Roseville Covenant Sermons

A homily for "Lessons and Carols", Luke 2:8-20. Christmas Eve at Roseville Covenant Church 2024.

The story of the Old Testament describes how God’s people demanded a human king only to experience the ache of kings who fell short of righteous rule. The birth of Jesus brought the Messiah who would save people from their sins, and One who would forever rule in justice and righteousness. The Angel Gabriel confirmed this by telling Mary, "He will rule over Jacob's house forever, and there will be...

It's not uncommon to hear someone say, "I believe in God, but organized religion feels oppressive to me." I can sympathize. High on the list of institutional crimes would be the ways religious leaders often fail the people they serve. In recent decades in America we've been living through a reckoning of clergy abuse, congregational exploitation, and moral compromise in churches of every kind. If o...

Despite the increasing commercialization of the holiday in our increasingly unchurched world, most people can still name who's birthday we celebrate on Christmas. His name and the circumstances of his birth are well known. What is less understood is what Jesus was born to do. Theologians have sometimes described Jesus' work in this world as his "Threefold Office". Jesus is a prophet, a priest, and...

Constellations, sunsets, oceans, mountains, forests, flowers, butterflies, orcas, and panthers... the first page of the Bible tells us all these beautiful creations are signs of a beautiful creator. But the first chapter of Genesis is yet to climax. On the sixth day of creation, among the various animals, the Bible zooms in on one animal in particular given a special designation: the human is made...

On the first page of the Bible we read a carefully composed ancient creed that gives us a deep look into what philosophers and theologians call, cosmology, "the order of the universe." Last week Pastor Karina told us about the pre-creation chaos. Genesis 1:2 tells us the uncreated world was "wild and waste," churning waters of disorder. But very quickly in the Biblical story we see the hand of God...

This coming Sunday we will flip our Bibles from its final pages to its first pages - from Revelation to Genesis. It's important for us as the people of God to grasp our story, where we're going but also where we came from.  The book of Genesis offers us the wonderful beginnings of God's story here on earth and our role in it. I can't wait to dive into the deep waters of the first five verses with...

It is a Biblical tradition for Hebrew Prophets to use provocative images to get a reader's attention. John, the author of Revelation is no different. In chapters 17-18 of the book we meet a woman who in the King James Version of the Bible is called, "the Harlot".In modern parlance, she's a prostitute. She is dressed in the most expensive clothes and jewelry, she's intoxicated, and she is saddled o...

If ever there was a book where we are tempted to just flip to how the story ends, Revelation is it!  We have successfully made our way through plenty of challenging terrain in Revelation and have finally come to the edge of the end of John’s vision. My hunch is that if there is one part of the book that we are familiar with, it’s the closing chapters – the proverbial “happy ending.” We love the pa...

In chapters 12-19 of the Book of Revelation we find some of the most fantastical, surreal, and even horrifying images of the Bible. Some of it feels like it comes from the pages of fantasy novels, Manga, Anime, or a Marvel movie (in fact, a few Marvel villains get their names from the Greek New Testament). We meet multi-headed dragons, angelic warriors, mutant beasts, and cosmic armies battling ac...

What do hilarious jokes, heart pounding thrillers, and amazing magic tricks all have in common? Misdirection! The comic, storyteller, or illusionist coaxes you for a moment to think one way so that the surprise of the punchline or the jumpscare has that much more impact when it finally lands. In the heart of the book of Revelation is one of the Bible's great misdirections: the prophet John wonders...

Angels, dragons, beasts, elders, eagles, harlots, martyrs, gems, blood, fire, and brides: reading the final book of the Bible can feel like a fever dream. What doesn't help is how many readers across the centuries have fixated on its evocative images only to miss its deeper messages. Many read Revelation with an interest in predicting the future, but the Revelation of John is as much or more about...