Category: Scripture
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Where Was the White Church?
A lightly edited version of a talk I gave at a conference at Progressive Baptist Church here in Chicago. On a November Sunday in 1898, the Rev. Francis J. Grimke stood before his congregation at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington D. C. Rev. Grimke had been born into slavery in South Carolina, the…
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Living Peaceably With Creation
A sermon about living gently with Creation. 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither…
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Cynicism is not Inevitable
A sermon about the truth which abides, even in our cynical age. To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32) “What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he…
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Wait for It
A reflection for our church’s brief, online Watchnight Service. Imagine a gathering of enslaved women and men, collecting in secret on any given December 31st. New Year’s Day was often when enslavers settled their accounts; should they find themselves in debt, it was likely they would sell some of those they had bought and abused…
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There is Freedom: A Juneteenth Sermon
This is a lightly edited version of my sermon from the Sunday before Juneteenth. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17) Imagine being an enslaved person in Texas at the beginning of another hot summer in 1865. Given the state’s relative distance…
David W. Swanson 