Presented -October 26, 2014

(Dt. 6:5-9; Lev. 19:1-2, 15-18; 1 Thess. 2:1-8; Mt. 22:34-46)

As I look back over these past years, I am proud of the fact that First Baptist has been guided by a sense of mission “out there” in our community that is determined only partially by our numbers (either in terms of people or dollars), and much more by a sense of the kind of community we believe God is calling us to be, and going in the way we believe God is calling us to go. It is important that this continue into 2015 and… Continue reading →

Presented -October 19, 2014

(Isa. 45:1-7; Mt. 22:15-22)

Very soon we will go to the polls and vote, which means we have endured endless rhetoric of late (as we seem to do more continuously than we used to). One of the perennial subjects of the rhetoric, political spin, and all the rest of it is taxes, who raised them (or lowered them) last time, and who will this time. A long time ago Jesus had his own debate about taxes with an unlikely coalition of religious/political leaders within his culture called the Herodians and the Pharisees. We don’t know a… Continue reading →

Presented -October 12, 2014

(Isa. 25:1-10a; Phil. 4:4-9; Mt. 22:1-14)

The Old Testament Lesson pictures God’s final presence with people as a sumptuous banquet where everyone will have enough and more than enough to eat. Such an image may have limited appeal in our world where most of us have never been very hungry, but in Jesus’ world where very few of his hearers had ever been anything else, it was very attractive. Later in history than this text that is now in the Book of Isaiah, though it was probably composed as late as the 4th century, this picture… Continue reading →

Presented -October 5, 2014

(Ex. 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Phil. 3:4b-14; Mt. 21:33-46)

There’s a book written over 60 years ago by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber called Two Types of Faith that I first read long ago. I have almost pirated his title for this sermon. I want to acknowledge how much I have learned from him (and not only in this book), but I’ve changed the title so as not to suggest that he would have begun to agree with my conclusions, which are a bit different from his.

Through the years, I would say the vast majority of… Continue reading →