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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722

Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a

Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a

Christian Education
For All Ages: 11:20a - Noon

Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible

All Are Welcome!

A Congregation Of The

From April 20, 2008
You Can Do This, Too!
John 14:1-14

Today's gospel lesson reminds me of a pork chop. Not just any pork chop but one I once ordered at Cynthia's on a fancy date; it came stuffed with gorgonzola cheese and other kinds of deliciousness. Not only was it rich, it was substantial enough for four or five people. Most of that chop went home in a doggie bag and nourished me for the better part of a week.

Today's gospel lesson is like that pork chop. Jesus says so many important things this morning, all of them so rich and generous, but it's almost too much. Just a bite or two from the fourteen verses that are ours today would be more than enough.

Our choices are many. "If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it." "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me….I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also."
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From April 13, 2008
Our Common Wealth
Acts 2:42-47

Time unfolds differently for the church than it does in daily life. Take Advent, for example. Those four weeks equal centuries as we go from ancient prophets telling us about the coming Messiah, to his conception, and then to his birth.

Time is measured differently in Lent, too, as we power walk through Jesus' three-year public ministry in under two months.

In church, time expands and contracts. It even jumps back and forth willy-nilly sometimes. Take today, for instance. Here we are in Eastertide, four Sundays out from the magnificence of Christ's resurrection, and yet things are out of sequence.

Even though we won't celebrate Pentecost until the 2nd Sunday in May, today we're being invited to remember what happened after that, after the wild winds of the Holy Spirit turned a gathering of believers in Jerusalem into the very body of Christ, into the church.
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From April 6, 2008
Out of the Ordinary
Luke 24:13-35

Toward the end of a seminary semester, a classmate's spouse asked me how things were going. I replied that I was heavy into a paper about Christ. "It's such a shame we don't know what Jesus really looked like," she said wistfully. "You would think, given who he was, that a painter or sculptor would have made him the subject of a work of art."

Yes, I said, that is too bad. What I didn't have the heart to say is that it would take a long time, centuries really, before Jesus would be raised to that level of importance. And even then their efforts would be the product of imagination alone; anyone who might have known Jesus was long gone and scripture offered no clues.

Yet even those who did know Jesus, even those who were most familiar with the shape of his jaw and the angle of his shoulders, even they were unsure about what Jesus looked like--after God raised Jesus up after death, that is. After Jesus was released from the tomb, Jesus' best friends had a hard time making the connection between the fellow they followed all the way to the cross and the one who was not defeated by it.
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From March 30, 2008
Show and Tell
John 20:19-31

When bad things happen to good people, we respond. We offer the kindest words we can summon. But that rarely feels sufficient--not when love is involved. So we offer food. We offer help. We offer to keep our friends and loved ones lifted high in prayer.

We want to show we care, not just say so.

We don't live in a spirit world, you and I. We don't flutter our wings and float on breezes like angels do. We don't eat tufts of cloud or sip sunlight. We live in a physical world, governed by gravity and the seasons. A physical world in which being in bodies is at once a source of pleasure and vulnerability.

Because God has placed us here and not in the realm of angels, because we inhabit a material world, it makes sense that when it comes time to reveal our caring for one another, we want to find some tangible, concrete way to express that caring. Indeed, we are more inclined to trust someone's words when they are backed up with something tangible.
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From March 23, 2008
God's Big Give
John 20:1-18

What would you do if someone handed you a bundle of cashand told you to give it away? That's the challenge facing a handful of ordinary people on Oprah's Big Give, a new series ABC is hosting this season.

Here's the deal: women and men of all ages and backgrounds are given money and tasked with finding and helping total strangers. Over the course of the eight-week series, we follow their every move, and even before the finale airs know that the person who ends up being the biggest giver also becomes the biggest winner--one million dollars goes to whoever was the boldest and most generous giver.

That's one big give, all right. I don't know how Oprah will top it; maybe another season with a two million dollar prize at the end. And yet even if Oprah had 20 seasons of her Big Give, and billions of dollars were spent making a difference, even that wouldn't begin to come close to God's big give of Easter.
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Previous Sermons Archive

"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen

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