The Rose Bowl played on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2021, was unique, because it was the first Rose Bowl to be played in the state of Texas. And though great plays were made in that recent game, and though many great plays have been made over the course of one hundred...

It all started with Montgomery Ward Department Store, which in 1939 was looking for a marketing gimmick and prevailed on one of its bright young men in the advertising department to compose a Christmas poem. Robert May produced a little ditty that Montgomery Ward then...

The year was 1962, the month was October, and the crisis was the United States’ discovery that the Soviets had secretly installed ballistic missiles in Cuba. The world waited with bated breath as the world’s two superpowers engaged in a dangerous dance of...

I know exactly where I was when the seed of this sermon was planted. I was running through the so-called Eternal City of Rome in the early morning, before dawn. I passed various famous buildings of ancient Rome, enduring emblems of the empire’s astounding wealth,...

How often do we stop to recognize that God’s covenant interaction with humanity starts with the simple command, “Go”? God says to Abram, “Go! Go from your country and go from your kindred to the land that I will show you.” God says to Moses, “Go confront Pharaoh and...

People like to assert the timeworn axiom that hindsight is 20-20. More than most axioms, that truism is dead wrong. Few among us see the past any more clearly than we see the present or future. If hindsight were 20-20, historians wouldn’t spend years developing the...

Occasionally, when I am in a feisty and perverse mood, I tease some of my fundamentalist friends by telling them that Paul did not write a single book in our Bible.  When they sputter and fume, I tell them that my source for this opinion is Paul himself.  Yes, he...

The inspiration for this sermon came years ago when our children were small.  Little germ carriers that they were, they brought home a horrible virus that swept through our entire household, inducing high fever and achiness.  Our family could do nothing more than...

As most of you know, a couple of weekends each year I lay aside my pastoral duties to meet family and friends from around the country for a few days of camping and river rafting.  Next weekend, will be the 89th time we have gathered.  And though the cast of characters...

Some years ago I ran across the amazing story of a young black South African minister who had been arrested by apartheid authorities on bogus charges.  He was terribly tortured by his captors, enduring unspeakable horrors.  Amidst his anguish this young man would...