West End UMC Podcast Audio Podcast

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Romans, the first of the letters of Paul. Romans is a multi-layered and intricate letter. Much of the first part of the letter is about God’s grace through which all are welcomed. Then in chapter 12, Paul says, “Therefore” and begins to write about how this oneness in the body of Christ affects how we treat each other. He describes i...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Acts, a book that chronicles the early days of Christianity. Our focus is on Barnabas, who plays a minor role in Acts. His character is all about support and encouragement. We may recall that Saul (later Paul) was initially intent on crushing the belief in Jesus until his conversion on the road to Damascus. When Paul went back to Jer...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from the Gospel of John. Early in this gospel, Jesus tells the disciples he will be leaving them, but in this passage Jesus describes himself as the vine and those around him as the branches, telling them that if they “abide in him,” they will have joy, peace, and love (even if he is not physically with them). It is a strong message to us...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Luke in which Jesus heals two people from very different segments of the community. The writer of Luke seems to have an interest in “the great reversal,” in which, for example, the downtrodden are elevated and those of privilege are taken down. These two healing stories in Luke 7 reflect in the realm of Jesus the equality of a centur...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading of the familiar story of the healing of the demoniac. In this story, Jesus retreats to Gentile territory, which is unusual for him and makes us wonder whether he knew about this man and intended to go there. The man is clearly out of control and is relegated to “the tombs” away from people. When Jesus arrives, the man asks “What have you...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading of the familiar parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, a parable that appears only in Matthew. In many ways it is shocking because it seems so unfair. The worker who worked all day gets the same pay as the workers who came on the job later, even the same pay as the worker who arrived at the end of the day. It seems economically improper...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Matthew as we begin the New Testament. Our guest preacher is Bishop Ken Carter, currently the bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference, and the text is the familiar encounter when a lawyer tests Jesus by asking him the greatest commandment. Matthew is not the earliest of the Gospels, but it does have the most connections to th...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament in our Protestant Bible. We’re using Malachi as a lens to examine what we’ve learned about the character of God to this point. Malachi is speaking to the people after they have returned to Jerusalem from exile, and, yet, they are not following God as they should. Malachi speaks out against...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Zephaniah. In the lectionary, because of its words of hope in hard times, readings from Zephaniah come up on the third Sunday in Advent and also on the night of Easter Vigil, which is the Saturday of the tomb before the resurrection on Easter Sunday. As the Israelites found themselves in Babylon, all of us find ourselves in times of...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Jonah. The story of Jonah is one that appeals to all ages, but in some ways it is also a difficult story. Initially, God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh and give God’s word to that city. But he goes in the opposite direction, heads out to sea, and, in a storm, is swallowed by that big fish, and, in that way, was brought back to the land...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s readings from the prophets Amos and Micah. Reading Amos is, in some ways, hard because it is largely gloom and doom. Amos lived in the period when the Assyrians were threatening from the north, and he was warning that the reasons had to do with Israel’s infidelity to God in their mistreatment and neglect of the poor. This can guide us into self-e...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from the prophet Ezekiel describing one of a number of visions Ezekiel has throughout this massive book. The historical situation is that Ezekiel is with the other Judaic exiles in Babylon, Jerusalem having not only been conquered, but destroyed. Every aspect of their lives has been upended, and they are lost in every sense. In this visio...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s readings from the prophet Jeremiah. In this passage we find God calling Jeremiah to prophesy when he is merely a boy. Jeremiah cannot understand why he would be called as a mere child, and, throughout his prophetic career, his prophetic tasks are often sharp rebukes of his own people. Jeremiah seems to be a prophet who struggled at times, wishing...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s readings from the prophet Isaiah. The prophets were noted for putting forth visions of the world as God intended it to be. These were God’s visions, but the people were to participate in making them become reality. On this Independence Day weekend, we remember the Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are created equal,” and we kn...

Learning to Lean – We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s focus on Wisdom literature and passages from Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Our church has had an intergenerational Sunday school through the month of June, and sitting at a table with people of various generations who can share their views of God and God’s people is not dissimilar from examining the voice of youth...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s focus on Psalms. Not only are the scripture reading and sermon from Psalms, but the liturgy, prayers, and anthems are all either Psalms or are adapted from them. The Book of Psalms not only has been the “hymnal” through millennia for those who worship God, but it contains hymns/poems for any situation in which we might find ourselves. Embedded in...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Job, a difficult text recounting God’s appearance to Job to respond to Job’s doubts. Preaching today is Rev. Dr. Soren Hessler, who recounts the story of Job, a righteous man who loses everything, and whose friends insist he must not be all that righteous if he has ended up in this position. The friends represent the wisdom tradition...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Esther. Rev. Erin Racine is preaching in one of her last Sundays with West End UMC as she moves on to another assignment. In this reading, Esther, a Jew by birth but married to the Persian king, is asked by her cousin to do something truly dangerous in order to help save the Jews living in Susa. The king does not know Esther is a Jew...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from Nehemiah in which Nehemiah goes out under cover of darkness to inspect the walls of Jerusalem that had been destroyed by the Babylonian invasion. More than a century before, Babylonians had conquered Judah and exiled many of its skilled and brightest people. When the Persian king, Cyrus, finally defeated Babylon, he allowed the Jews...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from 2 Kings 7 in which four lepers find themselves in a desperate situation. They are rejected by their own people (Israelites) for their disease, and their city is taken over by invading Arameans. Given little choice, the lepers enter their city, hoping the Arameans will be generous but thinking they are heading to their deaths at the h...

After Lent and Easter we have returned to our trip through the Bible with today’s readings from 1 Kings 19 in which Elijah, who has worked as God’s prophet through incredible odds and in difficult times is now suffering burnout. He has challenged the people and the king and now is ready to die. He feels alone and totally spent, not unlike we feel at times. But in the desert God meets Elijah, first...

After Lent and Easter we have returned to our trip through the Bible with today’s readings from 2 Samuel in which, in spite of the friction between King Saul and David, as David was deemed to be Saul’s successor instead of one of Saul’s sons, after the death of Saul and Jonathan in battle, David reaches out in kindness to help any of Saul’s family. Mephibosheth, a crippled son of Jonathan, receive...

After Lent and Easter we have returned to our trip through the Bible with today’s readings from 1 Samuel, a passage where the people are rejecting Samuel’s leadership and asking for a king, which they have seen in other nations. We’ve seen and will see in our trip through the scriptures that God has a plan and design for what the kingdom should be, but the people continually turn aside and choose...

This is our annual Youth Sunday when the youth in our church take on all the roles in the services, including preaching and being liturgists. They have studied the Book of Ruth, and from the first part of that story, when in a tragic situation Ruth declined to do what was perhaps better for herself and, instead, went with her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, to Judah, Naomi’s native land, she was “dr...

After Lent and Easter we are returning to our trip through the Bible with today’s readings from Joshua and Judges. The Joshua passage tells of the people crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land and the instruction to pick a man from each tribe to go back into the river and take a stone to set up to remind people of that day and journey. Stories in Joshua and Judges are often about battles to co...