Lenten Sermons

The themes and character of Lent always make for a preaching challenge. Here are my offering from the second and third Sunday's of Lent. Rethinking Penance and That Living Water. Let me know what you think.

Light from light

Happy New Year. May yours be filled with joy and peace - and send a bit of that out into the world. At Faith, our year started out wonderfully, the Feast of the Epiphany was a time of celebration for four of our young people as they made their passage from childhood in their Rite 13 ceremony. For them, the light of adulthood is dawning and so it was a great chance to preach about light. You can read the sermon here.

Advent at Faith

And the joint is jumpin'! We now officially have more members than we have chairs in the church. What a lovely problem to have. We are planning our first ever Childrens Christmas Eve service. The Vicar is very happy!

On Sunday afternoon our Christmas pageant was filled with the wonderful moments that only children can bring. The angel Gabriel, played by 3 year old Julia, made the succinct annunciation to Mary "You're going to have a baby!" Mary's expression of surprise, well emoted by 5 year old Sage - complete with wide eyes and hands clapped to her cheeks. The angel then moved over to Joseph, played by 10 year old Hannah in her first trouser role, and told him "Your mother's going to have a baby!" That surprised us all.

Here's some sermon catch up. 2nd Sunday of Advent and 3rd Sunday in Advent.

The Peace Child

Preaching about peace is occasionally perilous. I've been excoriated any number of times for daring to do so. Well, here's another one. The story of the Peace Child is a powerful witness to the sacrifice necessary to truly seek peace.

Leaving ordinary time

Catching up a bit, here's the sermon from Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday after Pentecost and before Advent. To read about our transition from ordinary time to extraordinary time, click here.

Avoiding the apocalyspe

This is always such a fun time of year to preach - all of that fire and brimstone! Here's my take on Malachi and Jesus talking about the end of the world. Click here.

Seeing through the smoke

I just got a call from an old friend wondering how we were doing out here and it gave the me kick in the pants to post and say that we're ok here - Laguna Niguel has sat safely in the middle of the doughnut - fires all around but none that have reached here. Some of Faith's members are closer and I'm trying to keep tabs on them. The air quality is as bad as you might expect - it hurts your lungs even when you're inside. Max the church dog can't understand why he can't be outside as usual.
There will be lots of talk when these fires are finally out - the Orange County fire has been called arson - something too monstrous to consider. Resources are stretched to keep up. The National Guard has pointed out that a lot of their equipment is in Iraq, fire departments are underfunded despite plans to change that after the 2003 fires. Water is a serious issue and only going to get worse. Development continues despite concerns about how many people Southern California can accomodate. For right now, I'm contemplating how we can express our thanks and support for the Fire Departments. Please pray and thank you for your concern.

Returning to normal

What can I say about jet-lag? The 9 hour time difference between Europe and California will leave you a little puny. Regardless, it was wonderful to get home, although we got back to find several people in the hospital so there was some pastoral care to catch up on. We also learned that Faith had lost its most senior member, Doris Martin. As per her wishes, we held no special service but celebrated her life in the context of our regular worship - which is really a good way to say good-bye. Click on her name to read the sermon about our quiet oak of righteousness and how she was an example to all of us to stand still and strong in the midst of great change.

Rest in peace, Doris.