This was Pastor Tracy Barnowe’s farewell sermon as she left us to take up her new life in Southern California. In it, she shared her memories of a dozen moments in FCC San Rafael that she treasures and which, in her mind, illustrate what makes us special as a church family. (Scripture: Psalm 98)
On her next-to-last Sunday with us, Pastor Tracy took up the Parable of The Sower as a message central to the future of any congregation. She found a parallel between in a small but very meaningful triumph in back yard baseball, and what members of a church can do to improve their “batting average” in hearing and understanding…
With only three weeks left with us before she leaves for her new life in southern California, Pastor Tracy chose to address one of the nuggets of bad “bumper-sticker theology” that she believes create a barrier that prevents many good people from becoming involved with the church. (Scripture Matthew 11:6-19 & 25-30)
Religio-centrism — the idea that one set of beliefs or practices is uniquely the “right” one, and all others are “wrong” — has probably caused more human misery over the centuries than any other. And, sadly, Christianity has much to answer for in this regard. In this sermon Pastor Tracy looks at one of the…
On Ascension Sunday, Pastor Tracy examines the actions of the disciples during their last meeting with Jesus (Acts 1:1-11) and finds they have a shortcoming familiar to all of us today: an inability to see a truly new possibility when it appears . . . a failure of imagination. Despite having witnessed the profound drama of the…
On Mothers Day, Pastor Tracy examined one of the oldest descriptions of the early Church (John 14: 15-31.) The constant use of family words was not metaphorical: To many of the slaves and outcasts drawn to Jesus’s message, that early Church was the only family they had, and the mother/father love they found there is what sustains the…
Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. Paul Tillich On the first Sunday after Easter, Pastor Tracy preached on the traditional text, the story of Doubting Thomas. However, she held Thomas’s doubts up to us as a positive model to emulate. She notes that all the players in the Easter story had…
As we settled into the self-examination of Lent, Pastor Tracy examined a concept in scripture that generates a lot of confusion: the idea of “justified by works.” (Romans 4:1-5 & 13-17.) It has been used over the centuries to support theologies of reward and punishment by God, but those theories are in direct conflict with the core idea…
For the first Sunday in Lent, Pastor Tracy examines the origins of Lenten sacrifice in Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness. (Matthew 4: 1-11) In this familiar story of Satan’s temptations of Christ she finds a practical account of an inspired man getting his priorities in focus as he prepares to challenge the mightiest empire on earth. And, she…
On the Sunday before Christmas, Pastor Tracy focused on the shepherds (Luke 2: 8-20.) She notes that this beloved, familiar story embodies a truly revolutionary idea: that the birth of the Messiah would be announced through the lowest of the low – poor, nomadic workers on society’s fringes, living in constant fear. Today’s “shepherds” are…