Christmas Eve 2016
Jeremy Richards
Will you please pray with me:
Emmanuel,
Come and dwell with us here, tonight
Just as you came to dwell with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the cattle so many nights ago.
Be in our worship. Be in our celebration. Be in a hug between family members and a Christmas greeting between friends.
Be here with us.
Amen.
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 | Romans 1:1-7 | Matthew 1:18-25
Jeremy Richards
The great Catholic lay theologian G.K. Chesterton said, and I apologize for all the gendered language, Chesterton said it not me, but when he says “man” know he means “humanity.” Chesterton said,
Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but…free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.
Isaiah 35:1-10 | Psalm 146:5-10 | Matthew 11:2-11
Jeremy Richards
Our Psalm reading this morning begins: “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.”
The question we might pose, though, is: Who is God? Perhaps it’s true that we’ll be happy if our hope and help is in the God of Jacob. The problem however, is we don’t know exactly who this God is. It seems like every time I think I’ve got my finger on just who God is, God goes and surprises me – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
Isaiah 11:1-10 | Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 | Romans 15:4-13 | Matthew 3:1-12
Jeremy Richards
Don’t you just hate sermons on repentance? I hate sermons on repentance.
When my sister and I were young enough to still take baths together, but old enough that we didn’t need supervision, there was an evening that we were in the bath and I had a bright idea. I suggested that we pretend the bathtub was a boat that was sinking, and we needed to bail out all the water. By the time my mom returned to check on us, we’d emptied half the bathtub onto the bathroom floor of a house we were renting. My parents ended up having to pay for a new floor to be put in in the bathroom! Needless to say, we were in big trouble.
Isaiah 2:1-5 | Psalm 122 | Romans 13:11-14 | Matthew 24:36-44
Jeremy Richards
I remember one day, as a young child – I was maybe 5 or 6 – “helping” my mom in the kitchen of the old A-frame we used to rent. However old I was, I was at the age where children often have a lot of questions. I grew up in a very Christian home, so even at that young age I had a lot of questions about God. Somehow we got on the topic of Jesus’ second coming, and I remember my mother telling me that Jesus was coming back soon. She was sure of it. She wasn’t sure Jesus would come back before she passed away, but definitely before I did, which kind of scared me. I was really looking forward to life ahead.
Jeremiah 23:1-6 | Colossians 1:11-20 | Luke 23:33-43
Jeremy Richards
A few months ago, Brie and I went on a trip to celebrate my graduating from seminary – which was as much a celebration for Brie as it was for me. For our trip we went to Iceland and Ireland. One thing you’ll come to learn about Brie and I is that Brie is a planner, and I’m more of a go-with-the-flow kinda guy (probably not something you want to hear from the guy who’s planning your worship!). That was certainly the case with this trip. Brie planned EVERYTHING. She booked the hostiles, she reserved the camper van and the car we rented. In fact, looking back, I can’t even believe how utterly clueless I was about what would happen on this trip. I don’t know if there was anything I really demanded that we do.
Isaiah 65:17-25 | 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 | Luke 21:5-19
Jeremy Richards
So, I preached my first real sermon here two weeks ago, not counting my candidating sermon. And to be honest, I felt like it was a bit heavy. There weren’t any fun stories, or jokes really (and Stacey told everyone last week how I made Leviticus fun). So my plan for this week was to have a little more fun with the sermon, to maybe take my foot off the gas pedal. It’s easy for young pastors straight out of seminary to want to go a little too hard a little too fast – we tend to think we know more than we do.
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 | Luke 19:1-10
Jeremy Richards
Does anyone else feel like Habakkuk?
In the midst of an election year that seems to be even more divisive and hostile than regular,
with the constant news of yet another unarmed black man shot and killed in the street,
with reports of mass death in the middle East – 100 children recently killed in Aleppo,
[with the ever-present threat of terrorism around every corner,
with sexism that continues to be a daily reality for those of us who are women]
…and the list of injustices goes on and on…
It’s not hard to relate to Habakkuk’s words,