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Squid Game is back, and so is Player 456. In the gripping Season 2 premiere, Player 456 returns with a vengeance, leading a covert manhunt for the Recruiter. Hosts Phil Yu and Kiera Please dive into Gi-hun’s transformation from victim to vigilante, the Recruiter’s twisted philosophy on fairness, and the dark experiments that continue to haunt the Squid Game. Plus, we touch on the new characters, the enduring trauma of old ones, and Phil and Kiera go head-to-head in a game of Ddakjji. Finally, our resident mortician, Lauren Bowser is back to drop more truth bombs on all things death. SPOILER ALERT! Make sure you watch Squid Game Season 2 Episode 1 before listening on. Let the new games begin! IG - @SquidGameNetflix X (f.k.a. Twitter) - @SquidGame Check out more from Phil Yu @angryasianman , Kiera Please @kieraplease and Lauren Bowser @thebitchinmortician on IG Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts . Squid Game: The Official Podcast is produced by Netflix and The Mash-Up Americans.…
The Offering Plate Is Too Small
Manage episode 445253905 series 1265595
Contenuto fornito da Taylor Mertins. Tutti i contenuti dei podcast, inclusi episodi, grafica e descrizioni dei podcast, vengono caricati e forniti direttamente da Taylor Mertins o dal partner della piattaforma podcast. Se ritieni che qualcuno stia utilizzando la tua opera protetta da copyright senza la tua autorizzazione, puoi seguire la procedura descritta qui https://it.player.fm/legal.
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.
…
continue reading
416 episodi
Manage episode 445253905 series 1265595
Contenuto fornito da Taylor Mertins. Tutti i contenuti dei podcast, inclusi episodi, grafica e descrizioni dei podcast, vengono caricati e forniti direttamente da Taylor Mertins o dal partner della piattaforma podcast. Se ritieni che qualcuno stia utilizzando la tua opera protetta da copyright senza la tua autorizzazione, puoi seguire la procedura descritta qui https://it.player.fm/legal.
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.
…
continue reading
416 episodi
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×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 that we all need but struggle to believe. This odd God even goes to the cross on our behalf, manifesting the paradoxology of the Gospel: There’s nothing you can do to make God love you any more, and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you any less...…
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 flesh in Jesus Christ and moves into the neighborhood "with" us. There is, of course, elements of “for” in Jesus’ life: Jesus is for us when he teaches and heals. Jesus is for us when he dies on the cross and rises on Easter. Jesus does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. But the power of what God does for us is made manifest because God is with us.…
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 last minute hail Mary to fix the world. It is, was, and always will be God’s decision to dwell with us. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. God was always going to dwell with us because God always dwells with us and God will always dwell with us...…
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 lying at the root of the tree because God is cutting down our sin and using it for the divine bonfire the banishes the darkness forever.…
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, of course, can certainly put up a fight and make a mess of the whole operation. But God’s cut-and-fill operation is already among us...…
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 happen but we need not be afraid because God will be with us, always. Advent, as we’ve been saying, is the time when time gets confused. We look backward, forward, and everywhere in between. But one thing that endures through time is the hope we have in the Lord. It’s that hope that sustains us through what is coming upon the world. The time being really is the most trying time of all, but we can look straight into the darkness because we know the dawn will break from on high.…
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 it was inconceivable. And so, when people outside the church saw these individuals who were selling their possessions to help the poor, and people opening up their homes and tables to those who had no homes and had no food, they couldn’t wrap their heads around it. What kind of people would do such a thing? People who worship the King named Jesus.…
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 eyes to what you already have. To become what you already are: forgiven. The great gift of ministry is that I don’t have to stand day after day, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. Instead I get to share the Good News, “your sins are remembered no more,” and then I get a front row seat to the power of the Gospel at work.…
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 that he can make all well, still weeps at the grave of his friend. And it’s not just the tears, Jesus gets angry in his grief. There is nothing in this life that we experience that is beyond God’s knowledge. God knows our sorrow and our grief and our anger. When Jesus raises his clenched fist, when he lets the tears go, he does so with every person who has ever known loss. It's as the old hymn says: What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share. Jesus grieves, and Jesus grieves with us.…
