Zephaniah 3: 14-20 (links validated 11/14/24a)

New Resources

  • A Message of Joy

    Podcast with Joe Cate
  • The Lord Is Near

    by Dan Clendenin
  • Exegesis (Zephaniah 3:14-20)

    by Richard Niell Donovan
  • Advent 3C (2024)

    by Jennifer Jensen
  • How Are You?

    by Michael Marsh
  • Haunted by Joy

    by Jim McCrea
    There once was an officer in the Navy who had always dreamed of commanding a battleship. He finally got his wish when he was given the commission for the newest and most up-to-date ship in the fleet. He was extremely proud and started to become just a bit arrogant. One stormy night, the ship was on patrol, fighting its way through mountainous waves, while the captain paced the bridge watching for signs of trouble. All of a sudden, he spotted a strange light off the port side rapidly closing in on his ship. So he immediately ordered the signalman to flash a message to the unidentified craft. The message was: “Alter your course ten degrees to the south.” After a moment, the ship received a reply which read, “Alter your course ten degrees to the north.” It would be putting it mildly to say that didn’t go over very well with the captain. He had worked very hard to get where he was and he wasn’t about to take a backseat to anyone. So the captain ordered a new message to be sent: “Alter your course ten degrees — I am the CAPTAIN!” The response came back, “Alter your course ten degrees — I am Seaman Third Class Jones.” Now the captain was really angry. He grabbed the signal light and fired off the next message himself. “Alter your course. I am a battleship.” The reply came back, “Alter your course. I am a lighthouse.”
  • Advent 3C (2024)

    by Anne Stewart
  • Advent 3C

    by Howard Wallace

Resources from 2021 to 2023

  • Close to Home: A Home for All

    by Kathy Donley
    A colleague named Nathan shared the story of a memorable Christmas Eve service. He said that a young woman came to worship that night, someone who had a friend in the congregation. As the service went on, he noticed her and he thought that she was shrinking back from it, almost physically withdrawing into herself to avoid engaging with what was happening. His first thought was that the style of worship offended her, but when he spoke to her afterwards, she said she thought it was really amazing. But she also said that she had never been in a service before where it felt like the words really mattered and that if you said them you had to be prepared to change your life and live them. And she wasn’t. She wasn’t willing to make those kind of changes, so she had to withdraw, to distance herself from the claim on her life. She got it. Nathan thought that John the Baptizer would have been pleased...
  • Advent 3C (2021)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Sermon Starters (Advent 3C)(2021)

    by Scott Hoezee
    Are you going home for Christmas? Frederick Buechner has written that in mid-December 1953 he was in church one Sunday, listening to a sermon by his mentor, Rev. George Buttrick. Buttrick, too, related overhearing some people in the church narthex the week prior talking about Christmas and home. And when in his sermon that Sunday morning in New York City Buttrick asked, “Are you going home for Christmas,” Buechner says the question was asked with such a sense of longing that tears leapt to his eyes. Home. What is it really that we mean by that word? What do retailers and the postal service want to conjure by the word “home”? Is it a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting, all soft colors, crackling fires on the hearth, wide-eyed children whose eyes sparkle in the light of the Christmas tree? Is that home? Is it the sense of “Home sweet home” counted-cross stitched and framed over the mantle, or Dorothy clicking her heels together three times and saying, “There’s no place like home”? Is that home? Is it finally actually a place? Or is home more a longing?...
  • Advent 3C (2021)

    by Keri Lewis
  • Haunted by Joy

    by Jim McCrea
    There’s a story floating around the internet about a 92-year-old woman whose husband died after 70 years of marriage. In spite of that or perhaps because of that, she still preferred to be called Mrs. Jones. However, after his death, her physical condition became such that it was necessary for her to move into a nursing home. As she was being led from the lobby to her new room, the nurse who was escorting her tried to give her a vivid description of the room, including the eyelet curtains that framed the window. As Mrs. Jones listened to this description and slowly maneuvered her walker down the hallway, she smiled sweetly and said with enthusiasm, “I love it.” At that point, the nurse who was guiding her thought that maybe she had made the room sound better than it really was, so she became concerned that Mrs. Jones might be disappointed when she was confronted with its reality. Therefore, she cautioned, “You haven’t even seen the room…just wait.” But Mrs. Jones replied, “That doesn’t have anything to do with it. Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. I have already decided to love it.” She added, “I make a decision every morning when I wake up. I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed focusing on the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or I can get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away just for this time in my life.” I don’t know about you, but that’s an attitude I need to adopt in my life.
  • Advent 3C (2021)

    by Margaret Odell
  • Repent and Rejoice

    by Jo Anne Taylor

Resources from 2018 to 2020

  • Advent 3C (2018)

    by Rhonda Carrim
  • A Joyous Homecoming

    by Bob Cornwall
  • Advent 3C (2018)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Pipe Dreams?

    by John Holbert
  • Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter!

    Art and Theology by Victoria Jones
  • Preaching Helps (Advent 3C)(2018)

    by Stan Mast
    A recent issue of Christianity Today asked the perennial question, “If God wants us to believe in him, why doesn’t God come out of hiding?” Why doesn’t God overwhelm us with a powerful appearance, so that there can be no question about his existence? It’s a good question and the discussion of it in Christianity Today is profound, exploring all the places in space and time where God hides. It ends, as you’d expect, with a reference to the cross. That is where God appeared so that we could see him and believe...
  • Reassembled (Zephaniah)

    Art and Faith by Lynn Miller
    Could Picasso paint a realistic face? Sure. See his self-portrait below left. But sometimes it's the elements that have been fragmented and reassembled that tell the story most fully. His portrait of Dora Maar below right was painted in June of 1941. Because of his notoriety, Picasso was one of the few "degenerate" artists who were allowed to live (reasonably) unbothered during the Nazi occupation of Paris. What would it say for Picasso to have lived in the midst of such a human nightmare and paint a lovely portrait of a woman sitting in a chair wearing a hat?...
  • Song of the Redeemed

    by Glenn Monson
  • Movies/Scenes Representing Judgment

    Compiled by Jenee Woodard

Resources from 2015 to 2017

Resources from 2012 to 2014

Resources from 2009 to 2011

Resources from the Archives

Children's Sermons and Dramas