Haverhill Commons Church

Have you ever noticed that when it's very dark, noises sound louder? Or that it’s harder to tell what’s real and what isn’t? That’s our brain trying to keep us safe by increasing our fear. And when we say things are “dark” we don’t always mean a dark room or the darkness of night. Sometimes the whole world feels shrouded in a kind of gloomy darkness. When we find ourselves in the darkness, even if...

Human beings are highly resistant to change. Change often involves embracing an unknown future and often, we fear what we don’t know and therefore, we fear change. When we fear change it becomes hard to move on from a miserable job or end an unhealthy relationship. We refuse to loosen our control over our children as they grow. God appears to Moses in the burning bush as change itself. A fire—the...

One of the things that gets lost in the coming of Jesus is the fact that the people of God had been waiting a long time for a Messiah. We’re not talking about waiting for Christmas morning to come again… we’re talking about waiting hundreds of years. How much longer could the people of God cling to the dim light of promises written hundreds, probably a thousand years prior?  How long until they be...

Variations of “do not fear”, “do not be afraid”, and “fear not” appear more than 100 times in the pages of scripture—it’s clearly something that God wants to address, and it’s clearly one of the things we’ll struggle with most in life.   We live in a world that pours fuel on our anxieties so that we stay in a state of perpetual fear. What should be healthy, helpful fears can grow into a gigantic s...

Mark structured the first half of his gospel so that we would arrive at this moment of truth. The disciples have seen and heard enough. They should be able to answer the question that Jesus posed to them. “Who do people say that I am?” Peter had been taught that the Messiah would be a royal figure, the offspring of King David, whom God would empower to deliver Israel from her enemies. The Messiah...

When you think about your life and the ways you move through the world, would you say that you see yourself as the main character? If so, what does that mean for how you view those around you? Are you so focused on your own chances to stand in the spotlight that you forget to shine a light on the needs of others? Or do you relegate yourself to the role of background character in everyone else’s li...

It’s easier to claim to be virtuous, than be virtuous. It’s easier to talk the talk than walk the walk. And that's what Jesus was talking about in this passage—the discrepancy between what we project on the outside and what’s actually going on in our hearts. Jesus was highlighting one of the big problems with rules that govern external behavior. It gives you, and everyone around you, the feeling t...

Wealthy people, poor people, kids, adults, progressives, conservatives… we all get hungry. Using their stomachs as a common denominator, Jesus was teaching them that their needs united them in solidarity with every other person. And if we can see that what another person needs is the same thing that we need, it has the power to awaken our compassion for that person. Recognizing our common humanity...

We like to suppose we control of our lives, but if you’ve ever found yourself outdoors in a storm, you realize just how small and helpless we really are—completely at the mercy of a storm so much bigger and more powerful than anything we can handle. This story is also about a storm, but it’s a storm raging inside of a person. This man in Mark 5 lived among the tombs, possessed by demons. We don’t...

Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves can get in the way of what is actually possible. We sometimes assume our problems are not big enough compared to what else is happening in the world.  Or, we may believe we're not worthy or deserving of God's love and care.  Maybe you think if you're honest about what you've been struggling with others will judge you or think you're weak. These kinds of stor...

What is a parable? Parables are stories thrown alongside real life to illustrate or explain something. It’s a story with a lesson, a creative way to make a point, a mirror to help us see ourselves more clearly.  At the end of chapter 4 Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does n...

According to Jesus’ family, he was, “out of his mind”, beside himself, not seeing things clearly. The religious leaders also thought he was “out of his mind” and were threatened by ruling breaking and challenges to their authority. The two groups of people who should have been the most on board with Jesus, the religious leaders and his own family, wanted to stop him. Whether out of fear or pride,...

In his gospel, Mark is purposefully stringing seemingly random and unrelated stories together and in doing so, invites us into the interpretive process.  He wants us to not examine these stories in isolation but in relationship to one another to see for ourselves the bigger picture he is painting.  This bigger picture of course is a picture of Jesus, who he was, what he did, how he did it, and why...

