First Presbyterian Church, Evansville Sermons

“Well, it’s been a quiet week in Evansville, Indiana, my hometown.”  We made the national news this week when a racist customer at the Olive Garden on Green River Road requested a white server in place of the server assigned to her table.   The former...

Here, at First Pres, we do our best to give you a little more than you might expect at other churches on a Sunday morning.  It’s not because we’re trying to proclaim ourselves better than others.  It’s just that you’ve come to expect a little more...

If you don’t know this about me by now, then you probably have not been paying attention.  I have a thing for mountains and for mountaintops.  I am crazy for the mountains and when I see the Rockies, or the Alleghenies, or the Smokeys, or Ben Moor on...

The religious landscape in the United States is in the midst of a dramatic change.  While many of us can remember a time when Sunday meant getting up and going to church without fail, with no excuse being tolerated and no explanation of why a Sunday...

The story that Mark offers us on this Sunday morning is troublesome.  We’re dealing with an exorcism and that is troubling territory for proper Presbyterians.  We have far less trouble with healing stories.  After all, we have known those who were ill...

Telling a story is not as easy as it may appear, but we all like a good story told well.  Sometimes it has nothing to do with the subject of the story.  Uninteresting stories can become interesting simply by the way they are shared.  Apparently...

One of the truths I’ve uncovered in this business of preaching is that everything that should be said, has been said, and it has been said in a better way than I could ever hope to say it.  Tremendously complex ideas are compacted into a brief, pithy...

Four weeks ago, Jesus was born. Three weeks ago, Jesus was,perhaps, two years old and the wise men visited. Last week, Jesus was an adult and went to the river to be baptized by John. And this week, Jesus is beginning his public ministry. I told you...

It does not take us long, as children, to learn that life is full of rules.  This discovery is usually made when we inadvertently and unintentionally break one of the rules we know nothing about.  These can be rules about being at the table (“don’t...

We have come to that moment in advent - at which we arrive every year - when the focus for the morning centers on John the Baptist. For generations, John the Baptist has been viewed as a “warm-up act” for the arrival of Jesus.  Yes, John is important...

If you’ve spent any amount of time around Evansville in the last twenty years or so, you have seen more than enough of your share of these.  It used to be that the orange cones only blossomed in the spring.  But now, the orange cones seem to be...

Even though many of us are still eating Thanksgiving leftovers and have yet to reach their fill of football, time is moving on.  When I was in seminary, a group of us went to a wonderful Roman Catholic congregation for the First Sunday in Advent. ...

I have been watching Ken Burns’ history of country music.  (Most of you have finished with that, but I am working through the recorded series.)  I’m not that much of a country fan, though if you give me some Waylon and Willie, a bit of Loretta and...

One of the simple truths about life is that the older you get the more you learn.  At least we hope that is one of the benefits of aging.  There is little that is worse than a person who refuses to learn anything new, considering the remarkable gifts...

There are stories in the Bible that were just meant for film. The story of the parting of the Reed Sea and the passage of the Hebrews from the ensuing Egyptian chariots and armies is one, memorably re-created (though historically inaccurate) by Cecil...

One of the many benefits I have received from our interfaith partnership - especially with our Jewish sisters and brothers - is a new appreciation and understanding of the calendar.  By knowing a little of when and what the Jewish holy days are about...

It is that time in the Tri-State region when the sale of Kleenex and antihistamines sky-rockets each year.  The combines are in the fields.  The corn is being cut.  The beans are being harvested.  The dust clouds are rising from the fields.  The deer...

There were certain expectations of those of us who grew up in small towns.  If you are of a certain age, you will remember that, long before the internet and social media, if you got into some mischief of one kind or another, when you arrived home...

The old man was on his deathbed and he knew it.  He was no longer in his home.  He had been taken to another country by his sons who had relocated there to escape famine.  His life was ending and he called his sons to his bedside.  One by one he tells...

This is not the sermon I was planning to preach today.  The story I was supposed to preach was the story of Moses at the burning bush and his receiving of God’s divine name.  It’s a great story and I promise we’ll come back to it someday.   But...

A little review is in order.  We’ve met Abraham and Sarah.  They were told that they would become the parents of a great nation, even though both of them were approaching their expiration date.  When three strangers showed up at their tent and told...

Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page.  We’re in the book of Genesis - which means “beginnings” - and it’s not just the story of the beginning of all that is, seen and unseen.  It is also the beginning of the people of Israel.  It begins with a...

We’re back together again!  The summer season has “officially” come to an end.  Labor Day is past and we are now into the opening days of “pumpkin spice” season - not a liturgical season of the year, but one that seems to infect everything.  The heat...

The war had been brutal.  The Portuguese had been making war against the Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms in Angola.  Prisoners had been taken and marched anywhere from 100 to 200 miles to the port of Luanda, where they were loaded onto the ship San Juan...

The story is told of a widowed trapper who lived deep in the Alaskan wilderness with his two year old son. On one occasion, their food supplies had run out and the trapper was forced to go and catch some more food. The weather outside was so fierce he...