Sermons by Bob Rhodes (Page 10)
What’s So Important About Community?
This week we continue our “Questions That Matter” series with a question about community. This is deeply connected to our festivities this Sunday as we gather together to celebrate Independence Day. We will connect in an important way! I suggest that this kind of connection carries emotional and spiritual importance for us all. Scripture: Romans 12:1-8 (CEB)
Why Should I Give to the Church?
As we continue our “Questions That Matter” series, we turn to the matter of giving to the church. It seems as though there are many requests for money for worthy causes: natural disasters, public service organizations, educational institutions, and many more. Why should we give to the church too? Scripture: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Mark 5:21-43 (CEB)
Where do We See God?
This Sunday we begin our new series on Questions that Matter. This first week, we address a deep question that is rooted in our experience of God. As United Methodists, many of us affirm the Wesleyan Quadrilateral where we approach faith through scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. While not framed quite so succinctly, John Wesley clearly approached his own faith this way, and we can learn the importance of experiencing God. Scripture: Exodus 33:12-23, Luke 10:25-37 (CEB)
Seeking Light in the Darkness
This Sunday is Trinity Sunday and begins our regular season that follows Pentecost. This is the longest season in our Lectionary calendar, lasting all the way until we begin the church year again in Advent! We include one of the most-often-memorized scriptures. Many of us memorized John 3:16 in early Sunday School classes, and some of us even know the following verse as well. Scripture: John 3:1-17 (CEB)
Playing with Fire
This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday! In the Christian tradition, we celebrate this as the time when God’s Holy Spirit is given to the disciples who are then empowered to do some incredible things!
Forever
This is our final week for our sermon series following The Lord’s Prayer. This final week, we conclude with a section generally included by most Protestants that is commonly known as a doxology: for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Scripture: Matthew 6:9-13 (NRSV), 1 Chronicles 29:11 (CEB)
Deliver Us
This week, we move to our penultimate service in our sermon series following The Lord’s Prayer, seeking God’s deliverance from all that tempts us. Just as we spoke last week about how we sometimes don’t realize that we are in need of forgiveness, I suggest it may be possible that we don’t realize when we are tempted. Scripture: Matthew 6:9-13 (GNT)
As We Forgive
This week we examine the concept of forgiveness. It may be worth noting that throughout this series on The Lord’s Prayer, we’ve chosen to read the Matthew text from a different translation each week. This brings us perspective as we read this prayer throughout the series. I hope that it is also illustrative for us as we remember the many ways Christians from different denominations say this prayer! All of this leads us to ask what we are seeking forgiveness…
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
This week we continue our series exploring the importance of the central teaching of The Lord’s Prayer. Pastor Lea explored the opening verse last week (find her sermon here), and this week we follow seeking God’s kingdom on earth as it is from heaven. It may be that we don’t know quite what we’re asking for when we pray this. Scripture: Matthew 6:9-10 (NLT), Luke 22:41-42 (CEB)
Risking the Salvation of God
This is the end of Lent and the beginning of our celebration of resurrection! This is a time of looking forward with renewed hope after a period of darkness. This is a time that surely feels surprising, even to the point that we may even doubt what we see and what we feel. Could it be?? Scripture: John 20:1-18; Acts 10:34-43
Risking Temptation
This is the sixth week of the season of Lent and Palm/Passion Sunday. We conclude our Worship series guided by Amy-Jill Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week. As we near our Easter celebration, we might be tempted to want over to skip over the bad stuff and jump straight to the celebration and the eggs and the fun! And we would be wrong to do this. I wonder if Jesus was tempted, as he…
Risking the Loss of Friends
This is the fifth week of the season of Lent, and we continue our Worship series guided by Amy-Jill Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week. As we continue through Holy Week and near Easter, we arrive at a profoundly moving gathering of Jesus with his disciples. Gathering for the Passover celebration, Jesus does something extraordinary. Told differently in the Gospels (read Matthew 26, Mark 14, and John 13), we may understand Jesus in his…