Knox Church Sermons

Welcome to Knox on this first Sunday of Advent.  Advent is a magical time of the year.  We arrive at church to see last week’s decorating completed, the greens are up and the ribbons hung, and we begin worship knowing that soon we’ll get to sing our favorite Christmas song.  A family we may know […]

Jeff is 26 years old.  He gave his life to Christ as a teenager when he was on a youth retreat, and he was all in.  Youth group, mission projects, Bible Study.  He joined Campus Crusade in college and spent Friday nights evangelizing in his residence hall and spring breaks converting people on the beach.  […]

Dorothy Day lived in the 20th century during the time religious historians know as the second part of the social Gospel period; she founded the Catholic Worker Movement and the social justice focused journal by the same name.  She was responsible for a dramatic increase in public understanding around the realities of poverty and homelessness, and was […]

Two weeks ago, we presented the first phase of our Strategic Plan.  Then last week, I joked with you in the sermon about how boring it is to preach a series about strategic planning; but at the same time I argued that the substance of the plan was important.  Last week’s focus on our shared commitment to […]

I want you to take a moment this morning to imagine a neighborhood Presbyterian church, perhaps a bit more typical in today’s world than this one.  They have 50 or 75 members, their neighborhood is changing in difficult ways; poverty and unemployment have gone up in recent decades, stores and services have moved out, but people […]

This is the fourth sermon in a series I’ve called “Roots to Rise;” in it I’ve been talking about foundational narratives in the Bible.  These stories are the roots of our faith and that tell us not only how to survive, but how to rise up in life and thrive—how to make choices that give life […]

This morning we’re going to talk about freedom.  It was my sermon topic long before the latest news cycle, in which we’ve learned of renewed violence in Israel and Palestine among people who seek freedom each by their own definition.  This conflict has lasted so long, with so many tragic and complicated chapters.  And we continue to pray […]

This week we’re continuing a series we started last Sunday; for the next several weeks we are following the lead of our children as we worship; specifically, the Scriptures they are learning in their Sunday School curriculum are the same ones we’re studying in worship.  The month of September is dedicated to Christ’s invitation to “Follow […]

How to understand this lesson from Romans?  Some of you who pay attention this kind of stuff will note that I preach on stories more often than letters and wisdom texts in the Bible.  I’m sometimes not sure what to do with these long lists that sound like a lot of instructions.  So I’m a bit out of […]

Barbie Goes to Church.  Sounds like I’m all out of ideas, doesn’t it?  Well, here we are near the end of summer and this week I felt like doing something a little bit fun so we’re going to talk about…Barbie.  What???  Of course, this is church, so we’re really going to be talking about God—and Barbie is not to […]

Every Sunday when we begin our service of worship, we make a few announcements and then, before calling you worship, we have a time of reflection.  We invite you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, slow down enough to experience the presence of God surrounding you…  And we know that some of you are greatly […]

This summer we’re talking about being a Sacred Community—not a perfect or flawless community, but a community that is authentic and blessed and walks with God on its journey through the world. As we’ve talked through stories in the Book of Genesis, we’ve seen some of the marks of sacred community: the central place of […]

We’re in the midst of a series of sermons on Sacred Community; we’ve been talking about the characteristics that help a community to feel, not perfect, but sacred—authentic and meaningful. Today’s marks are driven by a great story in Genesis 18 about an encounter Abraham and Sarah have with God—and the marks of sacred community […]

Good morning.  This summer we’re preaching through a series of sermons we’re calling “sacred community”—based on a series of stories from the Book of Genesis.  Last week we began by defining sacred community not as a perfect community, but as one that commits to live life together—in all of its joy and all of its […]

This month and next I’m going to be preaching a series of sermons on an idea we’re calling Sacred Community—based on stories from the Book of Genesis.  Most of us know a thing or two about the Book of Genesis.  It starts with the stories of Creation and Adam, Eve, and the Serpent.  Then there’s Noah, Abraham and […]