City Church of Richmond Sermons

“No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground
He comes to make
His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found
Far as the curse is found”

— Isaac Watts, from "Joy to the World"

“The church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him to not be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”

— Dorothy Sayers

“That is man’s true rectitude: to be created in the image of God is to be opposite to or to respond to Him in such a way that God may be able to behold Himself in man as in a mirror.”

— John Calvin

“I can’t imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have cre- ated itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature.”

— Francis Collins, Director of the US National Institutes of Health

“Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. ”

— John Calvin

“It is clear...that the Holy Spirit’s intention is to teach us how to go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go.”

— Galileo

“We are God’s chosen ones, even when our world does not choose us. Long before any human being saw us, we are seen by God’s loving eyes. Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God who is all ears for us. Long before any person spoke to us in this world, we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love.”

— Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved

“Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow. ”

— T.S. Eliot, “A Song for Simeon”

“Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.”

— John Donne

“Into the stable they straggled, poor and dirty,
hardly suitably dressed for polite society.
Had we been Joseph
we would have feared robbery.
Had we been Mary
we would have feared germs around our newborn.
Had we been God
these are not ones we would have chosen
to first come and see the Child.
After all, they showed a certain carelessness
about the rules of the church.
And yet, God-chosen, they came
to kneel and worship him
whom we would later call the Good Shepherd.
Perhaps we could brush up on our humbleness.”

— Ann Weems, "Had We Been There"

“For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning - not home but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach home at last.”

— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat