Jordan Rimmer Sermons

                   In this sermon I look at two aspects of our Christian Faith--The Me Gospel or personal salvation and The We Gospel of the kingdom or social justice. These are like two sides of the same coin. When we get too out of balance and emphasize one over the other, then the faith becomes warped to a point that it is no longer Christianity. I am indebted to the book Me and We by my teacher Leonard Sweet which helped me think deeply about this topic.

This is the conclusion to my series on the book of James. James is giving advice for staying a doer of the word throughout all of life's circumstances. We should lean into God through prayer and praise and into one another through confession and prayer. I also take some time to talk about anointing with oil because after the sermon I anointed those who wanted to with oil and prayer while they came forward for communion.

  On April 26 Westminster Church accepted 5 new members and we did an infant baptism.  I took a few minutes to explain membership and baptism and what we believe about them.

 In James 5:7-12, James encourages his readers to be patient and establish their hearts because Christ is coming back. But shouldn't Christ's return mean we should be doing more?

 James has some harsh and bity words to say to the rich in this passage.  But does God think we should all be poor?  Here I compare a few other texts to try to develop a theology of wealth and possessions.  More than that, I make the argument that we should be going through this same process for every area of our lives.  

 I recently took a trip to Toronto, Canada to do research on Henri Nouwen.  Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest who taught at Notre Dame, Yale Divinity School, and Harvard Divinity School.  He wrote a number of books about Christian spirituality, leadership, and loss.  He spent the last 10 years of his life living in L'Arche Daybreak.  This is a community of disabled adults and their assistants where I went to stay for a couple of days.  I wanted to understand how Henri's personal story impacted his ministry.  I was surprised to learn a lot more about life, ministry, and myself on the trip.  This sermon is my attempt to share this experience with my congregation.

This is my sermon from Easter 2015.  I use the story of the road to Emmaus to talk about the meaning of Christ's resurrection.  It is about more than "God-talk."  It is about living the Resurrection Life.

When Jesus comes into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday He is actually walking into a ton imagery and expectation.  As we begin to see all of this symbolism we begin to have a richer understanding of what happens on the rest of Holy Week.

 In this sermon I develop the symbol of the cross.  How could this "emblem of suffering and shame" become such a symbol of hope and power?  I also talk about different types of crosses, the motion of crossing yourself or doing the sign of the cross, and the idea of carrying your own cross.  I reference a Powerpoint slide that is posted here.    

In Acts 8 Philip talks to the Ethiopian eunuch about the good news of Jesus based on the passage from Isaiah 53 that the eunuch is reading.  This sermon looks at that same chapter to find Jesus in it.

In this sermon I refer to a number of movies to look at how we struggle to live in the present and follow God with everything we have.

This sermon takes a look at what I call The God Chair--the space in your life that God was meant to fill but that we put other things into.

        This sermon on James 3:13-18 is about the two kinds of wisdom that James describes.  Those are easy to see on paper, but is much trickier to see in our own lives.  How can we know if we are aiming at the wrong target in our lives?

   James 3:1-12 talks about one of the most difficult and most important part of being a doer of the Word--your tongue.  James uses a bunch of metaphors in rapid succession to share how our words are important to our faith.

 How are we saved?  Is it faith without works as Paul says?  But James says that faith without works is dead?  In this sermon I look at these kinds of questions and try to look at how faith and works relate to each other.

 We continue in James talking about the need to be doers of the word and not hearers only.  James calls us to not show partiality and favoritism in the community, because our faith is one for the lost and the broken.    

 In this sermon I look at the second half of James 1.  What do you see when you look in the mirror?  Are you ready to be a doer of the Word and not just a hearer?

I am preaching through the book of James from the perspective of images and metaphors. Here we start the book with 7 images.  I even brought a live Alligator Snapping Turtle to church with me.  Listen to find out why.

Westminster Church is in the middle of a transition in worship.  Our 37+ year organist is retiring and we are thinking about what kind of worship we want moving forward.  In order to set the stage for those discussions, I decided to preach a sermon about what worship is and how it developed into what it is today.      

What happens when all the bows are put away?  When Christmas is over?  We cannot possibly keep up the pace and the emotions of Christmas, but what part of the holiday can and should we keep going?