Two Sermons for the Price of One

Proper 18

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

Jeremiah 18: 1-11 . . . The prophet puts forth an allegory for God’s dealing with Jerusalem and Judah: it is like the hands of a potter working with clay.

Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18 . . . God alone perceives the heights and depths of life.

Sermon on the Psalm . . . Listen as Rev. Dr. Frank A. Thomas, preacher, teacher, scholar, lecturer, author, and master coach, who currently serves as the Nettie Sweeney and Hugh Th. Miller Professor of Homiletics and Director of the Academy of Preaching and Celebration at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana, teaches us how we, too, can and should pray scripture for the rest of our lives. “What is your one verse?”

 

Philemon 1-21 . . . The letter that Paul sent to Philemon asking that he receive back in love the runaway slave Onesimus, who was voluntarily returning to him

Luke 14:25-33. . . Jesus speaks of the necessity of coming the full cost of discipleship

Sermon on the Gospel . . .  “I suppose it’s only natural to present the Christian faith as some sort of answer to our questions, a kind of primitive, but sometimes effective technique, to help you obtain whatever it is that you think you just must have in order to make your life more fulfilling or livable,” begins Will Willimon, Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School and a retired Methodist bishop.