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, sees his own inner anti-hero, he crescendos to these words: “Wretched that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And notice, Paul doesn’t ask “What will deliver me?” There’s no program of spiritual development or improvement that can overcome this inner turmoil. There is no what that can deliver. There is only a who. And the who has a name: Jesus. The proclamation of the Gospel is that Jesus jumps into the pit with us to show us the way out. Jesus climbs the hard wood of the cross on our behalf. Jesus rewrites our biographies so that they mirror his own. Jesus stands to be judged in our place. Jesus baptizes us into his death so that we rise into his life. To put it rather pointedly: Jesus becomes the sinner atop the cross so that we become saints in him. That’s why Paul can make such a bold declaration like there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death. To use language from Taylor Swift, even when we’re left to our own devices with prices and vices that end up in crisis, they are no match for the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.…
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 identities and qualities. But our primary identity, the outfit with which we've been clothed, is Jesus. We live in Christ and Christ lives in us...…
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 might delight in us. Perhaps that’s why God tells our first parents to have dominion over Creation and not domination. Domination would mean we get to do whatever we want whenever we want. Dominion is different. Dominion is a responsibility for this wondrous gift we’ve been given.…
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 experience. It’s here, among this body, that we learn of our shared story, that we are not alone, and that we are valued not because of what we can do, but because of who we are. The church opens us up to a future we cannot conceive on our own. It trains us in the habits of gratitude for one another. And it sets us free to delight in diversity.…
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 for you. We say that the Good News of the Gospel is for the world which is true - but it's also just for you. You. Regardless of who you are, whether or not you even understand it, whether or not you are a good and pious person. God loves you, and there's nothing you can do about it.…
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 having to bear the burden of everything. In the Kingdom of God ’tis better to receive than to achieve. You see, the Shema, even as a commandment is actually a gift, a gift just like the one that we will shortly receive at the table. It is a new way of knowing, and of being known, that helps us makes sense of this strange world. And we make sense of it together..."…
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 the new future so that we see what we’re actually praying for...…
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 getting ourselves forgiven. It’s not a transaction, it’s not a negotiation in order to secure mercy, it’s not the first step on the road to perfection. Confession is the last step - it’s what happens when we are finally able to confront the truth: we are not as we ought to be, and yet we worship the Lord who looks beyond what we've done to what's been done for us by Jesus.…
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 institutions are founded on the fundamental failure to see that we all mess up at some point. Imagine how different our church, or community, or even our world, would be if we took seriously the truth - we are all like Peter, and Jesus never gives up on us. In fact, the only thing Jesus gives Peter is the same thing that Jesus gives to all of us: grace.…
Mark 4.35-41 Music is perhaps the greatest technology of the heart, and singing in particular. To lift our voices together is to stand against the disorder of the world. Notice: singing is not a denial of reality. The Moravians on the boat with Wesley weren’t singing in order to pretend like the waves weren’t beating down upon them. No, they were singing because they knew how the story ends - they had seen the whole picture. So too, we stand and sing not out of naiveté, but because we know not all is as it ought to be. We sing in defiance of the wind and the waves because we know, deep down, that God is going to get us to the other side. It might not be pretty. And it certainly won’t go according to plan. But God will get us to the other side because God will always stay by our side...…
Mark 4.26-34 In the end the parables are stories that Jesus tells about himself. He is the Good Shepherd off in search of the lost, he is the fatted calf sacrificed for the party, on and on. And the branches of his kingdom are a place of grace for everyone. Grace, as Frederick Buechner was apt to say, is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it, or deserve it, or bring it about, anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream, or earn good looks, or bring about your own birth. And a crucial eccentricity to our faith is that we are saved by grace, by God’s action toward us in the person of Jesus Christ. There’s nothing *you* have to do, there’s nothing you *have* to do, there’s nothing you have to *do*. Which means grace might seem like a small thing, but Jesus does a lot with a little...…
