By Jessie Larkins

• There’s a New <del>Kid /</del> King In Town by Jessie Larkins (12/28/2016)
  First Sunday after Christmas Isaiah 63:7-9 Psalm 148 Hebrews 2:10-18 Matthew 2:13-23 Sweet little Jesus Boy — They made you be born in a manger. Sweet little Holy Child — Didn't know who you was. Didn't know you'd come to save us, Lord; To take our sins away. Our eyes was blind, we couldn't see, We didn't know who you was. -Robert MacGimsey, Sweet Little Jesus Boy (1934) One of my favorite Christmas Eve memories from childhood is sitting in the dim light of the sanctuary at my grandparent’s Methodist church in Richmond, VA. Every year the sam...
• Fear of Beggars by Jessie Larkins (9/21/2016)
  Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 OR Amos 6:1-7 1 Timothy 6:6-19 Luke 16:19-31 When I served as the pastor of a local church I often had folks in my office who wanted to know what to do about the guy on the street corner flying a sign. I’ve been part of churches who have made “blessing bags” to keep in their cars, full of items like bottled water and socks, to avoid passing cash to the homeless that live on the streets of our town. (Because, you know, drugs and stuff). I have had folks confess to ...
• New Endings, New Beginnings by Jessie Larkins (7/14/2016)
  Ninth Sunday after Pentecost Amos 8:1-12 Colossians 1:15-28 Luke 10:38-42 My father and I often respond to absurd news reports shared by text message or email forward with the tongue in cheek response: “A sure sign that the apocalypse is upon us.” In the past few weeks I have not been sure if that’s an appropriate joke to make. Wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and violence and death plague every news cycle. My cries have been “Come, Lord Jesus” more often than they’ve been jokes or hashtags. When I read the Old Testament lesson appointed for this coming weekend and hear Amos’ denunciation of 8th ce...
• Pain and Hope by Jessie Larkins (6/14/2016)
  Fifth Sunday after Pentecost 1 Kings 19:1-15a Psalm 42 Galatians 3:23-29 Luke 8:26-39 Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure, into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; that in boundless silence I may grow strong enough to endure and flexible enough to share your grace. Amen. --Guerillas of Grace, 28 These are tough days for those who mount pulpits to proclaim the Word of God. Sitting, as I am, on this Monday before Sunday, wondering ho...
• The Power of Fear by Jessie Larkins (12/29/2015)
  Epiphany Sunday Isaiah 60: 1-6 Ephesians 3:1-12 Matthew 2:1-12 On Monday of this week, a grand jury in Ohio declared that the police officers who shot and killed 12-year old Tamir Rice while he played with a pellet gun in a Cleveland park and then left him unattended on the ground for four minutes before administering comfort or assistance would not be indicted on any charges related to his death. The officers said the boy looked like he was 20. They said they told him to stand down. He was a large black boy in a park and they were afraid. People do stupid and sometimes horrible things when they are afraid. ...
• Helpless Before the Throne by Jessie Larkins (10/14/2015)
  Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost Job 38: 1-7 (34-41) Hebrews 5:1-10 Mark 10:35-45 “We will have so much winning. We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning. Believe me, I agree, you'll never get bored with winning. We never get bored. We are going to turn this country around. We are going to start winning big on trade. Militarily, we're going to build up our military. We're going to have such a strong military that nobody, nobody is going to mess with us. We're not going to have to use it." -Donald Trump, September 2015 "I am no longer my own, but thi...
• Dream or Deliverance? by Jessie Larkins (7/21/2015)
  Ninth Sunday after Pentecost Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2 Samuel 11:1-15 Psalm 14 Ephesians 3:14-21 John 6:1-21 I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of the American Dream. It’s the illusion of a utopian consumerist life that can be achieved when one has a big house in the safety of the suburbs, an SUV or two, money for a Disney vacation, fashionable clothes, a beautiful family (with approximately 2.5 kids and a dog) who attend all the best schools. I was recently informed that in 2015, Rejecting the God Who Is by Jessie Larkins (6/3/2015)

  Second Sunday after Pentecost 1 Samuel 8:4-20 Mark 3:20-35 Even those sympathetic to the cause of the young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were a bit shocked by the brazenness of the young organizer. President Johnson, the same president who would later sign the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts into law, asked King to tone down the spectacle a bit—there were, after all, elections to be won and constituencies to satisfy. As the Civil Rights movement began to gain strength through the tactics of non-violent resistance, the establishment grew increasingly uncomfortable. White pastors across the South, in an attempt to keep the peace, appealed to King to be p...
