Recent Sermons
- Amy Morgan Genesis 11:1-9, Acts 2:1-21 If you ever go to Chinatown Coffee Company in Washington, D.C., it’ll change your life. I’m not kidding: this coffee is so amazing, it’s a spiritual experience. The quality of the beans, the perfection of the roast are unbelievable. And then, they have three different brewing methods you can choose from for your coffee tasting experience. Any coffee shop where the brewing method is a menu option is pretty fantastic, you have to admit. At Chinatown Coffee Company, you get to have your choice of coffee made your way and meet people from all over the world who happen to be in Washington, D.C. drinking the most amazing cup of coffee. And then there’s Starbucks. Now, I’ve got nothing against Starbucks. They are a remarkable company. They do a lot of good in the world while they make a lot of money. What is less than remarkable, however, is their coffee. I mean, it’s fine. But it’s no Chinatown Coffee Company. The great thing about Starbucks is their ability to produce the same, somewhat mediocre, cup of coffee a million times a day in 17,000 stores all over the world. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, makes about sixteen million ...
- Spiritual Genetics: Living into our New Selves John Judson Hebrews 13:1-6, Isaiah 40:27-31 Charlie believed that he could teach everyone to sing. As the music director at my former church he spent many hours working with those who never believed that they could sing at all, much less in a choir. So that was his mantra…I can teach anyone to sing. It was good then that he had never met my mother. Now, my mother was an incredible woman. She held a bachelor’s from Rice University and a Masters in math from the University of Houston. She taught physics and calculus. She played a mean game of tennis and could climb 14,000 foot mountains in Colorado. Above all she could keep all four of her sons quiet during church. However, she could not sing. She could not pitch match, or as she herself admitted, carry a tune in a bucket. All of us in the family knew this because even after sitting in church for 50 years with my father, a bass with perfect pitch, she couldn’t do it. As I thought about my mother this week, her inability to learn to sing raised a question for me. Should everyone be able to learn to sing or are there some people who ...
- Spiritual Genetics: Helper Genes John Judson Daniel 3: 16-26, Hebrews 11:39-12:2 We had the right where we wanted them. It was our first soccer match of the season and we were playing the University of Texas. The temperature was running in the upper 90s and there were only a couple of minutes to go. With some luck we could win….well not exactly since we were down 11-0. Yes that’s right, we were losing an intercollegiate soccer game 11-0. It would have been easy enough to give up but we didn’t in part because we had some people in our corner. We had our fans. They continued to cheer, scream and yell for us…not at us. Now, in a sense of full disclosure what I need to let you know is that when I say fans, I use that term loosely. What I am referring to is the maybe 20 people in the stands were willing to hang out that long in the heat. In addition they were our girlfriends and roommates. However none of that mattered. We needed them and they were there. What this brought to mind this week was that there are times when we all need someone in our corner. There are times when we all ...
- Spiritual Genetics: The Choice of Khan John Judson Hebrews 9:11-14; Amos 5:21-24 He is my favorite on-screen villain as well as one of the top-ten on screen villains of all time. His name is Khan Noonein Sing. His back story is that he was one of the genetically engineered super humans that were created in the late 20th century in an effort to improve humanity…to weed out all of the flaws for which human beings have been known. However, along the way the genetically engineered humans decided that they needed to run things and so took over the world. Ultimately they are driven from power by ordinary humans in the Eugenics wars. Khan manages to survive and appears in not only the original Star Trek series in 1967 but in the second Trek movie in 1982. I realize that all of this introduction may seem a bit much for a Sunday sermon, except that this character and the story line built around it demonstrates one of the great truths about humanity; that superiority breeds contempt. In other words almost any time one group believes they are superior to another group, oppression and death follow. In the history of the world we see this in virtually every aspect of life. We ...
- Spiritual Genetics: More Than Method Acting Amy Morgan Isaiah 53:1-5, Hebrews 2:14-18 During the filming of the movie "Marathon Man," actor Dustin Hoffman attempted to put himself into the shoes of Thomas "Babe" Levy. Levy was an avid runner and historian who became entwined in an elaborate spy plot. In order to realistically portray the character, Hoffman deprived himself of sleep for several days. When Hoffman arrived on set one day, he was in such a state of disarray that fellow cast member Laurence Olivier reportedly asked him, "Why not try acting? It's much easier." While acting in the Olivier sense – embodying a character from the outside-in – might seem easier, actors who ascribe to what is known as “The Method,” believe they have to start from a different place. “The Method” is an acting technique inspired by the work of Constanin Stanislavski in the late 1800’s and later developed in this country by Lee Strasberg and others at the Actor’s Studio in New York. “The Method” teaches actors to access their personal emotional life, to draw on their actual experiences, to embody the role of a character. It assumes that we cannot accurately portray an emotion we have not actually felt. Some actors have taken method acting to the ...
