"Generous Peacemaking"
A Sermon on Isaiah 11:1-9 and Romans 15:5-7 by Kimberly L. Clayton for Covenant Conference 2015, Friday, November 6: "'The church is called blessed because it is a peacemaker.' I am intrigued by this slight difference in wording. This second image does not say what we are called to be, but instead declares what we are. A peacemaker. This clause in the Confession does not call us peacemakers—a bunch of individual peacemakers, each one of us doing our part, making peace in our own little sphere, as helpful as that would be in our individual families, my neighborhood, your school, her workplace, his circle of friends.No, listen to it again: The church is called blessed because it is a peacemaker. A big ol’ unified peacemaker. We are in this together, united, one, with one another. These days, I’m afraid, the church is called a blessed many things—but I’m fairly certain that a peacemaker is not our best known characteristic."
"Better Than a Hallelujah"
A Sermon on Isaiah 65:17-25 and 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, 6:1-2 by Marci Auld Glass for Covenant Conference 2015, Saturday, November 7: "The Belhar Confession reminds us that we are called to proclaim this new heaven and new earth that God is about to create. But we can’t do that in a way that tells people to be okay with the pain they are experiencing NOW, or with the injustice that is breaking their backs and their souls NOW. We aren’t called to be Pollyanna and deny the truth of people’s lived experience. As Paul Roberts said the other night, we are not called to just be nice. We are called to disrupt."
"Of Truth and Love"
A sermon by the Rev. Brian D. Ellison at the NEXT Church Conference, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago:"Speaking the truth in love. This is the change on which the church depends. Our growing up, by speaking the truth in love."
A Prayer for Courage
The Rev. Margaret LaMotte Torrence, Interim Pastor of Black Mountain (NC) Presbyterian Church, preached this sermon the day after the Presbytery of Western North Carolina affirmed Amendment 14-F. Her comments at the presbytery meeting are included: "I cannot imagine our marriage apart from the church. And how much harder it must be to nurture and sustain a relationship that runs against the grain of society’s norms. Yet we have told our gay brothers, our lesbian sisters—up until now—that their desire to live in covenant faithfulness has no place in the life of the Church. In so doing, it seems to me that we have robbed them of the companionship and the counsel of the Church, and we have robbed the Church of the full measure of their gifts—and their companionship—and their counsel. For anytime we are withholding part of who we are from our community, we are offering less than God would have us give. And anytime we have cut off part of the body, we are not fully the church."
Going to the Chapel
A Sermon on 1 John 4:7–21 by the Rev. Tricia Dykers Koenig at the Philadelphia Regional Conference, Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, February 7, 2015: "Friends, we don’t welcome other religions because we believe they are true – we welcome them because we believe our own Lord and Savior. We are not kind to others because they particularly deserve it – we are kind because it is our call in Christ. Welcoming all, especially the marginalized, is not about who they are. It's about who we are. Or perhaps more precisely, because we know who we are – children of God because God loves us unconditionally – then we know we can never deny that identity to another."
We Journey Together
A Sermon on James 2:1-17 by the Rev. Bertram Johnson at the Northwest Regional Conference, Mercer Island Presbyterian Church, 30 January 2015: "Through our acts of partiality, of favoritism, of judgment, of limitation on not just LGBTQ people, but on all God’s people, we pit the truth of God’s grace against itself and show our hypocrisy and lack of faith. As these first century believers dishonored the poor by favoring the rich, we continue to dishonor God’s people by creating divisions and obstacles to God. Through our biases the Church becomes a stumbling block and an exclusive club to those who seek to know God. We do this because we fail to believe that Christ’s sacrifice is big enough, wide enough, and deep enough to heal all our human-made fears and prejudices. When I’m faced with such opposition from my brother and sister Christians, like James, I ask do we really believe that the power of God is for all or is it that we think it’s only for some?"
Dress You Up in My Love
A Sermon on Colossians 3:12-17 by the Rev. Kenneth E. Kovacs, Ph.D., preached at the Covenant Network Regional Conference, University Presbyterian Church, Baton Rouge, LA, 24th January 2015: "The non-possessive delight in the particularity of the other. Love sees the other and does not confuse the other with oneself. Love allows the other to exist in freedom and creates a space for the other to be. Love creates a space to be—it always creates a space. Love does not possess the other, or control, define, delimit, or diminish the other. Love transforms the other from an it (an object to be controlled) into a Thou (a subject worthy of respect and honor). Love allows the other to be, to thrive, to grow, to exist apart from oneself, to have a life apart from oneself, and then takes immense delight and joy in the particularity, the uniqueness, the incomparability of the other. When we love this way the other comes into focus before our eyes and we are allowed to see, really see the other for whom s/he really is. The non-possessive delight in the particularity of the other."
Being Humble When You Know You’re Right
A Sermon on Acts 11:1-18 by the Rev. D. Mark Davis at the Covenant Network Regional Conference, St. Mark Presbyterian Church, November 22, 2014: "What it means to be part of a church that is empowered by God’s Spirit, is to spend our lives playing “catch up” to a Spirit who disrespects our prejudices and will not be hampered by our anxieties. None of us follows this Spirit easily, without some wrestling with God, without some difficult transitions from naïve certainty to perplexity to a chastened and transformed certainty. When we follow this Spirit, we are humbled, even when we’re right. We can listen to even our severest critics, because we know that the same Spirit whose work is confounding them is the same Spirit whose work once confounded us. What we can only do is to tell our stories with confidence and tell them with grace."