Mark 3.20-35 The church is where God assembles us to imagine and day dream about how beautiful the world could be. It’s wild stuff really. It always has been. That people like me can stand up in a place like this and say “Welcome home.” Or: “I declare the entire forgiveness of all your sins.” Or: “You are loved beyond measure.” I sound like I’m out of my mind! But such is the power of God’s grace, it calls into existence things that do not exist, it creates a community where strangers become sisters and others become brothers, a family, where there is always a place for you no matter what. It sounds impossible - but God does God’s best work in the realm of impossible possibility.…
Mark 2.23-3.6 Jesus has a word for all of us. A word of gospel rather than a word of law. A word of relief rather than expectation. Jesus says, 'Stretch out your hand.' Whatever it is you’ve done, or left undone, it is no match for the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. Stretch out your hand. Come to the altar to receive the one thing needful, the body and the blood. You are more than your worst mistake or your last slip up. Stretch out your hand. Take hold of the Good News of salvation, this is the day that the Lord has made and we are here to rejoice and be glad in it. Stretch out your hand.…
Psalm 29 The church has a word of relief, and that word is the Gospel. It’s a very countercultural word, one that threatens to undo everything we think we know about what we think we know. The church can be safe and secure, unthreatening, unassuming, with our pews bolted to the ground, where we mutter and muster an 'Amen' only once in a blue moon. But God will not let us remain as such. The Spirit will start stirring things up through songs and scriptures and sermons to remind us that God is God and we are not. Jesus will speak right into our heart of hearts the story of salvation and we won’t be able to help ourselves from shouting “Glory!…
Acts 2.1-12 To be a Christian is not so much having a certain set of beliefs that give meaning to our lives. Instead, to be a Christian is to be initiated into a community with practices and habits that actually transform our lives. Which is just another way of saying, we only ever learn what it means to be Christians by watching other Christians and doing what they do. To be Christian means being together. Which, of course, isn’t easy. After Pentecost, the story of Acts tells of the great challenge of being the church. The church stand for, preaches, and speaks the language of the heart that runs completely counter to the language of the world. The world worships the first, the greatest, the found, the big, and the alive. God comes for the last, least, lost, little and dead. The world runs on deception and destruction. The Spirit conveys grace and mercy. The world is full to the brim with bad news. Jesus comes bringing Good News. On Pentecost, the Spirit is poured out on all flesh, the tall and the small, the sinners and the saints, the found and the forgotten. Not because we earned it or deserved it. But because we needed it. And we still do...…
John 17.11-19 Jesus' prayer in John 17 is rather unlike the compact prayer that he taught the disciples to pray, that prayer we will all pray later in worship. The theologian NT Wright says this very long prayer of Jesus is “so rich that we may choke on it unless we chew it slowly.” One of the people who has chewed slowly on this text is Brian Zahnd. Brian is a gifted writer and the pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. He’s got this knack for focusing the Gospel into bite size pieces. Like this: “God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We have not always known what God is like - but now we do.”…
Psalm 22.25-31 & John 15.1-8 The odd proclamation of the Gospel is that there is no hope in us. We are all withering branches in need of some pruning and care. We’re all sinners. We’re all incompatible with the Messiah because we tend to make such a mess of his message. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay because Jesus comes to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He says, Abide in me as I am in you. All of you. God meets us where we are, not where we ought to be. That’s the difference between the bad news of religion and the Good News of the Gospel...…
Psalm 23 & John 10.1-18 The first task of a Christian is not to forgive, but to learn to be forgiven.
Luke 24.36b-48 I don’t know the last time you took a stroll through the strange new world of the Bible, but let me tell you, it is strange! It tells of cosmic creation, rainbowed repentance, kaleidoscopic covenants, profound prophets, geriatric geniuses, sacred psalms, liturgical litanies, paradoxical poems, and one heck of a messy Messiah. What begins on the day of Easter, and is continued through the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of the early church, is the stark claim that knowing the scriptures does little good unless we know it as part of a people constituted by the practices of a resurrected Lord. In other words: our faith is always faith seeking understanding...…
