Your presence here in such numbers today is a wonderful indicator that this congregation is important to you and to people you love....

Last spring, I got a message from the universe. Now I don’t get too many messages from the universe; sometimes I don’t even get my phone messages. But this message was very loud, and it came at four in the morning in the form of a tremendous thud from my closet. This particular message was one...

It has been a not-so-quiet week in Lake Wobegon! On Monday, I found that, apparently over a long period of time, a large sum of money was taken from me. What I thought I had safely saved toward some of my future dreams was gone! Have any of you ever been robbed? Do you remember how it felt to be...

Readings 1: The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 14, verses 3-91 While he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the Leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came in with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head....

Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.

Early spring awakens memories of a deeper cold and hopes of a warmer wetness, sprouting seeds and budding branches. Gray trees on gray sky screen eyes from all that lies waiting: the color of a million flowers, the feathers of migrating songbirds, the blossoming smiles of friends. Soon we will no...

The question for us today is: what does it mean for us to stand with our faith, for us to stand with this church?

It was in Alaska, right before the first Gulf War, that I first realized how music can “teach us how to hear the world differently,” as jazz critic Jed Rasula once said. I was in the Air Force “Gateway to the West” jazz band and my unit was temporarily deployed to Alaska, waiting anxiously...

The Greek philosopher Plato compared the human mind to a ship on which the sailors had mutinied and locked the captain and the navigator in a cabin. On such a ship, the sailors feel free to steer the ship as they like, but their direction is erratic. The goal of our religious education and youth...

I invite you now into a quiet time, a time for spoken and silent contemplation. Spirit of Life, we have come into each other's presence this day seeking a part of ourselves, knowing that we do not live alone, and knowing we cannot live fully if we are for ourselves alone....

The Bridging Ceremony celebrates the transition of our youth from their high school experience into young adulthood. It is a time of tremendous change—and stress—for our youth. It is a time when many of them will leave our particular church community to travel to other cities, into higher...

We say in our church that the offering is a sacrament of the free church. What we mean by that is that we believe it is a blessing to be able to govern and support our religious community ourselves—to make possible by our generosity everything we dream of and do to live out our shared values.

The purpose of the church is to encourage all who gather there to grow more generous in spirit and in action. This is the great end of all the world's faith traditions: to bring the human being closer to the divine by acts of creation and compassion. We now take an offering that allows us to...

I hope you all had the opportunity to meet someone new this morning, and I certainly hope to meet all our first-time guests this morning after the service....

Every week in our church we take up an offering. It's good to remind ourselves from time to time that the offering is symbolic as well as practical. We know that it is through pledges that we build our budget and fund our yearly programs and ministries of worship and religious education, pay our...

We have come together to share our deepest concerns, speaking and singing words of inspiration and hope. We have committed ourselves to do what we can to ease the burdens of those who suffer, to stand for decency and compassion....

We have a calling in this world: We are called to honor diversity, To respect differences with dignity, And to challenge those who would forbid it. We are people of a wide path. Let us be wide in affection And go our way in peace. Amen.