Author: Aaron

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!”

Pentecost 11(B) – 1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

The writer of Ephesians says, “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another.”  He also says, “Speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.”  We are members of one another.

On Sunday morning, a man walked into a Sikh temple in Oak Park, Wisconsin, and opened fire, killing six.  And on Monday, an arsonist set fire to a Muslim mosque in Joplin, Missouri for the second time in two weeks; this time, it did its work, and the place of worship was burned to the ground.

Pentecost 10(B) – Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; John 6:24-35

Jesus says, “You’re not looking for me because I set you free.  You’re looking for me because you’re enslaved to hunger, because you ate bread and you want more.  Why don’t you know I set you free?”

The Israelites complaining in the desert have always struck me as a little strange.  Not that it’s not human nature to complain, even in the best of times.  I’ve made that analogy before, and which of us doesn’t get a little whiny when we’re hungry?  But when you notice the actual content of their complaint?  “We had it so much better back in Egypt.  Sure we were slaves, but at least we had enough to eat.”

Pentecost 7(B) – Mark 6:14-29, Amos 7:7-15, Ephesians 1:3-14

A few weeks ago, after I gave my sermon, someone came up to me and asked how I was doing.  While I always got around to the good news, he said, my sermons lately had begun so full of bad news that he wanted to check to make sure my life wasn’t equally dismal.  I assure you that after some truly joy-filled moments in these past weeks and with some truly exciting things ahead, I am doing quite well, thank you.  But it was one of those rare moments of truly constructive sermon feedback, and because I’m both grateful for it and want to take it to heart, I promised myself my next one would take on a very happy character.

And because God is fond of thwarting my plans, today’s Gospel is the beheading of John the Baptist.

Feast Day of John the Baptist – Malachi 3:1-4

I’m feeling a little frustrated this week.  I’ve been getting more involved lately in my role as director of public policy for the synod, and as part of that, I’ve decided to take the advice of one of the great theologians of the 20th century, Reinhard Niebuhr, and add reading the news to my daily devotions and prayer, along side the Bible.  The idea is to help see scripture as truly applicable to today’s circumstances.  The reality is…  a bit disheartening.

Easter 6B; Music Sunday; Mother’s Day – John 15:9-17; Acts 10:44-48

When I was in college, I had the opportunity to spend a semester in Vienna, Austria.  It was just at that moment when, with apologies to Ed Clark, I was making the decision to give up on that physics degree I was fruitlessly pursuing, and switch to music instead.  And what a city to do it in!  With four of the world’s best concert houses, and ticket prices around a dollar (if you didn’t mind standing), I think I went to the symphony that semester more often than I went to class.

I remember one night at the Vienna State Opera; it could have been any show.  At intermission, a woman came up to me and asked if I was from the United States.  She must have heard me fumbling with my lousy German at the concessions stand or something.  I said yes, expecting to have a lovely conversation with a stranger in my own language, finally, after all these weeks of being unable to communicate.  But instead of asking me what part of the country I was from, or why I was traveling abroad, her next question was, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior?”