If you are a preacher following the Revised Common Lectionary, here are a few Lenten Sermons for Year A, Lent 3 to get your juices flowing. If you are not a preacher but need a little faith boost, give these sermons a try. I hope you’ll find them helpful!

The Point of No Return – Text: Exodus 17:1-7

One of the truly enjoyable periods of my life took place back in the 1980’s when my good friend Len S. and I joined forces to buy an airplane – a Cessna 172. We flew a lot of miles together and made a lot of bad landings. Some of our favorite flights were those we took on hot summer nights from our home airport in Fall River, Massachusetts over to Martha’s Vineyard for a tasty cup of real New England clam chowder.

That flight, of course, was not without its hazards. It entailed flying out over Buzzards Bay. An engine failure out over the ocean at night would not be a happy experience. So we always carefully plotted a point-of-no-return – that hypothetical place beyond which it would be shorter to reach the island than to return to the mainland. And once we got that figured out, we’d calculate an altitude to fly from which we could glide to the island if the engine went out.

Thankfully, nothing like that ever happened to us on those summer evening flights to the Vineyard. But I have experienced many such critical moments over the course of my life.

And you have too. (Full Sermon)

He Knew Everything – Text: John 4:39-42

Were you as devastated as I was years ago when the Federal Trade Commission and the State of Florida filed separate lawsuits alleging fraud against Miss Cleo and the Psychic Network? I mean, if you can’t trust your friendly, local TV psychic, who can you trust? And there are several parts of this whole scandal that are rather bothersome:

First, it was alleged that Miss Cleo’s promise of free psychic readings was not exactly true. The 1-800 numbers given led folks to 1-900 numbers which were billed at $4.95 a minute. And the average customer ended up paying about $60 for a call. That bothers me!

Second, it seems that Miss Cleo used the callers’ own information to begin aggressive telemarketing of psychic services to them after the first call was ended. And even after asking to be placed on “do not call” lists, many people continued to receive up to ten calls a day from an automated message that claimed Miss Cleo had a dream about them, and they should call back right away. That’s kind of bothersome too, don’t you think?

And third, and this is what bothers me the most, if Miss Cleo was really as clairvoyant as she claimed to be, why didn’t she see all this coming in the first place?

But this not a sermon about Miss Cleo and the Psychic Network. This a sermon is about the One who truly knows everything there is to know about us. (FULL SERMON)

Another Take on “He Knew Everything” – John 4:15-29

She is a loser three times over. For one thing, she is a Samaritan. For another, she is a woman. And for a third, she is a moral failure.

And yet, at the end of the story, she becomes the first evangelist – the first person in the Bible to lead others to faith in Christ.

And I wonder how this can be!

You might expect Jesus to choose someone else for such an important ministry – someone respectable – someone with a clean record – someone male and not a Samaritan. Billy Graham is my idea of an evangelist. But, no, Jesus chooses her.

You may have noticed that it is noontime when Jesus meets this woman at the town well. That’s rather odd because the women of that day generally went to draw water for their families in the early morning hours. It was a time not only for filling up the water jars, but also for socializing and filling each other’s ears with the latest gossip.

She was probably the subject of a lot of that early morning chatter. Maybe that’s why she waited until the other women had gone home before going to the well to draw her own water. It was noontime when she went to the well that day, and the only person there was a Jewish man named Jesus. (FULL SERMON)