In Sermons:

On The Cutting Edge

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 28, 2025

The Holy Spirit, wielding the Word like a scalpel, cuts away our games and pretensions and rationalizations and shows us what we are really like. Jesus is the reason why the knowledge of our sinfulness does not lead us to despair.

My Dad was in the foreign service when I was a kid and my family was stationed in Argentina for a couple of years. We lived in a city called Rosario, about 4 hours north of Buenos Aires. The weather was fabulous, the schools were good, the streets were safe, and there was a club with an Olympic ...read more

Scripture: Hebrews 4:12-15

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

Re-Centralization

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 28, 2025

It is only in Jesus Christ that we are reconciled to God, to each other, to creation, and to truth itself.

Paul wrote this letter to the church at Colossae because they were in danger of being turned into Gnostics. Now, we aren’t in danger of turning into Gnostics, are we? I mean, how many of you woke up this morning and said to yourself, “you know, this Gnosticism stuff - I think I’d really better look ...read more

Scripture: Colossians 1:15-23

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

The Vision Thing

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 28, 2025

Living for Jesus means seeing him as clearly as possible and longing to be as much like him as possible.

Peter was not big on writing letters. He certainly couldn’t hold a candle to Paul, whose pen never seemed to stop, sending letters all over Asia, explaining, encouraging, correcting. But of course being under house arrest made letter writing the best way to keep in touch with all the churches Paul ...read more

Scripture: 2 Peter 1:16-21

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

Rocky Road

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 28, 2025

The first step in our becoming ambassadors for Christ is to accept that the road of Christian discipleship is often a rocky one.

Ambassadors get VIP treatment: first class seats and free champagne, red carpets and limos, valet parking and 24-hour room service. Ambassadors get interviews with world leaders and press mavens. An ambassadorship is a class act, the apex of the diplomat’s career, the privileged crown on a lifetime ...read more

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

Plain Brown Wrapper

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 28, 2025

The death of our egos showcases the life of Christ.

Under the central dome of the great basilica of St. Marks in Venice is a treasure called the Pala d’Oro, a masterpiece of medieval goldsmithing, ten feet long and almost five feet tall. It has eighty enamel plaques on it, many looted from Constantinople after the 4th Crusade. They illustrate scenes ...read more

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:1-12

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

A Long Campaign

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 16, 2025

In God’s time we will see the results of what we have done, even if someone else completes the work, just as Timothy built on Paul’s foundation.

My own graduation from high school and departure to college is so long ago and far away that I can hardly remember it. On the other hand, I graduated from seminary almost 30 years later, and so it’s much closer. There’s a lot the two have in common: leaving behind the old familiar, and going off ...read more

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

Back To The Basics

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 16, 2025

Whether we are little ones or big kids, we belong to Jesus, too. We are weak, and he is strong.

When I first started seminary, I heard a rumor that shocked me. I heard that Christian ministry is a very competitive field, that churches and pastors compete with one another, and that within churches individuals compete for position and status. But after I thought it over, I realized that of ...read more

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

Living In God

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 14, 2025

Even the most noble and selfless kind of human love is inadequate to define God’s love. Because human love and divine love are different.

When I was a little girl going to Sunday School, and used to come home with questions, my mother was in kind of a dilemma. You see, she didn’t believe in God. She thought there was a lot of good stuff in the Bible, as long as you left God out of it. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto ...read more

Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

The Christmas Spirit

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 14, 2025

How much of our activity at this season owes more to the Christmas spirit than to the spirit of Christ?

The eternally liberal town of Eugene, Oregon lost their cross a few years ago. It used to overlook the town from Skinner Butte, but after a heated battle it was replaced by an American flag. This year the diversity police focused on a new target. The Christmas tree in the Hult Center for the ...read more

Scripture: 1 John 4:1-6

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

An Appropriate Reaction

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 14, 2025

Our freedom comes with a price. We are no longer our own. And the only appropriate response is to do what God wants from us in return.

Hostages have been much in the news these days, for good reason. The most horrific fate is that of the Israelis kidnapped in October 2023. Many have died; some are still in captivity. Only a merciful God can heal the wounds of the ones released. May that same merciful God bring about the release of ...read more

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:15-23, Psalm 116:12-17, Amos 5:21-23

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

Twenty-Four Carat Faith

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 11, 2025

We don’t have to suffer for our faith. But we do have to live for it. And if we never grate against a sinful world, how true to Christ are we being?

Peter is one of my favorite Bible characters. He’s the one who always opens his mouth before his brain has switched into gear and that’s a failing I have a lot of sympathy with. Remember when the disciples were alone on the boat out in the middle of the Sea of Galilee and they saw Jesus walking ...read more

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3-9

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

Designer Immortality

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 11, 2025

The so-called “immortality” scientists are trumpeting is a counterfeit, a cheap knock-off to deceive us into thinking we’ve overcome death. Don’t be taken in.

For much of her life, Jeanne Calment’s big claim to fame was that she sold pencils to Vincent van Gogh in her youth. But by the time she died in August of 1997, this charming Frenchwoman had made her way into the Guinness Book of World Records for a grander accomplishment. She had become the ...read more

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3-5

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

Spiritual Anatomy

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 10, 2025

There is a space in Christ’s body that only you can fill. Some part of his hand, his eye, or his heart is missing when you are not there

A couple of weeks ago, I used the image of a jigsaw puzzle to illustrate that the gift of God takes some assembling before it starts to take shape in our lives. That is why you were given a piece of a jigsaw puzzle on the way in to the sanctuary this morning. The gift of God’s spirit comes in ...read more

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:14-26

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

A Most High Calling

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 10, 2025

No matter where we labor, the Most High himself has called each one of us to the highest calling of all: to be saints living in fellowship with Jesus Christ.

I know that most of you aren’t as addicted to news and talk shows as I am. But it may be that you’ve heard some of the talk about when we’re going to hear some calls for sacrifice from the administration, something on the order of the kind of sacrifice that was asked of the American people during ...read more

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed

God's Country?

Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jul 10, 2025

America is not Jerusalem. American is not the new Israel. Our country is not protected as Israel was. But WE, the church of Jesus Christ, are.

Is America Jerusalem? The Puritans in Massachusetts thought of their colony as a “city on a hill”, a great experiment in godliness which would shine like a beacon to all the nations as a testimony to the transforming power of God. But not everyone came to this country for religious reasons. Many ...read more

Scripture: Psalm 125:1

Denomination: Presbyterian/Reformed