Psalm 133 & John 20.10-31 The story of Thomas seemingly ends with his triumphant and faithful declaration: "My Lord and My God!" But John isn’t quite finished. For he actually concludes with a strange note about how “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.” But, John continues, “These are written so that you may come to believe, to trust, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through faith you may have life.” Do you see? Faith is a gift given to people like us. And it makes people like us exactly what Thomas insisted he required to belief. This wondrous church, this body of Christ, wounded and weary, bold and beautiful, we are what the world beholds and knows that Jesus is the something more they’ve been looking for.…
Unexpected by Taylor Mertins
Matthew 26.17-30 Music has this almost magic quality to it. It can bring forth emotions we did not know we had, or that we did not know we needed to feel. God uses the songs we sing to remind us who we are and whose we are. And the same happens here at the table. We do this in remembrance not only because we are commanded to, but also because, in so doing, we become Jesus’ memory for the world. The Eucharist is the feast that makes Christ’s time the time in which we live. A time meant for singing. And so, it is here in this ferocious fellowship of differents God says, “Behold what you are! And become what you receive.”…
Matthew 21.1-10 One of the craziest parts of what is already one of the craziest parts of the Bible, is the fact that, on Palm Sunday, Jesus doesn’t say anything. Have you ever noticed that before? It’s a bit odd coming from the one who has lots to say in his Sermon on the Mount, the one who parades out parables every chance he gets. Jesus doesn’t say anything while the crowds say everything. And when Jesus doesn’t meet their exceptions, when he doesn’t meet our expectations, the result is the cross...…
Matthew 6.25-34 It is to a people obsessed with themselves, with too much and too little, that Jesus speaks this powerful word: Why are you so worried about what you eat and drink? About what you wear and how you look? Look at the birds of the air. They are not terrified of these things. Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? Consider the lilies of the field! They neither toil nor spin and they are more gorgeous than anything you have in the closet. You need not worry about these things because your worry is eating you alive. Your heavenly Father knows what you need, and it is to you that the kingdom is given. The proclamation of the Gospel is that we need not worry, like the birds or the lilies, because God provides. But our desire to live lives without fear cannot but help create a world of fear because we are told, and often believe, there is never enough. Which is perhaps why, for millennia, the church has insisted on reminding people of these words from Jesus. The songs we sing and the sermons we receive and the sacraments we share all declare that we have worth and value. We say what we say in the church because the world is always trying to convince us of the contrary, both implicitly and explicitly. From our bosses, spouses, friends, and foes, from the advertisements, videos, movies, and shows. You’re too fat. You’re too skinny. You’re too stupid. You’re too slow. You’re too bold. You’re too shy. On and on we are bombarded with the words of the World. And then Jesus says, “You are enough. You are wonderfully made. You are beloved as you are.”…
Matthew 26.14-16 A rich man comes up to Jesus and he says, “Teacher, I follow all of the commands of God. What more must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus, looking on the man with compassion, says, “Because I love you, how about you try selling everything you have, give the proceeds to the poor, and then you can follow me” The man walks away from Jesus, grieving, because he has many possessions. As far as I can tell, this is the only time in the strange new world of the Bible that Jesus invites someone into discipleship and they turn it down. The story doesn’t end there, of course. Jesus goes on to talk about how difficult it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven. As difficult, in fact, as it would be for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. What a wondrous moment in the Gospel! It is quick to makes us squirm sufficiently in our seats. It is an uncomfortable word to hear because we, compared to the rest of the world, are rich beyond imagining, and then Jesus drops this word on us. And yet, there’s still more to the story! Peter, wondrous Peter, raises his hand after Jesus rebukes the wealthy, and says, “If that rich guy can’t be saved, even though he follow the entire law, then who can?” And Jesus says, “What is impossible for humans, is possible for God.” In the end, we worship the God who saves sinners, who can raise the dead, who can even diminish our greed, because nothing is impossible for God.…
Matthew 26.36-46 “Thy will be done” is the enemy of sloth. It’s the recognition that though we might not have eyes to see any new possibilities, we worship the God of impossible possibility, who makes all things new. “Thy will be done” sets us on an adventure in which we never quite know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future. Perhaps that’s why Jesus is forever telling parables about those who fall asleep, and why he is forever commanding the disciples to wake up. When it comes to the Gospel, the only thing we have to do is wake up to God’s new possibilities, God’s new day, God’s new way. “Thy will be done.”…
Matthew 21.12-17 Contrary to the witness of John Mayer, we don’t have to wait on the world to change. We can pray for it. But we shouldn’t be surprised if, while praying for the world to change, God starts the work by changing us.
