Category: Sermons

So Ahasuerus, Esther’s husband, the king of Persia, issues the decree. On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the Persians will kill every Jew in the Empire.

How long until you swallow up the powers of death—the powers that walked into that club in Colorado Springs and the powers that seem to rule this world—forever How long, O Lord? How long?

Do the smart thing, and lay down your arms, and surrender. Then you can sit under your own vine and fig tree, until we take you away to somewhere else. Until we destroy you.

Sometimes things are big and complicated and overwhelming. And sometimes things are gracefully simple.

Every great magic trick has three acts. The pledge, the turn, and the prestige. The ordinary, the extraordinary, and the astounding.

Right now, in this moment, Nathan is on his way to tell David—the king of Israel—exactly what God thinks about what David has done.

As hard as this is to hear, there is not one person here who has not broken their covenant. There is not one person here who does not stand in a field of shattered promises.

We like these commandments. We include them in our lectionaries and have posters of them in our churches. Sometimes, we even memorize them.

The Israelites say to Moses, “A life in slavery would have been better than a death in freedom.” And Moses says to the Israelites, “You forgot about the other option.”

It is easy and it is comfortable to imagine that it’s the word of a protagonist against the word of a villain, and that’s that. And sometimes, that works. But most of the time...