by Crawford UMC | Jun 6, 2021 | Sermons
The full question submitted for this week was actually, “Why don’t we have prophets and prophecy now? Someone said it was because Jesus was the ‘ultimate’ prophet.” I believe we do have prophets and prophecy now, but because we frequently misunderstand the role of the prophet, we often don’t recognize them.
So in addition to celebrating Holy Communion on Sunday, we’ll take a look at the role of prophets in the Bible and see if we can get better at spotting the prophets in our midst. Who knows, you might be one of them!
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by Crawford UMC | May 30, 2021 | Sermons
This week’s question has been asked many times in many settings. What is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity supposed to mean? How do we understand it? Where did it come from? How important is it?
The Christian calendar follows the celebration of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost with Trinity Sunday. In honor of the occasion, we’ll take up this doctrine of the Church that everyone insists on but no one seems to be able to explain clearly. Maybe trying to explain clearly is part of the problem?
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by Crawford UMC | May 23, 2021 | Sermons
On Pentecost Sunday we focus on the gift of the Holy Spirit. In honor of the occasion, the question for this week will be the one that God asks of Ezekiel as they survey a mass grave of dry bones in Ezekiel 37: “Mortal, can these bones live?” After this past year, how would we answer God’s question? What did Ezekiel do?
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by Crawford UMC | May 16, 2021 | Sermons
This sermon topic comes from a person discouraged by the constant barrage of violence, hate, and corruption that fills every news cycle. The person wrote, “Sometimes it’s hard not to feel hopeless, that [what I do] is just not enough — like God has turned away, and left us on our own, and that negativity and brutality are going to take over the world.” The person has a point. It does seem like we’re in especially perilous times right now. Where do we find hope? Does what we do really matter?
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by Crawford UMC | May 9, 2021 | Sermons
One of the Ten Commandments (either #4 or #5, depending on how you count) says, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” We often breeze past that just like we breeze into Mother’s Day and Father’s Day thinking, “Who can possibly have a problem with that?” A lot of people, as it turns out. What is that commandment asking us to do?
Is it dishonor to put a parent into a long-Term Care facility? What about parents who demand fealty for life no matter the cost? And what about parents who abuse, neglect, or otherwise harm their children? They get “honor”?
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by Crawford UMC | May 2, 2021 | Sermons
There are people who attend Crawford with backgrounds in many different Christian traditions as well as those with little to no church background at all. That means there are many understandings of what it means to share the bread and cup as we celebrate Holy Communion. What is it, exactly, that we think we’re doing during that time? Since this is a Communion Sunday, it seemed like a good time to lift up this question from the list of issues you have submitted.
My response is that trying to think it through is probably not helpful. There is more to be gained by living it.
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