Fourth Sunday of Easter (A) — John 10:1–10Trinity Lutheran Church, Pleasant Valley, PABethany Lutheran Church, Stony Creek Mills, PAFaith Lutheran Church, Mount Penn, PA Good readings inspire good questions. The fourth Sunday of Easter doesn’t usually get a lot of questions, though, with readings so familiar and well-loved. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall […]
Friends in Christ, Holy Saturday is perhaps my favorite day of the Church year. I’m not sure why. It should be a day of sorrow, of shock, when hope is lost. Not a day we celebrate in the church very often, mostly because it is a day filled with pain.
The First Sunday of Lent (A) — Genesis 2:15–17, 3:1–7; Matthew 4:1–11Bethany Lutheran Church, Stony Creek Mills, PAFaith Lutheran Church, Mount Penn, PA The LORD God took the human and put it in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the human, “You may freely eat of […]
Festival of the Transfiguration (A)—Exodus 24:12–18; 2 Peter 1:16–21; Matthew 17:1–9 Come up the mountain. In Exodus today, God’s people have already left Egypt, following God’s directions to the mountain called Sinai. Wondrous things happen on mountains. People believed gods lived there. It makes sense; it climbs into the sky, reaching up to the clouds, […]
“I am the Alpha and Omega,” Jesus says. “The beginning and the end.” Elsie’s beginning, it seems, was some distance away, in England, the other side of the pond. Far away today; further away (it seemed) when she came to the shores of America with her new husband, Frederick, a soldier from the States. It’s […]
Sermon for the Presentation of Our Lord — Malachi 3:1–4, Luke 2:22–40 Proclaimed at Faith Lutheran Church, Mount Penn, PA As I’ve been waiting for my time here to begin, I’ve been substitute teaching in the public schools nearby. I was eager, at first, to work in Hamburg. It’s where I grew up, and at […]
The Baptism of Our Lord (A)—Acts 10:34–43 Proclaimed at Trinity Lutheran Church in Pleasant Valley, PA. It’s nice to have a chance to be back here at Trinity, after more than a year away. Spending October before last with you was a lot of fun, though I have to admit that I enjoyed 2019 even […]
Sermon for Epiphany (A): Isaiah 60:1–6 and Matthew 2:1–12 Proclaimed at St John’s Lutheran Church in Sinking Spring, PA It was a dark time in Israel when the prophet of the third part of Isaiah spoke. His words acknowledge that there will come a day when “Darkness shall cover the whole earth, and thick darkness […]
Today we thank you, O God, as this year draws to a close, for the season that is also ending at my home congregation. Pastor Bruce Osterhout has faithfully cared for the people God has placed in his charge for five and a half years. He has often done so bearing the pain of the […]
Today we thank you, O God, for Jeanette Rankin, whom I just learned about. Rankin was the first woman ever elected to the US Congress, in 1917, three years before women’s suffrage! Though remembered controversially for her pacifist faith convictions during the World Wars, she said “If I am remembered for no other act, I […]