Things to Ponder

"Number our days" isn’t about living in anxiety or regret. It means to pay attention to them…God has created character, relationships, opportunities, disciplines into the next chapter for you. You don’t open up to a clean slate; you open up to the power of God at work in your life. Look back at your last chapter. What sits in your heart that you are delighted to share? What hidden challenges did y...

Martha asks, “Am I doing the right thing?” The Corinthians asked, “Is this allowed?” Paul asks a different question entirely, “What kind of person and community are we becoming?” He wants us to use a new filter: Does it build up? Does it give life?  Does it deepen love in Christ? We live in a world that is constantly competing for our attention, but the deepest question is not what captures our at...

Wisdom realizes we’re shaped less by what we think, and more by what we love. So before Scripture tells us what to do, it is serious about calling us to examine what we want. Which means wisdom is this: Decide today who you want to be tomorrow. Because the person you become tomorrow is being formed right now. Christ has never stopped working on you. Christ can see in you what you cannot see in you...

Wisdom is the applied knowledge, the practical understanding, we get as we live life, answers the question, “How do I live well? Just one problem. We gain wisdom looking backwards, but we have to live moving forward. Our world is flush with information, but desperately lacking in lived wisdom. Information technologies have not made us more generous, compassionate, or wise. Wisdom is aligning my li...

Pentecost demands our desires. It demands those messy, growling-belly parts of our lives we try to hide. When your heart says, “I  want... I desire,” the Spirit challenges us to hand those desires to Christ and say, “Lord, here’s what I want. Maybe this is from you, maybe not. Whatever - make my heart beat for your Kingdom.”

We need the imagination to see who actually sits on the throne. Our conviction is that in Christ is our hope, and the hope of the world. Christians says without apology that Christ is not identified with agendas and parties and movements, but that is he above all kings and all presidents and all governments of the world, and demands a higher allegiance. I am a citizen of heaven who happens to live...

Healing is tricky - there's a lot more to it than just "getting better." When Jesus heals Simon's mother-in-law, its not just that she's better; its that she is restored. One woman’s dignity became the public invitation for an entire community. We are restored so that we can stand at the threshold and meet the world,” offering dignity to a world that just wants to know someone cares.

A temple is a place where heaven and earth come mighty close together. In the aftermath of his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is building a new temple, a new place for sacrifice, a new place for reconciliation with God. But it’s not coming in the forms of bricks and mortar. It’s not fundamentally coming by building an organization or an institution. It is coming in you and me, “living stones,...

For all the bigness of the gospel, for all the grand proclamations that Jesus is drawing all things to himself, his way of sharing that news is surprisingly small. Jesus is at work in the local. The Church that is committed to the Jesus message and the Jesus method will be deeply committed to local. As my (Pastor Sam) grandmother once told me, “A pastor should smell like his congregation.”

The gospel stories of Easter aren’t merely recounting “what happened.” They show us the first moments of a new world breaking into the old. On the road to Emmaus, two disciples can't recognize the risen Christ because they were looking for victory in the ways of the old world. When the open the Scriptures and break the bread, they recognize Christ, who has brought new life that has defeated death....

Before Jesus sends the apostles to the world or gives them work to do, he gives them an experience of Himself. Because before anything changes out there, something has to change in me. God renews the world, beginning in the hearts of people. Peter describes it in 1 Peter—a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is not a metaphor for self-improvement. It is a wa...

Faith compels Mary to be at the tomb even without hope, to be faithful without “purpose.” And it is precisely that faithfulness that places her at the moment the light of the world is revealed. In her darkness, she kept moving. And so did God. While it was still dark, Jesus had already risen from the dead, and the risen Christ was already moving towards her, closer than she could know. While Mary...

At Christmas, we confess Jesus is fully human, and fully God. The payoff for that doctrine is Good Friday. On the cross, the full brokenness of our humanity – the Roman soldiers and Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial and Pilate and Caiaphas’ cowardice, and every sin and every sickness and every disappointment and every injustice and every violence and every war – is present here.  WHILE AT THE SAM...

