Faithful to the Call -- Luke 5: 1-11

The text was the Revised Common Lectionary Luke passage.  I was trying to balance the idea of faithfulness and call.  This was Scout Sunday, so I did get over into our local context a good bit.  

Luke 12: 22 to 34.  The text is from The Message.  (We had flowers for Eugene Peterson.)  Her sermon title is Enough.  

Amy Gearhart is an Elder in the Missouri Conference and we had her speak at Hilltop on Commitment Sunday.  AKA Consecration Sunday.  Amy explains her new position at the Mountain Sky Conference.  I called her the Transition and Culture Czarina. 

This was our most effective Stewardship campaign in my time at Hilltop, at least in terms of Treasure.  Still work to do in all three of time, talent, and treasure but we are making progress.   

I spoke a little at the start to make some comments on the shootings at the Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  

Job 23 ... I like Job.  Not easy to preach from but I do think it speaks to us in our humanness.  

This is the Reverend Tiffany Eddy in her debut sermon at Hilltop.  Tiffany is an Elder in the Oklahoma Conference, and spent five years on active duty in the United States Navy.  She now lives in Bluffdale, Utah and is participating in Clinical Pastoral Education at St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City.

This was United Methodist Women Sunday.  Tiffany spoke to the subject of empowerment!  i clipped a smidgen at the end whenTiffany was concluding.  Forgive me please.  

Pentecost 17:  18.09.23

James 3:13 - 4:8a

Pastor Dennis “Big Idea”: 

I decided to take to the area of which wolf will you feed?  Which wisdom will you honor? Played with the idea of what it means to be "all in".  Sometimes it means you are exhausted or tired.  But other times, it means, I am totally with this.  I am "all" in. No guilt.  No shame.  But at the same time, where are you?  

Revealed this service my financial contribution to the church.  Not for guilt, or shame, but to show Marilyn and I are all in.   

Sunday Four of Five Straight RCL Sundays on James

^3:13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. ¹⁵ Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. ¹⁶ For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. ¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. ¹⁸ And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

^4:1 Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? ² You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures….

⁷ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ^8a Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Our District Superintendent preaching on Kick Off Sunday.  Great Sermon.  Great!  Looks at what the church really is supposed to be and then ends with an enormous question.  The silence in the podcast was the silence that morning.  

Ephesians 1: 3-14 

Sermon one of seven from Ephesians.  Will introduce a "rule" per week.  

This week:  "Love your congregation where they are."  

This is Acts 10 where Peter is surprised by what God is calling him to do, set aside almost everything he has previously known.  What is it that we have previously held as true and God has surprised us with what we need to do?  

This series springs from the well dug by the Reverend Adam Hamilton, Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, Kansas. 

This is getting started with the idea of Unafraid.  We actually live in a time of borderline irrational fear.  The numbers are good.  We are healthy, wealthy, and longest lived people and for some reason, we are more and more afraid.  

Sermon draws from Isaiah 41: 1-10, Psalm 56: 3-4 and Philippians 4: 6-7.  

This starts a six week series on Fear.  The first sermon is on how much of fear is more imaginary than real.  Question is "what are you afraid of".  I know FDR is not Jesus but "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself" is part of the idea if not the message. 

FEAR can at times be False Events Appearing Real.  At times we live in a world where smoke detectors are going off but it is because their batteries are low, not because there is anything to really fear.  Topical sermon so form will roughly be:  The element of the human condition we are going to look at (Unnecessary Fear), exegete that element of the HC, what does scripture say about it (the Isaiah, Psalm, Philippians and of course Jesus (sermon on the mount)), and then application. 

We do live in times where Auden's "Age of Anxiety" is incomplete and for whatever reason we live in an "Age of High Anxiety."  Real? 

This is drawn from 1 Samuel 3: 1-11, and I address brefly the context of the passage at the beginning of the reading.  

Samuel is being advised to "listen" ... and Eli tells him to communicate to God that Samuel is actively listening for God to speak.  That constitutes the core of the reflection/message.