Midway Christian Church Sermon Podcast

Part 5: Fifty Days of Easter, May 25, 2025  This strange story of the Ethiopian eunuch could haveeasily laid out a rigid dogma of belief which the early church was supposed to follow. This story could have easily set the course for practice which would have shaped the Church for generations to come. Instead, it offers a glimpse into an encounter where the Holy Spirit is present. It offers us an in...

Part 4: Fifty Days of Easter, May 18, 2025  Stephen’s story reminds us of the challenges of discipleship, things we often tend to forget or ignore. It shows us that we are called to testify in all things and through all things to God’s love. It also reminds us to not forget that Christ was crucified for speaking truth to love and grace, and as his disciples, we cannot expect different treatment. &...

Part 3: Fifty Days of Easter, May 11, 2025  Through the story of the walk to Emmaus, the author of Luke is reminding us, as ones who follow a Risen Savior, the very core of our faith is the knowledge, the understanding, the promise given to us by a God who loves us more than we could ever imagine. At the very core of our faith is the promise that death does not have the last word. Where the world...

Part 2: Fifty Days of Easter, May 4, 2025  In our text for this morning, having denied Christ three times, Peter is given a chance for reconciliation. But I would argue that the author of our text extends that chance to us as well. We are given an opportunity to embrace our call to listen and follow Jesus in this new reality and to show we love Jesus by feeding Jesus’ sheep, by tending his lambs....

Part 1: Fifty Days of Easter, April 27, 2025  The Appalachian region is deeply rooted in customs that have been handed down for generations. “Planting by the signs,” a practice predicated on the belief that moon phases and astrological signs exert a powerful influence on the growth and well-being of crops, is deemed superstitious by some but has been considered essential to gardeners and farmers f...

Part 7: Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain, April 20, 2025 How do you make the Easter story new again? Haven’t we heard it all before? These are the questions I ask myself, to which I reply: I don’t. We don’t. And that is the point. It is the same story we tell again and again because it IS the same story again and again. What changes is us as Jesus’ disciples. Every time we encounter this story,...

Part 6: Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain, April 13, 2025 “[Like the people of Jerusalem,] we are in a time when we need to draw on courage to call into question the structures that uphold systems of oppression. We are in a time when we need to subvert the powerful and protect the vulnerable. The crowds close in on Jesus. Some lift their hands in praise, others point accusingly. I hope this imag...

Part 5: Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain, April 6, 2025 Too often we use so much of our energy trying to maintain the past or present, that we no longer have the strength to embrace the future. It is never about forgetting what was. It is about honoring the path which brought us here and knowing that the path does not, cannot, go in only in one directon. Rather, the path will have twists and tu...

Part 4: Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain, March 30, 2025 What if God’s love and redeeming grace was our repeated refrain, our way of life, our way of understanding who we are, our way of seeing the world, our way of seeing every single person? Just imagine if we lived our lives in response to God’s love and redeeming grace instead of trying to earn it. "God Loves First" Ephesians 2: 1...

Part 3: Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain, March 23, 2025 As people of faith, again and again we are shown the way; a way which overturns tables; a way which brings down walls; a way which creates community and connection between us all. As people of faith, again and again we are shown the way; a way which this world calls foolish; a way which defies our understanding; a way which is sometimes d...

Part 2: Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain, March 16, 2025 “The Lenten journey calls us to examine the things in which our hearts are invested, recognizing that we often insert our voices into the silence of God. Lent invites us to listen to God’s wisdom for us and truly see who Jesus is, not just who we have created him to be.” "We Are Called to Listen" Mark 8: 31-9: 8 Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl...

Part 1: Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain, March 9, 2025 The story of God’s covenant following the Great Flood reminds us that, again and again, God meets us. God meets us and promises to stay with us. “This story reminds us to hope, to believe that even in the midst of the storms, a new tomorrow awaits” us. We hold to this hope because we know God meets us where we are…in the broken, the hurt,...

