United Congregational Christian Church

Tag: love

  • Who Does God Love? [Sermon]

    When I was young, I once told a leader in my church that I wish that we could have an island where all of us Christians could go to be away from people who were not Christian. We were the good people, and non-Christians were not good people. Clearly, God loved us and not them.…

  • Prepare [Sermon]

    Sometimes I prepare way in advance of a trip. Not only have I reserved by mode of transportation or planned my route on the road and reserved the place or places where I will stay, but I have chosen what I will wear (and maybe packed it), what I will do when I get there,…

  • Remember [Sermon]

    I recently read some advice on how to be successful. I wonder whether that really works.I don’t think it would be helpful in making friends.Well, not real friends. Let’s go to God in prayer.God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds,…

  • The End Is Near!? [Sermon]

    There are a lot of punctuation marks and other special characters. Just in English we have periods, commas, colons, semicolons, hyphens, en dashes (which are longer than hyphens), em dashes (which are longer then en dashes), at signs, hashtags or octothorps (the tic-tac-toe looking symbol), dollar and cent signs, ampersands (the and sign), carets (the…

  • How to Get Even [Sermon]

    How to Get Even [Sermon]

    There is a phrase going around: leopards eating faces. It comes from a Twitter user named Adrian Bott who, on October 16 2015, tweeted this: ‘I never thought the leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party. It has been applied to British people who voted to…

  • Who Cares? [Sermon]

    Who Cares? [Sermon]

    It’s not in our readings today, but it’s a familiar parable: The Good Samaritan. It’s in Luke 10, and this being year C in the Revised Common Lectionary, we will come to it this year on July 13. But a brief summary of the parable is that a Jewish man is beaten and robbed, and…

  • Why Look for Jesus? [sermon]

    Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park is on highway 199 east of Crescent City. I’ve driven by it on my way to Grants Pass or Portland. There are many reasons people may go to Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park: Or, if you’re George Lucas, you might want to film some scenes for a Star Wars movie.…

  • Expect Love [Sermon]

    Last week I mentioned a particular road that goes along a particular cape on the Pacific Ocean. And then just west of that road there was a large earthquake, and we’re still experiencing aftershocks from it. I’m not really superstitious, but I also don’t like to tempt fate, so I won’t be naming that road…

  • Who Is My Neighbor? [Sermon]

    Who Is My Neighbor? [Sermon]

    Yes, who we have been is a witness to who we are now, urging us to not rest on what we have done, but instead to continue to love our neighbors, no matter how near or far, no matter what color skin, no matter who they love, no matter their gender, no matter their ability,…

  • What Does It Mean? [Sermon]

    Jesus was a Jewish teacher who was alive during the life of Shammai, the teacher the Talmud passage mentioned, and may have even studied with him. So I think we can use the teachings of Jesus and other Jewish teachers to illuminate what Jesus taught.