compliance with laws that don’t seem to make much sense, like some of the dietary laws in the Torah. They’re easy. Do justice? Sure. I try not to treat people unjustly. Love kindness? Sure. Who doesn’t love kindness? After all, isn’t Christianity primarily about being nice? Walk humbly with your God? Sure. It’s not too hard to feel humble when I compare myself to God. So sure. I’m all over this stuff. It’s easy. It makes the life of faith easy. What’s not to love?
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 23, 2011
Scripture:
I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of being home after dark when the power went out. When that happens in our electricity dependent homes, everything goes dark. There’s not much we can do at that point. We can’t watch television. We can’t read, except perhaps by the dim and flickering light of a candle or the inadequate glare of a flashlight. If we were working on something we have to stop because we can’t see. So probably, for a while at least, we just sit and wait for the power to come back on, hoping that it won’t take too long. Usually after not very long it does. The lights come back on. The television comes back on. The stove or vacuum cleaner or power drill we were working with comes back on. Most importantly for many of us, the computer comes back on, and we just go back to doing whatever it was we were doing before the power went out, before it got dark. That’s how it is with electricity. That’s how it is with electric light.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 16, 2011
Scripture:
It’s Martin Luther King Day weekend. This weekend we pause to remember and celebrate the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If Protestantism had saints he’d probably be one. He would at least be venerated as a martyr for the faith, as many people are in Orthodox Christianity. We don’t do that exactly, but we do celebrate King’s life and work. Yet as I considered Martin Luther King once more this past week I discerned that we need to ask ourselves just what it is about his life and work that we celebrate; and we need to ask whether there aren’t parts of his life and work that we don’t celebrate, that we’d rather forget. I am convinced that there are such aspects of his life and work, and that’s what I want to talk about this morning.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 9, 2011
Scripture:
Today we commemorate the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, and as has been our custom for the past several years we will participate in a ritual renewal of baptismal vows. On this day it is particularly appropriate for us to consider baptism, what it is, what it isn’t, why we do it. Baptism is, of course, one of the foundations of the Christian faith. It is a sacrament in every Christian tradition; and in the Protestant tradition it is, along with the Eucharist, one of only two rituals that we consider to be sacraments, to be rituals that bring and reveal God’s grace. In the United Church of Christ baptism is considered mostly to be the sacrament through which a person becomes a part of the Christian community. I’ve preached on that meaning of baptism here before, and we see that meaning every time we do a baptism here in our church, whether the person being baptized is an infant or an adult. Yet as I have considered baptism this past week in preparation for today’s service I have been thinking about the way that, in the Christian tradition over the centuries, baptism has been seen as more than that, has been seen to have greater, deeper significance than that; and it is some of that greater, deeper significance that I want to talk about this morning.
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 2, 2011
Scripture:
So in the story we just heard three kings come to worship the baby Jesus, right? No? Not right? But we’ve always sung “We Three Kings” on Epiphany like we did this morning, haven’t we? So they’re kings, right? Or am I supposed to believe that the hymn, which is about the only Epiphany hymn any of us knows, is wrong? But surely that can’t be. The church wouldn’t have us singing a hymn that got the story it’s telling wrong, would it?