Second City Sermons

Psalm 70 captures humanity's universal cry for help in times of distress. Beginning with 'Make haste, O God, to deliver me,' this prayer acknowledges our need for divine intervention when facing enemies, difficult relationships, and our own shortcomings. While we often seek salvation in human relationships, control, or various forms of escape, true deliverance comes only from God. This psalm teach...

Psalm 70 captures humanity's universal cry for help in times of distress. Beginning with 'Make haste, O God, to deliver me,' this prayer acknowledges our need for divine intervention when facing enemies, difficult relationships, and our own shortcomings. While we often seek salvation in human relationships, control, or various forms of escape, true deliverance comes only from God. This psalm teach...

Psalm 69 presents David's raw cry to God in the midst of overwhelming suffering, describing himself as drowning in floodwaters with no foothold. This psalm speaks powerfully to our experience in a broken world filled with natural disasters, betrayal, ridicule, physical suffering, and the weight of our own sinful hearts. David's initial response is understandable—he calls for justice and even destr...

Psalm 68 celebrates God's deliverance of His people to the promised land, likely written by David for the Ark of the Covenant's procession to Jerusalem. The psalm portrays God as the defender of the vulnerable, father to the fatherless, and protector of widows. While addressing the difficult topic of the Canaanite conquest, it emphasizes this was God's divine judgment coupled with grace, as exempl...

Psalm 67 speaks to a truism that exists beyond the Christian faith; that our primary relationship shap us to go out into the world and shape it for good or for ill. Yet, Psalm 67 speaks to the fundamental Fathering relationship, that between us and God. It's for this reason that it begins with echoes of the great Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6 where the Lord blesses his people, keeps his people and...

Colossians 1:15-19 reveals four profound truths about Jesus Christ: He is God, Creator, Sustainer, and Head of the Church. As the image of the invisible God, Jesus possesses the fullness of deity and existed before creation. All things were created by Him, through Him, and for Him, meaning creation itself has embedded purpose. Christ actively holds the universe together and, as head of the Church,...

Psalm 66 is a psalm of praise. It is a psalm both praising God for who he is and what he has done and calling others to praise him. It begins wide, calling all the earth to praise and narrows down to the individual. It's a very fitting psalm for Trinity Sunday, as the call to the earth reflects the Father, the call to the church, the Son, and the call to the individual, the Holy Spirit.

In our eagerness to serve God, we often rush ahead without receiving what we need most—the Holy Spirit. After Jesus' resurrection, the disciples were ready to share the greatest story ever told, yet Jesus commanded them to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father. Despite having engaged with the true story of our world, experienced Jesus bringing hope, had their doubts addressed, been resto...

When we feel rejected, even by Jesus himself, we can find confidence in Christ's unwavering love. The apostle John's experience in John 21 shows how he maintained his identity as 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' even when seemingly overlooked. This confidence comes from remembering we are among the beloved community, recalling past experiences of God's love, and embracing the mystery of faith. With...

One of the great post-resurrection texts is the very end of Matthew where Jesus tells his disciples what has come to be known as “The Great Commission.” Yet, what we see in his words is the reiteration of the great covenants of Scripture: The one true God who has authority, working through his people and their obedience to him to bring a blessing to his world. To be the people of God has always be...

Being a community of the resurrection, means that we are a (re)storied people because of the restoring work of Christ in the cross and resurrection. We see in John 21 that Jesus invites us into an honest assessment of our past - our shame, sin and family stories - a present participation in his healing work, and then a life and death like his. We are taken, healed and then made to be a cruciform a...

Motherhood represents the epitome of sacrificial love, demonstrating vulnerability, persistence, and selfless giving that spans a lifetime. Through the biblical example of Hannah, we discover three fundamental aspects of motherly love: the deep desire to give love, the commitment to fervent prayer, and the willingness to sacrifice for others' wellbeing. Hannah's journey from desperate longing to s...

