Taylor Mertins

The world will tell us again and again and again that we are not worthy, that there is always more to do. Christmas tells us the opposite. God makes us worthy. There is nothing we have to do, except open our hands to the gift that is Jesus Christ. That is how the Good News works, it’s *good* news.

It’s rather extraordinary that we know the name of the Lord’s mother! And yet, even more extraordinary is the fact that God chose to come and make time for us, redeeming out time, and making possible the salvation that disrupts time forever. Our time is so redeemed because Mary’s son is Immanuel, God with us. No matter what. Whether we are on the naughty list or the nice list, God is with us. Whet...

Joy is what happens when we dare to trust the Lord to do for us that which we cannot do on our own. Joy is what happens when we are able to look at what we have, and had, and know that all of it, the good and the bad, came as a gift. Something rather than nothing. Joy is what happens whenever we encounter water in the midst of the deserts of our grief.

The promise of Advent is that new life always starts in the dark, whether in the womb or the tomb, whether underground or the lost being found; new life starts in the dark.

It was almost 100 years ago when Christians across the globe needed the first Christ the King Sunday. They needed a day set apart to reflect on how the Lordship of Christ outshines even the most devious dictators and the most devastating depressions. Today, we need it just as much. We need Christ the King Sunday because it reminds us, beats upon us, that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. It for...

Do you know what the mission of the church is? Our denomination says we exist to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. That’s fine. But it betrays the central claim of the Gospel: God has already transformed the world in the person of Jesus Christ! The kingdom we live in is based upon what God has done and is doing for us, rather than upon what we do. The church doesn...

Blessed are those whose lives are an absolute mess, for God does God’s best with broken pieces. Blessed are the humiliated, for they are on the journey to humility. Blessed are the broken-hearted, for grace falls through the cracks. Blessed are those who grieve, for what is grief if not love persevering? Blessed are the last, least, lost, little, and dead, for to them the kingdom has been prepared...

Whatever Christianity is, it is at least the discovery of friends we did not know we had. Friends who are possible only because Jesus has gathered us in for God’s great parable to the world we call the church. Friends who are willing to carry us to Jesus over and over again because Jesus is the difference that makes all the difference.

Flannery O’ Connor once said, “Most people come to the Church by means the church does not allow, else there would be no need their getting to her at all.” Which is just another way of saying that Jesus meets us where we are, not where we ought to be. But then Jesus takes us somewhere else.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, not our money or lack of it, not our possessions or our minimalism, not our goodness or our badness, not our lives and not even our deaths. We might not see it, or even believe it, but there is greater wealth in the salvation of Christ than in every bank account in the world. And it’s ours for free. We can’t earn it. We don’t deserve it...

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the claim that salvation does not come to us by natural inclination, by birthright, by earning, or deserving. Salvation is a gift from God. And because it is a gift it can only be received on God’s terms, not ours. The church is the witness to the gift of salvation, reminding us time and time again what we have been given even though we deserve abso...

Faithful prayers are those that offer us up to possibility because prayer is the ultimate recognition that we are not in charge. Prayer deconstructs all of our preconceived notions about what is, and isn’t possible. Prayer reminds us that God is God, and we are not.

The strange and bewildering proclamation of the Gospel is that you can put your whole bank account in the offering plate and God will not love you any more or any less. God loves you no matter what. The Good News really is that good. It's so good, in fact, that we can't help ourselves from changing because of it.

Jesus is the shepherd to risks it all on the one who is lost. Jesus is the Samaritan who lavishly helps those down in the ditch. Jesus is the Father who forgives before apologies are offered. And Jesus is the unjust steward, the dishonest manager, who fudges our accounts when we don’t deserve it.

It’s too easy, at times, to lose sight of how weird it is to be part of the church. For many years we have endeavored to appear as appealing as possible to those outside. Whereas the real test of whether or not the church is the church is if we are sufficiently unacceptable to the world. We are not yet another club or social gathering that provides a needed distraction from all that is wrong in th...

In the kingdom of God the new economy of grace is weird. It is everything for nothing. It is forgiveness, and mercy, and love. It is Good News for people drowning in bad news. If Joseph was willing to forgive his brothers after all they had done, if Jesus was willing to return to his disciples who abandoned him and denied him, just imagine what we can do with the new economy of grace. It could be...

Jacob is a no good dirty rotten scoundrel. He runs from all his problems all while making more problems for himself and his family. He’s a liar, and a thief, and a cheat. There’s nothing holy about this heel grabbing son of a... Isaac. Why then do we read of this man and his wandering heart? Why do we lift these verses from the strange new world of the Bible and say, “Thanks be to God”? Why does G...

Life is a long game of hide and seek, but God always wins.

We only learn what it means to be Christians by watching other Christians within the church and doing what they do. To be Christian means being together. Which, of course, isn’t easy. Particularly because we believe in telling the truth, even to those we love.

God beckons us to the altar so that we might be altered. We are invited not because we are good, or virtuous, or even right. We are brought before the throne of the Lord because we are not as we should be, and God has a habit of making something of our nothing.

The waters of baptism wash away any notion of our being defined by our faults and our failures. Every drop of baptismal water contains an ocean of grace and mercy and love deep and wide enough to engulf the entirety of everything that ever was or will be. In baptism, the heavens are torn apart, the past, present, and future are confused in the best possible way, and the Lord declares, “you are my...

If grace really is as amazing as we sing it is, then we are going to be surprised by some of the people we discover in Heaven.

At its best, and I mean at its very best, worship reminds us, and begs us to realize, that we, even us, we are included in the myriads of the thousands in John’s vision. Worship tells us over and over again that there is nothing we can do for good or ill that can stop God from getting what God wants. Worship gives us Jesus.

Oddly enough, even with its bizarre images and confounding cassations, Revelation is an odyssey of encouragement. It tells us who we are, who God is, and what is the world is going on in the world. To put it simply, it tells us the truth.

The proclamation of Holy Week, the entry into the city, the meal on Thursday, the cross on Friday, the empty tomb on Sunday, they run counter to just about everything else in life - they don’t give us ways to be better human beings, they aren’t commandments about how to make the world more bearable. They are not about what we do, but are instead about what is done to us. And that what has a name:...