• Easter People by Jessie Larkins (4/7/2015)
  Second Sunday of Easter Acts 4:32-35 Psalm 133 1 John 1:1-2:2 John 20:19-31 “Easter people, raise your voices, sounds of heaven in earth should ring. Christ has brought us heaven’s choices; heavenly music, let it ring. Alleluia! Alleluia! Easter people, let us sing.” - William James, Easter People, Raise Your Voices, UMH #304 “What is a ‘Easter people’?” That was the question that a 4-year old child in my congregation asked me on the way out the door on Easter Sunday just a few days ago. We had just sung one of my favorite Ea...
• Descent Into Life by Jessie Larkins (2/17/2015)
  First Sunday of Lent Genesis 9:8-17 1 Peter 3:18-22 Mark 1:9-15 Having Descended to the Heart Once you have grown used to the incessant prayer the pulse insists upon, and once that throbbing din grows less diverting if undiminished, you’ll surely want to look around—which is when you’ll likely apprehend that you can’t see a thing. Terror sometimes sports an up side, this time serves as tender, hauling you to port. What’s most apparent in the dark is how the heart’s embrace, if manifestly intermittent, is really quite reliable, and very nearly bides as if another...
• Eyes to See by Jessie Larkins (6/13/2012)
  Third Sunday after Pentecost Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 2 Corinthians 5:6-17 Mark 4:26-34 In an era with a six billion dollar election cycle and more than 90% of elections won by the candidate with the most money, these understated stories of anointed shepherd kings and mustard shrub kingdoms make little sense to our calloused senses. The prophet Isaiah warned, and Mark quotes just prior to the telling of these parables, that people would “look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand” (Mark 4:12). ...
• The Far End of the Net by Jessie Larkins (1/17/2012)
  Third Sunday After Epiphany Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Jonah 3:1-5,10 Mark 1:14-20 Only one time in each three-year lectionary cycle do we get a chance to read the prophet Jonah (twice if you’re Episcopal or Catholic and following the lectionary). The entire story takes only 48 verses to tell, but by the time it’s done the reader has been taken on a whirlwind tour of the ancient world, explored the character of God, watched Israel wrestle with its calling to be a conduit of God’s grace for all of the nations rather than its terminus, and felt both sympathy and anger towards a self-centered prophet more concerned with his public standing as a...
• Jesus is Coming - Look Busy by Jessie Larkins (11/9/2011)
  Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Judges 4:1-7 OR Proverbs 31:10-31 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Matthew 25:14-30 With the attention demanded by All Saints, Christ the King, and the First Sunday of Advent this month, the preacher has little time to spend with this last so-called Ordinary Sunday of the Church year. In my own United Methodist tradition this also happens to be the time of year when Finance committees are urgently preparing 2012 budgets and pastors are nervously writing stewardship sermon...
• Follow the Leader by Jessie Larkins (8/22/2011)
  11th Sunday after Pentecost Matthew 16:21-28 “We believe that the truth of the gospel cannot be separated from the kind of lives required for the recognition of that truth” -Stanley Hauerwas “Our instinct to embrace Jesus’ exemplary goodness while avoiding the blood of the cross is a “stumbling block” to God’s mission in the world.” -Charles Hambrick-Stowe At some point in my growing up years I remember seeing, on the bookshelf in our living room, the spine of a book whose title was Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. Even at a young age, I can clearly remember sensing the irony and nonsense of that phrase. Who makes war to get peace? Now I understand why its author would have suggested that the dominan...
