Pastor’s Homily

Resurrection Joy
First UCC – Carlisle 4/21/19
John 20:1-18

When we woke up this morning, it is likely that many of us experienced the sun shining in the east, with blue skies telling us we are going to have an enjoyable and wonderful day. My brief drive to work today certainly points to the suggestion that we will have a beautiful and joyful day today, we have sunshine and it seems as though spring is here. Part of yesterday was quite nice. Saturday afternoon also had some nice sun with a gentle breeze. It seemed like we really were fortunate to have such weather. This past day or so has been great, but the same cannot be said for the whole weekend. For just about everyone in the area, we had some rather difficult weather on Friday. There was a great deal of rain that came to […]

Fair weather faith Palm Sunday
4/14/19 1st UCC of Carlisle
Luke 19:28-40

I would like to start off this morning and speak to the concept of popularity. I imagine we have seen situations where a word, person, or story has gained immense approval. There is a contemporary word to this described this sort of path and that is the word trending. This is a term that some people may be familiar with. It usually refers to a situation on the internet, something that everyone is talking about, and everyone is sharing their views on. Trending might usually occur on social media or on the internet, but I imagine we have seen it the world as well. So for example, there may an image or a story or a video which is shown on the internet that starts to gain the attention of lots of people, and more and more people […]

Emotional exercise Luke 15:1-3, 11-31
Season of Lent 3/31/2019

I would like to start us off toward with a word, shockobuku. I heard it once in a movie and the definition given in the movie resonated with me at the time. It was said to have been a swift spiritual kick to the head that alters ones reality. This particular definition is something that might be helpful to us as we continue this journey through Lent:. Violent action aside, this is something that can completely changes a person’s perception of an individual’s choice, of a situation, of someone’s life. Now I am not entirely sure I am clear if this is an actual word, or something that was made up by Hollywood. Sometimes it seems as though Hollywood creates certain words and ideals and places them out there into society and then society accepts and endorses these words […]

Imagine for a minute with me that we are walking in a downtown anywhere in the world. It could be Carlisle, perhaps a nearby city. We walk a specific section of that town on a daily basis. We are very familiar with the people we see, who are walking the streets, the people in the shops and stores. And each time we take this walk, we see one particular individual sitting on one of the street corner. Every time we have walked the street we see this individual, he is talking to himself, he wears ragged clothing, we might notice that it seems as though he has not had a bath in a number of weeks. And it is the same situation every time we take this walk, we see that man sitting there, talking to himself, acting and looking strangely.

And then we take this same walk today, we go […]

Last Wednesday began the season of Lent for the church. On that night at the Ash Wednesday worship I spoke about the exercises we need to engage in this Lenten time. I mentioned the notion of fitness we all need to embark upon at the following levels, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. During this year’s time of Lent, I am going to invite us to consider what exercising these parts of lives means, and what it means to be fit. On this first Sunday of Lent, I would like to spend some time considering spiritual fitness. This gospel passage seems relevant to the conversation of spiritual exercise and application.

When we look in the NRSV version of the Gospel of Luke passage today, the title of the reading is the Temptation of Jesus. This is an appropriate title for this week’s Gospel reading. The devil tempted Jesus to go for “domestic […]

This passage from the Gospel of Luke is outstanding in a couple of ways. Firstly, this beyond human convention transformation of Jesus Christ is something that we do not learn about at any other point in the gospel of Luke. It is true that we can find the account of this transformation in other gospels, but the event is significant enough in that it only happens once. This is where the disciples and the listening audience realizes the connection Jesus has with God. While only Peter, James and John see this event on the mountain, it is more than likely those three told the rest of the disciples about what they saw and what happened (the physical change in Jesus, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, and the voice of God).

The second outstanding part to this passage had to do with what follows the mountaintop experience, as Jesus continued his […]