In Mark chapter 1, Jesus is a disruptor. He’s not merely tweaking the system, he’s re-writing it, stirring the pot, unsettling the status quo. It’s clear here that Jesus has authority to restore not just one aspect of our brokenness but every aspect. We see him healing bodies. Restoring spirits. Bringing people back into community. Upending systems of exclusion. Terrifying those who benefit from t...

In the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, Mark declares, that Jesus is the gospel, or in every day English, the good news. The word “gospel” is that the Romans, the ones who ruled Judea in the time of Jesus, had already been using that same word for years.  In the Roman world, when they pronounced a gospel, messengers were sent throughout the empire to share the “good news” that a new Roman Emperor h...

Though the Israelites had been delivered from Egypt, Pharaoh’s economy of never-ending work, greed, and oppression had formed and patterned their relationship to work. We live in economy like that of Pharaoh’s—an economy governed by the almighty dollar and not by generosity, justice, and mercy. In Isaiah 65, we see God’s hopes for our work. Work is meant for our good and for the common good.  As w...

Misión de Caridad was formed to break the cycle of poverty for displaced women and children on the Mexico side of the United States border by educating and empowering families to build healthy lives of purpose within self-reliant communities.  When families come to the border, they often settle on land in an area near Misión de Caridad’s facility. The streets are dirt. Families construct houses ou...

Revelation 7 gives us a glimpse of what worship could look like when we get to heaven. Here, the church isn’t plagued by debates over different worship styles and practice or what’s the “right way” to worship. The image presented is one of both diversity and unity. It’s not just people from a few nations, or just those who speak Greek and Hebrew, it’s representatives from every nation, every tribe...

It important to look forward and visualize what we hope will happen. When I was a teacher, we would set goals for our classes and students. Knowing where we wanted to be at the end of the year helped us make decisions about what to prioritize during the year. Being able to see our destination helped us actually get there. Leading up to Micah 4, we see there’s an army at the gates and corrupt leade...

There is no doubt the world is a place of great need, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the extent and complexity of that need.  It's hard to know where to even begin.  Can do we end hunger?  Can we fix unjust systems?  Can we save the world?   Only God can heal us and make whole what we have broken. God demonstrated this on the cross. Instead of creation ending in death, a new path was opened....

We’re kicking off a new summer sermon series called Spoiler Alert: God’s Story Rules.  We are going to explore the end, or perhaps the culmination, of God’s story.  We will talk about the ways that knowing the trajectory of God’s story informs how we think and live now.  What’s the reason we do anything? The end of God’s story, the last pages of Revelation, give us some reasons.   The picture we s...

We all tend to overestimate our abilities. For example, 93% of drivers think they’re above average drivers. But what’s that based on? How do we arrive at these conclusions? Similarly, do we overestimate our ability to know and understand how God works? Maybe we’ve defaulted to think God works in predictable ways. Or, maybe we think God doesn’t, can’t, and won’t work in other ways. In Acts 9, the L...

In his book Transitions, Bill Bridges notes that when we’re in the middle of change, we’re more aware of how little control we have over our circumstances. Yet in those moments when we’re the most uncertain about what will happen next, we can affirm with more certainty the things that won’t change. In other words, we might not know what will happen today, tomorrow, or a year from now—but we can kn...

We’ve all experienced transitions. You start a new job, you move from elementary school to middle school, a relationship ends, another begins. Your daughter goes off to college. Your hair starts turning gray.  Even something as simple as your favorite pizza place going out of business—all transitions that involve change and loss and disorientation.  How well have you navigated your own life transi...

We’re all more comfortable interacting with people who are like us. Often when we encounter difference, which can lead to the belief that they’re not just different—they’re wrong. And then next thing you know, the world is divided into us and them. We can become so entrenched in our way of thinking that we’d rather be right than be in relationship. Paul fights for unity in these young churches—it...