by Stacey Hilliard | May 14, 2023 | Sermons
While Mother’s Day is not a religious holiday, the Bible is full of stories about the hardships of motherhood and commands to care for women and children. Here in the United States, we are not good at caring for mothers. As the chart here shows, we have the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world.
But living through the actual birth is merely the first challenge faced by mothers, both historically and today. So, this Mother’s Day we will focus on the challenges facing mothers in our world and how we might embody our prayers for them. BonnieJean Butler will join me in the sermon to highlight the plight of mothers in a war zone and how we can help.
– Pastor Anne
by Stacey Hilliard | May 7, 2023 | Sermons
One of Jesus’ more famous sayings is also problematic for many people. “I am the way,the truth, and the life,” Jesus says in John 14:6, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Let’s look at the problems caused by common interpretations of that verse and how Jesus might actually be pointing in a different direction.
– Pastor Anne
by Stacey Hilliard | Apr 30, 2023 | Sermons
You can perhaps see from this 1990 photo of me with my own (freshly shorn) sheep, how much I love them, and I can’t pass up the opportunity the lectionary has given me to talk about them. What the picture doesn’t quite capture is the fact that sheep are dumb as rocks or a lot of other things about sheep that can help us understand the many, many metaphors in the Bible that refer to sheep and shepherds.
– Pastor Anne
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by Stacey Hilliard | Apr 16, 2023 | Sermons
One of the odd pieces in the stories of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances is that even those very close to Jesus often fail to recognize him. I think that weird detail has something to teach us as we struggle to find Jesus in our lives today.
– Pastor Anne
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by Stacey Hilliard | Apr 9, 2023 | Sermons
On Easter Sunday, our scripture lesson is the resurrection story from Luke, who reported that when the women who went to the tomb ran back to tell the disciples that Jesus was risen, their story was received as merely “an idle tale.” Some things never change.
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by Stacey Hilliard | Apr 6, 2023 | Sermons
On Palm Sunday, we descended the Mount of Olives with the joyful procession leading Jesus into Jerusalem. Just four days later, we find Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, which lies at the base of the Mount of Olives, sweating blood in prayer. How did we get here?
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