On Palm Sunday, Jesus is proclaimed as King. But he is a servant king. Jesus shows his power. But it is the power of co-suffering love. Jesus is proclaimed as liberator. But  it is by his cruel execution that we are saved. So let us cry Hosanna, save us! Save us from our own predispositions to power and rivalry, the small ways we manipulate and strongarm. Hosanna, save us from a world that, for al...

There is no personal call to Christian faith that isn’t a call to the community of believers. Catechesis is a community project. That is the purpose and work of worship. We gather to be shaped together by Christ for life like Christ. This stands in opposition to how we generally talk about worship, evaluating through a consumerist lens, which says church is ultimately a product to be consumed. But...

This Sunday, we turn our catechetical thoughts towards the kids! Christianity is a received religion, which means it can only be given from a life to a life, a line connecting all the way back to Christ himself. If we want young people to have a genuine experience of Jesus, then the most important thing we can do is remain at the feet of Jesus. The surest guarantor of wonder and passion in a young...

One objection to catechesis suggests that ultimately, what we believe isn't so important as what we do. While we always celebrate good in the world, Jesus says that following Jesus means we are more fruitful. The fruit isn't for us, it's for the world. A step towards our community is ALWAYS a step towards Christ first. Catechesis is so that we do good work in the world.

EVERYTHING is religious! That’s not a problem; that’s the world God created. The problem is when we don’t see it. Just because we fail to take interest in the spiritual doesn’t mean the spiritual fails to take an interest in us. And over the course of time, 6 days of work and television and socials and friends and culture will overcome an hour on Sunday every single time. The way of Christ require...

Catechesis is an intentional process that forms us as disciples of Christ. But it's not a "smorgasbord" of spiritual options, but a path that we walk in the way of Christ. It reminds us of our identity with Christ, and enables us to live like Christ lived. This Lent, set out on this intentional journey to follow Jesus!

At his Transfiguration, Jesus is fully revealed as God from God, light from light. We read this on the last Sunday before Lent, so that we go into Lent strengthened by this vision. So do not head into Lent without having witnessed the uncreated light of Christ.

We did a deep dive into the Beatitudes, Jesus' most substantive teaching on who is blessed (or "happy") in the Kingdom of God. While we might have heard these read from time to time, we tried to bring a new perspective on them, and the invitation to discipleship that they are.

On the heels of our sermon two weeks ago, we wonder what the church can do in times of great upheaval to be a light to the world. We found a historic precedent in St. Benedict of Nursia, who "preserved humanity" in his early monastic groups. Centered on Christ and his cross, we too can be a place which preserves the humanity and dignity of all.

Sermon Text: Deuteronomy 11:7-21   God is not mindless about land, but cares for it, so the Lord sees your faithfulness on it and sees your unfaithfulness on it.“ There is an ominous – perhaps a fatal – presumptuousness in living in a place by the imposition on it of one’s ideas and wishes.” Scripture calls us to this agrarian work, to tell the truth about our land and our selves. Our first, most...

Sermon Text: Genesis 11:1-9, Philippians 2:1-13, Luke 4:1-13   The Church is the body of Christ, so we reflect Christ's nature - fully human, fully divine. Therefore, there's nothing we do in the church that doesn't have eternal, spiritual ramifications. When it comes to stewardship, all of it draws us to Christ or obscures Christ to us. So as we go through the "administrative" parts of the church...

Sermon Text: Acts 1   The Church is the body of Christ, so we reflect Christ's nature - fully human, fully divine. Therefore, there's nothing we do in the church that doesn't have eternal, spiritual ramifications. When it comes to stewardship, all of it draws us to Christ or obscures Christ to us. So as we go through the "administrative" parts of the church in the coming months, let us look with t...