Sunday, August 17, 2025 – Jeremiah 23:23-29, Psalm 82, Luke 12:49-56 One mark of maturity is the ability to tell—and to hear—the truth. I’m reminded of that famous line from A Few Good Men when Jack Nicholson’s character yells, “You can’t handle the truth!” The truth can be painful. Today’s readings invite us into that
Sunday, August 3, 2025 – Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23, Colossians 3:1-11, Luke 12:13-21 When I got my dog, Cotton, back in the north Georgia mountains, I developed a particular whistle I would use to call him. It was a way for my familiar “voice” to cut through the other noises of the environment, to reach
Sunday, July 13, 2025 – Luke 10:25-37 Have you ever been watching a movie and know just what’s going to happen next – even before it happens? I’ve experienced that when watching a whodunit mystery on television. Sometimes we’re extra observant and notice subtle cues before other people do. That happened to me when I
Sunday, July 6 – Galatians 6:[1-6] 7-16, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 One of my first jobs after college was in sales. I worked for a company that sold Brittannica reading skills programs for young children and sets of the Compton’s Encyclopedia. It wasn’t easy and for my first six months, I couldn’t sell a thing. Someone
Sunday, June 29, 2025 – 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21, Psalm 16, Galatians 5:1, 13-25, Luke 9:51-62 Though there is a lot of rich material in all of our readings, today, I’d like to explore the idea of freedom. What does freedom mean to you? In the gospel of John, Jesus says If you abide in
Sunday, May 4 – Acts 9:1-6 [7-20], Psalm 30, Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19 I’m currently reading a book called Why Religion Went Obsolete, by Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame (see his conversation with Tripp Fuller below). In it, Smith writes about societal movements and changes since the 1990s that came
Sunday, March 16, 2025 – Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18, Psalm 27, Philippians 3:17—4:1, Luke 13:31-35 There’s a story motif that appears in many different cultures and historical periods throughout the world that mythologist Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey.” It’s a pattern that has become familiar to us through books or movies like Star Wars and
Sunday, March 9, 2025 (Lent 1) – Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16, Romans 10:8b-13, Luke 4:1-13 Since I began serving Redeemer as interim minister in October of 2023, my approach to preaching has been a week-by-week endeavor. It’s pretty much all I could do to just keep juggling all the plates that I had in
Sunday, February 9, 2025 – Isaiah 6:1-8 [9-13], Psalm 138, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Luke 5:1-11 I have to confess, I’ve never been very interested in fishing. As a child, my brother often took rod and reel and went with our Uncle Richie, who just passed away a couple of weeks ago, to see what they
Sunday, January 26, 2025 – Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, Psalm 19, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a, Luke 4:14-21 Listen to the suffering of the people of Judah. First, their king and his family were forced into exile in Babylon. Then a few years later, when the great Temple was destroyed, almost all the Judeans were forced out
