Forest Hills Mennonite Church

Beginning in Romans 9, Paul spends 3 chapters exploring the complex and painful history of Israel, the animosity that exists between Gentiles and Jews, and how God's mercy prevails over everything.

What's the role of human effort in God's plan for creation? There's a longstanding tension with Christian thought: some are deeply skeptical of any human effort, while others act like the well-being of the whole creation rests squarely in our own two hands. In Romans 8, Paul gives us a more nuanced and complex picture. 

Romans 7 might be one of the most challenging passages in the New Testament. An early church leader named Origen described it as if "Paul were moving between unmarked rooms using hidden passages." Paul's understanding of the Law, Sin, and God's rescue all come crashing together, helping us see the depths of human dysfunction and the all-encompassing love of God in Christ Jesus. 

It's easy to assume that Jesus came preaching love and grace, but Paul wrote about judgment, wrath, and even Hell. A closer look at the New Testament, however, thoroughly scrambles that caricature. In Romans 5, we see Paul make an audacious claim: that Jesus is better at saving than Adam was at sinning.

When Paul talks about sin, is he talking about bad behavior, human brokenness, or something else? Romans 2 opens a window into a complex line of Paul's thought: how human sins unleash Sin—a power that in turn enslaves humanity.

At the heart of Paul's message is vision of the Good News—or Gospel—of God. In and through Jesus Christ, God has acted decisively to rescue and redeem creation. But how does Paul's Gospel relate with the Gospels, or even Jesus' Gospel? 

Why does the Letter to the Romans exist? Why did Paul take time to write to this group of people, most of whom he had never, who lived far away from where he spent his time? One reason might be that Paul recognized that because of what God had done in Christ Jesus, Christians throughout the world were being knit together by God's grace. 

As we dive into the Letter to the Romans, we borrow an idea from Scot McKnight and read it backwards, beginning with the greetings in chapter 16. What we discover is a diverse community—or even a community of communities—united by their shared allegiance to Jesus.

As we take our worship into the beauty of God's creation, we reflect on how we experience God through each of our five senses. 

After a summer of talking all about food, Pastor Jon finally brings the real deal, demonstrating  how we can make conscious choices to welcome everyone to the table—just as God in Christ welcomes us. (If you prefer a video version of this message, you can find it on YouTube )

After the resurrection, Jesus gets invited to another meal—and once again changes everything.

Around the table, Jesus offers the possibility to transform everything, even the very way we make sense of the world. 

The second most famous meal Jesus attends is the miraculous feeding of 5,000 men, plus women and children. Right in the midst of a deserted place, Jesus invites everyone to God's great banquet and forms a new community that transcends every difference.

An unexpected—and uninvited—guest shows up at a meal with Jesus, turning the entire event on its head and revealing the surprising heart of the Gospel. 

In Jesus' day, every meal was understood as the entire world in miniature. Questions of politics and religion were constant dining companions. Even something as simple as a midday snack could provoke significant controversy—and the arguments continue to reverberate 2,000 years later.

One of the most famous dinner scenes in Luke's Gospel comes in the midst of a short story Jesus tells. A young son abandons his family (after taking his half of the inheritance) and ends up very, very hungry.

Jesus invites his first followers—some fishermen—to join him in his ministry. As he does so, he steps into the complex worlds of subsistence economics, imperial occupation, and tense interpersonal relationships. All of it of it comes crashing together when Jesus sits down at a table for dinner.  

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus is led into the wilderness. In the midst of human hunger, Jesus confronts the reality of evil and clarifies his own sense of calling.

"Throughout Luke's Gospel," Robert Karris writes, "Jesus is always at a meal, going to a meal, or coming from a meal." This summer, we're joining as houseguests at some of the tables Jesus visited, beginning with the woman who taught him table manners—his mother, Mary. 

Long before social media companies started fracking our attention, a French philosopher named Simone Weil was exploring attention as a spiritual practice—the substance of our love for God and neighbor. 

Worrying about the effects of new technologies on society is probably about as old as society itself. At the same time, it's entirely possible that the technological moment we're all in makes it much harder to give our attention to others and to the world. Thankfully, Jesus shows us a better way. 

What has your attention at the moment? How do you experience your own ability to attend to others and the world around you? Many people see our current culture as marked by a profound deficit of attention. If that's true, Christian tradition has deep wisdom for how we might begin to heal our ability to attend. 

After our journey through Lent, we arrive at our destination: the resurrection of Jesus. It's the dawn of new creation and the formation of a new community.

On the journey toward Jerusalem, the pilgrims sing of being the depths of despair, yet holding onto to hope that with the Lord there is full redemption. Throughout the events of Holy Week, we see how Jesus brings about this long-expected redemption.

Research suggests that even people who manage to stay active don't particularly enjoy exercising... but sometimes music helps. Psalm 129 offers an example how music designed to help us persevere.