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Leaning into the Wilderness
A Sermon originally delivered to Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI Text: Matthew 4:1-17 Immediately after Jesus’ baptism, the claim from the heavens that Jesus is God’s son, Jesus is led to the wilderness to be tempted. While we may see these as different events, they are all tied together in one long narrative…
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One Word for 2015: Wonder
Wonder Few things are more beautiful than to see a person filled with wonder. More often than not it is children that experience this sense of wonder when faced with a world that they are still trying to understand. The capacity to experience wonder is the capacity to be surprised, to be amazed, to understand…
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The Deception of Carols
Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright… *** O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by… *** Away in a manger, no crib for his bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. The stars in…
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Finding Our Way
A sermon originally delivered at Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI. Esther 4:1-17 By now the Kingdom of Judah has been conquered and all the people of any social standing whatsoever have been taken to Babylon in a couple of deportations. The Exile was a pivotal point in the history of the people of…
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From Family Churches to Church Families
Churches love families. We have family nights, family worship, bring families up front and we have pictures of families on our websites and screens in churches. Churches ought to be a good place for families – a place to support families and strengthen them. In many of our churches, families are defined as the mid…
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Fear or Hope?
Sermon originally delivered at Calvary Community Church, New Berlin, WI. Text: Isaiah 36:1-37:7 The Kingdom of Israel has fallen to the Assyrian war machine. The focus now turns more singularly to the kingdom of Judah. Now this is not a match of equals, Assyria is the superpower in the region and Israel and Judah are…
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The Ordinary Ones
Sermon originally preached at Calvary Community Church. Text: 2 Kings 5:1-14 Few things are more delightful to me in this passage, than the fact that this whole event happened, this story was recorded, this whole thing began with the words of a little foreign slave girl. This little slave girl, someone with no social…
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A letter to Martin Luther on Reformation Day
Dear Martin, Here we are, October 31st almost five hundred years after you posted your concerns on the town bulletin board, and the church is more divided than it has ever been. For better or for worse, that date has gone down in the annals of history as the day we broke the church. That…
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Blessed are the Autumn Daisies
Long after the trees have dropped their leaves, and the canopy of green becomes a jagged collection of branches reaching upward toward the disappearing sun, long after the geese have ceased honking and the birds have stopped their morning songs, long after the bushes begin to blaze but are not yet consumed, long after the…
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After God’s Own Heart
A sermon delivered to Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI 2 Samuel 12:1-9 We fast-forwarded quite a bit through the story of scripture. We moved through the book of Judges, which describes the early life of the Israelites in the land. Rather than a unified nation, at first they were a loose confederation of…
Matthew van Maastricht
Shepherd of Souls | Spiritual Director | Psychotherapist
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Matthew van Maastricht 