The Nexus Podcast

Well, friends, just like that, we have arrived at our season finale. For our final Sunday together before the summer, I want to close with a question worth carrying over the next few months. When was the last time you experienced God? Not just thought about God, agreed with an idea about God, or heard someone else speak about God. I mean, sensed God’s nearness in some real way. I think for many of...

This Sunday we’re doing something a little different: Into the Looking Glass: Anthropology Over the past several months, our Anthropology series has sparked conversations, questions, disagreements, insights, and more than a few stories. It’s been one of those series that seems to have stayed with people. So rather than simply moving on, we’re taking one last look. Join me (Sarah) as I walk us back...

Well folks, the end of our season is fast approaching, and so this Sunday represents a sort of epilogue to our anthropology series. Instead of bringing another teaching or abstract idea, I simply want to tell you a story that forces us to ask one of the oldest and most uncomfortable questions there is: what are human beings, really? I want to tell you the devastating story behind one of J.M.W. Tur...

n her well-known poem, “Wild Geese”, Mary Oliver says: Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- over and over announcing your place in the family of things. While we might be more familiar with the image of the Holy Spirit...

Well friends, this Sunday marks the final week of our anthropology series, and we’ll be wrapping it up by asking what happens when anthropology meets faith? Throughout this series, we’ve explored what it means to be human: limited, conflicted, self-centered, and deeply in need of mercy. But this final week brings that conversation into the life of faith itself. What if the goal of the Jesus Path i...

When it comes to anthropology, the rubber hits the road in both relationships and politics. This week, we tackle what happens when anthropology enters the political arena. This won’t be easy, because our politics have a way of getting into the air we breathe. It shapes the news we consume, the conversations we avoid, the assumptions we make, and sometimes even the way we see the people sitting acr...

This Sunday at Nexus, we continue our series on anthropology by asking what may be the most practical question of all: what do we expect from the people we love? Anthropology can sound abstract until you are married to someone, raising kids with someone, building friendships, joining a church community, or assembling a gazebo with your spouse and discovering that “marital harmony” apparently has a...

Friends, this Sunday we keep moving through our anthropology series by asking a deceptively simple question: what if the "self" is not something to be found, but something to be formed? As we start to explore the real-world implications of the anthropology we hold, I want to explore the tension between cultural aphorisms like “be yourself” and “you do you” with Jesus’ words “deny yourself.” Can yo...

Where we begin makes a big difference to our journey and to our future. We don’t pick up a book and begin at Chapter 3. Why would we do that with Scripture? The Bible begins the human story in beauty and goodness, but so often, our theology and the stories we tell ourselves tend to begin with our brokenness. We overindex on the negative. (Don’t mean to brag, but I am quite skilled at snatching def...

Well, with Lent and Easter now behind us, we’re returning to our Anthropology series this Sunday after a six-week pause. I want to pick the series up again with one of the biggest questions beneath so much of life: what are human beings really like? What does it mean to be human, not just in theory or only when we are at our best, but in the ordinary realities of conflict, relationships, stress, h...

On Easter Sunday, we gather again to step into a very different kind of morning. If Good Friday asks us to stay with what feels lost, Easter invites us to consider what we might be missing even when it is right in front of us. With poetry, song, Scripture, and reflection, we will move into a story where recognition comes slowly, hope arrives strangely, and the world may be more alive than we first...

This Good Friday,  we will make space for the weight of the story without rushing past it. Through Scripture, music, art, and reflection, we will linger with the cross as a place of sorrow, honesty, and difficult love. This is a service for anyone who knows that not everything can be fixed quickly, explained neatly, or tied up by the end.

Friends, we are about to enter Holy Week, and so, as we do, we’re turning to one of the most surprising exchanges at the cross. It is the dialogue between Jesus and two criminals also being executed beside him. I want to pair this moment with Andrea Mantegna’s painting Crucifixion (Louvre). There is something incredibly vivid, to me, about this painting. It kind of draws you into the scene as a sp...

Have you ever been left behind? I have been - at church, no less. And I must confess…I have also left a child at church. While I was probably 16 years old when it happened to me, our daughter was but 18 months. I know. Not a stellar parenting moment. But it’s surprisingly easy - it always involves two cars, and the abandoned person somehow falling between the cracks. A simple miscommunication and...

The Dry Place, from March 15th is avaialble by podcast: This Sunday in our Lent series, we’re going to focus on Jesus’ shortest, and easiest to skip, saying from the cross. In John, Jesus simply utters, “I thirst.” It isn’t a speech or sermon. It isn’t a lesson. It is two simple words that speak volumes and asks us to lean in close rather than hurry past them. In those two words are I think both a...

This Sunday in our Lent series, we’ll be sitting with more of Jesus’ words from the cross. This one is less divine revelation and more communal and tender in nature. And I want to come to Jesus’ words as with one piece of art held up long enough for it to actually do something to us. We’ll be gazing at La Crucifixion (a stark, monochrome crucifixion plaque), and letting it orient our attention int...

Lent is now upon us, and for the weeks leading up to Easter at Nexus we’re slowing the pace down on purpose. Each week we’ll take just one of Jesus’ sayings from the cross and we’ll keep a single piece of art in front of us as a visual companion. This Sunday’s artwork is Karel Dujardin’s: The Calvar (1661): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duajrdin-Calvaire-Louvre.jpg a dark, storm-charged...

Have you ever had a day, or week, where you sincerely wanted the good, and then things still unfolded opposite of all your good intentions? The invitation this Sunday is to take that strange, universal experience seriously, not as a quirky personality glitch, but as a window into what it means to be human. We’re exploring The Conflicted Self this Sunday. We’ll hear one of the most uncomfortably ho...

For today's sermon, we’re going to have fun with metaphors - we’ll return to the garden image, connecting that to Paul’s biblical image of the body. All of this is to explore the lens we use to look at the world. Consider - how much do you notice your thoughts…and how critical would you say they are? Do you have a strong inner critic? Or would you be more of a finger-pointer? Maybe like me, you’re...

Friends, what do FBI hostage negotiators have in common with Instagram, Netflix, and Spotify/Apple algorithms? Well, uncomfortably, they may know us better than we know ourselves. Which tells us something important about human nature. This Sunday, we’re continuing our Anthropology series by poking at a story many of us are quietly living inside: the idea that with the right hacks, tools, and techn...