Taylor Mertins

Paul says the Law brings wrath, but the Gospel sets free. Doing all of the right things, and knowing the right people, and making the right choices, sounds wonderful in principal, but turns out to be impossible. We can’t make ourselves righteous, we can’t rectify ourselves, we can’t redeem ourselves. Thankfully, God is completely caught up in the work of doing things we could never do ourselves by...

Pentecost is the promise that we don't have to build a tower into the sky to get close to God; God has come to us. The arrival of the Holy Spirit means we are no longer defined by our mistakes, but only by God’s grace.

The movement that Jesus begins, the adventure of faith we call church, is constituted by people who know we have all the time in the world, made possible by God’s patience, to challenge the world’s impatience, by cross and resurrection. The gift of the Ascension, of Christ’s ruling at the right hand of God, is the reminder that we can wait and pray. It’s a gift!

Paul writes to the church in Rome that faith comes from what is heard and what it heard comes through the preaching of Christ. The story has the power to change everything. It changed everything for Paul! The man who agreed to the stoning of Stephen now stands surrounded by stones that invoke his proclamation. He is compelled to preach in order to set the people free and bring about the end of rel...

The story of the Gospel is a promise that no one is outside the realm of God’s mercy, that the worst thing is never the last thing, that grace is greater than our sin.

Living for other people is a completely radical and bonkers idea. Getting rid of possessions so that others can benefit is a wild and far cry from how things are supposed to work. Holding all things in common isn’t normal. It’s therefore not surprising that the disciples in Acts constantly find themselves in trouble - the kind of conflicts that John Lewis called good trouble. It’s good trouble bec...

The Gospel has a way of digging itself in, commingling with all of our thoughts about how things are supposed to be. The Good News declares that God has changed everything, we only need to act accordingly. In short - the people are moved to move upon hearing the story. That’s what the word “repent” means after all, it’s a turning or a returning to something. And that something has a name: Jesus.

It’s a confounding image to take in - these ragtag disciples tripping over themselves in the streets, drunk on the Spirit. It must’ve garnered quite the crowd. However, none of the twelve, Peter included, had much to show for themselves. No exceptional credentials, no fabulous degrees from Jerusalem University, no financial capital to invest. They have nothing, really. Nothing except a message. An...

Notice: On Easter, Jesus’ response to the sins of his followers isn’t to berate them or judge them or even damn them. He doesn’t give them a list of things to do, or programs to start, or even prayers to pray. Instead, he just comes back to them, to us, with love. How odd of God. Easter invites us to do nothing more than trust that the Good News really is that good - that God in Christ refuses to...

Perhaps a night like tonight would be easier to handle had Jesus offered himself to the eleven but not to Judas. Maybe it would sit better with us if Jesus had drawn the line between those who are in and those who are out. But no, there’s our Lord caressing the feet of his betrayer, who will shortly use those feet to march out of the room and deliver Jesus to death. Maybe this is Jesus’ way of par...

Karl Barth once said that “To clasp our hands in prayer is a beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” When Jesus enters the holy city the crowds sing their prayer, much like we sing and pray before we come to the Table: Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Do you know what that word means? Hosanna? It means “Save us!” The crowds call for...

That Jesus teaches us how to pray is the wild declaration that God wants us to speak up, to voice our opinion, to ask for God’s intervention. And the claim of prayer is far more astonishing than we make it out to be as we mumble our way through the Lord's Prayer every week - the author of the cosmos listens and acts according to our prayers! Therefore, let us boldly pray prayers that are big enoug...

It’s one thing to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses,” and another thing entirely to add, “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness always comes at a cost - it’s not cheap and it isn’t easy. The hurt we experience is consequential. Therefore, when Jesus teaches us to pray this way, he’s not implying that we should shrug things off as if they don’t mean anything. It’s just that Jesus...

We’ve said the Lord’s Prayer so many times in so many places with so many people that we often no longer think about what we say when we pray. And I think a similar sentiment is true of the Lord’s Supper. How many times have we come forward with our hands outstretched? How many times have we received the grace of God through food and drink? Enough that we know what we’re doing when we do so? The t...

To pray “Your kingdom come” is to be willing to become part of a rather weird gathering of motley, mediocre, and messy people who were once considered outsiders but who have discovered their insiderness in Jesus. And yet, we pray for God’s kingdom to come because it is not yet here in its fullness. It’s the whole “already but not yet” thing. To be Christian is to be unsatisfied with the status quo...

Jesus’ rebuke against practicing our piety publicly, particularly as we enter the season of Lent, it cuts straight to the heart. But sometimes that’s exactly what we need. Our hard-heartedness often renders us convinced that we have to earn our ticket to heaven whereas the crosses on our foreheads reminds us that heaven has already come to us. In the end, we are not called to be good, or virtuous,...

For some reason, we (that is preachers) like to take this miracle, and instead of focusing on it, we focus on Peter. We make our theology into anthropology. Focusing on Peter makes this extraordinary story ordinary, which undermines the miracle that is the Transfiguration! The Gospel isn’t found in Peter cowering on the mountain, and it’s certainly not in the idea of doing good works (which we all...

The Law functions to drive us out of our propensity toward sinful self-sufficiency. That’s why Jesus preaches his offensive sermon. Otherwise, we are doomed to remain exactly as we are. And the Lord doesn’t arrive to keep things the same - the Lord arrives to make all things new. Including us. But there is no resurrection without crucifixion. Hence the expression: The Gospel can only make alive th...

The Gospel does not promise the possible - it deliver the impossible. The Gospel gives what the law demands. That’s why the love of God is strong enough to change things, even us. Or, as Luther put it: God accepts none except the abandoned, makes no one healthy but the sick, gives sight to none but the blind, brings life to none but the dead, and makes no one righteous except sinners.

Blessed are those whose anxieties overwhelm, who can barely muster the strength to make it through a day, for only those in need of help will be helped. Blessed are those who know not is as it should be and who yearn for things not yet seen, for that yearning is what we call hope, and hope does not disappoint. Blessed are those who don’t insist on getting what they deserve, otherwise they just mig...

There’s a big difference, a huge difference, between trying to convince someone of the Gospel, and living according to the Gospel. For, living according to the Gospel, puts us in relationships with people we would otherwise ignore and, because God has a sense of humor, it usually results in someone seeing how we live and then asking, “Why are you the way you are?” And the answer, of course, is Jes...

The Lamb of God brings a kingdom the world doesn’t want - the blood of the Lamb makes a difference and that difference means we are now different. God does not accept the current realities of the world. God is still contending against the powers and the principalities. God will get us to the Promised Land. It’s like God is saying to us today: “Come and see what I can do - come and see what we can...

In the end, becoming and being a Christian is something done to us and for us before it is anything done by us. In other words: faith requires others. Just like baptism. Someone has to hold us, pray over the water, tell us about Jesus and the promise of what he has done, is doing, and will do. Someone has to model that faith, a whole life of faith. Otherwise, we would have no idea what we are bapt...

There’s a story that passes around this time of year every year about a certain pageant and the child who played the innkeeper. For weeks and weeks all the children practiced their positions and their lines, they were ready. But when Christmas Eve arrived, and the little Mary, Joseph, and plastic Jesus arrived at the cardboard cut out entrance to the inn, they knocked on the door and the innkeeper...

The great joy of Christmas is that we do nothing to make it happen - Christmas happens to us. Even the biblical characters that we read and sing about, they are all so wildly passive in the story. They are recipients of God’s grace made manifest in the manger - just like us.