Sunday Sermons from Trinity UMC Lincoln, Nebraska

Moses found a bush on fire that refused to die out — what if it still hasn’t? This week we’re doing something different: less explaining, more telling. We’ll walk through the burning bush story in full — the fire, the name, the excuses — and let it land the way it was meant to. Come ready to listen for what catches you.

We’ve been looking for God in all the wrong places. Many of us imagine faith as a journey to someplace else, someday in the future. But the story of Jacob’s dream invites us to ask a different question: What if heaven is breaking into the ordinary moments of life right here and now?

What do you do when hope starts to feel foolish? Most of us know what it's like to wait for something that never seems to come—healing, change, justice, reconciliation, a better future. This Sunday, we'll explore the surprising story of Abraham and Sarah's laughter and discover why biblical hope is not the same thing as optimism.

When did you stop believing people are good? Spend enough time online, enough time watching the news, enough time being disappointed by people, and eventually cynicism starts to feel like wisdom. But the Bible begins with a radically different vision of humanity— one that insists there is something sacred in us worth healing, restoring, and refusing to give up on.

Are your doubts honest enough? This Sunday is Trinity Sunday— the day Christians celebrate one of the strangest and most beautiful ideas in our faith: that God is bigger than our categories. We’ll explore why the disciples worshipped Jesus and doubted at the very same time… and why maybe that’s not failure, but part of what it means to encounter a God too vast to fully explain.

Pentecost 2026

Most of us are living accidentally. We put thought into our workouts, our careers, and our calendars. But when it comes to marriage, family, faith, rest, or even our attention, many of us just react to whatever comes next. Over time, that kind of drifting shapes us more than we realize. There’s a better way, and it’s the reason we’re called “METHODists.

Is outrage changing us? We live in a world that rewards anger, division, and instant judgment. But what if fighting what’s wrong starts changing something inside of us, too? This Sunday, we’ll explore a classic sermon from Methodism’s founder and the hard challenge of loving people we deeply disagree with—without surrendering either truth or compassion.

Your soul is being shaped every day— by something you barely notice. Money is one of the most powerful forces shaping your soul. Not just in the big decisions, but in the small ones you barely think about. What you spend without hesitation. What you second guess. What feels normal to you now. Join us as we draw on wisdom from the Bible and from the Methodist tradition to help us turn our hearts to...

Doing good isn’t as simple as it sounds. You try to help. You show up. You do the right thing. And for a moment, it matters. But then something bigger pushes back—systems that don’t change, patterns that keep repeating. And it starts to feel like the world itself is working against your best efforts. But what if the weight of fixing the world was never yours to carry? What if real hope begins with...

Belief is easy. Living it is where everything changes. Most of us spend more time figuring out what we believe, but far less time knowing what to do with it in the moments that actually matter. Today, we’ll explore a gift of Methodism: John Wesley’s three simple rules for living. It’s not about becoming a better person, it’s about learning how to live your faith in real life.

You might believe in God… but does it actually change your life? Most of us aren’t trying to ignore faith—we’re just busy living. Work, kids, stress, routines… and somewhere along the way, what we believe can start to feel disconnected from how we actually live. But what if faith isn’t about thinking about God more? Real faith is what shows up in how we live when we’re NOT thinking about it. This...

Let’s be honest: sometimes everything is not going to be alright. But Easter isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about facing the moments when it isn’t—and asking whether there’s something deeper than denial, something stronger than wishful thinking. This Easter Sunday, we’ll explore the claim at the center of the resurrection: that even when everything is not alright, your story is no...

What if Christ is standing right in front of you? Every one of us knows what it feels like to be welcomed—and what it feels like not to be. This Sunday, we’ll hear Jesus’ startling words about meeting him in “the least of these,” and we’ll explore what it means to practice a deeper kind of hospitality: not just being polite, but making room for the presence of Christ in one another. It’s a message...

When the place you expect to find God disappears, where do you look next? In Jesus’ day, the Temple was the center of everything—the place where heaven and earth were believed to meet. But by the time Matthew wrote his Gospel, that sacred place was gone, reduced to rubble. In this week’s message, “Sprouts Growing in Rock,” we’ll explore Matthew’s surprising answer to the question everyone was aski...

You might be closer to heaven than you think. Most of us spend our lives searching for meaning, peace, and something that makes life feel bigger than the daily grind. But what if the deeper reality we’re longing for has been right in front of us all along? This Sunday, we’ll explore Jesus’ mysterious phrase “the kingdom of heaven”—and what it means to recognize and live in God’s goodness that’s al...

You don’t have to carry the whole world. Most of us are exhausted from trying. We scroll through crisis after crisis, story after story, and quietly load them onto our backs. But what if you were never meant to carry the river of need — only the boat God places in your hands? This Sunday, we’ll walk through Matthew 9 and 10 and discover how Jesus responds to overwhelming need.

You can’t fix the world with an unchanged heart. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lays out a way of life that runs straight against the grain of our culture: mercy over outrage, integrity over image, trust over anxiety, love even for enemies. This Sunday, we’ll explore what it means for Jesus to reshape us from the inside out—and how that kind of formation turns ordinary people into salt that pre...

Every year, we tell the Christmas story—but we don’t always tell this one. This Sunday, Lent begins, and with it a new journey through the Gospel of Matthew. We’re calling the series “This Age and the Age to Come,” a season-long invitation to see the sharp contrast Matthew draws between the world as it is and the world God is bringing into being. We’ll start not with a sweet, singing Christmas, bu...

When the world feels like it’s coming apart, our first instinct is to grab for control. This Sunday, we’re heading up the mountain— where Moses, Elijah, and the disciples all discover that God refuses to be controlled. But what if control isn’t the only option? What if faith invites us to a posture that helps us live out of something more fruitful than fear?

Even fire from heaven didn’t fix everything. This Sunday’s sermon explores Elijah’s journey from public victory to private exhaustion, and the quiet encounter with God that changes how he understands his role in the story. It’s an ancient reminder that faithfulness doesn’t mean carrying the whole burden alone.

Sometimes life feels heavy, unsettled, and harder than it should be. This Sunday, we’ll sit with a deeply honest moment from Scripture where even Moses struggles to trust God’s promise and wants more certainty than faith usually gets. We’ll explore why it’s often difficult to see where God is in the middle of turmoil, and how remembering where God has been can give us the courage to keep doing the...

Too many people see Christianity as a force that’s caused more harm than good. In this week’s message from our Restoring Faith series, we’ll speak honestly about why that’s true for so many, and why it doesn’t have to be the final word. We’ll explore the heart of the gospel—how faith changes us on the inside and then moves outward into healing, service, and love that the world can actually feel.

What if the problem with Christianity isn’t what we believe—but what’s quietly growing inside us? This week in our Restoring Faith series, we’ll talk about why love is meant to be the center of the Christian life—and how that love can slowly erode without us even noticing. With Jesus’ help, we’ll explore how faith can be healed from the inside out.

Faith wasn’t meant to break the moment you start asking real questions. Today, we’re naming something many of us feel but rarely say out loud: the problem may not be faith itself, but the way it's too often practiced. We’ll start with Jesus’ command to love God with our whole mind—and what that means for doubts, curiosity, and a faith that can actually grow.