Category Archive

The story of the exodus became the cultural moment that the people used time and again to understand their past and present with God. When they faced times of trouble they remembered the time that YHWH had delivered them and prayed that he would act in such a way again.

You may have noticed over the last two years here at Arbor House, that we don’t celebrate a lot of holidays. Perhaps a better way to put it is, we are very particular in what holidays that we do celebrate.

I have been reading a lot about Cain and Abel recently. I have been reading about them because that is the topic of my master’s thesis. As a grad student there is nothing that we like to talk about more than our master’s thesis and there is nothing that everyone hates more than hearing a grad student talk about their master’s thesis. So I will save all the boring details for another time.

Scripture is like a rearview mirror. We can look back at the history of God and humanity and their acts. The question we then have to wrestle with is, how does this look back relate to where are now? How do the lessons that we discern from the history of God and humanity, relate to our present?

The church year can be split into two mirrored halves. They both follow the same rhythm. The rhythm starts with a season of waiting and preparation, Advent and Lent, where we are expectant of the high holy days that are to come.

Twenty centuries later, the world still swells in the weeks before Christmas. I’m not talking about the fact that Target has Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes available in late October or the fact that those obligatory Santa Claus pictures are taken at shopping malls all across the country.

Listen to this sermon:

Today is the beginning of a new year! This is one of those times in the church calendar that it is apparent that we are out of step with most of those around us. It is a time when we are reminded that our lives, our reality is ordered around the life of Jesus Christ our Savior.

Here we are on Christ the King Sunday, reading about events leading to Christ’s death, in a culture that customarily skips over Advent and begins celebrating Christ’s birth the day after Halloween.

So, those were some interesting readings this morning, weren’t they? First, we have both the OT and Psalm readings from I Samuel: Hannah’s story; then the reading about Jesus being our high priest, and finally the Gospel reading about the destruction of the Temple. And actually, I think they all hang together pretty well.