Brewing Theology With Teer Hardy

Mark 9:38-50 September 26, 2021 The methods we follow, proclaim, and serve in Jesus' name may work for us, but the truth is that we do not get to put a trademark on Jesus, and we do not get to copyright the amazing grace we proclaim week after week. Jesus was not interested in squabbling over team affiliation or franchising rights. Instead, Jesus redirected the disciples' attention to something mo...

September 19, 2021 Mark 9:30-37 The disciples' missteps are our missteps. Their feet in the mouth moments of embarrassment are our moments. Their confusing, disorienting, and abrupt mistakes and misreading of Jesus based on their experiences of the world mirror the confusion, disorientation, and abruptness we feel when Jesus calls us away from the ways of this world and invites us, after seeking u...

Mark 8:27-38 As those who seek Christ, we have been freed, along with all of creation, from the burden of perfection knowing Christ has done for us which we have never been able to do. Peter could not see it and still, he was the rock upon which Christ built the church. God continues to work through those who follow Christ today, proclaiming his Lordship over all creation. God continues to work th...

Psalm 125 Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, extending peace that surpasses all understanding to the righteous – the people who follow God’s law, loving God and neighbor perfectly – but also to those of us who depend upon grace being extended to us. Through his life, death, and resurrection not only did Jesus display what peace looked like among the nations and neighbors but by taking our unrigh...

August 8, 2021 Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, Arlington, Virginia 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 We are all like Absalom if Absalom had narrowly avoided that tree and was restored to the Father who loves him. And that is because another King’s Son rode on a royal donkey to a tree. In his body on the tree, on the cross, he suffers the curse that belongs to every David and Absalom, every Goliath,...

2 Samuel 7:1-14a July 18, 2021 David was able to control God just as much as I can prevent the movement of God with a well-placed Bible on a table. No matter how hard David tried, no matter how hard we try we are unable to domesticate, to control, to keep at bay the movement and presence of God. This section of 2 Samuel is titled “God’s Covenant with David” with God being the center of the story a...

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 Israel's story in 1 and 2 Samuel is one of change. The cycle of the story in 1 and 2 Samuel from Israel's defeat and loss of the Ark to the Philistines defeat and Israel's reclaiming of the Ark does not bring to reader, it did not bring Israel back to the original starting point. The story may have pushed Israel into a new physical location with a new King legitimized buy by...

June 6, 2021 Mark 3:20-35 Throughout his ministry, beginning in Capernaum, continuing to the cross when he told a disciple and his mother, “Here is your mother. Woman here is your son,” Jesus created a new family, and frankly, it looked and continues to look different than many expect. Those that were once out are now in. Those unable to be healed are now whole. Those relegated to the outskirts of...

Pentecost 2021 Acts 2:1-21 On that Pentecost we were all there. All of us. All of you. And that is how the church was formed and sent - all people, engulfed by God’s amazing grace, not because of their merit rather because of the faithfulness of the One the church proclaimed then and proclaims today. At Pentecost, using every language known so that there would be no mistake, no mistranslation, no...

Mount Olivet United Methodist Church Luke 24:36b-48 The disciples had witnessed first hand the work Jesus had been engaged in and the Gospels tell us early on that they believed. They believe after having received physical confirmation. The disciples believed enough to give up their lives and follow Jesus, an itinerant rabbi, for three years, and at every turn along the way physical signs were bei...

The cross is ultimately where the Palm Sunday procession leads. While the might and power of Pilate’s procession would lead to the seat of power, Jesus, the donkey riding Savior, would ultimately end up being put to death. Jesus, riding a borrowed colt, is making clear that he is not the Messianic king the crowds expected. There would be no violent overthrow of the Roman Empire. His disciples stil...

Regardless of where we have been worshiping over the past year, we, the church, Christ’s called and gathered body, are resurrection people. We do not believe that sin and death and the hopelessness of the valley of dry bones hold the last word. This has been difficult to remember of the past year, because, frankly, death and dry bones have been part of our everyday life. Even if you have somehow m...

