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Collected Works COLLECTED WORKS Volume II Thomas Lawrence Mowbray B. Mus., M. Div., D. Min. Mowbray Publishing Nashua, Iowa Published in honor of the Rev. Dr. Thomas L. Mowbray to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. Copyright 2005 by Thomas Lawrence Mowbray. All rights reserved. Manufactured for Mowbray Publishing by Hinkman Bindery, Inc. N. Manchester, Indiana 46962 ii SERMONS FOR THE LITURGICAL YEAR BASED ON THE REVISED COMMON LECTIONARY YEAR A 1 YEAR B 117 YEAR C 251 iii INTRODUCTION This collection of sermons, meditations and homilies for Years A, B and C of the Revised Common Lectionary is gathered from various sources. Each selection is listed according to the appropriate Sunday or holy day along with the date it was preached, the sermon title, and the text or topic. iv SERMONS FOR YEAR A OF THE REVISED COMMON LECTIONARY CONTENTS Advent 1 Date: 29 November 1998 Title: ―The New Day Dawning‖ Advent 2 Date: 06 December 1998 Title: ―A Sacred Time of Hope‖ Advent 3 Date: 13 December 1998 Title: ―Confident Anticipation‖ Text: Isaiah 35:1-10 Advent 4 Date: 20 December 1998 Title: ―Joe‘s Doubts‖ Text: Matthew 1:18-25 Christmas 1 Date: 24 December 1998 Title: ―Tidings of Comfort and Joy‖ Epiphany Date: 03 January 1999 Title: ―The Star of Bethlehem‖ Text: Matthew 2:1-12 Epiphany 1 The Baptism of Jesus Date: 10 January 1999 Title: ―The Person and the Work of Jesus‖ Text: Matthew 3:13-17 Epiphany 2 Date: 17 January 1999 Title: ―The Lamb of God‖ Text: John 1:29-42 Epiphany 4 Date: 31 January 1999 Title: ―The Spontaneous Qualities of a Grateful Life‖ Text: Matthew 5:1-12 2 Epiphany 5 Date: 07 February 1999 Title: ―Cutting Back on Salt and Conserving Energy‖ Text: Matthew 5:13-20 Epiphany 6 Date: 14 February 1999 Title: ―The Practical Shape of Behavior and Piety‖ or ―Salvation Is Free Only After the Bills Are Paid‖ Text: Matthew 5:21-37 Ash Wednesday Date: 17 February 1999 Homily Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Lent 1 Date: 22 February 1999 Title: ―Saying Good-Bye To Old Adam‖ Text: Romans 5:12-19 Lent 2 Date: 28 February 1999 Title: ―Faith As Gift‖ Text: John 3:1-17 Lent 3 Date: 07 March 1999 Title: ―An Unwinding Conversation‖ Text: John 4:5-42 Lent 4 (One Great Hour of Sharing Special Mission Offering for the United Church of Christ) Date: 14 March 1999 Title: ―Fifty Great Hours‖ Text: Mark 16:15 Lent 5 Date: 21 March 1999 Title: ―The Power of the Divine Word‖ Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14 Palm / Passion Sunday Date: 28 March 1999 Title: ―What God Would Do‖ 3 Easter Sunday Date: 04 April 1999 Title: ―The Day of Proclamation‖ Easter 2 Thomas Sunday Date: 11 April 1999 Title: ―Tireless, Indispensable Doubt‖ Text: John 20:19-31 Easter 3 (Pulpit Exchange Sunday) Date: 18 April 1999 Title: ―United and Uniting‖ Easter 4 Date: 25 April 1999 Title: ―Living As An Offering‖ Text: I Peter 2:19-25 Easter 5 Date: 02 May 1999 Title: ―The Witness of Stephen‖ Text: Acts 7:54-60 Easter 6 Festival of the Christian Home Date: 09 May 1999 Title: ―The Christian Home‖ Easter 7 Date: 16 May 1999 Title: ―Power to Serve‖ Text: Acts 1:6-14 Trinity Sunday Date: 30 May 1999 Title: ―A Trinity of Love‖ Proper 5 Date: 06 June 1999 Title: ―Being a Blessing‖ Text: Genesis 12:1-9 Proper 6 Date: 13 June 1999 4 Title: ―Laugh With Me‖ Text: Genesis 18:1-15 Proper 7 Father‘s Day Date: 17 June 1999 Title: ―The Fatherhood of God‖ Text: Matthew 10:24-39 Proper 8 Date: 27 June 1999 Title: ―A Remarkable Circularity‖ Text: Matthew 10:40-42 Proper 13 Date: 01 August 1999 Title: ―Nearer to God‖ Text: Genesis 32:22-31 and 28:10-17 Proper 14 Date: 08 August 1999 Title: ―Rescue At Sea‖ Text: Matthew 14:22-33 Proper 15 Date: 15 August 1999 Title: ―The Hidden-ness of God‖ Text: Genesis 45:4-20 Proper 16 Date: 22 August 1999 Title: ―An Unlikely Cast of Characters‖ Text: Exodus 1:8-2:10 Proper 17 Date: 29 August 1999 Title: ―Put Off Thy Shoes‖ Text: Exodus: 3:1-15 Proper 19 Date: 12 September 1999 Title: ―A Very Clear Lesson‖ Text: Matthew 18:21-35 Proper 20 Date: 19 September 1999 5 Title: ―The Uncertainty of Grace‖ Text: Matthew 20:1-16 Proper 21 Date: 26 September 1999 Title: ―Transferred Dependency‖ Text: Exodus 17:1-7 Proper 22 World Communion Sunday Date: 03 October 1999 Title: ―Today‘s Worldwide Event‖ Proper 23 Date: 10 October 1999 Title: ―The Prepared Guest‖ Text: Matthew 22:1-14 Proper 24 Date: 17 October 1999 Title: ―When You Find Yourself Between a Rock and a Hard