Knox Church Sermons

It goes without saying that Easter is a joyous day for church people.  On Easter morning the music is marvelous and the room is full.  Toddlers are dressed in special Easter outfits that are super cute…as long as you don't know was required to get them on.  Brunch plans and egg hunts are at the […]

Throughout human history, there are countless examples of strongly held beliefs that have to be reexamined.  You know the kind of things I'm talking about:  We once believed that the world was flat and the Earth is in the middle of things.  We once took it as a given that one human being may own […]

I was talking with a friend this week, a dad like me, who has become very frustrated lately by something quite simple; he cannot get his young son to sit down and go to the bathroom.  Any of you in the room who are parents can relate to the daily struggles to get kids to […]

I am a guest at a couple of Iftars this month.  The Iftar is Muslim tradition of breaking of the daily fast at the end of each day of Ramadan.  This year for the first time in decades Ramadan coincides with the Christian season of Lent, and both of our traditions engage in a season […]

In the 1990s, a biblical scholar named Marcus Borg wrote an incredibly popular book—by which I mean that it flew off the shelf at Barnes' and Noble (when that was a thing)…  He called Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.  In its opening chapter Borg describes a journey many of us can relate to:  He […]

Today is our Annual Meeting as a congregation.  I always resist talking about church for its own sake.  I suspect you are here not to preserve the church but because of the life and work to which Jesus Christ calls us.  The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church says much the same thing among its very […]

 There's something going on these days that I probably don't mention out loud as often as I should.  I know many of you are staying up at night these days or waking up in the morning with a troubling sense that things are not the way they are supposed to be.  You are scared, or […]

For those of you who were not here with us last week, we are entering into a series of sermons this winter and spring about core Christian beliefs, exploring what Christians here at Knox believe about God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.  Last week we looked at the core convictions about God expressed in […]

It's an interesting time in our culture and country to be Christian.  After decades of significant decline in church and secularization in wider culture, research suggests that the trends are reversing.  Young people, especially, are finding their way back to church; much of the greatest growth is happening in traditional liturgical environments like Catholicism and […]

“Marley was dead…”  Those are the opening words of the old Charles Dickens play A Christmas Carol, the story that has been told and retold until “Scrooge” has become synonymous with a miserly, joyless person, and if you want to sound like a grumpy, joyless downer at Christmas, everyone knows you use Scrooge's phrase, say it with […]

Trust Me is the name of a brilliant short story written some decades ago by John Updike.  In a dozen or so pages, he weaves together several stories about Harold, who explores the mysteries of trust.  We meet 4 year old Harold at the edge of the swimming pool with his father's arms outstretched; we follow […]

This morning's sermon takes us to the city of Thessalonica on the shores of the Aegean Sea in Macedonia.  It is around 51CE. What drove my scripture choice today was the lectionary.  That's the cycle of readings in the Presbyterian Church that gets us through the Bible every three years.  Most of the time in […]

Over the next four weeks we're going to be in a sermon series about growing in your relationship with God.  This growth happens in different ways for different kinds of people, and we're going to focus on prayer, mission, music, and community.  We hope that you'll connect with at least one if not several of […]

Today's sermon is called Welcome Home. Craig Barnes is a retired pastor and President of Princeton Seminary, and the author of several books.  One of those books is called Searching for Home.  In that book, Barnes tells his own story of how “home” and “family” are complicated.  When Craig was a teenager, his own father walked […]

For all of the reasons indicated in my introduction it seems like today is a good day to talk a bit about church and think about who we've been, who we are, and who we are becoming together here at Knox.  More and more these days, we seem to hear new members and visitors who […]

Over the last several weeks we've been talking about prophets in these Sunday morning sermons:  Deborah, Jeremiah, Amos…Jana will continue the series later this month and today we come to Hosea. I like the book of Hosea.  When I first read Hosea, I was moved to discover that God cares about regular human struggles like […]

On these days when our members have been on their Civil Rights journey, I want to call your attention to a quotation that our travelers saw on a memorial in Montgomery, Alabama; it was one of Dr. King's favorites:  “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream…”   It is a biblical […]

Even before last night's news about Iran, I have been thinking, praying, wrestling with the amount of violence in our daily news cycle. Today I will share with you a story from the Book of Judges that I hope will be helpful. The point is rather simple: that Christian can be realists with respect to […]

A big thanks to Beth Ehrsam for sharing a story this morning about how mission has been transformative in her life; and a big thanks is due to our Mission and Social Concerns Committee and its dedicated members who have prepared a Mission Fair for us today, highlighting the work of five of our Knox […]