- Spiritual Genetics: Like Father Like Son John Judson Genesis 1:26-31, Hebrews 1:1-5 Doug needed to be able to be in two places at one time. His work was demanding and needed more time of him than he could give. His wife and children were asking more of him than he had time to give. How in the world could he cope? Well the answer came to him when he was overseeing the construction of a new wing for a large scientific corporation. It turns out that this company had perfected human cloning. After a brief conversation with the scientists who took pity on him they cloned him on the spot. The clone had his knowledge and his memories. Though it was not exactly like him, it was close enough. Now Doug really could be in two places at one time. This is the premise of the movie Multiplicity with Michael Keaton playing Doug and his clones. That’s right…clones…because in the end Doug is cloned twice more…with each clone reeking more havoc than the one before. At the movie’s conclusion there is a happy ending, but what the movie points out is that being close is not the same thing as being exactly the same. Just as cloned animals (and ...
- Lost and Found John Judson Isaiah 25:6-9, John 20:1-18 He had been standing right there beside be. He had been looking intently at the toys on the shelves when suddenly he was gone. My five-year old son Andy was gone. We had gone to the local Toys-R-Us store to do some shopping. We had had the “you need to stick close to daddy speech.” I had paid close attention to keeping him close by as we moved up and down the aisles but now he was gone. A certain level of panic began to arise in me. Cindy had sent me off to the store with her first-born and I was now going to come home empty handed. This would not be good. A couple of people looked at me with the “you really are a bad parent look.” I began to call Andy’s name and no response. Quickly I covered the aisles close by and then, with my heart nearly pounding out of my chest, I found him. He was seated in front of the Thundercat characters trying to decide which one he really wanted. He was lost and then he was found. The feeling of relief was palpable. My guess is that Mary would have ...
- Open in Case of Experience: Good News Goes Viral Amy Morgan Zechariah 9:9-10, John 12:12-19 Over two hours of video gets uploaded to the website YouTube every minute. And its Kevin Allocca’s job to sit there and watch it all and figure out why some videos get millions of hits and others get none. Oddly enough, it has nothing to do with the quality or content, the timing or influence of the video. According to Allocca, in order to stand out, to be seen by millions, to make someone suddenly, if momentarily, famous – in other words, in order to “go viral” – a video needs three things. First, tastemakers need to be talking about it. When T.V. personalities and celebrities talk about a video on their Twitter or Facebook, or it gets featured somehow in the wider media – a video takes off. But there’s another component needed to keep up the momentum and put a video over into the viral category. A community needs to be able to creatively participate in it. Within days of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” video taking off, there was a spoof of this video for every other day of the week. People need to be able to take the material and somehow personalize it. Finally, it seems that viral ...
- Open in Case of Emergency: A Prayer for Unity John Judson Isaiah 60:1-7, John 17:20-26 He was different…and by different I mean different in a good way. Most of the draftsmen who worked with us were the usual guys being guys kind of guys. They would talk about women, guns and adventures that probably never happened. Each one of them could have been someone famous but they chose not to be. But this one guy was different. At lunch he would read his Bible. He was always polite and quiet. Knowing that I was going to be going to seminary I decide he was someone I ought to get to know. We ended up having lunch together on a regular basis and eventually I asked what church he attended. His answer was, “The Church.” And I asked again which church he attended. His answer was again, “The Church.” It turned out that that “The Church” was founded by a Chinese Christian named Watchman Nee. Nee, who was eventually died as a prisoner for his faith, believed in the unity of all Christians. He taught that, like the New Testament, there ought to be only one church in each town. As we discussed this I asked…so it doesn’t matter whose church is the ...
- Open In Case of Experience: What Shall We Do Now John Judson John 15:12-17, Jeremiah 7:1-11 I loved it the first time I saw it. It was one of those commercials that just warms the heart. The opening scene is of a father and son playing catch. The viewer immediately becomes aware that the son does not know how to throw. He has that awkward kind of motion that a beginner always has. He is in need of instruction, which is what his father is doing. The whole thing is almost Norman Rockwellesque. The more times I saw the commercial however the more it dawned on me that there was something wrong…not with the son but with the father. It was the father who had the awkward motion and was teaching his son to do the same. The instant I understood that I wanted to leap through the television and save the boy. I wanted to save him because if that was the way he started throwing when he played catch with other boys he would be covered by guy-shame. All of us guys know what that is. There are simply some things a guy is supposed to be able to do…and throwing a ball is one of them As I reflected on that ...
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