Second City Sermons

John began his first epistle by reassuring us of the truth of the incarnation of Jesus, but also told us that because of the truth of the incarnation and resurrection we have fellowship with the Father and the Son and one another. It makes all of the sense in the world then that what John has to address next is that which breaks fellowship and what we do about it. Sin breaks fellowship and our tem...

Though we are not totally sure the exact circumstances which gave rise to the writing of 1 John, what is very evident is that some, even by the end of the apostolic era, had turned from the true faith. Maybe they had given up on Jesus altogether, at the very least they had given up on the idea of God in the flesh in Christ and all that that truth calls us to. Jesus is the Word of Life. He is not t...

School is upon us. That means Fall is right around the corner. The beginning of school and the beginning of fall present us with dueling thoughts and emotions. We are presented with the hope of a new year and the bounty of produce, but also the limitations of all that is demanded of us. We know that so much of our fear and our sin that comes out of that place of fear is connected to the idea of sc...

A lot of times it feels like things just don't go right. Maybe it is we ourselves that seem to be our own worst enemy, sometimes it's other people and sometimes it just seems like the world in general. And we sure wonder if God knows all about it. Maybe we think of him as Rowan Williams points out, as sort of a failing billionaire and we are trying to manage his estate and we wonder if he has any...

What do you do when the worst happens to you? What does the worst bring out in you? When you lose your job, or when your spouse criticised you for the 25th time today, or when your children decide you just are old and can therefore be dismissed as not knowing anything. What about when the tragic happens: when you have another miscarriage, when COVID sticks around and keeps sticking around? What do...

If there is one thing that most everyone longs for it is peace. We want to know that we are alight, that our kids are alright, that the future is alright. We stay up late and are restless in bed with the worries that occupy our minds. We dream of winning the Mega Millions with the thought that if we had enough money all of our worries will go away. We don't forgive because what will that demand of...

Psalm 96 invites us to sing, to bless the Lord and declare his glory among the nations. David penned this Psalm. He knew much of God’s faithfulness and love. We know more! David could only imagine the coming Messiah. We can offer greater praise because we have seen the marvelous work of Jesus in the Gospels and in our own lives.

Psalm 122 is a Psalm of Ascents. It’s part of a group of Psalms comprising Psalms 120 – 134. Each year, as they traveled up the hill the temple was built on, the people of Israel would sing these Psalms to remind themselves of God’s grace and love for them. So, these Psalms were used to gather the people’s hearts together in preparation for worship. Israel was gathered as God’s inheritance. Jesus...

Life is full of times of great difficulty, times when we are faced with deep tragedy and sorrow, times when we wonder if we will make it through and if the foundations of our lives will be shaken to their core. We long for a strong stability, a place of comfort and stability. We might run to all kinds of things for this stability, or even to run away from feeling how deep the need is. But the Bibl...

Psalm 60 is sort of a strange psalm. The heading that we are given in the Hebrew is the longest in the Psalms. It takes up two verses in the Hebrew. And the heading speaks of victory, but the psalm puts us in a place of despair and or crying out for God to do something. Like David, our lives are often filled with sorrow. The travail of this live is deeply hard, sometimes unbearable. David’s life,...

Psalm 59 continues on with the theme that we have been in through most of the 50s, namely David fleeing from Saul and finding refuge in God. The title of Psalm 59 tells us that it was written when Saul sent men to watch David's house to try to kill him! People are out for him. A whole group of people are out for him. And they are people that have the backing of the king. Some of us know this kind...

Enemies are all over the Bible and they are all over the Psalms. The Psalms take life seriously - there's no tidying it up! - and so they take enemies seriously. It seems, as Walter Bruggeman says, that "the Psalms are full of enemy talk." There are 94 terms in the Psalms to describe enemies! Friends can have become enemies, our own selves are at times our enemies, leaders can be enemies, and all...

