Haverhill Commons Church

"Pray this prayer and you'll get your breakthrough."  "Buy this thing and be satisfied."  "Vote for this candidate and they'll solve all your problems."  We tend to be drawn to things, to people, to systems that promise results, and it's not that the prayer or the product or the politician is bad... it's just that we're asking something of them they're unable to actually deliver. This was true of...

And Paul really wants the Colossians to know how much he cares about them… He says he’s agonized for them and for many other believers who he’s never met personally.  He writes, “For though I am far away from you, my heart is with you.” Has your heart ever been somewhere else?  Have you cared so deeply about another that your heart is with them and you can’t help but try and do something to allevi...

We can picture God as big and cosmic, a force, like gravity, that holds everything together—but that God is “way out there”, unaware of our suffering or unwilling to intervene.  And we can picture Jesus, the human being, as our friend, as someone who cares about us… but he doesn’t also seem capable of absorbing all the sin of all the world or reversing death itself.   And yet the Bible never settl...

The news cycle is moving faster and faster. Wars rage around the world. Our cultural fabric seems to be ripping at the seams. It feels as if the center cannot hold. As if the world is falling apart. Perhaps you’ve felt this way not just about the world around you but about your own life. The loss of a job or a loved one. The weight of an injustice levied against you. Illness and suffering. It can...

Standing on the edge of fiery furnace, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were able to actually embody what it means to have faith. To believe that God is good and trustworthy beyond the assurance of a guaranteed outcome. They knew God was not only in control of their story but walking it out with them.  Their faith was not contingent upon whether God would save them. Even if God didn’t, it was enough...

Rahab was a woman, a Canaanite, and a prostitute. She is the kind of person the Israelites would have written off and ignored. And yet, her faith in the God of Israel defies expectations. Before she even asked to be included amongst the people of God, she offers that kind of inclusion to the Israelite spies. In faith, she’s already done the very thing that she hoped God would do for her. As she we...

This was a special morning of worship we called More to Your Story. We dedicated an hour to sing and pray together, engage with scripture, and reflect upon our own stories. This summer we’ve been revisiting some of the most famous and familiar stories in the Old Testament and allowing the enduring powers of these narratives to shape and reshape our lives.   But instead of asking these questions of...

In The Odyssey, Odysseus’ crew couldn’t trust his promise that they would survive without eating the cattle. In Exodus, Israel couldn’t trust God’s promise while Moses was on the mountain. And in our lives, we struggle to trust God while we’re waiting for the next chapter of our own stories. Like the Israelites, who make and worship a Golden Calf, we often turn to other things to try to save us—wh...

None of us hear the stories of the Bible in a vacuum.  We show up to them with our own values, assumptions, and life experiences and we use these things to help us make meaning out of these stories. Similarly, Abraham used his own values, assumptions, and previous experiences with the gods of the ancient world to make sense of this God, the God of Israel. But what Abraham soon discovers is that th...

Rocky. Mulan. Aladdin. The 1980 USA Olympic hockey team. What do they all have in common? They’re all underdog stories. And we love them. We often think of David and Goliath as an underdog story but there’s actually more to the story. It’s the story of what happens when people turn away from God and put their trust in something else. It’s a story about God giving his people what they wanted. It’s...

Of all the ways God could have chosen to reveal God’s self to the world, why stories? Why not a systematic theology textbook? Or an easy to read list of principles? Why not just a giant collection of rules? Often we just want the point, the lesson, the answer, the takeaway, but stories, good stories, work differently. Stories invite us to slow down and get curious. To notice details and ask questi...

The road to healing, strength, and peace is not a smooth digital superhighway spanning the universe. It's a river that grinds away our rough edges so that we can embody the other-oriented love of God. The world tells us that the best life is one of comfort and ease, one without struggle, one that is padded and comfortable.  But that’s a lie.  The best life is the one that Jesus lived in the real w...

