by Crawford UMC | Jun 13, 2021 | Sermons
Most of the characters in the book of Job, including Job himself, are questioning why bad things happen to good people. As a result, we tend to read it thinking that’s the question the book is trying to answer. We then come away mad that it doesn’t answer the question, and frequently upset at the nature of God it presents.
And what is Satan doing at God’s staff meeting anyway? I think we have misunderstood the question behind the story of Job’s misfortune as well as the type of literature we’re dealing with. Join us Sunday for a different take on both the question and the book.
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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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