Homecoming Sunday begins the Fall church season. Pastor Elisabeth takes on the difficult task of explaining love. Also included is a hilarious reading from “The Guide to Installing Love.”
United Church of Christ
Sermons (Page 2)
Pastor Elisabeth continues her series of core values which unify us. These values create a “center of gravity that holds us together when chaos all around us is happening.” Today she discusses respect–exemplified by deep listening and by appreciating the diversity of the gifts of the Spirit among us.
Rev. Middelberg discusses how the compassion of Jesus makes the realm of God visible. He called together a dispirit community, spoke for the marginalized, healed and feed the people, and loved unselfishly.
(July 28, 2024) We build practices of engaging in beauty to build resilience so we can bring healing to a troubled world. She quotes Wendy Farley who wrote, “Divine beauty shimmers and Shimmies through the universe and in very place where someone is singing or weeping.” Pastor Elisabeth describes people bringing healing through art,…
Pastor Elisabeth considers how to be faithful in difficult times when injustice prevails. “There is a greater goodness to which we all belong,” she reminds us.
He held no office, discussed no legislation, didn’t “rule” over anybody, said nothing about partisan issues. But the establishment feared him. Pastor Elisabeth explores Peter’s and the other disciple’s encounter with the Risen Jesus while fishing in Galilee. Jesus tells Peter 3 times, that if he loves Him, he must feed His sheep. Throughout Jesus’…
This version edits to include only the key readings and sermon during this emotionally and spiritually powerful service. Included are Julia Ward Howell’s original Mother’s Day proclamation, a reading from Psalms, readings from women in difficult situations around the world, and a moving sermon by Pastor Elisabeth.
Christ has risen, indeed! Pastor Elisabeth describes how each gospel writer tells a different resurrection story as if their experiences were too big and too mysterious for one account. The Gospel of Mark ends his resurrection story rather abruptly, almost as if he was saying ‘this is my story, now go tell you resurrection story.’ She asserts God takes the smallest of openings in difficult and hopeless situations and breathes new life into them. The world needs to hear our resurrection stories of seeing the opening and finding love and new beginnings again and again. (Mark 16:1-8)
Palm Sunday represents Jesus’ challenge to us to “reconstitute the world” to use Adrienne Rich’s phrase. Pastor Elisabeth describes the “humble” entrance to Jerusalem as a fierce challenge to the dominate religious and imperial power structure by siding with the poor and using love to lift up the outcast. This love can heal the deepest…
Rev. Elisabeth Middleberg, March 3, 2024 Rev Elisabeth Middelberg discusses finding strength in these difficult times. She starts by quoting Wendell Berry’s poem “When despair for the world grows in me…” and affirms the Irish poet David White’s “It is still possible to fully understand, that you have always been the place where the miracle…