December 29, 2019

Like Simeon and Anna, let us be faithful in our waiting and working, our longing and hoping. The world is going to be won over by true power, the power of love.

Pastor Bill Chadwick | December 24, 2019
Luke 2:1-19
I was talking on the phone with our youngest, Anji. She asked how I was and answered, “Great…except I haven’t yet found a really good story for my Christmas Eve sermon.”
“Well…,” she replied, “You could always tell that old one about Mary giving birth to the baby Jesus.”
After another week of intermittent searching for that dynamite story, I came to the realization that perhaps her sarcasm was, in fact, a “word from the Lord.”
Let me tell you a story. It needs a bit of an introduction.

Sermon by Bill Chadwick | December 22, 2019
Bethlehem, the little town about six miles south of Jerusalem, was normally not a prominent city bustling with commerce or government buildings.
But 1000 years before Jesus, it was the home of the shepherd boy, David, and the place where he was anointed by the great prophet Samuel. David became Israel’s greatest king and it was from his lineage that the Jews expected the Messiah to come.
Bethlehem.

Sermon by Bill Chadwick | December 15, 2019 There were only two wise men left. I sat slumped back in my chair, far from the typewriter, arms crossed, legs outstretched: the universal body language for writer’s block. I gazed out the window of my second-floor study onto the scene below. A fresh blanket of snow…

The Spirit of God is moving. Here today in this place. Out there in the world where you live and breathe.

Life is hard. If it isn’t hard for you today, it was last month or will be next month. That’s just a fact of life this side of heaven. You or your someone in your household may be facing health issues, financial struggles, relationship challenges, employment difficulties…you may be grieving the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a dream or …who knows?

And yet scripture calls us to “give thanks in all circumstances.”

It’s more than just getting ready for Christmas; Advent is about reminding ourselves of how we
might prepare to live the life God makes possible. That involves getting ready to meet God in
everyday life.

Sermon by Pastor Bill Chadwick | November 17, 2019 II Corinthians 9:6-8 In my long and varied experience, I have heard of only two Presbyterian congregations that do not hold an annual financial stewardship program. Those two are Calvary in McGrath and Wahkon Presbyterian Church. I knew from my previous time here that you didn’t…

We are all children of God. Therefore, we are all sisters and brothers. And we are “God’s delight.
And as God’s children we are to be about the business of God, which is the business of love.

Which is perfect! That is precisely what we are doing at a funeral. Our loved ones do not belong to us. We merely borrow them for a while. And eventually we have to return them to the One who loves them even more than we do, the One who fashioned them, and, for a time, loaned them to us.