Sermon for Christmas 1 (New Year’s Eve / Day)
A new canon for our hearts.
In my sermon last week for Biblical Preaching, I tried to say (I’m not sure if it was clear, but I tried) that the words we use in Scripture and in singing write a particular kind of canon on our hearts. So we should take our words — and particularly our songs — very seriously.
To close, I had the members of my preaching lab sing “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” but with words from Isaiah 40:1-11 as I’d rewritten them.
Sermon for May 15 2011 (Good Shepherd Sunday / Youth Sunday)
Texts here.
In reading over the texts and working with our youth as they prepared today’s service, I couldn’t stop thinking about the December Christmas pageant. I guess it’s because today is Good Shepherd Sunday - I don’t have a lot of sheep in my life, but at the Christmas pageant - well, then we have sheep! We have sheep and a donkey and, if we have enough kids, maybe a camel.
The sheep in our pageant are usually the littlest ones - the ones that, in some ways, need the most shepherding. They haven’t been in the pageant before. They’re not sure when to walk in. They aren’t sure of the story, or what their part is in it. But we bring them - again and again - and after a few years as sheep, they graduate to donkey, to shepherd, to angel.