Part 6: Messages From 7the Gospel of Luke, March 2, 2025 It is God’s word, it is God’s wisdom which gives us the strength, gives us the courage to become people of love and grace, to live in a way which reflects the Beloved Community in all we do and say. "A House Without A Foundation" Luke 6: 39-49 Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl, Midway Christian Church, Midway KY ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.midwaychristian.o...

Part 5: Messages From the Gospel of Luke, February 23, 2025 God shows grace, God shows mercy, God shows love to the just and the unjust. Luke tells us that we are to act in ways, speak in ways which reflect the character of God in all things and through all things because “God is kind to ungrateful and wicked people. Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.” "Behaving as God&#39...

Part 4: Messages From the Gospel of Luke, February 16, 2025  Just as the disciples chose to hear Jesus, we can choose to invite the Gospel message into our hearts, in our minds, into our very beings. We can invite the Gospel message to transform us, to help us become the people of love and grace. Or we can choose to make the Gospel message simply words we say on Sunday morning. "To Hear and T...

Part 3: Messages From the Gospel of Luke, February 9, 2025 Luke reminds us that our call as followers of Jesus is not about saving souls. It is not about membership numbers. Our call, our mission, our identity, our ministry as Jesus’ disciples is about building relationships with others, about being so moved by the holy that we can do nothing else but share the good news. It is about experiencing,...

Part 2: Messages From the Gospel of Luke, February 2, 2025 When we sit with this passage from Luke 4 for a while, we realize the crowd’s reaction was never about Jesus. It was about them. It is about us. It is about the Beloved Community in our midst. It is about reframing the narrative. It is about inviting Jesus to be who we need him to be – someone who opens our hearts and minds, our very being...

Part 1: Messages From the Gospel of Luke, January 26, 2025 In Luke, we are told that Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, returns to Galilee to begin his ministry.  Unlike other Gospels where Jesus’ ministry starts with miracles like turning water into wine, Luke has Jesus officially starting his ministry by reading from the prophet Isaiah which says:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because th...

“Baptism” Luke 3: 15-7, 21-22, January 12, 2025 On Baptism Sunday as we remember our own baptism, we use the opportunity for us to reclaim, to reaffirm who we are, especially when that narrative in our heads sometimes tells us that we are not enough, especially because we live in a world that tells us we need to strive for more, to be more, to be perfect, to never admit that things may be falling...

Part 4: This Little Light, December 22, 2024 As people of faith, we believe that God’s love does have the power to change the world. We are counting on it. We are depending on it. As people of faith, we know that God’s love does have the power to transform this world into God’s Beloved Community here on earth because we have experienced it in our own lives. "This Little Light Fills the World with...

Part 3: This Little Light, December 15, 2024 For like all those years ago for the people of God, in the midst of all this gloom, a light continues to dawn. This light reminds us again of the promise of Advent…that this world will not have the last word, that love and light will overcome, that the Word Made Flesh came to dwell among, to become one of us so that we can become like him. "This Little...

Part 2: This Little Light, December 8, 2024 Peace on Earth may be an elusive reality, yet it is our hope as people of faith. It is what we hold to – that image of God’s Peaceable Kingdom coming to fruition for all of God’s people. It is what we are called to work towards as we share our light with others. So we gather to pray, to dream, to vision. We gather, knowing that in the days to come, God’s...

Part 1: This Little Light, December 1, 2024 We embrace the call to let our light shine so that all will know that love will overcome by letting our light shine bright with hope. And to do that, we find courage and strength in these words from Isaiah,  “I, the Lord, have called you for a good reason. I will grasp your hand and guard you, and give you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the n...

"Bread of Life” John s: 24-35, November 24, 2024  Like the crowd that followed Jesus across the sea and knowing our physical needs have been met, it is time to embrace the invitation to see the larger picture, to realize that there is more happening than we realized, and to embrace the invitation to say thank you to the one who supplies and meets all our needs, our God, our Creator, the one who ha...

Part 6: Love... It Might Just Be Crazy Enough to Change the World, November 17, 2024 What if we as people of faith really do change this world? This very question encapsulates our hope as people of faith. We know that the world we live in is not exactly what God intended.  There is too much hate. There is too much hurt. There is too much “othering”. There is too much separation and division. There...