What happens online stays online, right? Surely the rage baiting and the angry comments sections don’t have an effect upon the real world? Well, we’re learning they do and perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising when we consider that for the first 6 years of Facebook’s existence, the official slogan emblazoned on the walls of its corporate headquarters was “Move Fast and Break Things.” It seems that...

It takes wisdom and discernment to navigate the complex realities of interpersonal or social conflict or to find truth in the sea of disinformation. So, how do we become wise? In this passage, Solomon recognizes he is still a child and does not know how to lead the people of Israel. Instead of asking for wealth, military victory, or a long life, he asks for “a discerning heart to govern your peopl...

Our passage this morning is one you’ve probably heard before, likely at a wedding. But Paul didn’t write these words for a wedding, rather, to a church that was in danger of falling apart. Paul says that they’ve championed some gifts over others, some people over others. He says that giving everything to the poor and similar other-oriented actions, though good, can be done with selfish motives for...

In Greek mythology, after leading his fellow titans in a revolt against the Olympian gods, Atlas was condemned to hold up the heavens for all eternity. Over the centuries, the details of the story got kind of mixed up, so when we now think of Atlas holding something, we picture him holding the whole world. He’s, as we say, “carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”  We, however, carry th...

The digital age promised a revolutionary new world marked by connection, life, and the sense that we’re all a part of something greater than ourselves. And it has somehow done the exact opposite. There’s something different about these online spaces.  It’s as if they’re trying to replicate something that we can only truly experience when we gather together in a room with other people.  The book of...

For most of human history, relationships were entirely local. Studies of medieval church records find that most people lived their whole lives within a 10 to 30 mile radius from where they were born. Friendships were maintained through physical presence, shared meals, and working side-by-side. The internet has changed everything. We can maintain meaningful, instant, on-going contact with one anoth...

Most depictions of technology we see in popular culture arrive at the same conclusion. Technology is going to end us… Now the Bible doesn’t mention iPhones, the internet, or social media apps, but it does have a lot to say about why things keep going off the rails, and what God has done to put it right. It is not a list of self-help practices, but it does show us how to be healthy and whole human...

Today, we conclude our series on the gospel of Mark and instead of sermon, today is an opportunity to engage and come up with our own takeaways to a question central to the gospel. It’s the same question that Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” There isn’t one right answer to this question. Our relationship with Jesus is not static but dynamic. Our thoughts about Jesus change th...

Can you think of times in your life when you were really surprised? Like, really stunned. How did it feel? Three women arrive at Jesus’ tomb expecting one thing… only to find something they were not at all prepared to deal with. A moment that would change the trajectory of their whole lives.  Sometimes the surprise is so shocking, so earth shattering, so eternally consequential… and so good, that...

Good Friday is the day we remember God's great love to us, expressed to us in the person of Jesus.  On this night we gather at the church to sit at the foot of the cross and consider Jesus' crucifixion and death.   But who is Jesus? What does his life have to do with anyone else’s? What does his life have to do with ours? Does what Jesus said and did 2000 years ago speak to us today?  Three of our...

Jesus tells Peter that he will deny ever knowing Jesus, not once, but three times. To which Peter adamantly proclaims, “even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” Then, after Jesus is arrested, Peter is recognized. The fear of possibly being arrested too takes over, and Peter says the first thing he can think of to distance himself from Jesus. Later, Peter is recognized again... and...

It’s often easier to just let someone else make the call. Pilate did not think that Jesus was guilty of the crimes he was accused of. However, he tried to avoid making a call: he sought more information, he tried to buy time, he basically phoned a friend. He was in a position to protect an innocent man, to alleviate his suffering. He had an obligation to do what was right; to bring justice to an u...

“How does following Jesus inform the way we worry about the world?” In Mark 13, Jesus says to his disciples that the temple will be destroyed, which would have meant the end of the world for the disciples and the rest of the Jewish people as they knew it. Four of them took Jesus aside and pressed him, “Tell us, when will all this happen? What signs can we look for?” They wanted to know when and ho...