From The Pulpit of DUMC

#258. Rev. David Hockett - January 29, 2023

The second chapter of Luke’s gospel reports the angel’s joyful announcement to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid…to you is born this day…a Savior.” Working our way through Diana Butler Bass’s Freeing Jesus, we’ve considered what it means to experience and know Jesus as Friend and Teacher – as one who both invites us into loving union with God and who teaches us how to become all that God created us to be. This week we come to perhaps the most common, familiar, and often misunderstood name for Jesus – Savior. Likely, we’ve all seen the signs and bumper stickers – Jesus Saves - or the billboards that invite us to ask Jesus to be our Savior today. Western, and Protestant Christians in particular, give a lot of airtime to Jesus as Savior. So, what does it mean, to say that Jesus saves or that Jesus is our Savior? Bass hopes we’ll come to see that it is about far more than avoiding and “getting our ticket punched for heaven”. The salvation Jesus brings is personal and social and involves the transformation of our lives and the world so that all experience freedom, joy, and loving union with God both now and in the life to come.

#257. Rev. David Hockett - January 22, 2023

Wesley envisioned and organized Methodism to be a school for holiness, that is, a community of prayer, study, worship, service, and accountability through which we learn how to love God and love neighbor. Discipleship then, is a way of life, it is about how we learn from Jesus to be human the way God intends for us to be human. In this week’s reading from John (13:12-17), Jesus teaches us that if we are to be counted among his friends then we must follow his example of downward mobility. “You are my friends, when you do what I command you to do. Love one another as I have loved you, and give your life away for others.” (John 15) Jesus, our Teacher, who is the divine Word of God, emptied himself and became a servant, both to wash the sin and brokenness from our lives, and to teach us, to give us an example of what it means to be fully human. Learning from him, we experience freedom, joy, and abundant life.

#256. Rev. David Hockett - January 15, 2023

There is a sense in which we cannot ever really know Jesus apart from a willingness and commitment, however imperfect, to follow him. This is because Jesus is not an idea to be debated. Jesus is a person, alive and among us, who wants to be known, who loves us and wants to be in relationship. And like all relationships, our friendship with Jesus takes time, and effort, and attention. This week we begin our church-wide book study and sermon series on Diana Butler Bass’ Freeing Jesus. Bass invites us to consider what it might mean for us to “free” Jesus from all the institutional and religious stuff we place upon Jesus, so that we might experience him in relationship, fully and freely, for who he is. When we do, we encounter one who is our friend, and whose friendship defines our relationship with God and with one another.

#255. Rev. David Hockett - January 8, 2023

This week we find ourselves by the river Jordan where John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming an opportunity to experience forgiveness, reconciliation, and renewal. People came to John from Judea and Jerusalem and, as they confessed their sins, they were baptized and immersed into a new life. We also meet Jesus there, with John by the river, as he also comes to be baptized by John in the Jordan. Matthew tells us that the moment Jesus emerged from the water he heard the voice of God: "You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love." Here at the beginning of his ministry we are granted a glimpse of Jesus’ identity. Jesus is the beloved one, God’s only Son, the first fruits of God’s new creation. In and through baptism we receive our identity, are caught up in the life of Christ, and share in Christ’s belovedness. On Sunday we will remember, or anticipate, our baptism, and reaffirm our commitment to walk in the way of Jesus who is our light and life.

#254. Rev. Brad Hinton - January 1, 2023

This Sunday is Epiphany Sunday. We will read the story of King Herod and the wise men from the East. We will explore more of the Christmas story and hear about what the wise men did and where they traveled. The scripture this week says that "they left for their own country by another road" (Matthew 2:12). As we begin a new year we will reflect on the roads that we may be traveling this year, so as you prepare for worship, we invite you to reflect on the roads you have taken last year and the roads ahead for 2023.

