Haverhill Commons Church

Misión de Caridad was formed to break the cycle of poverty for displaced women and children on the Mexico side of the United States border by educating and empowering families to build healthy lives of purpose within self-reliant communities.  When families come to the border, they often settle on land in an area near Misión de Caridad’s facility. The streets are dirt. Families construct houses ou...

Revelation 7 gives us a glimpse of what worship could look like when we get to heaven. Here, the church isn’t plagued by debates over different worship styles and practice or what’s the “right way” to worship. The image presented is one of both diversity and unity. It’s not just people from a few nations, or just those who speak Greek and Hebrew, it’s representatives from every nation, every tribe...

It important to look forward and visualize what we hope will happen. When I was a teacher, we would set goals for our classes and students. Knowing where we wanted to be at the end of the year helped us make decisions about what to prioritize during the year. Being able to see our destination helped us actually get there. Leading up to Micah 4, we see there’s an army at the gates and corrupt leade...

There is no doubt the world is a place of great need, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the extent and complexity of that need.  It's hard to know where to even begin.  Can do we end hunger?  Can we fix unjust systems?  Can we save the world?   Only God can heal us and make whole what we have broken. God demonstrated this on the cross. Instead of creation ending in death, a new path was opened....

We’re kicking off a new summer sermon series called Spoiler Alert: God’s Story Rules.  We are going to explore the end, or perhaps the culmination, of God’s story.  We will talk about the ways that knowing the trajectory of God’s story informs how we think and live now.  What’s the reason we do anything? The end of God’s story, the last pages of Revelation, give us some reasons.   The picture we s...

We all tend to overestimate our abilities. For example, 93% of drivers think they’re above average drivers. But what’s that based on? How do we arrive at these conclusions? Similarly, do we overestimate our ability to know and understand how God works? Maybe we’ve defaulted to think God works in predictable ways. Or, maybe we think God doesn’t, can’t, and won’t work in other ways. In Acts 9, the L...

In his book Transitions, Bill Bridges notes that when we’re in the middle of change, we’re more aware of how little control we have over our circumstances. Yet in those moments when we’re the most uncertain about what will happen next, we can affirm with more certainty the things that won’t change. In other words, we might not know what will happen today, tomorrow, or a year from now—but we can kn...

We’ve all experienced transitions. You start a new job, you move from elementary school to middle school, a relationship ends, another begins. Your daughter goes off to college. Your hair starts turning gray.  Even something as simple as your favorite pizza place going out of business—all transitions that involve change and loss and disorientation.  How well have you navigated your own life transi...

We’re all more comfortable interacting with people who are like us. Often when we encounter difference, which can lead to the belief that they’re not just different—they’re wrong. And then next thing you know, the world is divided into us and them. We can become so entrenched in our way of thinking that we’d rather be right than be in relationship. Paul fights for unity in these young churches—it...

Rome valued strength because strength was power. If you have enough power, in the form of money, or physical strength, or military might—then you can make people do what you want them to do. God has infinitely more power than we do. God has unimaginable strength, unlimited resources, unbridled authority. God could order and rule the world by force.  But even all God’s power can't make hearts respo...

Maybe you feel like you’re alone making major decisions or struggling through transitions, changes, and challenges. And if so, you might wonder, “Where is God?” Is God on the sidelines, judging how well you’re doing or does God jump in and do it all for us? God cares about this world and God has chosen to change individual people, to give them life by the Holy Spirit, so that as God’s people, the...

That morning, the women who had witnessed Jesus’ death and burial came to tomb. They came needing to grieve and express their love for him. They needed a tangible way to embody the deepest loss they’d ever experienced. This is their lament; it’s the funeral they’re holding for Jesus.  They see the stone has been rolled away and an angel appears and says “Do not be afraid.” Then the angel commissio...

We’ve all been in situations where we’re somewhere in the middle of our journey, trying to find the strength to keep going, but we’re so weary that we don’t know what else to do but give up. In the poetry of Lamentations 5, Israel finds itself somewhere in the middle of their own journey, collapsed on their own mountain, exhausted, depleted, ready to give up.  Lament is a gift. In a way, lament is...

