Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the message I preached yesterday at Bethel Lutheran Church, Portville, NY. The service was followed by our church picnic and ice cream social. It was a great day indeed! The sermon is from John 6:56-69 .                                              We have been on quite an adventure with Jesus, his followers, and his adversaries over these past five weeks in John’s gospel. Many things have happened since that first passage in John 6. Jesus’ disciples witnessed a feeding miracle and Jesus walking on the water. The audience has changed from being the crowd to being the Jews. Today, they are the disciples and the twelve. Jesus’ audience called him a variety of things. Jesus challenged and shocked his audiences by declaring he is the Son of Man, the one approved by God the Father, the bread of life, the one who came down from heaven to do the will of his Father, the one who gives his flesh and blood for food and drink, and the living bread. If we ever thought of Jesus as

Last night I had the privilege of leading and preaching at a Thanksgiving eve service at Zion Lutheran Church, Baker, WV. It was the first time in many years this church has had a Thanksgiving service. This is the message I shared with them: The text is John 6:25-35.             Some of us have memories of wonderful family gatherings at Thanksgiving, like you would see in a Norman Rockwell picture. Among the memories, may be that of going around the table with everyone saying what they are thankful for. It’s a lovely tradition. Those are not among my memories of Thanksgiving growing up, however. My family was not religious and didn’t go to church. It wasn’t even much of a special day when I was a child, except that we ate different food. As we gather around our tables tomorrow, what are we looking forward to? What makes Thanksgiving special for us? Is it for the special food that we so rarely have—pumpkin pie, turkey, homemade stuffing? Or is it the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Para