Author: Aaron

Funeral of David Bennett – Matthew 5:13-16

They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Anyone who ever went walking with David Bennett might have had to say it begins with a few steps; Dave’s pace was quick and he was hard to keep up with. But for him, the first step took place on a summer day in 1938 in Reading, Pennsylvania. In that tiny infant in the Bennett household, a new life came to being and the light of Christ sprang to life in him.

11th Sunday After Pentecost (C) – Colossians 3:1-11, Luke 12:13-21

It’s Vacation Bible School time again. Last week, I had the joy of being a part of the program at Christ Lutheran, and next week, I get to do it all over again at Immanuel. Thinking back on it, VBS is probably the one ministry of the church that I’ve been involved with the longest. One of the activities that the curriculum we used this year features is a daily cartoon starring Chadder the Chipmunk, and so I got to send my brother a note this week letting him know that I was thinking of him, since, a decade and a half ago, in my home church in Pennsylvania, it was his job to run Chadder the Chipmunk’s Theater every summer. In fact, next weekend, I’m flying to Illinois to do his wedding, and I’ve threatened to bring along our Chadder the Chipmunk puppet to do the sermon.

Pentecost 8(C) – Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Luke 10:25-37

As many of you know, I had the opportunity to spend the first part of this week with ten of our youth members here at the church on a four-day overnight where we talked about food.  There really is no greater joy in my life than spending time with these teenagers, and I think they had a really good time too.  But I have to say, as time goes on, these overnights are getting harder and harder to plan.

The reason for that is a simple one, but it’s also very frustrating to me.  When I put these together, I use an educational method that comes to us from the Bible studies done by Base Christian Communities in South America.  You begin by observing the world around you.  Really see the situation as it is, in all it’s complexity and depth, joy and pain.  Then you process it.  This is more than just thinking about the problems you’ve seen; it’s really digging into them, trying to get at the reasons behind the problems, to allow the scriptures and traditions of the church to encounter them, to see where God’s Gospel meets the world’s injustices.  Then, based on what you’ve seen and what you’ve discovered, you take action.

Lectionary 9 (C) – 1 Kings 8:22-43; Galatians 1:1-12; Luke 7:1-10
At Christ Lutheran, West Boylston, MA

When the ancient Israelites finally settled in their promised land, it took quite a while to really establish themselves. Centuries of fighting against the prior inhabitants for land and resources, difficulties establishing leadership in a land where religious judges and prophets were the only recognized powers, and the challenge of organizing a people and society marked by differences between tribes and family lines made for a very slow process of settlement. It wasn’t until the rule of King David that they finally got around to converting the old worship space, the movable tent-of-meeting that they used in the desert, into a permanent and appropriate temple that accurately reflected the greatness of their God.

Holy Trinity (C)

Today is Trinity Sunday, the only day of the church year when we turn away from our usual immersion in the stories of our faith and focus on a particular doctrine of the Church. It may seem a little strange that we do it for this one specific article of faith, among all the other things we profess to believe in. Why the Trinity–a doctrine that we do not, cannot possibly begin to understand. Any attempts to do so fall short, and the best we can do is grasp at inadequate metaphor. Even our greatest theologians, with all of their understanding and language, have said that we cannot plumb even the surface of the meaning of the Trinity. So why have this festival? Why focus on something we can’t know? Why make it a point of faith?

Good Friday – Luke 20:1-15, Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24
Preached at Oakdale United Methodist Church, as part of West Boylston’s ecumenical Good Friday worship.

If we are involved regularly with the scriptures, we end up developing a sort of relationship with different texts in the Bible.  There are the parts that we fall in love with, that we can’t hear enough.  For me, Jeremiah 31 is one of them, a passage that speaks so clearly of the Gospel, God’s promise to write his Word on our hearts, and that we will be God’s people, and He will be our God.  Then there are those bits that we’ve heard a billion times, and are confident we know well and understand.  When the father of the prodigal son runs out to welcome him home, we can see the powerful way that God yearns for us to return to Him, that He runs out to greet us.  And then there are the parts of scripture that are confusing, that no matter how often we read them, we just don’t quite get it.  Like the parable in today’s Gospel story.

Lent 4(C) – Joshua 5:9-12, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32.  Preached at Christ Lutheran, West Boylston.

Father, I am hungry.

Says the little girl to her dad as they walk another day through the wilderness.  The man is weary from the walk, surrounded by thousands of other Israelite families, wandering toward some land that they supposedly were promised by some supposed God who was supposed to have rescued them from Egypt.  Certainly life was difficult in Egypt.  Working hard labor, long hours with little reward; working for the pharaoh and not for yourself; barely able to feed your family.  But barely able is still able.  There was still something, still some opportunity to provide for your children.

Lent 3(C) – Luke 13:1-9
Preached at Christ Lutheran Church, West Boylston

My father was an expert gardener. In addition to an orchard of fifteen fruit trees, cherries and apples, chestnuts and pears, my father cultivated a large, beautiful vegetable garden. Every year, we would have fresh broccoli, carrots, potatoes, rhubarb, beans, onions grown in our own backyard, more than we could eat. Raspberry bushes that grew over my head as a child, blueberries tiny and sweet. When Mom mentioned that she loved asparagus, my father worked that unforgiving soil until we had so much asparagus that it went to seed before we could harvest it, the long, thin, flowering stalks reaching for the heavens. I remember as a little child, my father taking me out back to plant pumpkin seeds, and watching in the fall as my VERY OWN PUMPKIN grew along its curled vine. Twenty-two years after my father passed away, we still find clusters of garlic growing wild on the property. And all this while working as a traveling insurance salesman, seldom home but pouring his heart and soul into those plants when he was, and producing the earth’s bounty therefrom.

Ash Wednesday – Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

The Prophet Joel says that, “The Day of the Lord is coming.  It is near—  …A day of clouds and thick darkness, like blackness spread upon the mountains…”

My faith is obviously important to me.  But I’ve always struggled with one thing in my faith life.  As vital as my connection to God is for my own well-being, I’ve never been able to find a regular way to maintain that connection.  I’ve never quite developed a regular habit of prayer.

Pentecost 14(B) – Mark 7:1-23

I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about children’s sermons. On the one hand, they are a way to intentionally include children in our worship life, which I think is very important. They also require the preacher to come up with something very concrete about the gospel, something clear enough that kids can latch on to it. I think sometimes, that’s good for the adults in the room too, because some days that concrete nugget from the children’s sermon is about all we can walk away with.

But on the other hand, I wonder if we do children a disservice by it. We bring them up front, and kind of put them on display for the rest of the congregation, like a liturgical decoration of some sort. And then we send them back to their seats and get on with the important, adult part of the service. I hope we don’t give kids the impression that we think they’re not smart enough to follow the “real” sermon or that the Good News has to somehow be watered down for them.

The reason I say all of this isn’t because we’re headed back to our regular worship schedule, and the 8:00 folks who have been missing the children’s sermon all summer will get to hear it again at 8:30. It’s because sometimes, whatever mixed feelings I may have, the children’s sermon is the way that God seems to speak to me the loudest. As I was preparing for this week’s sermon, I couldn’t find a way to sit with the kids and say anything other than, “Jesus says it’s okay not to wash your hands!”