Almost everyone prays. But what is prayer? More importantly how would God direct us to pray. All important questions David considers as he contemplates his difficult situation in Psalm 5.

During the summer it is our practice to return to the Psalms. This being the ninth summer we have followed this course, we start with Psalm 57. The Psalms are wisdom literature, the inspired contemplations and prayers of David, Asaph and others. The Psalmists lift their lives up to God, sometimes with praise, but often with the struggles of life. As they do this the Psalmists show us a God who car...

During nearly every worship service, countless Christians around the world say the Lord's Prayer every time they gather together. When they do so, they end with words that aren't found in the best manuscripts we have of the gospels of Matthew and Luke where we find Jesus teaching his disciples to pray this prayer. So, why do we, as Christians end this prayer of our Lord with the words "For thine i...

We come to the last petition of the Lord's Prayer on Pentecost Sunday, the Sunday that we remember the gift of the Spirit to lead and to guide the church. How appropriate then that we pray in this last petition, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil", for as you trace the indwelling of the Spirit through the life of Christians in the Old Testament epoch and through the life of Jes...

In much of Jesus's earthly ministry, He was challenged in His authority and as to His identity. He was popular among the common people, but the Jewish leaders threatened by His popularity took various opportunities to challenge Jesus by trying to trap Him in His words and hopefully turn the people against Him. But Jesus always had the right answer for all to hear, even when He was asked the wrong...

We are all debtors! We are all up to our noses in debt. Not exactly the thing we want to hear. But we are called to love God with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. God and all of those made in his image are worthy of such love. In fact, their very being demands such love. And we don't give it. We are debtors. But God, in his infinite grace and ki...

"Give us this day our daily bread." Many have broken the Lord's prayer into six petitions, the first three directed godward and the last three directed towards the needs and dynamics of humankind. We have just prayed "on earth as it is in heaven" and now when we turn to the needs of this earth, Jesus gives us a petition that encompasses all things. To ask God to give us our daily bread is to ask h...

The Lord's prayer is often divided into two major sections, the first three petitions being directed godward and the final three being directed earthward. The turning point is said to be the phrase "on earth as it is in heaven", which is to say, the hing of the prayer, the focus of the prayer is the hallowing of God, the will of God, the Kingdom of God here, with us, on earth. That is then lived o...

What do we pray when we pray that God's name would be hallowed? We pray that there would be no imposters, no false gods in his place. We pray that he would be rightly recognized for who he is. He is the great I Am, the One who was and is and is to come. We pray that he would make his real identity properly known so that we and all others would recognize and then honor him as he really is, the true...

It was common for a rabbi, for a great teacher, to teach others how to talk to God. When Jesus' teaches his disciples to pray he does so in response to their request for him to teach them "as John taught his disciples". But Jesus begins his prayer "Our Father", an incredibly intimate and therefore entirely radical way to approach God. Ever since, the Lord's prayer has been the foundation of all Ch...

Easter is a time of reversals, the cross becomes the empty tomb, death becomes life. In his gospel, John shows Thomas' doubt turning into faith, the disciples' fear into courage, Mary's sorrow into joy. But it's not a story of such life-changing reversals only for those long ago. The same God does this Easter-shaped, god-inspired work all of the time in the lives of the greatest skeptics, the peop...

What answer do you have to our suffering world? How do you make sense of it? A hard and bitter heart? The idea that it's just the way it is so eat, drink and be merry and live a take-it-when-you-can-get-it life? What about religions? What do they say? The Christian good news is that God himself suffers. Wherever all of the suffering comes from, the Bible tells us that it is related to sin and huma...

How in the world, within the course of less than a week, does a crowd go from shouting "Hosanna!" to shouting "Crucify Him?" How, well, the same way we do. Jesus didn't just go along with the party lines. In fact, he rubbed all of the lines wrong. Just like he does today. He pushed the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the common people. Everyone wanted him to be their tribal King, their tribal God...