Matthew 20.1-16 Grace, when it is so freely offered to any and all comers, without any regard to merit, seems downright irresponsible. Even when the truth of the matter is that grace being offered to me is no more or less miraculous that it is to someone who walks through the door at the last second. Grace is only grace because it is given to those who don’t deserve it. Which, in the end, includes each and every one of us. Envy, on the other hand, is all about keeping score, holding on to the ledger book in our minds, noticing who did what and for how long. Whereas Jesus’ story, and every other parable for that matter, is the proclamation that God has gotten out of the score-keeping business forever.…
Mark 6.1-6 The rest of the world, uninformed of the story that gives meaning to our stories, considers Pride to be an essential characteristic for living. We, on the other hand, are taught to be suspicious of pride. For pride often leads to us to believe that we are better than everyone else. Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them, Jesus warns. He continues by ripping apart the religious practices of those who pray in public for public praise, and those who show off their fasting for prideful gain. All that Jesus lists falls into the category of self-justification, self! It’s like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable who does all the right things so well that he’s wrong. “Well, at least I’m not like that degenerate over there” is merely a projection of our self-inflated righteousness and a denial of our sinful truthfulness. Lent, for better and worse, is a season of accusation. It is a time for us to hear who we really are. And it begins with ashes. Ashes, of course, are a sign of finitude and frailty and failure. But more important than the ashes themselves is the fact that we receive them in the shape of a cross...…
Revelation 21.1-6 Notice: it is not just a new heaven that John sees, but a whole new earth. Revelation, then, is the final declaration that matter matters. Remember, whenever Jesus waxes lyrical about the kingdom of heaven, he does so with earthy and earthly terms. The kingdom is like a mustard seed, it is like yeast mixed with flour, it is like a party with food and wine and dancing. Remember, when Jesus is resurrected on Easter, he returns to the displaces embodied, sharing food and drink, the incarnated Good News. Remember, when the church grows during the Acts of the Apostles, it’s not because they were pining after the pie in the sky after they die, but it grows because Christians took seriously the material world and how the sharing of goods could make life better for others. On earth as it is in heaven. Do you see? Revelation reminds us that the new heaven and the new earth isn’t just something that will happen, it is something that happens right now. We have access to how beautiful the world could be in water and bread and cup.…
Acts 2.1-4 & Romans 16.25-27 The Bible is, as Barth loved to say, the strange new world of God. With every page we discover more and more about the wild and wondrous God we worship. And in no place is this more evident than the Acts of the Apostles, and the various epistles. For, the eruption of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost sends reverberations through the church that we are still feeling today. God is on the loose!…
Mark 1.1 & Mark 16.1-8 “When the church stops talking about Jesus, it has nothing left to say.” - Sam Wells
Genesis 12.1-3 & Malachi 3.1-2 The Good News of the Gospel for each and every single one of us, is that God meets us in the midst of our sins, not our successes. God meets us where we are, not where we ought to be. Israel’s story, both the person and the people, reminds us that God comes to us in our weariness and our woundedness. God delights in keeping up the covenant even when we fail to do our part. Ultimately we are as helpless as Israel, hobbling around with our hips out of joint. We can run away as far as we can for as long as we can, but one day God will catch up with us. God will grab hold of us. And God will tell us who we are...…
Genesis 1.1-5 Imagine, one day, you receive a strange delivery. A trunk. It’s heavy and you can feel and hear all manner of objects inside tossing about as you drag it inside. You open it and discover a great cacophony of items. Inventories. Diaries. Poems. Creative writing assignments. Blueprints. Photographs. Letters. Various genealogical records. Drawings. And on top of it all is a note from your great-great grandfather. All it says is, “This is who I am.” The Bible is like that treasure trove of a trunk, given to us by God, in order that we might know more about the One in whom we live and move and have our being.…
Luke 2.1-14 Christmas is not just about remembering an event in the distant past. Christmas is the celebration of a miracle in our midst. Christmas isn’t just where we come from, Christmas is who we are, here and now. Yes, it is finished, as Jesus says from the cross. Easter is the exclamation point on a sentence that begins long before the Incarnation of Christmas. But our knowledge of this power, our knowledge of salvation, our faith in the grace made flesh is Jesus in a miracle that has meaning for us in this very moment. As Martin Luther preacher in many of his own Christmas sermons, “The nativity of our Lord happens again and again everywhere the Gospel strikes at the heart of a person.” In other words, despite what the Grinch might realize by the end of his story, Christmas is actually about the presents, or at least the present of this present moment.…
Titus 2.11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.
