From the sermon:

Greed is truly a root sin; One that leads to other sundry and vices. Greed will cause us to lie, steal, take shortcuts and rationalize. Yet we give greed respectable titles like financial success, economic security, the good life. These are noble sounding but reality bending.  Consider this: “the media features and we are drawn to stories extolling thirty year old millionaires who have achieved their fortunes within a decade of graduating college. Rarely do we ask if such a goal is commendable, at what psychological or spiritual cost it was achieved, if ruthless or immoral means were used and what good will be done with all this wealth.” Let’s face it. We assume a person of means is to be respected, admired and followed. We never give much thought to how they made their money. How they spend it or don’t. How they treat their employees or fellow human beings.

Title: The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed

                    Bible Passage: Matthew 6:24

From the sermon:

Who here hasn’t felt the flush of anger rise within you? Who among us hasn’t had a strong desire to hit the wall or kick the dog? How many of us have stomped up the steps or out the door? Anyone laid awake and plotted revenge? It’s a bad demon this anger. But it may surprise you to know that in the history of the church, there has been disagreement over the issue of should anger really be considered a sin? It’s the only one of the seven attributed to both God and Jesus. The desert monk, Evagrius felt that anger was a gift given by god so we would rise up against true evil. It’s anger that causes us to rally against injustice in this world. Read the Hebrew prophets and hear their rage at the inequality and bias of their world. This is the anger of righteous indignation that leads to defense of the poor, the downcast and downtrodden. Anger can be energy for a needed burst of passion or juice to get the gears going.

Title: The Seven Deadly Sins: Anger

                    Bible Passage: Matthew 5:21-26

The Bible text is from Matthew five:

 ²⁷ You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ²⁸ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹ If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. ³⁰ And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

From the sermon:

The disciple of Jesus doesn’t disconnect the body from the mind. We realize, as taught in our text that what we allow to filter in and settle in the contours and crevices of the psyche eventually affects our bodies. In Matthew, Jesus radically re-defines adultery and gives much stricter dimensions to lustful thinking. Christ teaches it isn’t enough to refrain from the overt act but that the battle begins in the imagination. As someone said, “It isn’t a sin to look once, it is to look twice”. Or in other words, to let the dangerous thoughts multiply. Frederick Beuchner describes it this way, “after a while, x-rated titillations tend to turn tawdry and tedious, even days later, they keep flickering away somewhere in the back of the mind to a captive audience of one.”

Title: The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust

                    Bible Passage: Matthew 5:27-30

Title:   The Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony

           Bible Passage:   Matthew 5:6

From the sermon:

What a radical word “revolution” is. It’s revolt against the established rule, whether good or bad. It’s an invitation to chaos and uncertainty. Revolutionaries are by definition troublemakers who stir the pot of unrest. They are despised by the established powers. Our nation was formed when rabble rousers of all sorts decided to overthrow the government of King George III.  It was audacious, a bit foolish, and doomed to failure. It was a dwarf picking a fight with a giant.

Sermon Title:     Revolution, Constitution, Institution

   Bible Passage:    Galatians 5:1

Title: The Seven Deadly Sins: ENVY
Bible Passage: GENESIS 4:1-16

The question we always ask is how did the Egyptian wise men duplicate the things Moses did? After all they replicated turning the Nile to blood, calling up hoards of frogs, etc..  Wondering how they did such things is the wrong approach. I think the Bible’s point is how can Moses and Aaron, slaves from slaves , do such a thing?  In Exodus 7:11 we’re told the King, “summoned the wise men and the sorcerers; and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same by their secret arts.” This is the ancient equivalent of pitting the faculty of Harvard against two nobodies who know nothing. But what makes these men who they are is the Lord who stands with them.

What would it be to know that God had seen your misery? Think about that. If somehow I could convince you that wherever you find yourself today God has noticed. What would it be if I could go down to the Gulf Coast this morning, assemble the residents who are watching oil roll up on their beaches with no end in sight and say to them, “God has taken notice of you and has promised He’s getting ready to do something.” What do you think that would do to their collective psyche?  If you’ve ever had a parent, a boss, a friend, step in at a difficult time and say, “let me help” you know to a degree what Israel felt when Moses and Aaron fed them sweet morsels of hope that day. That’s what Israel heard—God has seen your misery. And they worshipped. Wouldn’t you? Don’t you? When hope flows in your veins don’t you whisper prayers of gratitude?

As one has written just as the resurrection completes the crucifixion, the ascension completes the resurrection. Some maintain that Jesus returning to the Father is the most neglected doctrine of the Church and that we cannot understand Jesus apart from it. Perhaps we can best appreciate it by hearing how Peter sums it up in a sermon from the book of Acts, “This Jesus” proclaims Peter, “is exalted at the right hand of God.” We must remember that these early followers didn’t hang their heads low when Jesus left. They didn’t kick the can all the way back to Jerusalem. They didn’t say, “Well. That’s that.” No, Luke tells us: “And it came about that while he was blessing them, he parted from them, and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising God.”

Perhaps the most unique perspective on the resurrected Jesus provided by Matthew is the very last phrase in the text which are the last words of the gospel, “And remember, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” You see when the curtain drops in this first gospel Jesus is still here. There is no ascension in Matthew. There’s no flying away into the clouds like Luke reports. Matthew wants us to know Jesus didn’t die and go away like everyone else we know. The resurrection isn’t a poetic way of saying that the spirit of Jesus lives on as a constant inspiration to us all. That’s a pretty modern, and fairly vanilla, way to view Easter that makes the resurrection as bland as cottage cheese.