Second City Sermons

Hypocrisy has long been the bane of the Church. Yet, its hardly a new condition. In Jesus day is was obvious to most folk as they interacted with the religious leaders of their day: the scribes and pharisees. Being at the temple as he teaches these things Jesus also comments on giving.

It's Holy Week and the tension is rising. Jesus flipped over tables and called out the religious leaders. And they're getting mad. So they send someone to ask about taxes, about money, about who has say over our lives and our hearts. And what about the afterlife, if there is one? Jesus responds to those questions, but his big response has to do with their so-called desire for the king to come in t...

Jesus has spent the last three years of his life preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God (Luke 5:43) and now he has just entered Jerusalem, being the very visitation of God to bring his redemption and peace. But by what authority has he preached? By what authority has he healed? By what authority does he enter Jerusalem as a King? Well, that's the question the chief priest, the scribes and t...

Jesus enters into Jerusalem with crowds shouting that he is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, but we know that Jesus knows what his reign will cost him. This may be a triumphal entry, but it brings with it the tragedy of the world that brings peace in heaven and earth. He weeps over Jerusalem, Zion, for even there they have exchanged the things of God for the things of this world, they h...

Jesus gives us this parable of the coins (or Matthew tells us the talents) right before he enters Jerusalem, because, Luke tells us, the crowd supposed that the Kingdom of God would appear immediately. Well, what do we do with what has been given to us while we wait? What do we do with grace? What do we do with love? What do we do with forgiveness? How do we evaluate the risk of extending these th...

Luke 19:1-10 tells us about the interaction between Zacchaeus and Jesus. The story is a well known Sunday School story. Zacchaeus was short, not only of stature, but he was short of honesty, compassion and even societal acceptance. He just didn’t measure up. Yet, Jesus pursued him. Zacchaeus didn’t know it when he climbed the tree but he had an appointment with Jesus.

The blind beggar cried out to Jesus, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” In this broken world we have a longing for recovery! Jesus, full of mercy and compassion, will meet us where we are when we call out to him in faith. There can be significant recovery in this life for those who look to Jesus. As we come together at Second City as a community of faith, we help each other enjoy the light of Christ...

What do you need to do to have eternal life? Get your life all in order? Don't drink, smoke, or chew or go with the girls who do? Obey all of the commandments from when you were young? And who gets eternal life? The people who are able to help a lot of people in this life? The people who ask the right questions, who study hard, who sit in the front row? Or maybe the people who are vocal about all...

Luke is adamant - you can't do a thing to enter the Kingdom of God! It's grace alone! None of this works stuff. The tax collector gets it better than the Pharisee and the widow understands better than the Rich Ruler. And maybe the ones who get it better than any others are the infants. The Kingdom is for the utterly dependent, it's for those who have to be carried everywhere and spoon fed. It's gr...

What are the signs that you are trusting in yourself that you are righteous? Jesus speaks to this by way of a parable in Luke 18. What he says is that how you approach yourself has everything to do with how you approach your neighbor and ultimately how you approach God. Even more than how you approach neighbor and God, the real determining factor in how you engage yourself, others and God, is what...

Why is prayer so hard? Why is it so hard to continue in prayer? Jesus says through this parable in Luke 18 that it has to do with how we understand God. Does he care? Is he just? Can we trust him? In this short parable, Jesus compares and contrasts an unjust judge with God himself. If an unjust judge will eventually yield to the persistent pleading of a widow, will God hear us? Well, is God just?...

Epiphany is the revealing of God as the God for the World. The wise men from the East remind us that Jesus hasn't jus come for the Jews or that God's grace isn't localized to one place and to one people. Even so, though God's grace may be for the world, few have the eyes, ears and hearts, to see it, hear it and receive it. So, Jesus here in Luke 18 tells us, "The Kingdom of God is coming in ways t...

We were made for Relationship. Relationship with God and with one another. The Bible's big story is the restoration of relationship, of life together, a dramatic movement from intimacy to hiding to God's consistent pursuit. His pursuit of his people out from Slavery, in the cloud and pillar of fire, in the tabernacle and the Temple. God keeps coming down. But the greatest pursuit is his coming in...