As the United Methodist Church’s communion liturgy states, suggesting Peter was right, “It is a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give to give thanks,” to give praise to God. That is to give praise to God in Christ. What we see here in this theophany, is that Christ is the Maker of heaven and earth, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, and that same one has promised that...

Jesus Christ is the Hope of the world. Every day we place hope in one another to get through the day, live as a community, and care for one another, and yet, Jesus tells us, and we see in his ministry that to follow him means our hope rests in him and nowhere else. This may sound lofty or church of me to say, but when we proclaim Jesus Christ to be Lord, placing our whole trust in his grace, we ar...

Baptism of the Lord - Acts 19:1-17, Year B In the waters of our baptism, God has clothed us in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and given us a full pardon. The baptism offered by John was not able to do this and if we think today that the person doing the sprinkling, pouring, or dunking has any control over what is happening in this holy moment we are wholly mistaken. Professor James Torrance put...

Mark 13:24-37 We find ourselves in a time of already and not yet. The Kingdom of God is here, inaugurated in the Christmas manger we look toward, and not yet fully realized as we await Christ's return. As Advent people, we are doorkeepers and people of the watch. Waiting seems more intense this year, as we wait in the pandemic, waiting for a vaccine, waiting for the day when masks a necessary acce...

November 15, 2020 Ephesians 4:1-16 The unity we see is already present. The peace we long for is here. The absence of division and fraction is here. It is just like Jesus says it is, like a treasure hidden in a field, buried in your backyard. Just because you do not realize it’s there. Just because you refuse to believe it’s there. Just because you won’t risk looking like a fool and go digging up...

Do you have swagger and confidence? What if I told you that swagger and confidence were traits of followers of Jesus? But... that swagger doesn't come from where you think it does. Philippians 3:4b-12 Get full access to Brewing Theology with Teer Hardy at teerhardy.substack.com/subscribe

We now live in the realest world, already transformed by Christ. Church, at its best, is just renewing our minds once a week to realize what Christ has already accomplished in spite of, and for, us. The transformation we seek and the transformation we experience does not come as the result of our greatness or ability to transform ourselves. To not be conformed to this world and instead being trans...

July 26, 2020 Romans 8:26-39 “Who will condemn us? Who is against us? Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul continues, “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” Jesus told his followers that the extravagance of God’s love, manifested in the Kingdom of God, is like that o...

Romans 8:1-11 Paul’s point is that sin - manifested by “peril…famine...sword...” - has been defeated by the cross of Christ. To live according to the Spirit is to live with the free confidence and joy that all that stands against God has already been defeated. By the Grace of God, we are free to set aside the agenda of life in the flesh - life consumed by us verse them, inequality and injustice, h...

Matthew 10:40-42 Compassion and mercy are the model given to us by Jesus for loving and welcoming every person who comes to us in His name. The difficult task is that it will take more than a little bit of grace to open the doors of the church that have been closed to so many people - the LGBTQ+ community, single or divorced adults, those who haven’t opened a Bible in decades or ever. Then there a...

The message of Pentecost is that everything has been done. Done for everyone. The Holy Spirit at Pentecost, using every language known so that there would be no mistake, no mistranslation, no nuance missed, or nonverbal misconstrued came so that those present and us today might trust, we might believe, so that we will have faith grounded in the hard to believe, impossible and yet all too real prom...

When I was a kid, like many of my friends, I was the proud owner of a rock tumbler. A rock tumbler allowed us to take a variety of rocks we found in the neighborhood and polish them to the point that the rocks were like gems. As a kid all we needed were a few rocks from the neighbor’s driveway, some polishing grit, and a little bit of patience. This recipe for success allowed us to (at least in ou...

The culmination of the Emmaus story is found in the disciples being able to see the Risen Lord in the breaking of bread, but they are unable to see the Risen Lord without Jesus’ Bible study to end all Bible studies – explaining how the entire Old Testament is actually about him. For us, as followers of Christ, we believe God’s Plan A has always been Jesus and the revelation of the coming Messiah,...