2008
Sermons
Dez 28 - The Costly Gift
Dez 24 - The Whole Story
Dez 21 - Disrupted!
Dez 21 - Blessed be God, anyway
Dez 14 - Signpost People
Dez 7 - Turn Around!
Nov 30 - Lament
Nov 23 - Seeing Jesus
Nov 16 - Treasure
Nov 9 - Good News, or Bad?
Okt 12 - Now We Join in Celebration
Okt 5 - Is All Lost?
Sep 27 - No reason to brag
Sep 21 - At the Right Time
Sep 14 - The Holy Cross of Christ has set us free!
Sep 7 - Responsibility for One Another?
Aug 31 - Extreme?
Aug 24 - Questions
Aug 17 - Inside, Outside, Upside Down
Aug 10 - Against Giants
Aug 3 - You Are What You Eat
Jul 27 - Whose Treasure?
Jul 20 - ...and the Harvest
Jul 13 - God, Seed, Growth, Harvest
Jul 6 - Burden and Yoke
Jun 29 - The Big Question
Jun 22 - Death and Life
Jun 15 - Priestly and Holy
Jun 8 - Lord, Have Mercy
Jun 1 - And it will be hard
Mai 25 - Just One More....
Mai 18 - Good...very good!
Mai 11 - Transformed!
Mai 4 - It's a battle..............
Apr 27 - In the conversation
Apr 20 - We are...we will be....
Apr 13 - Worship and Life
Apr 6 - Just Talking
Mrz 30 - Resurrection of the Body
Mrz 23 - This New Day
Mrz 22 - Blessed be God!
Mrz 21 - It is finished!
Mrz 21 - Died, For Me!
Mrz 20 - This Do!
Mrz 16 - Good News for those who flunk the test
Mrz 9 - To Laugh, Yes, To Laugh!
Mrz 2 - Together in Christ - Glenn Lunger
Mrz 2 - Why?
Feb 24 - Bigger than we thought
Feb 17 - Abraham the Player, Nicodemus the Spectator
Feb 10 - Saying NO
Feb 6 - In deep conversation with the Father
Feb 3 - How close to God?
Jan 27 - What? Who? Where? When?
Jan 20 - Behold, the Lamb who takes....
Jan 13 - It Just Might Happen
Jan 6 - The Gift of You
Blessed be God!
Great Vigil of Easter - March 22, 2008
Blessed be God,
the creator of all that is
in this night of elemental contrasts:
--darkness filled with light,
--silence broken by speech,
--death overwhelmed by life,
-- barrenness supplanted by plenty,
--hunger filled with food,
--dryness giving way to water.
Blessed be God,
who has given us every good thing.
Blessed be God,
who uses the common and ordinary to be the bearers of his promises
and reminders for us
of his unswerving and all-encompassing devotion to us.
Blessed be God,
therefore, for water,
for the water of life.
Ho! All who are thirsty, come to the waters, says Isaiah.
Remember that just as the rain comes down from heaven and waters the earth,
so will the Word of the Lord
come upon us
and do what God wills.
Remember
each time that we use water day by day for washing
or for nourishing ourselves,
and each time we use
or recall the use of water in church,
that it is
in the union of water and God's Word that Good News comes to us.
Blessed be God
for his Word that breaks the silence of death, opening the new and resurrected life for Christ
and the anticipation of new life for us.
Remember the whole story that we have rehearsed this night,
from the beginning of creation
to its central point and culmination
in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember that at our baptism,
Christ added us to that story, grafted us in,
adopted us as his own,
and promises never to remove us from the conversation that is the life of the Triune God.
Blessed be God,
who sees our barrenness, our helplessness, our hunger,
and sets before us the Great Banquet, with the Bread of life, of hope, and of anticipation.
This is the gift not just once, but again and again as often as we need it.
Blessed be God
for the Light that fills the darkness,
that turns this place and this assembly into an oasis of light
even in the middle of the darkness of the night outside.
Remember this night's light\
when the sad and dark times come for each of us,
the times when we think that no one else can understand just how sad or alone or abandoned we feel.
Remember and know that there is light for every darkness,
company for every abandonment,
comfort for every loneliness.
Remember this night's light
as a sign of what will happen
on that great and final day
when all and every kind of darkness is at length banished forever.
Blessed be God, creator of all that was, is, and ever will be.
Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.
|
Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him. |