ReNew Ames Messages

God is planning a wedding! The Lamb will marry his followers! Yeah, sounds weird. It's a freaking metaphor. Marriage is about union. So this metaphor is about a union of Jesus and his followers. And it's about a union between heaven and earth. This is a vision of God finally putting things back together again. It ends in a garden city and you know what other story is set in a garden? The very firs...

So...judgment is coming! Armageddon, bowls of wrath, and the great prostitute - woo hoo! What will judgment look like? John seems to be saying two things. First, God is going to take away everything gained by the ways of the empire - gained by taking advantage of people and creation. What happens when your stuff gets taken away? Weeping and gnashing of teeth. Second, John seems to be saying that G...

Every healthy relationship simultaneously develops more connectedness and more independence. Parent - Child. Friend - Friend. Spouse - Spouse. Jesus - Peter. The story of Peter being told in a vision to take and eat what had previously been labeled as unclean for the people in his culture is a story of removing barriers that previously were in place to keep order. It isn't that Peter had been doin...

So at the time this books was being written, the churches in Asia Minor would have been witnessing a great deal of suffering and oppression, both around them and within their communities. They would have looked around at the world and thought, "What is going on in the world?" We ask that same question today, as we witness the constant violence and oppression and brokenness everywhere. John's respo...

Chapter 8 of Revelation - the 7th seal is broken. We expect the world to be put back together again. Not yet. Instead, we get silence in heaven. We live in a noisy world - but is anyone truly listening? Think about what it's like when you're listened to. You get a sense that your life matters. You get a sense of dignity. When we pray, heaven is silent and God listens. This world matters to God. Th...

When you experience knee pain and you go to the doctor, what do they do? They diagnose the problem and find a solution that will help ease the pain. They try to get to the bottom of what's really wrong so you can heal. That's essentially what we have going on here in chapter 6. We expect God's plan to be enacted - we expect the world to be put back together. Nope. We get violence. All the evil aro...

This is a continuation of the invitation to worship. John sees that the one on the throne has a scroll that is sealed. This is like an architect with the plans for a great building. Only the one who can enact the plans can open the scroll. John weeps because there is no one worthy to open the scroll. Israel couldn't do it and neither can any of us. So, apparently God's plan to renew the world and...

Worship is something larger than we expect. When we worship together we're joining in on a reality that is already taking place: all of creation is giving honor and glory to God, is already worshiping. When we meditate on creation we eventually get to the awe inducing question, "Who did this?" Worship gives us a center. There's a lot of talk about the throne - an occupied throne. The throne is in...

This is the famous hot, cold, lukewarm letter. Often this is portrayed as hot being good, cold and lukewarm being bad. You're either on or you're off, there's no in between. But what if it's something different? Let's talk about the place: Laodicea. They had no water source of their own. They got their water from two different places. One city nearby had a hot spring. One had a cold spring. So, on...

Philadelphia. There's some really cool stuff here about the city being a gateway or a doorway to the east. Jesus is essentially saying, "I've opened a door for you. Will you walk through it?" He's inviting the church to partner with God in making the world like God's kingdom - love, grace, healing, etc. We're taught to open doors for ourselves, to make things happen, to create our own destiny, to...

Pentecost: the Spirit was present in the midst of Jesus' followers, and they preached, prayed, and served together. We think of the Spirit coming down to be in the midst of the people, but what more can be applied to our current existence from this story? The Kingdom of God is here, now, and the Spirit is among us as we go through every day. So what will we do in this Kingdom? Well, hopefully we a...

Sardis was an unconquerable city that got complacent and was conquered on two different occasions. Among the people of the church community of Sardis, there were those who were around the worship practices of the followers of Cybele, the mother goddess. The goddess of procreation and productivity. Part of their worship involved cultic rituals, with people wearing robes in the temple and cutting th...