We celebrate each Christmas the birth of the one who is the desire of the nations. The unheard of occurs - God comes wrapped in our flesh, into our broken world. He comes for our world and for all types of people in our world. He comes to save men and women, young and old, poor and rich, kings and beggars, Jew and Gentile, all of us.

A teenager, seemingly pregnant outside of marriage. An old woman, miraculously pregnant. A betrothed man gets a visit by angel, and takes his pregnant bride on a trip to Egypt. A king, so corrupted by his own power, that he orders the killing of all the boys who might be his predicted successor. A troupe of star-gazers from the east, seeking a royal birth. The circumstances of Jesus birth are anyt...

Part of the beauty of O Antiphons is that they rehearse for us the great movement of God's redemptive work through the Old Testament. As we reflect on Jesus as the Wisdom of God, or as the Lord of Might, or as the Root of Jessi and the Key of David, we enter into the long waiting story of Israel. This week we see Jesus as "great David's greater Son"! As God's promise to Abraham was a promise that...

Part of the beauty of the great O Antiphons is that, like the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, they lead us chronologically through the story of redemption history to Jesus. As we sit in them, we wait with Israel for the Emmanuel, but with Israel we see pictures of God's great grace and power towards his creation and his people as the story unfolds. This week, we remember God's greatest a...

This Advent and Christmastide we are looking at the ancient "O Antiphons" and considering what they teach us of what we long for and what we are given in the gift of Jesus. This week with Pastor Peter down with the flu one of our Ruling Elders, Bruce Weatherly, invites us to consider Psalm 73 in-light of Christ’s arrival in our lives. Advent marks the arrival of the “word made flesh” to a waiting,...

This Advent and Christmastide we are looking at the ancient "O Antiphons" and considering what they teach us of what we long for and what we are given in the gift of Jesus. The first stanza speak of Jesus as the "Wisdom from on high". Wisdom is something that is sought the world over and what the Bible tells us is that it is found in Jesus. Wisdom, after all, is skill in the art of godly living, l...

We come to the end of Nehemiah and sadly what we find is the people are going against the Lord in the very ways that they had said they wouldn't! The book ends with Nehemiah calling people back to the Lord and doing so in dramatic ways - pulling hair! But this chapter is about grace. This Nehemiah community lives not in its own ability, but in the Lord's! We are left at the end of the book having...

As we near the end of the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah once again gives a list of who is around. Recording who has come to do the work, who has stuck around through the internal and external conflicts, and who exactly has decided to give themselves to this community is an important part of this book. Here near the end though not only is the variety of the community highlighted, but the fact that wha...

Nehemiah 9 is almost all a long prayer of confession. The people have settled into the land, heard the Word, celebrated, and now they are confessing. But what is confession? Confession, maybe more than anything else, is confessing that we have not responded to God properly, to his work, to his ways, to his history and his grace. The problem then is not sins (that's just a pharisaic / fundamentalis...

During His famous sermon of the mount, Jesus directs the listeners to notice the difference between the two ways of life, one is through and broad gate of one’s own making that leads to death, or by a narrow gate that is made of Jesus which leads to life eternal. Jesus also warns against false prophets that act like sheep but really are ravenous wolves, but they can be identified by their actions...

What forms a community? What makes it what it is? Nehemiah 7 and 8 show the people settled in the land, but gathered around the Word of God. Preaching, teaching, confession, sharing. And what happens when the people do this? The fear that has been so present in the book turns towards joy, the greed of chapter 6 turns towards generosity. The returned people are a word-shaped community.

In Nehemiah six the wall is completed, and the work is done in record time. Even so, the chapter is full of fear, or the life of fear and the attempt to instill fear. That forces the questions: Who are you afraid? Who do you stand in awe of? But also, related to all of this is who is part of the community of faith? And what does it mean to be a Christian? The wall may be up, but the work isn't don...