Place‖ Text: Exodus 33:12-23 Proper 25 Date: 24 October 1999 Title: ―The Will of God In a Nutshell‖ Text: Matthew 22:34-46 Proper 26 Date: 31 October 1993 Text: Matthew 23:1-12 Title: ―Halloween and the Christian" Proper 27 All Saints Sunday Date: 07 November 1999 Title: ―The Special Children of God‖ Text: I. John 3:1-3 Proper 28 Date: 14 November 1999 Title: ―God‘s Entrepreneurs‖ Text: Matthew 25:14-30 Proper 29 Date: 21 November 1999 6 Title: ―Entering Gates With Thanksgiving‖ Text: Psalm 100:4 7 Advent 1 Date: 29 November 1998 Title: ―The New Day Dawning‖ Are you ready? Are you ready for Christmas? I confess that I am not as ready as I have been in years past, because my habit through the years has been to purchase Christmas gifts all during the year so that when Christmas arrived, I was already ready. This year I will need to work on my readiness a little more diligently than in the past. My holiday should not suffer, however, because Christmas has usually meant for me something that I expected and anticipated. Therefore, the great hype of Thanksgiving weekend sales promotions has not usually attracted much of my attention, even though, this year, I am not quite as ready as usual. Mary and I have started on our Christmas decorations, but we have not gotten very far; we plan to get the candles in the windows today. The rest of the decorations will make their way into our home as time allows, and the tree will probably not be decorated until Allen comes home [from college]. So, that is my report; how are you doing with your preparations? Most of us are probably preparing for Christmas as best we can, but Christmas, in spite of all the commercial push of this past week, is not imminent. Christmas is not an imminent threat and, therefore, I suppose, many people do not prepare for it in the same way that we prepare for other events. For the imminent threats in life, we have such things as fire trucks and rescue vehicles that are always ready. Security systems on our national borders and in our homes are constantly watching out for that which is imminent. But Christmas is different. Christmas, I suppose, is more in the category of things we expect to recover from. It is part of life and life goes on. We make some preparations for it, but we are not surprised when it comes. We will recover form it. As we Christians use the season of Advent at the beginning of each new church year, however, we have an opportunity to be people who are ready. We not only expect Christmas, we long for it. We read the words of the prophet Isaiah, and we also long for the Lord to establish justice among the nations, and we long for peace to prevail. We read the words of the Apostle Paul and we also long to "cast off the works of darkness" in our lives, and to "put on the armor of light." And we long to be ready for the birth of the Christ child, when eternity will touch the temporal. When will our longings cease? As I read the newspaper last Sunday, I was struck with an article about the space station project. As you may recall, a week ago last Friday, the United States and Russia launched a new phase in human space exploration, which the article described as "no less audacious than the building of the pyramids in Egypt or the great cathedrals of Europe." Sixteen nations are cooperating in the building of the space station, which is, so far, designed to 8 weigh 460 tons and cost 63 billion dollars. The scope of the project is mind-boggling, but something is even more amazing to me. As a person who can clearly remember the race for space of previous decades during the insane nuclear arms race, the most amazing thing to me is that the first phase of the most ambitious international engineering project ever attempted, is being attempted in peace time, and that the first module lifted off a week ago last Friday was carried into space aboard a rocket originally designed to launch multiple nuclear warheads at targets in the United States. Talk about turning swords into plowshares! Talk about satisfying a longing for peace to prevail! Here is an historic chance "to beat swords into plowshares,‖ by converting deadly Cold War missiles into peaceful long-haul trucking vehicles for an orbital facility. As one scientist said, with the space station, we will "be realizing for the first time the real true potential of space for solving problems on earth." The space station has been planned as a full-time laboratory in orbit.
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