Resurrection Philadelphia Sermons

Luke 10:38-42 Stillness before God transforms us into unhurried love. It is in the stillness of silent prayer that God turns over the soil of our hearts, revealing our desires to us and the source of their fullest satisfaction. - Tyler Staton, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools

Luke 10:25-37 "I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. It can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt." - Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

1 Peter 2:9-12 When the Church tries to embody the rule of God in the forms of earthly power it may achieve that power, but it is no longer a sign of the kingdom. But when it goes the way the Master went, unmasking and challenging the powers of darkness and bearing in its own life the cost of their onslaught, then there are given to the Church signs of the kingdom, powers of healing and blessing w...

Luke 9:46-62 "To follow a crucified Messiah is to confess that those who are mighty by the standards of the world are not the ultimate insiders but are likely to be the consummate outsiders in the kingdom of God. Conversely, to be enfolded into the kingdom of the crucified Messiah is to be given the status of consummate insider, even if one was previously at the margins of society." - J. R. Daniel...

Luke 9:18-36 A capacity to be thankful in the midst of hard times requires acknowledging that we do not know the whole story, that we are living before it is complete, and that we are thankful for the presence of God and faithful persons in our lives. Gratitude is a crucial way that death and destruction do not have the final word, and cannot fully define us. - Christine Pohl, Living Into Communit...

Luke 9:1-20 Baptism takes us to where Jesus is. It takes us therefore into closer neighbourhood with a dark and fallen world, and it takes us into closer neighbourhood with others invited there. The baptized life is characterized by solidarity with those in need, and sharing with all others who believe. And it is characterized by a prayerfulness that courageously keeps going, even when things are...

Acts 2:1-21; Luke 24:44-53 The Spirit is given to begin the work of making God's future real in the present. ... Just as the resurrection of Jesus opened up the unexpected world of God's new creation, so the Spirit comes to us from that new world, the world waiting to be born, the world in which, according to the old prophets, peace and justice will flourish and the wolf and the lamb will lie down...

Luke 8:40-56

Luke 8:22-39 "If God were small enough to be understood, he wouldn't be big enough to be worshipped." - Evelyn Underhill

Luke 8:4-21 "Christian faith isn't a general religious awareness. Nor is it the ability to believe several unlikely propositions. It is certainly not a kind of gullibility which would put us out of touch with any genuine reality. It is the faith which hears the story of Jesus, including the announcement that he is the world's true Lord, and responds from the heart with a surge of grateful love tha...

Luke 7:36-8:3 The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe. - Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved

Luke 7:18-35 "The reason I can continue watching and waiting, even as the world is shrouded in darkness, is because the things I long for are not rooted in wishful thinking or religious ritual but are as solid as a stone rolled away." - Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night

Luke 7:1-17 "The best testimony to the truth of the gospel is the quality of our life together. Jesus risked his reputation and the credibility of his story by tying them to how his followers live and care for one another in community.... How we live together is the most persuasive sermon we'll ever get to preach." - Christine Pohl, Living Into Community

Luke 24:1-12 Perhaps the drama is played out now, and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world's history those words might have been spoken with complete conviction, and that was upon the eve of Resurrection. - Dorothy Sayers, "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged"

Luke 19:28-48 Palm Sunday challenges us to consider whether we have adopted the efficiency of force and cruelty instead of the way of Jesus. Stated differently, Jesus’ life was not just a means of salvation; it was a way of being human. - Esau McCaulley, Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal

Luke 6:37-42 Only under the gaze of God can we fully and truly accept ourselves.... When we see ourselves with God's eyes, we experience tremendous freedom. It could be called a double-freedom: to be sinners, and to become saints. - Jacques Philippe, Interior Freedom

Luke 6:27-36 We are sowing the seed of love, and we are not living in the harvest time. We must love to the point of folly, and we are indeed fools, as our Lord Himself was, who died for such a one as this. - Dorothy Day, Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People

Luke 6:17-26 Never soul was set free without being made to feel its slavery; nothing but itself can enslave a soul, nothing without itself free it. - George MacDonald, "The Hardness of the Way," in Unspoken Sermons

Luke 6:1-11 "I do not know You God because I am in the way." - Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

Luke 5:27-39 Turn and leave your life behind. More beautiful words have never been spoken. My passage through seconds, minutes, and hours could hardly be called life. Enticing. Those words waft toward me like smells from Mom's kitchen. They drift toward me supremely, like the love from Coltrane's saxophone. I realize that those words, follow me, are just an invitation back home. -Drew Jackson, "Fo...

Isaiah 6:1–8; Luke 5:1-26 The gospel imperative for the church is not simply the call to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. In that way of expressing the gospel message, a radically individualistic emphasis overwhelms the definition of what it means to be a Christian. While no one would argue against the idea that the Lord saves individuals and reconciles them to himself, the g...

Luke 4:31-44 The blueprint of the household of God looks nothing like the blueprints of our own cultural and social cliques. If we want to know how to embody the household of God, we need look no further than to Jesus. While on earth, Jesus modeled this new reality by connecting with every type of person around - conservative theologians, liberal theologians, prostitutes, divorcees, children, poli...

Luke 4:16-30 Many and varied are the interpretations dealing with the teachings and life of Jesus of Nazareth. But few of these interpretations deal with what the teachings and life of Jesus have to say to those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall.... This is a matter of tremendous significance, for it reveals to what extent a religion that was born of a peop...

Luke 4:1-15 (formatted as poetry) There is not a place in this world where I am not asked to prove it./ Substantiate my belonging./ Verify that my body is qualified to occupy this space,/ as if the miracle of my enfleshment weren't enough./ But I am asked to be superhuman. Divine even. More than mediocre,/ like the rest of them,/ to demonstrate that my placement on this earth is not the mere resul...

Luke 3:19-38 No person we meet from the moment we open our eyes in the morning till we shut them in sleep at night is finished. Each person is a tragic-comic soul whom God is saving. Implicit in every personal name (explicit in baptism) is the Holy Trinity, that intricate coming into being of persons-in-relationship in a not-to-be-fathomed eternity. - Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder