by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Texts: Matthew 6: 7-15; James 1: 1-4 I Go On: The Lord’s Prayer Revisited In the middle of the sermon there is a wonderful choral selection by Brian Cheney, our Senior Choir Tenor section leader. If I were a professor of homiletics, a teacher of the art of...
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Texts: Jeremiah 12: 1-5; I Corinthians 9: 24-25; I Corinthians 13: 4-7 Running with the Horses This is a sermon about endurance. This is a sermon about perseverance, about what it means to keep going when it feels like you can’t take another step. This is a sermon...
by Robert McCracken | Sermons
SERVICE OF INSTALLATION FOR THE REV. LAURA FITZPATRICK-NAGER We welcomed to our pulpit this morning the Rev. Mary Nelson. Mary is the South Central Regional Minister for the Connecticut Conference United Church of Christ. She works primarily with churches in...
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
John 6:1-14 Belonging Creates and Undoes Us Both: Three Stories I brought three sacred stories with me today. Each holds a moment of communion and belonging, hope and possibility. Maybe these will fill something in you, and in turn, may the stories of your life,...
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Texts: Matthew 5: 13-16; Romans 13: 11-14 The Ears of the Heart: Benedictine Wisdom for a World in Flux Here’s a short passage from a book entitled After Virtue, by Alisdair MacIntyre, a study of philosophical ethics that has had an outsized...
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Texts: Ezekiel 47: 6b-12; Jeremiah 17: 7-8 Tree by Tree: A Restless Child of the Promise The Hebrew prophets and their vision of a peaceable kingdom have been stirring my imagination over the past couple of months, beginning in Advent and now continuing...
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Texts: Genesis 31: 44-49; Isaiah 21: 6-8 Live at the Mizpah Café Since the beginning of Advent, we’ve been circling around the dreams of human flourishing that are found throughout the pages of Scripture, but that are given special prominence in the weeks...
by Robert McCracken | Sermons
Isaiah 9:2 and 6-7 Matthew 2:1-12 Hebrews 13:14 “No Longer at Home in the Old Dispensation…” And so we have come through Advent, we have soldiered through Christmas, and today we find ourselves on the day of the Kings: known in the church year as Epiphany...
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
The Christmas Dog Part I Before there were kids, before there were a string of Christmas Eve services to keep us up late, before there was an endless series of preparations, when things were altogether quieter, I fell into the habit of stealing away...
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Text: Matthew 1: 18-25 Restless Children of the Promise: Joseph’s Story, and Ours Too Is there any major character in the Christmas narrative, and indeed in all of the Bible, more overlooked and less understood than Joseph, the father of Jesus? Mary gets...
by Robert McCracken | Sermons
Luke 1:39-45 (46-55) Magnificat for a Broken World Yesterday, a group of us danced for joy at the IRIS Winter Party. It was held in the basement of a Baptist Church in New Haven where new and old friends and refugees gathered from all over the globe. I learned some...
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Texts: Luke 1: 57-58, 67, 76-80 Restless Children of the Promise, Part II: Mapping the Landscape of Love By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness… to guide our feet into the way of peace....
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Texts: Isaiah 9: 2, 6-7; Joel 2: 28 Restless Children of the Promise “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, the Everlasting Father,...
by Robert McCracken | Sermons
Psalm 104 The Bright Blessed Day, the Dark Sacred Night Yesterday, I meandered down to the pier at the mouth of the CT River to walk off some pumpkin pie. There wasn’t a soul there except for a diving duck who seemed to be playing hide and go seek in the shallows....
by Mario Baldessari | Sermons
Texts: John 21: 1-14 The Time Jesus Cooked a Culturally Appropriate Meal A few weeks ago, I was privileged to sit with Joseph and Martine Kazadi over lunch. As we ate, they narrated their long and arduous odyssey from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic...
