Michael Meehan and his partner Jamie Cline are long-time members of FCCSR, and they have raised their four terrific kids from elementary school to college as part of our family. In this sermon, Michael traces a straight line between the Pride movement’s message of all-inclusive acceptance and the same message in scripture. (Luke 10:25-37; Galatians…
For Fathers Day, Pastor Jeffrey looks at the relationship between the three things that – linked together – have been the most important influences in his life. In many ways, baseball was a primer for life for me — spirituality 101 — and it all took place on the field – or sometimes in our…
Our guest preacher this Sunday, Cassie Carroll, recently graduated from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and has been certified by the Presbyterian Church as a candidate for her first call. In this sermon, she finds Jesus’ familiar lesson comparing little children and rich men as candidates for Heaven (Mark 10:13–23) a fitting metaphor…
Pastor Jeffrey looks at several Bible passages where Jesus discusses the nature of prayer, especially the story of the tax collector (in Luke 18:9-14) desperately praying for God’s absolution. Jeffrey suggests that this kind of openness, this reaching out – perhaps without even saying a word – is the essence of prayer. We are living…
For Memorial Day, Pastor Jeffrey explored the meaning of memorials, from the death of Moses to today. The conclusion: remembering isn’t good manners or something ‘nice.” Remembering is an integral, essential part of being human and alive. Only that can be really yours which is another’s, for only what you have given, be it only…
For Pentecost Sunday, the Church’s Birthday, Pastor Jeffrey re-visits that first congregation being touched by tongues of fire, but then he turns to the bigger question: where in today’s world is that kind of inspired fire needed? How can we summon, personally, the kind of energy and passion that built the early church. May God…
In this very personal sermon, Pastor Jeffrey explores those moments when we feel much closer to the Divine. Often, they are physical settings that touch our souls – in Jeffrey’s case the retreat center on the Scottish island of Iona. With more experience, however, we learn that this unique experience is driven more by what’s…
On Mothers’ Day, Pastor Jeffrey built his sermon around a woman, Lydia from Thyatira, whom Paul met in Macedonia. She’s not one of the well-known women in the Bible, but she could rightly be called the mother of the Church on the European continent. Have a listen. It’s an interesting story.
After a rain-out last week, we returned to outdoor worship in our courtyard on a beautiful spring day. Jeffrey’s subject for the day was the story of Philip and the Ethiopian from Acts. At a time when the survival of the early church was very much in doubt, Philip was extending a message of radical…
Scripture: Luke 24: 36–48 In this sermon, Pastor Jeffrey continues the exploration started last week of the idea that the Disciples’ belief in the resurrection took time – – at least four different episodes in the Gospels. For the Disciples, and for us today, faith comes through repeated exposure to challenging ideas and the sharing…