Luke 1.67-80 The scriptures, the sermons, the songs, they are all about getting us to catch a hint of God’s more, a glimpse of the light that shines in the darkness. Dr. Seuss got it right - Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.…
Luke 1.46-55 The incarnation is not God’s last minute hail Mary (pun intended) to fix the world. It is, was, and always will be God’s decision to dwell with us. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. God was always going to dwell with us because God always dwells with us and God will always dwell with us. And yet, Mary's song threatens those in the positions and places of power because it calls into question their power. Long before the cross stands on the horizon, Mary’s song reminds those with ears to hear that her Son’s kingdom is not of this world. Things are getting flipped upside down. Which sounds like Good News when you’re on the bottom, but bad news when you’re on the top...…
Luke 1.26-38 The One born to Mary comes to embody a peaceful way of being that transcends all of what we think or know because Jesus takes us from where we are to where we can be. Mary, in receiving the visit of Gabriel and the promise he holds, goes from nobody to somebody, blessed, fortunate, given a job to do in the story of salvation. Even in her ordinariness, her youth, her singleness, perhaps her embarrassment and consternation, she is called by God anyway, singled out to bear the savior of the world into the world. This is why Mary is often referred to as the first disciple. She is the first to be called by God to take part in the good news-ing of the world. And she is the first, when called by God in this way, to say, "Let thy will be done." Notably, she prays that prayer long before her Son does. Mary has faith. Perhaps therein lies the Good News for all of us today. We don’t need the perfect holy resume, we don’t have to come from the right family, or have the right job, or the right income. Lowly as we are, God chooses us anyway. How unexpected.…
Luke 1.5-20 The season of Advent gives us permission to rest in the silliness of salvation, in the wild and wondrous ways God chooses the strangest people and the strangest means to bring about the Good News for a world filled with bad news. God will arrive in the manger, and God will come again, whether we deserve it or not. In fact, God did and will do this because we don’t deserve it - We need it. God’s got the gift, the only thing we need is the hope.…
Ephesians 1.15-23 With the world moving on from the turkey to the trimming and the trappings of Christmas, today the church pauses the frenetic pace of the season and asks the question, “Who’s in charge here?”
Revelation 21.1-5 We do what we do now in anticipation of what will come; we live according to God’s future - the new heaven and the new earth. Which means that whatever heaven is, whatever the resurrection of the body is, it will be like this life, only different...
Matthew 18.21-35 The title for this sermon is "Preaching What We Practice." Which is, of course, a flipping of practicing what we preach. For, it seems as though we imagine that’s the purpose of the church - We exist to tell people like you how you’re supposed to be living. If that’s true, if that’s the point of the church, then I should end this sermon by telling you to go out into the world and forgive those who have wronged you. Which, is not a bad idea, but it’s just not the Gospel. The Gospel is not the story of what we’re supposed to do. The Gospel is the story of what God has already done...…
Luke 14.15-23 There is a strange and beautiful value in looking out at the beloved community we call church and seeing the ragtag reality behind it. In the same way, there is something downright wonderful about seeing a bunch of sinners, and observing the communion of saints within and behind them. We have a word for this. A strange word. A word not often said aloud but absolutely definitive when it comes to the church - Koinonia...…
The Holy Spirit is always full of surprises, full of creativity, full of force. The Spirit goes wherever she wants, unsought, maybe even unwanted, intent on making all things new. You see, that’s what Pentecost is all about. A whole new creation. Just as the Spirit hovered over the waters in Genesis bringing forth order out of chaos, the Spirit blows through the upper room upending their orderliness for something exciting and something new. It has always been the nature of the Spirit to shake up the church, particularly when the church becomes too self-satisfied and content with the status quo...…
Philippians 2.5-11 Stanley Hauerwas is known for his anger. He is angry, like Jesus in the Temple, because he finds himself surrounded by Christians for whom Jesus no longer makes any difference, Christians who move and live in the world regardless of whether Jesus rose from the dead. He, that is Hauerwas, notes that his anger stems mostly from the great number of pastors who fail to challenge their churches to trust that without God, nothing is possible. In other words, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, if Jesus is not at the center of every single thing we do as a church, then we are wasting our time.…
Genesis 1.1-5 I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. There’s a reason we affirm the Creed week after week. It tells the story that gives meaning to all of our stories. For, we worship the Almighty God for whom nothing is impossible. The maker of all things, even us. And chaos, even the empty void, is no match for the One in whom we live and move and have our being. As the old hymn says: Summer and winter, and spring time and harvest, sun, moon and starts in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness to Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.…
