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...

Luke 13:1-8 Why do bad things happen to good people? This is one of the most important philosophical questions the Christian can answer. In seminary, this question is known as theodicy, and it deals with what is called “the problem of evil.” Simply stated, the problem of evil is, how can an all-powerful, all-loving God allow evil to happen. It is a valid question. Before we deal with this question, we have to look at the context in which it is asked. In the passage in Luke, this question is being brought up for a specific reason. It is a distraction. Jesus’ preaching is making people uncomfortable. Luke 12 records Jesus preaching, first to his disciples, then to a crowd of many thousands, so many, the Bible records, that they were trampling on one another. Jesus warns them to “ Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15). He also warns them against worry – reminding them that G...

How many of you have ever given something up for Lent? I never gave something up for Lent until I was in seminary, and when I did, I gave up pop. Now, you have to realize that I was dirt poor at the time, and my pop consumption was pretty low. I would buy a Pepsi from the machine at the Laundromat for $.35 when I did the laundry, probably about once a week. But the second day of Lent that year, I went to a seminar, and in the intermission, they had a table set out with all kinds of free snacks and free Coke and Cherry Coke… and of course, I had given it up the day before. I still remember and kind of groan about it, and, upon some reflection, I think I know why. My focus was off. I was focused on myself and what I was giving up. The whole reason I gave it up was because I felt like I was supposed to give something up for Lent. While I have fasted and have seen that discipline help me, I admit that there are times when I have done it for the sake of fasting. Or even because everyo...

As a coach, there is one thing I’ve found that seems true over all age groups and in pretty much any sport. That truth is this: if you focus on the basics, you will be more likely to succeed. Not just focusing on the basics, but practicing them over and over. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a football player try to “thud up” a ball carrier or an outfielder get ready to make the big throw before the ball is in his mitt or a basketball player blow a slam dunk when an easy lay-up would have done just fine. I even remember a soccer teammate who tried to do a fancy backwards overhead kick to clear out the ball and ended up scoring on our own goal. As a Christian, and as a pastor, I’ve found that sometimes we can focus a whole lot of attention on the little things, and some of them seem really important, but if we don’t spend time focusing on the main thing, we can forget the whole point. A prime example would be a famous pastor and public speaker who has always focused on lost an...

When I was a little boy, we learned that the way of salvation involved confession, repentance, baptism, and a final step, live-the-Christian-life. I don’t think this was intentional, but the way I heard it, it seemed like adults never had any trouble with this last step. It sounded like living out the Christian life was easy. Last week, as we looked at the Methodist way of salvation, we specifically looked at the end goal of Christianity, which is holiness, Christ-likeness, or Christian perfection. The last two weeks I have made the comparison of living the Christian life with riding the GoBus from Athens to Cincinnati. We have the choice to get off the bus at any time. But how do we stay on the bus? How do we live the Christian life? John Wesley was very methodical; this is where the term “Methodist” came from. He and his Holy Club figured out what helped keep them “on the Go Bus” and regularly, even religiously did it. From studying the Bible to fasting to caring for the hu...