Pastor Scamman

The Roman Catholic Church has a teaching called the Immaculate Conception. Perhaps you’ve heard of this. And perhaps you assumed, as I did, that this referred to the conception of Jesus. His conception was immaculate, that is, free from sin, and free from the help of any man. Every Christian believes…

If you or I sat down to write a book about the lives of our children or grandchildren, I’m sure there are some events that we would be happy to leave out. Why should the whole world hear about every embarrassing moment and bad decision? People don’t need to know this stuff, and there’s no reason to give…

Apart from the coming of Christ, the final word of God would have been a pronouncement of judgment. If we did not have the New Testament, the last sentence of Scripture would have read, “I will smite the land with a curse.” Without the Advent of the Day of the Lord, all humanity would be doomed to share…

In the Garden when God promised that the Christ would come and deliver his people, Adam and Eve expected the promise to be fulfilled immediately. In fact, Eve thought at first that Cain was the Christ-child. What a disappointment Cain turned out to be. Ten generations later Noah’s father also thought…

The season of Advent is a time of preparation. But what are we preparing for? Is it the coming of Jesus as the baby in the manger? Well, yes. We rejoice with the shepherds to hear the angelic announcement. Unlike the innkeeper, we want to prepare room in our hearts for Christ child. But Advent is more…

At this time of the year, the whole world is caught up with anticipation, waiting for the advent of the all-knowing and omni-present giver of gifts. He knows all about you, though you’ve never seen him. He knows whether you’ve been bad or good. He knows your thoughts, what you want and desire. And he…

Marriages have always been a legally binding agreement. But the specifics of that agreement or contract vary from one culture to the next. In order to understand the parable from our Gospel text, we need to know a little bit about how marriage worked in Bible times. Today when people get married, all…

Jesus told the parable in our Gospel lesson to teach us about the kingdom of heaven. Want to know what’s it’s going to be like? Listen to what Jesus says: “ The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants” ( Mt 18:23 ). Jesus teaches us that the Day of…

Many people love to think of Jesus as a great moral teacher, but they fail to see that his teachings often make no sense according to human understanding. Jesus’ words offend our ideas of morality and common sense. For example, proverbial wisdom tells us that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.…

The Hebrew word for angel is “malach,” which means “messenger.” In the long history of Christianity, God has sent many messengers to speak his Word to the church. Sometimes these messengers were the spiritual being we call angels. But most of the time these messengers were human, men who lived and died…