“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” Matthew 5:7 I have for some time been infatuated with words or phrases that have changed their meaning over the years or disappeared altogether. One example of this is when the architect, Christopher Wren, was showing off the completed St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to King…
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6 This past weekend Lisa put in a call to the manager of our H-E-B store here in New Braunfels. She was wanting to simply ask if he had such-and-such a product in stock before driving over to get it.…
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:5 Newsweek magazine was one of the first news agencies to report the growing hysteria in stores about, of all things, toilet paper. The report went: Amid fears about the global coronavirus outbreak, fights broke out in Australian supermarkets over toilet paper over…
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. –Matthew 5:4 This past weekend I saw a newscast where the anchorperson was interviewing Cristina Higgins, an American woman currently living under the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy. Ms. Higgins, married to an Italian, and the mother of two children, lives near Milan. The interview was…
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. –Matthew 5:3 One of the common beginnings in homiletics is for the preacher to begin with some kind of invitational device to pull her/his listeners into the sermon. Oftentimes it is a joke or a humorous story that creates some kind of…
An Introduction One of the curious ironies of preaching is that what a preacher says and what members of the congregation hear are sometimes different things. The prism of context can change the shape and sometimes the meaning of what is preached. A marvelous example of that comes from a satire created by the Monty…
Staying in Touch with God and Each Other During this Imposed Interim “Grace and peace” are words that Paul often employed when writing his scattered flock, and they seem so appropriate today because we are indeed a “scattered flock.” The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused major changes in the ways we go about our normal…
Spring, 2020 Michael M. Massar D.Min. One of the pleasures that became vital in my life as a minister is reading. When I was just a first-grader, my mother took me to the Ector County Library. There she helped me get my first library card and introduced me to the world of books. It was one of…