Occasional Sermons

Christian Community Presbyterian Church Bowie, Maryland August 10, 2025 Cultivate Surprise Luke 12:22-40 (Video may be viewed at  SERMON—Cultivate Surprise—Rev. Richard S. Hays ) I t’s so annoying. Just when you think you know what the Bible says, it trips you up. We are not addled in our thinking or roiled in a sea of conspiratorial misinformation by some devilish enemy. It’s holy writ—God’s word itself—which strikes the devastating blow. No wonder the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says that God’s word is sharper than any two-edged sword. Reading scripture is like working bare-handed with barbed wire.      The last piece of advice from today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel would have us constantly on red alert, 24-7, clutching our phones waiting for the doorbell camera app to chime with the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, knocking at our door.      That would stress out the saintliest of the saints. That kind of stress we don’t need in our lives. Jesus d...

Christian Community Presbyterian Church Bowie, Maryland September 22, 2024 Outlining a People Exodus 20:1-5a, 7-10a, 12-17 (Video may be viewed at  https://youtu.be/H7cD6shs0xA ) I am an avid reader of comic strips. One of my favorites, alas not in the Washington Post, is “The Born Loser” In one strip the title character, Brutus Thornapple, is sitting in his chair reading the Bible. One of his nemeses, his wife’s mother, Mother Gargle, walks up and says, “Well, look who’s reading the Bible! Har-de-har-har!” “I’ll have you know, you old barracuda,” Brutus replies, “that I’ve followed the Ten Commandments all my life!” She walks away saying, “Too bad you never managed to catch up with them!”      We have heard of the Ten Commandments all our lives, but do we really “catch up with them”? Do we understand what they are and why God has given them?      The Law was part of the ongoing blessing with which God embraced the people of Israel. Remember that God...

Christian Community Presbyterian Church  Bowie, Maryland  April 28, 2024  Seriously Seeking Something Acts 8:26-40 [Video may be viewed at  https://youtu.be/mRoICo24omQ ] A fter briefly flirting with church attendance, one television sitcom character chalked up her experience as generally beneficial because “I finally learned what that guy in the end zone is talking about when he holds up the big sign that says ‘John 3:16’!            Long-time churchgoers know what ‘John 3:16’ is about. We are accustomed to religious words and symbols. It’s our operating system, to use a computer term. That’s why we are shocked to find out that church affiliation in the United States is approaching less than half the population. There are more people who have no clue what the end zone sign means than those who do. Some scholars of religion and society call our culture ‘post-Christian.’ Others call it ‘pre-Christian’ because our world...

Christian Community Presbyterian Church  Bowie, Maryland  October 29, 2023  Charge to the Congregation on the Installation of Dr. Kori Phillips McMurtry as Pastor   P resbyterians have spent a lot of time determining the qualifications for pastors. Yet we have not spent an equal amount of time describing the qualifications of congregations.  Father Victor Pax, my Roman Catholic colleague during my first pastorate, said that he had a lot of parishioners whom he saw three times during his ministry and every time he saw them he threw something at them: water at their baptisms, rice at their weddings, and dirt at their burials.  Often the average church member sees a pastor as the in-house religious professional. By that I mean that pastors are seen as surrogates: they are supposed to “do church” for everyone else. They are the designated students of scripture, proclaimers of the Word, prayer-makers for people and events, and blessers of rituals ecclesiastical ...

Christian Community Presbyterian Church Bowie, Maryland October 8, 2023 Jesus the Storyteller: Parable of the Two Sons Matthew 21:23-32 [Video can be found at  https://youtu.be/1lZppmfr3Wo? si=R3d34fMITdAYJMZe ] A pastor visited a parishioner who lived by herself in the family home where she had been born 97 years earlier. They had a pleasant talk about things she had experienced in her near century of life: births and deaths, disappointments and celebrations, leavings and returnings. The conversation turned to the church and its history. Seeking a sense of the woman’s faith, the pastor asked if she ever thought about the hereafter. She replied, “I think about it all the time. Every time I go into a room I ask myself, ‘What am I here after?’” I see heads nodding. She’s not alone, is she? I can remember details of things that happened decades ago. But if you were to ask me what I had for dinner Friday night or what I did on Thursday, I would be hard pressed to tell you. You’ve been...

Christian Community Presbyterian Church Bowie, Maryland June 18, 2023 Go Where? Do What? Matthew 10:1-9, 16-20 [Video may be viewed at  https://www.facebook.com/ChristianCommunityPresbyterianChurch/videos/924549221978937   Scripture and Sermon begin at 42:15] O ne of the top ten words of scripture is the end of Matthew’s gospel: Jesus’ Great Commission. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). His words are a clarion call to missionary activity. The congregation I last served included retired mission workers who had worked in India, Nepal, China, Thailand, Singapore, Korea, Egypt, Iran, Sudan. Their wealth of faith and knowledge was a treasure trove.  Before the age of Zoom meetings, bef...