Kuna United Methodist Church Sermons

Our sermon series on hope continues as we look for hope in the gospels and find that Jesus embodied hope. Everything about him was bringing people out of despair, disorientation, into restoration. And then he sends us to continue to work.

God gives us hope in times of disorientation, when everything is just falling apart. Then hope changes everything. God's primary way of giving hope is through other people. God did a lot of that through the prophets, ministering to the people of God going through a horrible exile. Pastor Mia walks us through the history of the exile and the prophets who spoke God's hope in times of despair. Those...

Pentecost is the miracle in which the Holy Spirit arrived on earth in spectacular fashion. Our spiritual ancestors experienced noise, wind, wildfire, and languages as they began speaking in their mother tongues. Pentecost is the occasion that’s often celebrated as the birthday of the church. At the time of Pentecost, Jerusalem was full of people who believed God resided in the temple. They were th...

Cheering, clapping, and looking shocked. Mision control photos from last week’s successful completion of the Artemis II moon flyby show those joyous reactions as NASA scientists and engineers experienced the same wonderful event in different ways. That’s also how it was for the disciples after the resurrection. John’s Gospel (John 20:19‑31) describes how the disciples handled the news of Jesus ris...

Imagine this. You’re sitting in a packed room in a house in the Mediterranean. You’re there, listening to a story from a new scroll and the reader says, “Overcome with terror and dread, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” The new story, from Mark’s Gospel, is about Jesus’s resurrection. Three of the women in the room with you remember the day well—they...

And here we are. It’s Holy Week, the days leading up to Easter. Palm Sunday begins the final pages in the story of Jesus, and things are getting exciting. After three years of teaching, healing, and performing miracles in the country, Jesus decided to go to the big city of Jerusalem. As with most things Jesus did, his arrival was full of symbolic meaning. Like emperors returning from victorious ba...

Eight centuries before the birth of Christ, the Prophet Isaiah had a thing or two to say about how we live our lives. Chapters 56-66 of the Book of Isaiah are addressed to the Israelites who have returned home to devastation in Jerusalem, after the Babylonian exile. With generations of banishment ended, they need to rebuild their lives, their community, and what it means to be a God follower. When...

Lent and baptism go hand in hand. In the early church, Lent was a time of preparation for baptism. Today, we can use the season of Lent to remember our baptismal promises and discover our place in the story of salvation. In baptism, water symbolizes washing away sin and we make four promises, naming the kind of life we will have in Christ. First, we renounce wickedness and repent our sins. This is...

During baptism, the candidate or the parents of a candidate make a set of promises. Then the church community makes promises in return, telling the newest member of God’s family that they’re not alone in their faith journey. The community’s promise includes surrounding the baptismal candidate with love and forgiveness. Baptism is a celebration of salvation and initiation into Christian community....

In his prophecies, a shepherd named Amos described God’s grace. He said, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). English translations for the biblical meaning of the justice and righteousness described by Amos differ from our everyday usage and are somewhat incomplete. In the biblical sense, justice is an idea of fairness, receiving our d...

What is heaven like? Will we know our loved ones when we get to heaven? Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven using parables. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven is like a farmer who planted a field. The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl. Despite these teachings, we don’t have a concrete understanding of what the kingdom of heaven is like. So, what does the Bible...

God, how can we have faith in you? And how do we keep faith in times of difficulty? Trying to answer these questions of faith is a feat that leads to more questions. God, are you real? And if you are real, are you worth my loyalty? At the start of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, everyone believed in God and people made decisions based on which church was truly following God. Then things c...

Why do you allow suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? Because these two questions to God persist, suffering is one of the most common reasons for rejecting God. You've heard the statement, "I can't believe in a God who would let that happen." The attempt to make sense of God's role in suffering is a monumental task. Sometimes the good we do leads to suffering and sometimes suffering...

When people are grappling with injustices or disasters, they ask God, “Why do you allow evil to exist,” and “Can you stop evil?” Although there isn’t a precise answer to either of these questions, clues in Scripture provide some clarity. Guest speaker Patrick Meisen shares the insights he gained while examining these questions to God. Christian Apologetics, a branch of theology focused on defendin...

God makes room when lives depend on it. Matthew's Gospel tells story of three magi who follow the Christmas star to find the stable where Jesus was born. King Herod, the story's villian is threatend by the birth of Jesus, so he tries to trick the Magi into revealing the baby's location. But God intervenes. In one dream, God advises Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and Baby Jesus. And in another,...

Who understands you best right now? With Sanctuary relationhips, we can share joy, fear, and be our full selves. Both life-long and seasonal relationships can provide santuary. The most important sactuary relationship in which we are fully seen is with God, but we also need people who understand us. This is why God makes room for us to have relationships with one another. Luke 1:24-45 describes th...

Decluttering a house full of stuff is like repentance. When we let go of things we don’t need, we have a change of mind, then a change of heart, and finally a change of behavior. When we repent, we’re cleaning our hearts and souls. Simply put, repentance is a spiritual decluttering. During the Advent season, repentance helps us prepare for the birth of Jesus by making room for God and those God lo...

In Joshua 2:1-21, a woman named Rahab hid a pair of Israelites who were spying on the city of Jerico and the surrounding land. When pressure closed in, Rahab threw her loyality to God. Despite the risk, she provided sanctury to the spies and in doing so she changed her trajectory. When Rahab made room for the spies, she found refuge in God. Sanctuary is a sacred or holy place, and it is a place of...

The Ninth Commandment tells us, "Do not testify falsely against your neighbor." While God is commanding us to be honest, there's more to to consider. This week, Pastor Mia explains the meaning is twofold. Don't falsely accuse others of wrongdoing and don't back up false accusations. When God revealed the Ten Commandments to Moses, the Israelites lacked the necessary structure for learning how live...

Being unfaithful in marriage is not an option for Jesus followers. God tells us, "You must not commit adultery" in the 7th Commandment. When couples are married, they promise to be loyal to one another. In others words, no affairs, no infidelity, and no sexual intercourse with another person. Adultery was a problem in the ancient world and, despite declining for decades, it continues to be a probl...

Now that we've gone through the first four commandments about our posture toward God, we turn to God's commandments about how we are to live with one another, beginning with "Honor your father and your mother." Honoring ancestors is an ancient tradition that extends beyond cultures and peoples. In Jesus time, people had come up with human rules that people were using to dismiss caring for their pa...

God has a response to the craziness in life, "Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy." In the Fourth Commandment, God tells us rest is not optional. With so many things going on, we ignore the rest and renewal that God commands and then we suffer. The consequnce of neglecting the spiritual garden leads to literal and figurative death in the form of burnout, health problems, and broken relat...

Don't cuss! That's one typical childhood interpretation of the Third Commandment. Of course, we shouldn't mix God's name in with a string of nasty language. However, the use of naughty words isn't the primary meaning of "Do not use the Lord your God's name as if it were of no significance." One purpose of the Third Commandment is to stress the importance of keeping promises and telling the truth,...

This week, Pastor Mia shares the final lessons learned during a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. In pilgrimage, the journey is the point and the destination matters. The Gospel of James teaches us this wisdom, telling us to stand firm and be patient as we wait for the coming of the Lord. There is a correlation between backpacking on a physical trail and the spiritual journey. After w...

Every year thousands of pilgrims travel the Camino de Santiago, a route in Spain that leads to the burial site of St. James. This week, Pastor Mia explains how walking a path such as the Camino is a reflection of the spiritual journey. By making a physical journey we learn that our way is made by others. The Camino de Santiago was built by others. Some people dedicated their lives to developing th...