On October 27, Rev. Cochran-Carney preached this sermon as the candidate to be our next settled pastor. As an extra challenge, the church was without electricity that day due a PG&E blackout*, which he refers to in his opening. Following the service, the congregation voted unanimously to confirm the call. Pastor Jeffrey will start leading…
In this sermon, Pastor Sally explores the challenge of self-acceptance. This has never been an issue for old-time religion, with its focus on sin, punishment and guilt. (Deuteronomy 30:15-20) But real life is full of ambiguities, and a religion for our times has to recognize and deal with all the aspects of our selves. Rather…
“Home” is one of the most powerful ideas in human culture – – both as a physical reality and as a metaphor for spiritual peace. It appears again and again as a critical concept in scripture (Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16, Luke 12:32-34.) In this sermon Pastor Sally takes a deep look at the central irony of a…
When we celebrated Pride month in May of 2019, every time we tried to fly our Rainbow flag over the church sign, some troubled soul came by in the dead of night and tore it down. After this had happened for several weeks, we decided to extend Pride month into August and (after taking some…
What does “Prayer” really mean to skeptical people in our modern world? Drawing on the story of Jesus in the house of Mary and Martha, Pastor Sally finds a simple and profound answer: however we do it, prayer is the process of clearing a path through all our distractions to focus on the things that…
For Mother’s Day, paster Sally preached on love . . . but not the simplistic cliché of greeting cards and love songs. Rather, she examined real love, as commanded by Jesus in John 13: 33-35, and which, as every mother knows, is anything but simple.
(Scripture Deuteronomy 26:1-11) On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Pastor Sally examined the true nature of gratitude. Starting from the history of the Pilgrims’ first winter in the new world, when both they and the natives suffered devastating hardship, she observes that giving thanks for small blessings in the midst of hardship is when gratitude is…
On All Saints Sunday, Pastor Sally explored the first-hand accounts of near-death experiences as related in the writings of Dr. Raymond Moody and Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. The remarkable consistency of these accounts, spanning all ages and many different religious backgrounds (or lack thereof) provides a lot of food for thought. (Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15: 35-44,…
Dr. Shore-Gross was ordained as a Jesuit Priest in 1976, but left the order and the Catholic Church two years later when he and another priest fell in love. Thus started his career as an activist on LGBTQ issues and a leading thinker on both Queer Theology and Earth Justice. Dr. Shore-Gross has written a…
(Scripture Ephesians 5: 15-20) Pastor Sally looks at the defining complaint of modern life: too much to do and too little time. She offers a two-stage solution: First, learn to separate the truly important from the merely urgent. Then, focus on doing the important things with intentionality and love. She cites practical examples from her…