Explore past sermons from Peace Lutheran Church. Read a summary, find the scripture references, and download the original sermon manuscript.
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Recognizing Jesus When He Comes
In an experiment orchestrated by the Washington Post, violinist Joshua Bell played incognito in a Washington DC Metro station during morning rush hour. Of the nearly 1,100 people who passed by him, only 7 stopped long enough to listen for a minute or more. No one expected or recognized him. When Jesus met two disciples…
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Moving Past Fear
It’s coded into our autonomic nervous system; hardwired into our brain. Two choices in response to perceived threat: fight or flight. Only they’re not really choices, because it’s not really a decision we’re talking about, but a reaction— aided by the near instantaneous secretion of hormones, a quickened pulse, and the acceleration of other bodily…
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From Tears to Testimony
Mary comes to the tomb before dawn and discovers that his grave is opened and his body gone. She runs to tell others, then rushes back with them to the scene of the crime. They stare, like Mary, at the rolled up head cloth and discarded wrappings. Then, turning around, they head for home. But…
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Re-Membering
“The history of music,” writes Jessica Wapner, “is rich with sounds spurred by suffering.” Recently, a long-lost recording of Holocaust survivors from just after World War 2 was recovered, and it provides “a poignant new soundtrack for understanding life in the Nazi concentration camps and Jewish ghettos.” This Maundy Thursday night, voices from the past…
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Raising Lazarus
An odd collection of ne’er-do-wells and misfits calls a man called Ove from the edge of the grave and into community, calling his dried up bones back to life. Jesus raises Lazarus, and gives his community the responsibility of completing his liberation by unbinding him and letting him go. The film “13th” documents the deep…
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Coming to See
In the novel, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, we meet Marie-Laure, a girl born in Paris in the years before WW2, who loses her sight completely by age 6. Her father, a locksmith at the Paris Natural History Museum, anchors her world by crafting an exquisitely detailed scale-model of their neighborhood; a model she…
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From Long Bag to Living Water
We all have a backstory. Among its features—shame-inducing experiences and the times when we’ve fallen short of the expectations of others. Poet Robert Bly calls it “the long bag we drag behind us.” Today we meet a Samaritan woman at the well. What’s her backstory? What things has she been stuffing into that long bag…
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Beyond What We Know
America, says author Tyler Cowen, is standing still. People are becoming more risk averse, more reluctant to switch jobs or move to another state. Communities are self-segregating by income, education, and race. As a result, the core American trait of initiating and embracing change, which has defined America and Americans since its inception, allowing them…
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Being Human
A conversation about carnivorous plants provides a new slant on the story of Eve, Adam, and the forbidden fruit, and on the temptation story of Jesus in the wilderness. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, we are kin both to our first parents and to Jesus; we have both sets of genes in us. And in…
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Telling the Truth
Truth seems to be in short supply these days—at least the kind of truth that we all (or at least a healthy majority of us) can agree on. Everything, it seems, is up for grabs. If it feels like your point of view isn’t getting enough love—all you have to do is find the right…