Taylor Mertins

It’s interesting, I think, how almost no one in the New Testament self identifies as a Christian. In fact, the label of being a Christian is a public one. That is, it is applied to those in the church by the world because the world can’t make sense of what the church is doing. Today we take the practice of generosity as rather ubiquitous, particularly at this time of year, but in the first century...

By the power of Christ, through cross and resurrection, we are forgiven. More pertinently YOU are forgiven. That’s the heart of the gospel and it’s why people like me won’t shut up about it. But when I tell you you’re forgiven, whether from the pulpit or at the table, it’s not because you’ve somehow wiped your slate clean, or gotten all your ducks in a row. I am simply encouraging you to open your...

Grief isn’t something to be fixed or gotten rid of. To deny our grief is to deny our humanity. The best we can ever do for others in their grief is just be there, to manifest the love that refuses to let them go. And the best we can ever do when we experience grief is exactly that - experience it. Weep and be angry and let it happen. Because that’s what Jesus does. Jesus, knowing full and well tha...

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me. At tea time, everybody agrees. I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror. It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero. Who knew Taylor Swift was so Pauline? Even with all the accolades, all the money, all the power, all the influence, she sings of a life that is simul justus et peccator. In Paul’s letter, as he gets his Swiftie on, see...

Preaching is foolishness, Paul says, because lofty words of wisdom and grandeur do not bring us closer to God. Instead, God comes close to us. So close, in fact, that we have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. Which means who only really know who we are in relation to, and because of, who Jesus is. We can develop and put on all sorts of identit...

God’s grace is unmerited, undeserved, and untakeawayable. The offering plate is too small for God’s gift to us. God doesn’t give us 10%. No, God gives us everything. The whole kit and caboodle. For God is the gift. This is the Gospel, the goodest part of the Good News: God gives and gives and gives. God seeks and seeks and seeks. God forgives and forgives and forgives.

The strange theological truth is that the world does revolve around us. I know that’s a dangerous thing to say, particularly in a time in which narcissism is on the rise and the evidence of our destructive tendencies toward Creation are all too apparent… But there’s an important distinction - the cosmos is ours not so that it might serve selfish ends, of course, but that, through creation God migh...

The church isn’t supposed to do or make anything. We’re not a factory or a company. We’re the church. We’re in the business of being. All the doing or making we’ve ever needed has been done and made by Jesus.

The witness of the church, straight from the lips of the Lord (and Paul), is that there is always a space for you in this place of grace because our differences make us the church. We have eyes and ears and fingers and toes. We have friends and family and strangers and foes. In other words, the church is an antidote to the loneliness of the world, and the loneliness that far too many of us experie...

Remembering your baptism, whether you actually remember it or not is just the same as taking time to consider who loved you into being. In baptism you enter into the oneness of the community of faith we call the church, in which you are surrounded by people who care about you and want the best for you. In baptism, your eyes and ears are opened to those whom God delights sending into your life just...

Ephesians 4.1-6 & Deuteronomy 6.4-9 Jesus offers us an alternative epistemology: Love God and love your neighbor. Paint those words on your doors, talk about them with your kids, get them printed on stickers and adhere them to your water bottles. Unlike what the world tells us over and over again: think for yourself, make your own way, don’t worry about anyone except yourself… Jesus frees us from...

God is not sitting idly by, far away, waiting for us to pray. Prayer isn’t putting pressure on God, or persuading God. It’s not about getting God’s attention, or changing God’s mood. God’s mood toward us never changes. God yearns for a world that looks more like the kingdom than all of this. That’s why God gives us these songs to sing and prayers to pray. That’s why God give us Jesus, to embody th...

Psalm 51.1-12 Confession is often nothing more than telling the truth about ourselves to ourselves, to one another, and to God. The community of faith that confesses is not a church without sin (for there is no such thing), instead the church that confesses is a church without secrets. And yet, it’s important to talk about what we talk about when we confess. For, confession has nothing to do with...

Exodus 3.1-6 Prayer is what happens to us when we encounter the inconceivable surprise of living - it is a conversation born out of the realization, just as Moses discovered in the burning bush, that God is with us, always.

The Freedom To Be A Sinner by Taylor Mertins

John 21.20-25 John doesn’t earn his belovedness. He’s not the lovable disciple - he’s the beloved disciple. He doesn’t do anything better than the other twelve, he’s not striving after the gold medal of morality or the sanctity of spirituality. He is simply called to a life that he would not have had on his own, and he has fun along the way...

Luke 5.1-11 Jesus knows full and well what a mess Peter is and still calls him anyway. Jesus should’ve absolutely left Peter on the shore that fateful morn, but instead calls him to a life of discipleship that conveys the freedom to be wrong. And it is a freedom. Consider how many of our relationships have faltered if not floundered because we can’t accept wrongness. Think about how many instituti...

Mark 4.35-41 Music is perhaps the greatest technology of the heart, and singing in particular. To lift our voices together is to stand against the disorder of the world. Notice: singing is not a denial of reality. The Moravians on the boat with Wesley weren’t singing in order to pretend like the waves weren’t beating down upon them. No, they were singing because they knew how the story ends - they...

Mark 4.26-34 In the end the parables are stories that Jesus tells about himself. He is the Good Shepherd off in search of the lost, he is the fatted calf sacrificed for the party, on and on. And the branches of his kingdom are a place of grace for everyone. Grace, as Frederick Buechner was apt to say, is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it, or deserve it, or br...

Mark 3.20-35 The church is where God assembles us to imagine and day dream about how beautiful the world could be. It’s wild stuff really. It always has been. That people like me can stand up in a place like this and say “Welcome home.” Or: “I declare the entire forgiveness of all your sins.” Or: “You are loved beyond measure.” I sound like I’m out of my mind! But such is the power of God’s grace,...

Mark 2.23-3.6 Jesus has a word for all of us. A word of gospel rather than a word of law. A word of relief rather than expectation. Jesus says, 'Stretch out your hand.' Whatever it is you’ve done, or left undone, it is no match for the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. Stretch out your hand. Come to the altar to receive the one thing needful, the body and the blood. You are...

Psalm 29 The church has a word of relief, and that word is the Gospel. It’s a very countercultural word, one that threatens to undo everything we think we know about what we think we know. The church can be safe and secure, unthreatening, unassuming, with our pews bolted to the ground, where we mutter and muster an 'Amen' only once in a blue moon. But God will not let us remain as such. The Spirit...

Acts 2.1-12 To be a Christian is not so much having a certain set of beliefs that give meaning to our lives. Instead, to be a Christian is to be initiated into a community with practices and habits that actually transform our lives. Which is just another way of saying, we only ever learn what it means to be Christians by watching other Christians and doing what they do. To be Christian means being...

John 17.11-19 Jesus' prayer in John 17 is rather unlike the compact prayer that he taught the disciples to pray, that prayer we will all pray later in worship. The theologian NT Wright says this very long prayer of Jesus is “so rich that we may choke on it unless we chew it slowly.” One of the people who has chewed slowly on this text is Brian Zahnd. Brian is a gifted writer and the pastor of Word...

Psalm 22.25-31 & John 15.1-8 The odd proclamation of the Gospel is that there is no hope in us. We are all withering branches in need of some pruning and care. We’re all sinners. We’re all incompatible with the Messiah because we tend to make such a mess of his message. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay because Jesus comes to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He says, Abide...