Out of Our Comfort Zones Into God's Healing

A sermon for the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on October 21, 2012.

Mark 10:35-45

A year before he began his major work for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. preached a sermon he called “Paul’s Letter to American Christians”
It’s a sermon in which he imagines what the Apostle Paul might write if he were to write to Christians in America in 1956.
I want to read an excerpt from it to you:

“For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France.

Listen to What the Spirit is Saying

Sermon notes for Sunday October 15, 2012 at the United Church of Acworth, NH.

We depend, as did our ancestors, upon the continual guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.

UCA Faith and Covenant

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, who will stay with you forever. He is the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God.” John 14:16-17a

“When...the Spirit comes, who reveals the truth about God, he will lead you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own authority, but he will speak of what he hears and will tell you of things to come.”

John 17:13

We read in the letter to the Hebrews that “the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It cuts all the way through, to where soul and spirit meet, to where joints and marrow come together. It judges the desires and thoughts of a person's heart. There is nothing that can be hid from God; everything in all creation is exposed and lies open before God's eyes. And it is to God that we must all give an account of ourselves.”

We read from our faith and covenant, that “we depend, as did our ancestors, upon the continual guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.”

For our ancestors this was an extremely important statement. Just as it said that we depend on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it implied that we do not depend on the self-help gurus, the elite teachers of the schools, or some special representative of God, be it Pope or Prophet or other self-proclaimed mouthpiece of the divine.

Be Still and Know

Here is audio for a sermon given on October 7, 2012 at the United Church of Acworth, NH.

MP3 Audio:  Be Still and Know

Matthew 6:19-34

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things