Some weeks, even if one sets aside the necessary time, a preacher can still find her or himself wrestling with a text. And sometimes that match ends up with the text having slammed the preacher to the floor, leaving them begging for mercy. Other weeks the sermon preparation seems to flow, the text seems to spring to life. And on some rare occurrences one can even have a sermon put together in mind

This morning’s passage comes from a section of John’s gospel we often call the “last discourse.” In this time of year when graduation ceremonies are taking place all over the country, we might call this Jesus’ “Graduation Speech” to his very first class of his graduating students. It is a speech that follows his “last supper” with the disciples,

There is a scene near the end of the movie Waiting for Guffman when the camera brings us right into a little New York City store. The shop sells Hollywood novelty items, and it is owned by Corky, one of the main characters in the film. Corky lovingly displays the various pieces of memorabilia he sells, and one piece he shows us is related to the film “My Dinner with Andre.” That film

When I was in college out in the Northeast, I was a part of a men’s a cappella group. It was a student-led group, and the eight of us who sang in it had some great experiences together. My senior year especially, I remember spending many a weekend traveling to other schools in the Northeast, singing for a cappella concerts. There were some of those performances where I remember that feeling

Some of you may remember a while back I preached a sermon on how the discipleship journey was not, according to our scriptures, like a smooth straight and easy freeway. I talked instead about how our scriptures paint it as a perilous mountain road. I even compared it to the Yungas road in Bolivia, called the most dangerous road in the world due its dirt roads carved into a mountain with a sheer cliff