Sermon Posts

Stations of the Cross The Via Dolorosa (The Way of the Cross) From earliest times, Christians have followed in the footsteps of Jesus on the Via Dolorosa, tracing the road to Calvary. This practice developed into a rite in which believers in congregations far away from Jerusalem could pause for prayer and meditate on specific moments in Jesus’ last journey. You are invited to walk this road again today. Take your time to read the scripture and meditate on the artistic image associated with

John 9: 1-41 (This scripture reading is much too long to be included in the text of the sermon outline, but I strongly urge you to read the story in its entirety.) This is a long text and it is typical of the way that John writes his gospel. John has a very clear tendency to look at the literal story and then convert it into something more spiritual. He takes the “earthly” and turns it into the “heavenly,” if you will. This is what happens in this story. It works like this. A man was blind

John 4: 5-42 This story of Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well is full of surprises . . . (Surprise # 1) . . . that there is a conversation at all. The barriers were great. Jesus is a Jew and the woman is a Samaritan. It was commonly expressed that the Samaritans were not full Jews, because they had been forced centuries before Jesus to intermarry with non-Jews by the Assyrian conquerors, which made them lose much of their ethnic identity . . . while the Jews of the southern