Risk and Reality
A Sermon on Matthew 25:14-30 by the Rev. Brian D. Ellison at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians Regional Conference, College Hill Presbyterian Church, Tulsa, Oklahoma, November 15, 2014: "The reality is that we all have been entrusted with much. It is as if we have been given a talent, and knowing our master as we do, knowing the way the master reaps where he hasn’t sown, and harvests where he hasn’t scattered, having done so much already, we bury it. We cling to that hard-earned achievement, preserve that wealth of good will and justice abounding around us, ensure a comfortable if not extravagant future. Or we find a way of differentiation, of sheltering in place, of keeping the faith when surrounded by adversity through isolation and fear."
Lucy Strong - A sermon on Psalm 78
Covenant Network Regional Conference, November 8th, 2014, Idlewild Presbyterian Church / Memphis, TN: "We keep hearing the stories that connect our present with our past. The stories continue but what is our place in the stories? What are the stories we tell? What are the stories that shape us today and give us life? "
What Not to Wear
A Sermon on Marriage Equality and the Church, by Layton E. WilliamsMatthew 22:1-14 ~ Springfield Regional Conference, October 11, 2014"...Marriage matters, but we haven’t fought this long and hard because it is the only thing that matters, we have fought because it is part of something so much bigger that matters so much more—and that is the covenant of God to which we are all invited and all called. And it matters how we show up, it matters what we clothe ourselves in, what we wear, because every act of covenant with God—between two people and between all people—is not just a celebration. It’s also an act of holy protest against brokenness..."
Marriage and Singleness - A Sermon Series
We are grateful to the Rev. Jon M. Walton, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, for permission to share his sermons:Marriage, Bible StyleWhy Marriage?Marriage: A Civil Contract Between Two Persons?One Is Not the Loneliest Number
Preaching Human Sexuality
A sermon series by the Rev. Dr. Jeffrey K. Krehbiel, pastor of Church of the Pilgrims in Washington, DC, exploring Genesis 2, Genesis 38, Genesis 19, Romans 1, and I Corinthians 7.
“Marriage Matters … Why?” - Brian D. Ellison
A Sermon on 1 Corinthians 7:1-11, 25-38 preached at the Covenant Network Conference, November 2, 2013: "It’s not that the text suggests something simple in the sense of something sentimental, that 'all you need is love.' No mention of love here in this chapter about marriage at all, in fact, not even from the man behind 1 Corinthians 13. No, the simple summary of Paul’s response to the swirling questions about marriage here, about celibacy and abstinence, about mutuality and submission, about complementarity and about sex, we might actually say, is: 'All you need … is God.'”
"A More Perfect Union" - Sharon K. Youngs
A Sermon on Ruth 1:1-22 preached at the Covenant Network Conference, November 1, 2013: "What is married? We say it all the time at weddings, we say it to partners getting ready to marry, we say it to couples working hard to stay married: At its core, marriage is not about passion or emotion or physical attraction. It is not about feelings. At its core, marriage is about covenant, commitment. It is about shared hopes and shared struggles and shared life. At its very best, marriage is an embodiment of God’s hesed – God's steadfast love and faithfulness."
"Whose Body Is It, Anyway?"
A sermon by the Rev. Brian D. Ellison at the ordination and installation of the Rev. Daniel Vigilante as Pastor, Grace Trinity Community Church, Minneapolis, and Associate Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, by the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area at Westminster Presbyterian Church, August 25, 2013.
"Crossing Over"
A Sermon on 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14, by the Rev. Brian D. Ellison, The First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, Sunday, June 30, 2013: "You see, the dividing line—the Jordan River we all must cross—is not running on this Pride Sunday between LGBTQ on one side and straight on the other. Or between one group with problems and another. And it certainly isn’t between sinner and saint, for all would surely be on the same bank of the river then. The crossing over we are called to do—all of us—is from in here together to out there together. The Jordan of our lives is the threshold that so persistently separates us from Fifth Avenue and from the world. It is a line of demarcation between celebration and action, between faithful gratitude and trusting obedience. We carry with us all that happens in here, but then we cross over into the out there."
"The Reign of God We Get"
A Sermon on Luke 7:1-10 by Brian Ellison, at Southminster Presbyterian Church, Boise, ID, June 2, 2013: "But this is the world. And this is where God is. When Jesus shows up we might like every story to be like a magic wand being waved. The leper is touched and the healing occurs. The mud is put on the eyes and sight is restored. But the world we live in is a Luke Chapter 7 world, and healing rarely happens that way. Justice is rarely a matter of a single spoken word. Every problem is not healed by each just action. The day you or I offer a cold cup of water to an overheated stranger, he will be better and a thousand more will still thirst. But the witness of the scriptures and the promise of the gospel is that it still matters. That, in fact, it couldn’t possibly matter any more. That this is the kingdom of God."
At the Table: A Witness to the Resurrection and in Celebration of the Life of K.C. Ptomey
The Rev. Dr. K.C. Ptomey, Jr., a former member of the Covenant Network Board, joined the Church Triumphant on May 9, 2013. K.C. was Zbinden Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Leadership at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, having retired as Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Nashville.A Service of Witness to the Resurrection was held at Westminster Church on Saturday, May 18. The preachers, Ted Wardlaw and Jon Walton, have graciously granted permission to share their sermons here.