The narratives of Jesus with his disciples after the resurrection inform us about what it means to be a resurrection people. Jesus meets them in their fears and in their unbelief and he speaks peace over them and shows them his scars as a call to believing in the power of his resurrection. His scars and his words are the very things they need and they are the very things we need if we are to be a...

Cleopas and Mary meet Jesus following their crushing witness of his death. They are hurting and don't recognize Jesus, yet Jesus' approach to ministering to them is that of a questioner. His approach demonstrates the importance of dialogue in our relationship with God. Throughout the gospels, Jesus posed nearly 300 questions, each designed to provoke deeper thought and personal examination. The st...

Good stories are true stories. Not always in the sense that the events they tell happened in time and space, but, at the very least, a good story reflects an honest account of the world where the bad is not glossed over nor the good made little of. All good stories do this and all stories can be graded on this rubric: do they reflect THE Story? THE Story is the death and the resurrection of Jesus...

The distinguishing mark of the Christian faith is that God comes down! He comes down as one of us in his incarnation. He comes down in time and space, speaking and acting in the world as one of us. He comes down lowly, not only in the manger but on the cross, the ultimate instrument of a lowly death. But he even goes down further. His body is taken down and is placed in the grave. And the Creed te...

Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem reveals profound truths about authentic kingship and worship. While the crowds expected a powerful political savior, Jesus deliberately chose symbols of humility, riding a donkey instead of a war horse. His examination of the temple challenged where people placed their trust and hope - in worldly power versus divine authority. This transformative moment demon...

In all three of the synoptic gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke, the story of Jesus calming the storm and of his healing the man with the demon are put right right together. These accounts strike a cord with us because they a echo in our own lives. We often find ourselves caught in a storm, often of our own making, and in a real sense the man with a demon is very much like you and I without Jesus. An...

Mark's great 4th chapter is about the power of the words of God, but also about discipleship about those who hear the word and live accordingly. In rhetorical flourish, Mark gives us this dramatic scene of Jesus asleep in a boat where his disciples are full of fear because of the storm they find themselves in. And yet, with a word, he calms it. And then rebukes his disciples. Why? Because true fai...

Growth in the Kingdom of God is a mystery. It seems at once both so entirely connected to us and what we do with what we have heard and at the same time utterly the work of God. Sometimes it seems as though we see it and sometimes it is elusive for years and years. Even so, the Kingdom is like a little mustard seed. Small, seemingly insignificant and Jesus tells us that it will grow beyond our wil...

The Parable of the Sower illustrates how different people respond to God's word through the metaphor of seeds falling on various types of soil. From the path where birds quickly devour the seed, to rocky ground where growth is shallow, to thorny areas where worldly concerns choke out growth, and finally to good soil where abundant fruit is produced. This foundational teaching reveals both the tran...

One of the Gospel of Mark's great themes is discpleship and suffering. What Mark often does is ask us if we are willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus, the one who came not to be served but to serve. Here, in chapter 3, Jesus appoints the 12 disciples, reconstituting Israel around himself. In doing so he is making a polical, social, economic, relational statement, claim - a claim that touch...

What do we do with Sabbath? Well, so often it is used as a badge of honor, a way of sowing who is in and who is out. What it was always intended for was as a celebration and a reflection of God's good work of creation and recreation.

Sometimes, proximity brings greater animosity. Here in Mark 2 and 3 we have 5 stories in a row where Jesus engages in some conflict with the Scribes and Pharisees. They are near him and yet they don't see him for who he is. Rather, what they see is how he and his disciples live life in the wedding party and in the freedom of the Lord of the Sabbath. They can't stand that. And they are the religiou...

Levi was sitting in his tax booth making sure people payed their taxes as Jesus traveled around teaching and healing. Levi could not leave that tax booth unless he was called to leave it. “Jesus, call me too!” It is all about the Caller – the one we are called to follow. And it is all about Matthew and you and me. It is not so much about who and what we were or even who we are. It is about who Jes...