Exodus 17.1-7 We are saved not by our excellent decision making, nor by our decisive dogmatics, nor by our presumptive power. We are saved not by our degrees, or our progeny, or our bank accounts. Only God can do what we cannot. The Good News of the Gospel is that when our abilities fail us, our knowledge, minds, patience, health, career, family, sanity, there is always a source of water in the dry and parched land of our lives. In other words, when we have the fortitude to admit that all sorts of goodness has come our way even though we’re not really that good, when we can admit that we’re sinners saved by the amazing grace of God, then things start to change...…
The opposite of faith isn’t doubt, it’s control. The story of the manna is also the story of learning how to be out of control. Which might be why faith is such a challenge. For, from the time we are little children, we are fed a different story - that we have to be in control, that we have to be masters of our own destiny, that we have to make a way where there is no way. In short, we think we have to be God. But God is God, and we are not. God is the one who saves us, because we cannot save ourselves. Left to our own devices we can’t see beyond what we had in Egypt. We fall prey to the myth of empire and the foolishness of our own control. But here, in the wilderness, God says to the Israelites and to all of us, "You can let go. Open up your clenched fists of self-righteousness. Stretch out your hands and receive the gift. I have what you need, and what you need is far more important than what you want..."…
Exodus 14.19-31 The salvation made possible by the Good News means being saved from something, and for something. Just as the Israelites were saved from Egypt, they were also saved for a new kind of radical living witness to the power of God. Just like we have been saved from the powers of sin and death, we have also been saved for a new kind of living that calls into question the powers and principalities in this life...…
The great and wondrous news from scripture is that death is not the end. Which means that whatever mess we make in this life, it is no match for the only One who can do anything about it. Just as God delivered God’s people out of their bondage to slavery in Egypt through the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb, so too God delivers us out of our bondage to death through the sacrifice of Jesus, our Passover Lamb. Perhaps that’s why its important to remember what the word Exodus means. Exodus is not a journey or a vacation. Exodus literally means, “the way out.” Therefore, whatever we can say about Passover, of it’s many strange and bewildering requirements and details, we can say this: on that night, God’s people were saved by the blood. They were given a way out. And so are we...…
God calls all of us like God calls Moses. God has plans and desires and hopes for all of us, all of you. Some big, some small, but vital all. And here’s the Good News - you don’t have to be carrying saints to be part of God’s mission in the world. You don’t have to have all the right scriptures memorized, or pray the perfect prayers, or read all the important theology. If you need anything, it’s just a little imagination, a delight in wonder, and the capacity to be surprised by what God is up to, and what God might be up to with you. So kick off your shoes. Open your eyes and open your ears. The burning bush is calling for you...…
Romans 12.1-8 "Paul is addressing Roman Christians as people who have been released from the captivity to Sin by God’s action in Jesus Christ. Having been set free from this oppression, Paul empowers them to act, to respond, to do something. Present yourselves to God. And it all hinges on the therefore. Any time we encounter a therefore, whether in scripture or in life, we need to know what the therefore is there for. The word signals that what comes next depends on what came before. Everything that has come before the therefore has been about God’s doing. God gets all the good verbs. Despite our culture’s constant emphasis on making our own destinies or picking ourselves up by our own bootstraps, Romans (and all of scripture for that matter) proclaims quite the opposite..."…
Romans 11.1-2a, 29-32 Paul, as the church moves and grows, is rattling the cages of our prisons to disobedience with the Gospel. It’s as if he is saying that God makes sure we all experience what it means to be on the outside, so that God can be the one to open the door and welcome us back in. God, like the prodigal father, comes to find us in the streets of life with mercy before we even have a chance to say we’re sorry. God, like the prodigal father, is willing to throw a party on our behalf because we are lost and we are found. God has imprisoned all in disobedience, that God may be merciful to all.…
I’m not sure why Jesus left it up to preachers to share this news. For preachers, one and all, are a bunch of nobodies, sinners with no hope of their own, scoundrels most of the time. But then again, preaching isn’t something that preachers do, it’s what God does through us. The word of faith that draws near to you even right now in this very moment is not because of anything you have done, and certainly not because of what I bring to the table, but, as Paul says, only because it pleases God through the foolishness of what we preach to save those who believe.…