The road to restoration and healing is long, there can come a point where we feel like we don’t have the strength to continue. The Israelites have good reason to be feeling exhausted and defeated. They’ve lost everything they once knew. Ironically, the prophet Jeremiah warned the people that their greed would be their downfall. Their desire for the luxuries and delicacies that come with wealth and...

We love it when things are simple, when there’s a straight line between cause and effect. We’re conditioned to reduce the complexity of life down to things we can understand. But reality isn’t straight-forward. Of all the chapters of Lamentations, this one, chapter 3, is the messiest. It’s all over the place. A tone of remorse will shift to anger will shift to assurance. Sometimes the poet is talk...

We all want to be protected. We want to know that if disaster strikes, we’ll still be okay, that someone will have our back, defend us and protect us. Sometime it can work too well.  When we hide behind our walls, we might come to view everyone on the other side our enemy, afraid that they might get in and take, or ruin, what we have. Jesus could have established an earthly kingdom or endorsed a l...

Sometimes we open scripture expecting it to be a photograph and to read as if every single word is “true” in a really narrow sense. At times, it does communicate that way. Other times, the bible is more like an abstract painting than a photograph. It’s communicating something true and real through imagery and metaphor—something that is supposed to help us feel in response. Lamentations is poetry....

Has your world ever broken? If it has, what did you do? In 586 BCE, the Babylonian Empire, conquered all of what was left of Israel. Jerusalem, was destroyed, burned to the ground, along with the great temple that King Solomon had built.  It’s one thing to read about a death in an obituary. But the book of Lamentations is like going to the funeral and hearing the sobs and songs of an entire people...

Often when we’re turning to God with the question, “Now What?” it’s in response to some calamity or challenge. Our world falls apart, we get bad news, we’re faced with a difficult situation, a disagreement, a conflict, another troubling headline…we’re not sure what to do, so we turn to God and say, “Now What?” But there’s another way to approach the question, “Now what?” Instead of holding the bro...

This morning we’re asking, "Now What?” when we disagree. Acts 15 paints a picture of how we discern amidst disagreement and maybe even discern through disagreement—about what it looks like to learn, and live, the ways of God when we come to the table with different opinions. In our current moment, compromise is often viewed as a dirty word, a sign of weakness.  But in this passage, that’s exactly...

A rich, young, ruler asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” We know from the story he is exactly the kind of person you’d expect to inherit eternal life. So, why would he ask this of Jesus? Perhaps he knew he was missing something. Jesus says, “There is still one thing you haven’t done. Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor—then come, follow me.” The man’s...

Gideon is a son of Joash from the tribe of Manasseh, one of Joseph’s two sons. He is beating the grain in a wine press, hiding his efforts from his enemy. It is here an angel appears to Gideon. He responds to the angel by asking why the Lord has forsaken the Midianites, his people. This is a feeling many of us can resonate with. Whether in times of personal tragedy, financial ruin, torn apart fami...

1 Samuel 16 opens with the Lord instructing Samuel to go out and search for a king to replace Saul. Samuel arranged to meet the sons of a man named Jesse. The eldest son Eliab stepped up, and Samuel was impressed: ”Surely, this is the guy.” Strong, tall, overall good looking. But Eliab was not the guy. The Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by appearance or height, for I have rejected him. And then...

How well are we hearing from God?  Every day is full of choices. Does God guide our every step or does God leave it up to us? And if God is nudging us down one path instead of another, how are we to know? How do we hear the voice of God? In 1 Samuel, when God reaches out to him, he hears it. He’s open and available, but he doesn’t recognize God’s voice until the more experienced Eli tells him it’s...

Most of us probably know the feeling that accompanies the expression, “When it rains, it pours…” This feeling was not lost on the apostle Paul as he penned his second letter to the Corinthians. Paul had been through it. He’d been in prison, severely flogged, and exposed to death again and again. He spent a night and a day in the open sea. He was in danger in the city, in the country, and at sea. H...