Haverhill Commons Church

God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, but just two months later they’re following Moses through the wilderness, somewhere on the Sinai peninsula and they’re hungry. Even though they’d witnessed God’s saving power, five times in this chapter alone they “grumble, complain, whine” against God. Despite this, God gives them the food that they need. Day after day, week after week, year after year in...

Resting on the Sabbath isn’t supposed to be a burden. It’s not a religious duty, or something we should do to try to look like a good Christian. It’s not about spiritual posturing. It’s an invitation from God to delight in resting. To gain pleasure from it. When was the last time you felt truly delighted about something? Truly satisfied and happy? Especially when our lives are full of stress from...

On the seventh day, God created, blessed and set aside a period of time for rest. On the seventh day, God stopped, and it was good. This rhythm is good: Work, stop working. In this sermon we kick off our Lenten series on Sabbath with an exploration of what rest is, what rest isn’t, and why it’s so hard for us to stop.

Do we have a place because we’re wanted, or do we need to earn the space we take? At this special Ash Wednesday gathering, Susan Sharp shares her story of burnout and restoration. She reminds us that we matter to God, not because of the offerings we bring, but because of who we are.

What does love look like when we examine it on a granular level? Does loving one another really make difference in the world? And even if it did, how does one demonstrate the love God demonstrates to us? Love is from God because God is Love. Love isn’t simply something God does, it’s who God is. God is other-oriented, self-giving love. Love is revealed through action. In 1 John 4:11, John writes,...

If you were to boil a Christian down to one distinctive thing that identifies them, what is that thing? Who are Christians? Christians love. The one thing that defines and differentiates Christians is an ability to reflect Jesus’ unconditional, sacrificial, charity based, other-oriented love. Do you want that? Are you growing tired of giving that? Do you wish for that? Are you cynical about that?...

Mary Speta is a researcher, educator, speaker, and advocate in the movement to end commercial sexual exploitation. She serves as Executive Director of Amirah, Inc., a Massachusetts-based nonprofit providing exit and aftercare services to women who have experienced prostitution, sex trafficking, and commercial sexual exploitation. The church is called to partner with Christ, believing God has a pla...

John presents us with two ideas about living in the light: understanding our own sinfulness and actually loving each other. We like to rank our sins. Some of them we find pretty acceptable—buying or taking more than we need, judging others quickly, “little” lies, gossip, the pride of thinking we’ve earned what we have. Others, we can be prone to judging quickly and harshly. We so often want to min...

It’s getting harder and harder to tell what’s real from what’s not. The question, “What is real?” isn’t a new one. As best we can tell, John wrote this letter because Christians in the house churches he was overseeing near the ancient city of Ephesus were in crisis, the church dividing into rival factions with different ideas about what was real about the Christian faith.  And one of the most impo...

Every now and then I’ll go to the attic to dig out a box of some of that good stuff and just like Clark from Christmas vacation I’ll pour over the memories. And I’ll start to feel a strange feeling. I’ll feel happy. And I’ll feel sad. At the same time.  It’s the feeling of nostalgia. Nostalgia is powerful—which is why we have so many boxes in the attic. And nostalgia is complicated—which is why we...

When’s the last time you just played? Kids are experts at this! We can tell a kid to “go play”, and they innately know what that means. We adults can be quite good at finding reasons not to play, not knowing how to play, or frankly, being too busy to play.  In 2 Samuel, David manages to bring the Ark home to Jerusalem and a huge celebration ensues. Harps, tambourines, cymbals. Even David is in the...

Do you ever have those moments where the world actually feels like Silent Night – all is calm and all is bright? What do we do with the nights that don’t feel quite so peaceful? The ones where it’s 9:00 p.m. and you’re still working because you have a deadline. Or when it’s 2:00 a.m. and your child wakes you up for the third time.  Exercise, study, practicing a new skill–they all require sleep for...

Jesus arrived at a village where a woman named Martha “opened her home to him” and his disciples. “Opened her home” is a term of hospitality. So when Jesus shows up, Martha got to work, unlike her sister Mary who was not helping at all!  Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things”. The problem here isn’t that Martha is serving, it’s that she’s worried and upset, consu...

The holidays are one of the busiest, most stressful, most complicated times of the year. Our lives can often feel like a dead sprint from Thanksgiving all the way through New Year’s Day. Christmas is just full. And if it’s full, where is Jesus in the midst of all this Christmas chaos? Is there any room for him in an already full season? When we study Luke 2:4-7 more closely, we discover it’s possi...

God’s design for Ancient Israel was for them to observe a year of Jubilee every 50 years. It was intended to serve as a hard reset, a recalibration, that brought Israel’s society back into alignment with God’s intent, so that they would be a healthy people, able to better represent God to their neighbors. Generations later, when Jesus pronounced the Year of the Lord’s favor in Luke 4, he was usher...

Estimates say in Jesus’ time, Jews were paying anywhere from fifty to eighty percent of their income to the Roman government. This was the result of a corrupt system in which tax collectors took some off the top to enrich themselves and their superiors. In Luke 19, a crowd gathers to listen to Jesus who is passing through. Everybody wants to see Jesus, including Zacchaeus, a tax collector. Only, Z...

In Mark 10, Jesus asks a rich young ruler to make a choice. A choice to either continue living with a divided heart, loving his money and possessions, unable to love the Lord with all of his heart, mind, soul, and strength, and therefore forfeiting eternal life. Or to choose to love God and God alone. To choose to live out of his joy, not his fear and discomfort. To accept the gift of abundant and...

In a recent article, American author Xochitl Gonzalez argues that empathy is at an all time low because we’ve lost so many basic human connections. We can live most days without seeing another person. Why go to the office when you can zoom from home? Why go to school when you can take classes online? Why get together with friends when you can text whenever you want?  This lack of genuine connectio...

It’s clear that part of what it means to be human is to have a deep desire to connect to one another, to live in community, to have and feel a sense of belonging. That shared desire means that we all also know what it means to feel as if we are out of place. Constantly trying to figure out where we fit in. What happens when you believe you’ve found that place of belonging just to realize that you...

Have you ever found yourself in that kind of situation - things were different, unexpected, uncomfortable…and within minutes you knew that you didn’t want to be there anymore? We steer clear of what makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes we need to heed that instinct, but other times, we’re uncomfortable because we’re having to deal with someone else’s grief and pain.   Laments are prayers, born out of...

In Esther 1, a woman resists. When Queen Vashti heard the king’s order, “she refused to come.” “And this made the king furious, and he burned with anger.” Her reward for having courage and maintaining her dignity was to be silenced and to be shamed. Put back in her box, forced to wear a scarlet letter.     This is the insidious, relentless oppression of patriarchy. Women who go along with the syst...

Unconscious biases are stereotypes about others that we can form without even knowing that we’re doing so. We don’t design the environments, but maybe the environments are affecting us in ways that we don’t know. Pharaoh’s daughter finds the Hebrew baby in river, but instead of adhering to her  “us and them” worldview, she instead has compassion on him. Spares him. Protects him. All because of the...

We are invited to fear the LORD above all else, to revere God more than we revere the power structures of this world.  Like these midwives, we are invited to use whatever positions we have, even if they are not big or grand or powerful, to do what is right, even when there is intense pressure to do what is wrong.  And we’re invited to believe that in that, we will experience the freedom and the go...

The situation shows us that while we all experience the groaning common to creation, we do not all experience it the same way. Some people, through no fault of their own, experience more suffering. And some people, through no merit of their own, experience more privilege.  How we chose to use the privileges we have bears witness to our priorities and values.