Resurrection Philadelphia Sermons

Ruth 1:1-14 We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.... - Madeleine L'Engle, The Rock that is Higher

Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12 Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body. - St. Peter Chrysologus, 5th Century

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; John 1:1-18 You could more easily catch a hurricane in a shrimp net that you can understand the wild, relentless, passionate, uncompromising, pursuing love of God made present in the manger. - Brennan Manning

Isaiah 35:1-10 The human race cannot expect to receive any lasting comfort from the world. The comfort we so desperately need must come from somewhere else - in a burst of transcendent power breaking upon our ears from beyond our sphere altogether. - Fleming Rutledge, "Advent Begins in the Dark"

John 1:1-14 Lessons & Carols 2025 Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. - Thomas Merton, "The Time of the End is the Time of No Room," in Raids on the Unspeakable

Isaiah 11:1-10 Working against injustice and all that is broken in our world begins with seeking God, who loves justice and who longs for the world to flourish... But the work of justice is hard and long. And while seeing justice accomplished brings one of the most exhilirating joys a follower of Jesus Christ could ever know, the journey to victory is fraught with difficulties. More often than not...

Isaiah 2:1-5 The Advent season should come as a reminder to us that we can never be, and should not be, adjusted to the world. We are here to proclaim the reality and the imminence of a wholly other world, a world in which different powers rule and different standards operate. We are here to make it possible for ordinary men and women really to believe this, and therefore to live in hope and readi...

Luke 20:19-44 It is the call of the Son from heaven, and the vision of the new Jerusalem descending from heaven, that pushes back on our illusions that we could figure this all out, that we could bring this about. Shalom is not biblical language for progressivist social amelioration. Shalom is a Christ-haunted call to long for kingdom come. - James K. A. Smith, Awaiting the King

Luke 20:1-18 Surrender goes against the grain of autonomy and self-control. Under any circumstances other than trustworthy love, it may be extremely unwise. But in response to Perfect Love personally known, resistance can quickly dissipate and surrender becomes effortless - almost natural. The surrender Jesus invites from us - choosing his will and his life over his own - can never be motivated by...

Ezek 34:11-16; Luke 19:1-10 God is Christlike and in him there is no un-Christlikeness at all. - Michael Ramsey and John V. Taylor, The Christlike God

Luke 18:9-34

Luke 17:1-19 Once we learn that grace is not opposed to effort (action) - though it is opposed to earning (attitude) - the way is open for us to "work out" all that is involved in our salvation, not only "with fear and trembling" but also with the calm assurance that it is God who is at work in us to accomplish all of His goodwill. - Dallas Willard, The Great Omission

Luke 16:13-31 Our deepest life consists in a willed correspondence with the world of the Spirit, and this willed correspondence, which is prayer, is destined to fulfil itself along two main channels; in love towards God and in love towards humanity - two loves which at last and at their highest become one love…. This is not mere pious fluff. This is a terribly practical job; the only way in which...

Luke 15:11-32 The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.” - Henri Nou...

Luke 15:1-10 Nearly all areas of life in which we could become spiritually competent (hearing God and receiving divine guidance among them) confront us with the same type of challenge. They all require of us a choice to be a spiritual person, to live a spiritual life. We are required to "bet our life" that the visible world, while real, is not reality itself. - Dallas Willard, Hearing God

Luke 14:25-35 The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. - G. K. Chesterton

Luke 14:1-24; Isaiah 55:1-8 The future is given to those who are experienced in groaning. The future is denied to those who have been cynical and calloused and self-deceiving enough to rejoice in the present ordering and are unable to grieve about the ruin toward which the royal community is headed.... The staggering works of Jesus - feeding, healing, casting out, forgiving - happened not to those...

Luke 13:18-35 When we submit our lives to what we read in Scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves. - Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book

Luke 13:1-17 There is mystery in God. If God could be fit into our puny human minds, or limited to our experience of him, or contained in our theological description of his ways, he would be too small a God to worship. - R. Paul Stevens and Michael Green, Living the Story: Biblical Spirituality for Everyday Christians

Luke 12:35-56 What about those who have strayed from God's path, those whose eyes have veered in idolatrous directions? Are such people simply to die of spiritual thirst in the desert? No, the opposite is true. God uses the wilderness to win many back when they stray. With God, streams of living water appear in the desert. - Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence

Luke 12:13-34 Fear is not a Christian habit of mind. - Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things

Luke 12:1-12 The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work that you most need to do and the world most needs to have done.... Thus, the place God calls you is the place your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. - Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC

Luke 11:33-54 “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on...that’s who we really are.” - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Luke 11:14-32 The church has always been under call to live differently…. You are not just out there. You have been addressed, claimed, named, commissioned. You have been addressed in your baptism. Every time you take communion, you are called to the extravagant goodness of God, called to put your life down in the power and wonder of the creator God, called to remember that you are God’s, that you...

Luke 11:1-13 Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need; prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer. Our wants are for the sake of our coming into communion with God, our eternal need. - George MacDonald, "The Words of Jesus on Prayer," in Unspoken Sermons