sermon

My boxes of old sermons are a monument to my church’s ongoing conversation with God.

I’ve preached more than 800 funeral sermons. Many of these deaths have marked me.

My task at funerals is to share the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

On the cross, Jesus needed actual water. No one gave him any.

The best preachers, says Russell Mitman, preach liturgically,  eschatologically, multi-sensorily, and eight more ways that end in -ly.

The preacher maintains a sacred conversation between God and the congregation.

I can see my dad's manuscript: the title centered in caps, the body double-spaced and marked up by hand. But I can't remember the words.

In 1983, Kenneth Mitchell and Herbert Anderson wrote that "death is only one form of loss." This would have been unthinkable for Christians half a century earlier.

Much of the snickering about boring sermons comes not
because we expect so little but because we have hoped for so much. A hunger persists for a word from the
Lord—without which we are left to our boring selves.