Taylor Mertins

With the magi and the manger we discover how the kingdom inaugurated in Jesus extends even to the Gentiles. And with the baptism in the Jordan we learn that we do not have the righteousness we require to acquire the kingdom, but that’s okay because Jesus fulfills all righteousness. In other words, the heavens open at the river not just for Him, but also for all of us.

The wild proclamation of the Gospel, made manifest in a baby in a manger surrounded by some certainly strange gifts, is that God knows everything about us, the resolutions we keep and break, and chooses to be with us anyway. You see, this odd God delights in getting down in the muck and mire of life to dwell among us. This odd God speaks and heals and teaches and preaches and reveals the truth tha...

The strange and serious proclamation of Christmas is that though things change, we’re always in the moment of Christmas. Even when we snuff out the candles, and get in our cars, and go to bed, we’re still in Christmas. Because Christmas is the miracle of God making time for us...

Here’s the truth of Christmas, the great proclamation of the Gospel - God makes time for you and me. And not only that, but God has given us all the time in the world, redeemed our time and our foolish use of it because Christmas is the reminder of the lengths to which God was and is willing to go to give us the one thing we really need. The wonderful word of Christmas is "with." God takes on fles...

Mary praises God through song for cracking open the heavens and pouring out justice on a world thirsty for it. She points to the power of the Spirit because her Son will relieve the proud and powerful from their self-righteousness, and He will fill the poor with more than money can buy. And she sings of it already having happened because time is different with God. The incarnation is not God’s las...

Willie Jennings says that Joy is an act of resistance against despair and its forces. Again, it’s not living in denial, it’s not pretending things are better than they are. The joy we speak of in the church is the knowledge that, like the crowds who gather to hear J the B, we really are a brood of vipers. Seriously, according to the witness of the Word we’re all on the naughty list. But the axe is...

John the Baptist appears in the middle of nowhere and says to the gathered people, “Here comes the Lord! Get ready to change direction, be surprised, all shook up, and turned upside down. Hills are coming down and valleys are filling up!” In other words, when J the B shows up he says, “You can’t stay the same!” God is up to something! God is on the move! And God is going to get what God wants. We,...

Jesus is reminding us that no matter how broken things seem, nothing is so broken that God can’t make something beautiful out of the brokenness. There is no soil so ruined that God isn’t willing to toss another seed on it. There is no sinner so sinful that God can’t make a saint out of them. Frederick Buechner said that the grace of God is the declaration that beautiful and terrible things will ha...

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...