Brian's Sermons

This service was quite different from our usual service. There wasn't a sermon, exactly, but the following is what happened during the service. We had actors who portrayed some of the characters, and the children's choir and adult choir were the crowds in Jerusalem. The children's choir also joined Jesus as the disciples for the "Last Supper" and had Communion with him. This morning we celebrate a little differently than we usually do. On the calendar, Palm Sunday is listed as Palm/Passion Sunday. We celebrate Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode victoriously into Jerusalem, but the cries of “Hosanna” are quickly drowned out by the cries from the crowd: crucify him! A hallmark of Judaism was a required pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After Jesus walked on this earth, Christians, too, made the journey to Jerusalem to walk where Jesus walked. Over time, churches outside Jerusalem began to commemorate Jesus’ final days with their own prayer walks, mirroring the “statio...

Luke 18:35-43 One of the worst feelings in the world is when you can’t find something – you know you just had it, but now you can’t find it. What’s worse is when it is right in front of you and you still can’t find it. About 20 years ago, there was a fad – 3D hidden pictures. The idea was if you looked hard enough at the right angle, then you would see a hidden picture. Honestly, I could almost never see the picture and I always wondered if there really was one. The idea that someone else could see what I couldn’t always drove me nuts. But it’s a mainstay in Jesus’ ministry; sometimes it seems like the least likely were the ones who saw things the most clearly. In the passage immediately before the one I read today, (Luke 18:31-34) Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the Prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flo...