Second City Sermons

One of the rather strange aspects about the death of Jesus is that it seems as though many of the characters do it almost unintentionally, or at least their circumstances just kind of lead them into it.   Of course, that's not the case with all of the characters; the chief priests and elders and scribes had clearly planned it out, paying off Judas, arresting Jesus at night, lying to Pila...

This week we continue Jesus' trial, but this time it's not with those who are part of the Faith but rather those who are outside of it. Interestingly, they seem a lot more open. Whereas the religious leaders already had their minds set against Jesus, Pilate and Herod both appear to be open to him, Herod is even said to be "very glad". But openness doesn't equate to acceptance. In fact, t...

What do religious people make of Jesus? And in a more specific way, what do the Christian religious people make of Jesus? After all, the Jews were God's people. And it was the Chief Priest and Scribes and elders that had him arrested and are now putting him on trial. What do they make of him? And what do religious people today make of him? The truth is, that Jesus is first put on tr...

What a fitting passage we have for the first week of Lent. Judas and the band put together by the religious leaders of Jerusalem have just arrested our Lord, his disciples have scattered and now we are given the story of one of the leaders of the disciples and how he denies his Lord. And it isn't just one denial. He does it again and again. And that is what sin is. It's the denial of God...

Christians have always been made up of all kinds of different folk. The disciples demonstrate that for us very clearly. They come from different backgrounds and have different personalities and seem to have significantly different faith stories. It's no wonder then that just like the church, there were those in the midst of the disciples who had spent years with followers of Je...

Leaving the Upper Room, Jesus takes his customary evening trip to the Mount of Olives and his disciples accompany him. Jesus goes to pray to his Father. In Jesus' prayer we see both his agony as well as his desire and commitment to follow the will of his Father even if it means his own death. This prayer is put in stark contrast to the sleepy disciples, to whom he twice commands to pray that...

Still in the upper room, having just transformed the great salvation meal of Passover around his own work of salvation through his broken body and shed blood, Jesus now has to deal with some misconception of the Christian life with his disciples. You could say these are parting words, last words to accompany his last supper. The disciples began to argue over who will be greatest in the Kingdom of...

Having just taught his famous Olivet Discourse, our Lord and his disciples celebrate the Passover meal together. While it is the Passover, the great meal that Israel would eat that would celebrate what God had done in rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, Jesus works this great salvation meal around himself. In so doing, he gave us the great meal that marks the Christian life, Communion, the Lord's...

As we return to Luke for the next few months, we hear Jesus' last extended teaching before his death. Here he tells us to stay awake, to keep watch, to be careful to not fall asleep in our faith or to be overcome by the cares and delights of this world. There is debate around this passage, whether or not it spoke just to the destruction of the Temple or whether it speaks primarily of the time to c...

Part of the wonder of Christmas is God saying that the way things are not the way they should be and he's going to do something about it. Isaiah says it like this: Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill shall become level; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Part of how Luke teaches us this is the way John the Baptist comes into the world, prep...

Mary comes at the end of the genealogy and, really, at the end of a long and painful story. And when she comes, for Matthew, she comes with scandal. Joseph is a righteous man, we are told, and he wants to divorce her quietly. After all, how did she get pregnant? It's all wrong. And the story keep going with the wrong! No room in the Inn, Herod killing babies. So much wrong. And Tamar, Rahab, Ruth,...

Flemming Rutlage wrote that, "Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness." In his genealogy of Jesus, Matthew has forced us to look at the darkness. Tamar and the hard-hearted and hurtful hubris of Judah, Rahab and the sickening sin of the Cannanites, and the sad reality of family...

Matthew is intent on us not missing the point: Jesus comes with the deep and wide mercy of God! Tamar was an Adullamite, Rahab a Cannanite, and Ruth a Moabite. He just keeps saying it again and again: "This gospel is for everyone!" Of course, each of these women teach us more than that. Ruth teaches us that God's good news is even in the particulars of our own stories, our own longings, our places...

Of all things, the New Testament begins with a long list of people, a genealogy of Jesus. In the ancient world, as in our own, when you have a genealogy, you are often telling something about the person. When you consider the women who are highlighted in Matthew 1, you see just how deep and wide the scandalous mercy of God is. This second week of Advent we are looking at the second woman mentioned...

If you were writing your own genealogy, if you were recording your ancestry for posterity sake, who would you include? You can't includer everyone, after all, especially if you are going to go back 2000 years. Certainly, you would give the highlight, the big characters; you'd want to record those who shed light on who you are. Well, this Advent we are looking together at the women who are mentione...

John ends his little letter of 1 John by going back to what he has been saying all along. It may seem odd to end with "Little children, keep yourself from idols," but in that phrase we see the love that he has constantly shared and the theme that he has returned to again and again. Don't give up the faith! Don't buy the philosophy of your day. Don't give up on what you heard from the beginning. Do...

Love is not god. God is love. So, we don't get love right if we don't get God right. One of the key themes in John is the right understanding of the key of Christian faith - the gift of God in the incarnation of Christ. If you don't get that right, you don't get love right. But if you don't love one another, then you also haven't understood god. So, we learn love by abiding in the revealed love of...

Job is described as "blameless," yet Job suffered - terribly. The book of Job is frequently consulted for answers about suffering. It may ask more questions than it answers. Job was blameless. Why would he repent? Why did he suffer so?

John continues on in Chapter 4 with various tests of true faith. He's given the churches in Asia Minor and the churches of today, here and now, moral tests of how we live our lives and social tests of how we live together in love. He now turns his attention back to a doctrinal test. There were many other teachers coming up who claimed to be from God but they had given in to the thinking of their d...

Naaman is wealthy and powerful but he has an incurable disease. While he knows he needs help beyond what he can buy, he has no idea of the extent of what he really needs. In 2 Kings 5 we see God’s salvation in full force bringing the victory of life over death, freedom over captivity, and grace over greed.

Throughout First John the Apostle is calling us to be like God. But what is God like? John takes us back to the beginning to see the generosity of God. The call to imitate God is a challenge. Certainly, we can not create like He can, yet He calls out of scarcity and into generosity. He calls us to care for those he puts before us.

A consistent truth of Scripture is that we become like what we worship. In the Old Testament book of Leviticus (and in the NT book of 1 Peter) we hear this taught in this way: "Be holy as I am holy." God actually desires that we imitate him. After all, we are made in his image, to reflect his goodness. 1 John 3 tells us that we are children of God. And if we are children of God, then we will refle...

John continues his discussion that he started early about being people of the lie. In Ephesians Paul tells us that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the cosmic power over this present darkness (Ephesians 6:12). Here in 1 John 2, John tells us not to love the world and by that he means don't buy into a world where the lies of the evil one reign supreme. There were those who had...

John began his first epistle with the declaration that the eternal has been manifest in the flesh in Christ and because of the incarnation we have fellowship with God and with one another. But sin breaks fellowship, so through the rest of 1 John chapter 1 he was addressing some errors of our understanding of sin - it's not a big deal, we don't really sin anyway, and God doesn't care about it too m...

We all know life can be difficult. Suffering is part of our walk. Families are broken by sin. Ones we love, sometimes even our children, die. Job's story provides us with guidance, especially about how we should approach God as our world crumbles.