#253. Rev. David Hockett - December 11, 2022

In Sunday’s reading from Matthew 1:18-25 we meet Joseph, Mary’s husband, and watch as Joseph is confronted by the news that Mary will have a son. It’s hard to imagine how frightened, disappointed, and even angry Joseph must have been. And yet, anxious and upset as he was, Joseph says “yes” to Mary, to Jesus, and to God. Joseph is able to say yes because of love. In some way, it seems that Joseph grasped, or perhaps he had been grasped by, this strange new thing God was doing. The good news of Christmas had taken hold of his life, the reality that it was nothing less than the very love of God taking on flesh in Mary had so captured his heart and mind that Joseph himself is moved to respond in love. Now this is not love as we have come to know it, not love as an emotion or feeling, but love as a lived-out commitment, a long obedience that seeks the good of the other. What Joseph discovered is that loving God and others in this way is the foundation and source of all true joy.

#252. Rev. David Hockett - December 4, 2022

The Christmas gospel, the message that God has come among us, has invaded our world to reclaim it and make it new is to some a threat and to others a welcome promise. It is to all a message about how God has turned the world upside down, has upset both the power structures of this world, and the assumption of how things ought to be. It is the story, the announcement about how God in Christ is dramatically and radically reworking, reclaiming God’s creation. We’ve done a pretty good job of sanitizing and domesticating the gospel, of trying to make the message a bit easier to swallow and to make God manageable and useful for our agendas. But, John the Baptizer, this strange character we encounter in this week’s reading from Matthew (3:1-12), will not let that be. Our religious institutions and traditions cannot and must not be used as a defense mechanism to protect ourselves from the purging fire of God’s love. No, this strange holy man boldly proclaims that God is coming, like an earthmover, leveling mountains, raising valleys, building a highway straight to us. God is coming to bring peace to us and to the world, says John, be ready.

#251. Rev. David Hockett - November 27, 2022

The word advent means “coming” or “to come” and Advent is that season of the Christian year when we prepare our hearts and minds to celebrate Christ’s coming at Christmas and Christ’s coming again in glory.  We acknowledge that in some sense we are living in between those two appearances of Christ.  We are waiting – celebrating and giving thanks for what God has already done in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and anxiously awaiting what God will do when Christ’s Kingdom comes in its fullness.  As we seek to be the Church, the body of Christ, in this liminal space we are called to wait expectantly, to be prepared, in order that we might receive Christ whenever and however he comes to us.  The prophet Isaiah reminds us that we wait in hope because the day is coming when swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.  In the birth of Jesus that new day has begun and that changes everything.

#250. Rev. David Hockett - November 20, 2022

The Christian year revolves around the life of Jesus, beginning with his promised coming and birth in the seasons of Advent and Christmas, moving toward his passion, death, and resurrection marked by the seasons of Lent and Easter, turning towards the birth of the Church at Pentecost, and then to a long reflection on the life and witness of his followers in the months following Pentecost, throughout the summer and Fall.  The journey culminates this week with what is known as Christ the King Sunday or the Reign of Christ Sunday, where we focus on the Lordship or reign of Christ.  Using the crucifixion narrative from the gospel of Luke (23:33-43) and Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:1-11), we’ll see how Christ’s power is markedly different from the rulers of this world.  In Christ we encounter a kingdom where power is expressed in humility and love, and that makes all the difference for those who follow Christ as Savior and Lord.  

#249. Bishop Ken Carter - November 13, 2022

Bishop Kenneth H. Carter, Jr. will be at Davidson UMC on Sunday, November 13 for all three services. His sermon, The Peaceable Kingdom will be the text from Isaiah.Bishop Carter is the resident bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference. He earned degrees from Columbus College, Duke Divinity School, the University of Virginia, and Princeton Theological Seminary. He has served as president of the Council of Bishops, a  moderator of the Commission on a Way Forward, the chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry and the Committee on Episcopacy, and as a conference delegate. He is the author of 18 books. He was a local church pastor for 28 years and has preached in 20 countries on 4 continents. Bishop Carter’s hope for the church is that she will rediscover an orthodox Christian faith that offers the radically inclusive grace of God to all people and that calls every follower of Jesus to inner holiness, missional compassion, justice rooted in the gospel, and a hopeful story of transformation.