Reveille United Methodist Church

Ash Wednesday – February 26, 2020

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

I would like to begin by sharing with you a reading from Nick Hornby’s 2002 novel About A Boy, which tells the story of a middle-schooler named Marcus. Marcus’s parents are divorced, and his father is largely out of the picture. His mother, who suffers from severe depression, has just moved the two of them from Cambridge to London, and Marcus is having a terrible time, both fitting in with his classmates and bearing the burden of his mother’s mental health. Marcus is eventually befriended and mentored by Will, who begins the story as a shallow, materialistic man who has never worked a day in his life thanks to a trust fund he has inherited. The following reading is found in chapter one.

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5^th Sunday After the Epiphany – February 9, 2020

1 Samuel 3:1-18

There is a situation in which I would like for you imagine yourself this morning: corruption is rampant, and everything seems to be falling apart. Your leader is an ever-weakening, failure of a man with two astonishingly sinful and repugnant sons who always seem to do whatever they please, regardless of how abhorrent it is, and they never suffer any consequences for it. Also, no one is hearing from God anymore, and when God finally does speak, God speaks to you and informs you that God’s punishment will rain down upon this leader and his morally bereft household. You quickly learn that it is your responsibility to deliver this difficult news directly to the leader, who while not your father, happens to be the man who raised you. And by the way, you are eleven years old, a fifth grader.

And this is where we find ourselves in this morning’s text. Let us listen now to the word of God as recorded in the third chapter of the book of 1 Samuel, beginning with the eighteenth verse:

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Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany – February 2, 2020

John 20:11-18

Just to be clear from the outset of this sermon, I did not make a unilateral decision to skip Lent. We are not celebrating Easter in February, although I suppose one could make a compelling argument that we are, since for Christians, each and every Sunday is Easter, since each time we gather on this day of the week, we do so to proclaim the glory of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and that is good news for the church and for the world.

The bad news is that we are still going to observe Lent. No one is getting out of that.

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