• Apokatastasis and the Birthday of the Church by Jessie Larkins (5/27/2009)
  [image]Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27; John 15: 26-27, 16: 4b-15 (Pentecost Sunday) One of the first things that I remember learning as a seminary student in my introductory class on Church history was the word, apokatastasis. The word, which is Greek, most simply means “the end will be like the beginning” and i...
• Asleep at the Wheel by Jessie Larkins (3/10/2009)
  John 2:13-22; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; Exodus 20:1-17 (Lent 3B) There is a joke that occasionally passes through pastors’ circles now and again with a bit of light-hearted commentary on the passion (or lack thereof) of worship in a particular pastor’s church. Says one pastor: “My congregation is so dead in worship that if someone were to have a heart attack, when the EMTs arrived they’d wonder to whom they should attend.” Those of us who worship regularly in congregations that bear any resemblance to that description chuckle uneasily at this joke. Yet truth be told, it hits a little too close to home. What has happened to our practice of worship that it has become yet another instance of a religious institution “going through the motions” rather than true, life-shaping (rather than s...
• Is Your World Shaped By the Gospel? by Jessie Larkins (2/4/2009)
  1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39 (Epiphany 5B) Each of the New Testament lessons this week make reference to Jesus and Paul’s felt responsibility to proclaim the gospel message wherever they were. In the gospel, after healing Simon’s mother-in-law as well as many others who were brought to him, Jesus demands of the disciples that they move onto other towns so that he might “proclaim the message; for that is what [he] came to do” (vs. 38). Similarly, Paul speaks to the Corinthian Christians about the obligation he feels to proclaim the gospel to all people at all times. The question left for us, then, is “Do we also feel that obligation to proclaim the gospel in all times and places?” For those of us who preach and teach on a regular basis, we can easily brush past th...
• Epiphany 3B by Jessie Larkins (1/20/2009)
  Mark 1:14-20 I have a brother who is a bit of an adrenaline junky. In many ways he is not unlike most 26 year old boys who have no house payment, car payment, girlfriend, wife or kids: footloose and fancy free. On the other hand, there is something quite unique about my brother. It is the fact that, on average, he risks his life 2-3 times per day. You see, my brother has made a life for himself out of pushing the envelope. If you were to ask him, he would tell you that airplanes were invented to be jumped out of, mountains were made to be crawled up and then skied down, and waterfalls were created in order to slide off in 6’ pieces of molded plastic. My brother’s primary raison d’être is white water kayaking. He has traveled all over the world finding and conquering the world’s...
• Come, Lord Jesus by Jessie Larkins (11/27/2008)

  [image]Advent 1   Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37

  This week we begin the all-too-short journey toward Advent, that season when the Church’s prayer is the urgent and expectant: “Come, Lord Jesus.” For most folks, the Advent hymns and prayers invoking Emmanuel, God-with-us, conjure up domesticated images of babies, a ...
• Leadership by Imitation by Jessie Larkins (10/22/2008)
  [image]1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 (24th Sunday after Pentecost) It seems that wherever you turn these days the buzz word on the street is “leadership.” The failure of the financial market, when not being blamed on minorities or the poor, is blamed on a failure of leadership in government and industry. For too long the standard of worth for CEOs and economic strategists has been a cut-throat measure of g...
• Forgiveness and Evangelism by Jessie Larkins (9/17/2008)
  [image]A few years ago, I was a passenger in a car that was in a minor accident in a local shopping center parking lot. Both cars, the one I was in as well as the one that sideswiped us, were traveling at an appropriate parking lot speed of a...
• Should I Stay or Should I Go? by Jessie Larkins (8/1/2008)
  [image]When I read the Ascension texts for today (or this upcoming Sunday if you are in a Protestant tradition that celebrates the Ascension on the following Sunday), my tendency is to immediately jump to the conclusion of Luke’s report in Acts 1 when the angels appear to ask the disciples: “Why do you stand looking up at heaven?” I hear in this question an affirmation of my own ne...
• What Do You See? by Jessie Larkins (8/1/2008)
  [image] “Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” -- John 9:40-41 When I was in seminary...