Risking a New Beginning

I find it hard to believe that I’m able to assemble a collection of sermons that spans twenty years—from 1996 to 2016. This collection includes sermons from my seminary intern year in California, as well as from churches I’ve pastored in Vermont, Colorado, and New York. There are sermons on the Parables of Jesus, on the Book of Job, and sermons that wrestle with current events, including two sermons that were substantially rewritten on Saturday in response to the news on Friday.

I once heard it said that preaching on the Parables of Jesus was “a young preacher’s dream and an older preacher’s nightmare.” In this collection you’ll find sermons on Jesus’ parables from a young preacher and from an older one. I do know that in my early years I was eager to tackle the hardest parables, such as the “Unjust Steward” or “Dishonest Manager” of Luke 16:1-8, and now I approach the parables with considerably greater caution. 

In this collection you’ll find four sermons preached on the Book of Job, which is a task that I approached with tremendous humility and caution. I’m in debt to Samuel Balentine’s commentary on the Book of Job, and to Thomas G. Long’s book What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith for immensely helpful insights into Job.

During the 2015-2016 program year the Katonah Presbyterian Church committed to reading through Brian McLaren’s book We Make the Road by Walking. We had small group discussions of the book, and each week the sermon was in dialogue with the scripture texts and the pertinent chapter in McLaren’s book. You’ll find two of those sermons in this collection: “Working Through the Unimaginable” and “Judgment Day.”