Posts by Derek Nguyen

This Sunday is the last Sunday of Christmastide, and January 6th will be Epiphany of the Lord.  Our Scripture this week comes from John 1:10-18.  It is the second half of the prologue to John’s Gospel, at least that is what many commentators believed about John 1:1-18.  The prologue contains poetic verses that likened Jesus to the Word and light along with the concepts of incarnation, glory, grace, and truth. These concepts are illumined when we interpret them through Jesus. …

In a couple of days, we’ll have our Christmas Eve Programs at 5 PM and 7 PM. Christmas Eve’s celebration is, as I recall from personal experience, normally bigger than Christmas itself in terms of congregational celebration.  Unless Christmas falls on a Sunday, church folks normally celebrate Christmas Eve at church, but we celebrate Christmas at home.  This Sunday, we’ll be done with Christmas, but we’re still in Christmastide, at least until the evening of January 5th, 2022. The Scripture…

This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent.  Many of us are expecting to go to church to watch family members, friends, or congregants light an Advent candle and hear a heart-warming message related to events leading to the birth of baby Jesus.  To our surprise, we are given an apocalyptic text with signs from the heavenly bodies and chaos on earth together with dismay and confusion.  Some of us might ask ourselves, what do apocalyptic events and the warning…

This Sunday we continue our sermon series on the parables of Jesus, guided by the book Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi by Amy-Jill Levine. The focused parable is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.  It must have been frustrating for those workers who worked the whole day in the heat of the sun to receive the same pay as those who only worked for one hour.  It just doesn’t seem fair.  I imagine the other groups…

I remember when I was in middle school, I went to my school’s library and grabbed a few books from the shelves.  Needless to say, they were all books about plants.  I read about how plants use water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight to make sugar and oxygen in a process known as photosynthesis.  I was so intrigued by all the diagrams of how everything works and even the chemical reactions themselves.  The process of how plants utilize photosynthesis to create…

This Sunday we continue our sermon series on the parables of Jesus, guided by the book Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi by Amy-Jill Levine. There are different elements present in this parable.  We have the merchant, the object of his search (fine pearls), his surprise discovery (the one precious pearl), and the merchant’s act of selling everything he owned to buy that one precious pearl.  By synthesizing every element in the parable to formulate…

This Sunday we will focus on the lectionary text from Mark 7, which covers the conversation between Jesus and some Pharisees and legal experts. Although it is easy to glance over this text and jump to a conclusion that Jesus is condemning the religious practices held by the Pharisees and legal experts, a closer look at Jesus’ response will help us understand that what he is mainly concerned with is the intention of their hearts. We have different motives and…