To start this one, here's a little context on the community in Thyatira. It was a blue-collar manufacturing city. Lots of trades and trade associations. These associations were tied to the worship and temple practices of other religions. If you wanted a license for your business you would have to join one of these trade associations. That would have been difficult for these early Jesus followers....

This letter spends a lot of time in the context of the different religious temples and gods and goddesses, and certain practices that some folks in the community participated in. The Nicolations were a group within this church who chose to view other religions' practices as fine to incorporate into their daily life. Essentially a blending of other religious practices from their surrounding communi...

Letter to Smyrna. Oh boy, here's a real pick-me-up. A summary of the letter: words from Jesus to a real church. "Hey, I know your afflictions and your poverty. I know things aren't going the way you would like them to go. I know it feels as though you've lost control, like you've lost everything - yet, you are rich! I know you're being marginalized. It's gonna get worse before it gets better...if...

Sometimes we like to think of Jesus people as the "hands and feet of Jesus." Or, we think of Jesus people as the presence of Jesus in a lost and broken world so loved by God. Those are good ideas. Scriptural ideas. But they can also be dangerous if that's the only way we think of Jesus. What happens when something goes wrong? What happens when people abuse power? What happens when Jesus people coz...

Easter is filled with hope and excitement and love. That's how Holy Week started for the disciples. After three years of walking the streets with Jesus and spending so many hours listening to him teach and heal and proclaim that the Kingdom of God was near, and that it would be here, they watched him ride into Jerusalem on a donkey with the crowd shouting "hosanna!" But it only took a few days for...

We celebrate Palm Sunday as the beginning of Holy Week. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, and the people celebrate because they see Him as their soon-to-be triumphant conqueror of the empire they were living under. There are many groups of people who would have had different perspectives of this event, depending on their age and status in that society, but the overall mood portrayed is celeb...

Paul speaks to a group in Athens, at a place called Mars Hill, and describes God in a way that intrigues the people. He uses apophatic theology, which examines what God is NOT, rather than describing what God IS. By highlighting what and who God is not, Paul further illuminates what and who God is. God cannot be contained in a building or an community. We can encounter God in spaces that are outsi...

At the core of its theme and purpose, Lent is a journey towards the cross, or a journey of preparation. A key element of preparation is discipline. Knowing this, Lent is a journey into discipline, as we proceed forward through 40 days of preparing for the cross. There are so many spiritual practices that we can engage in; thinking specifically of the season of Lent, we can point our attention to t...

In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the social barriers preventing the tax collector from approaching the presence of God in the temple didn't deter him from recognizing what he had done wrong and coming before God in humility. While the Pharisee was taking every step to do things just the right way and go above and beyond to have his actions be visible, the tax collector was jus...

The story that is traditionally labeled "The Prodigal Son" is mislabeled; a more accurate name would be "The Ridiculously Compassionate Father." Both sons in this story are the actual worst, from their deep disrespect and disregard for their father, to their continued bad attitudes and unrepentant spirits. But their father continues to extend love and acceptance, to the point of embarrassing himse...

We've built our lives around the avoidance of suffering. When Jesus told the disciples that he would face betrayal and death, they were incredulous. But Jesus pointed out to them, "you're thinking of human things instead of divine things." Jesus said if people wanted to follow him, they would have to voluntarily suffer for the benefit of the world. We know that suffering can bring great things. We...

So let's recap real quick: Jonah took the message from God to the Ninevites, but delivered it halfheartedly. To his surprise, the entire city repented and changed their ways. This made Jonah angry; he believed that Ninevah did not deserve to be redeemed. That leads us to the end of the story, or rather, the open-ended question: what did Jonah do next? The Ninevites didn't matter to Jonah. He would...

Sometimes we hear the voice of God for a while and then it fades out of our awareness. But when we keep seeking that voice, when we stop and pray and reconnect with the Divine, that voice will return. And more than likely, the voice will tell us to "Go!" After all, the Divine is a God of action. This book of Jonah is a story about a God who does the unexpected, about a God who can't be measured, a...