The church has always been a place for truth, but that doesn’t mean we’ve always liked it. When push comes to shove we’d rather consider and contemplate our successes than our sins. And yet, the knowledge and confession that each of us is a sinner in need of God’s mercy can be weirdly and wonderfully comforting. For, it gives us the freedom from pretending to be people we aren’t. The writer Anne Lamott puts it this way, 'Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So try not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are.'…
Baptism, like communion, is not something to be mastered, comprehended, or understood. We can’t wrap our heads around it any more than we can figure out why certain songs give us goosebumps, or why sometimes our laughter leads to tears. Some things, in fact some of the very best things, are mysterious. Maybe that’s what makes them great. The challenge comes with resting in the mystery while the world values nothing but certainty.…
Paul is begging us to see that the key to our salvation isn’t positive thinking or more morality or healthier habits. The key to our salvation is Jesus! Our salvation is God’s grace made manifest in the One who frees us from the delusion that we have to save ourselves. The church isn’t in the religion business. Instead, the church is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. All of this, the scriptures, prayers, songs, preaching, it’s not about bringing the bad news that God will only look kindly upon us when we finally get our acts together. Instead, everything we do here is about bringing the great Good News that while we were sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. In the midst of our faults and failures, Jesus rescues us.…
Over the years, Paul’s writings and teachings have been often summarized as, “Become what you already are!” And for good reason. In baptism we are deadened with Christ that we might rise with Christ. In communion we put God inside of us that we might be more like Christ and less like ourselves. We are already defined by the grace of God, and nothing can ever take that away. Nothing.…
Paul says the Law brings wrath, but the Gospel sets free. Doing all of the right things, and knowing the right people, and making the right choices, sounds wonderful in principal, but turns out to be impossible. We can’t make ourselves righteous, we can’t rectify ourselves, we can’t redeem ourselves. Thankfully, God is completely caught up in the work of doing things we could never do ourselves by giving life to the dead and calling into existence the things that do no exist. No matter what we do or leave undone God continues to hand over the Good News through letters, songs, preachers, and pulpits until our hearts are strangely warmed and we know, deep in the marrow of our souls, that Christ has taken away our sins, even ours, and has saved us from the law of sin and death.…
Pentecost is the promise that we don't have to build a tower into the sky to get close to God; God has come to us. The arrival of the Holy Spirit means we are no longer defined by our mistakes, but only by God’s grace.
The movement that Jesus begins, the adventure of faith we call church, is constituted by people who know we have all the time in the world, made possible by God’s patience, to challenge the world’s impatience, by cross and resurrection. The gift of the Ascension, of Christ’s ruling at the right hand of God, is the reminder that we can wait and pray. It’s a gift!…
Paul writes to the church in Rome that faith comes from what is heard and what it heard comes through the preaching of Christ. The story has the power to change everything. It changed everything for Paul! The man who agreed to the stoning of Stephen now stands surrounded by stones that invoke his proclamation. He is compelled to preach in order to set the people free and bring about the end of religion. That’s an odd way to put it. But Christianity isn’t a religion. Or, at least, it’s not supposed to be. Religion, properly understood, is a set of habits, practices, or tradition that are done in order to achieve something, usually from the divine. Basically, if you do x then your god will do y. Christianity, however, is the Good News. It is something told to us about what is already finished. Christianity frees us from all the shoulds and musts that we might turn to the Lord who first turned toward us in Jesus Christ.…
The story of the Gospel is a promise that no one is outside the realm of God’s mercy, that the worst thing is never the last thing, that grace is greater than our sin.
Living for other people is a completely radical and bonkers idea. Getting rid of possessions so that others can benefit is a wild and far cry from how things are supposed to work. Holding all things in common isn’t normal. It’s therefore not surprising that the disciples in Acts constantly find themselves in trouble - the kind of conflicts that John Lewis called good trouble. It’s good trouble because the church is, was, and always will be counter-cultural. All of these things described in Acts sound like the beginnings of a political revolution. We just have another word for it: Gospel.…
The Gospel has a way of digging itself in, commingling with all of our thoughts about how things are supposed to be. The Good News declares that God has changed everything, we only need to act accordingly. In short - the people are moved to move upon hearing the story. That’s what the word “repent” means after all, it’s a turning or a returning to something. And that something has a name: Jesus.…
It’s a confounding image to take in - these ragtag disciples tripping over themselves in the streets, drunk on the Spirit. It must’ve garnered quite the crowd. However, none of the twelve, Peter included, had much to show for themselves. No exceptional credentials, no fabulous degrees from Jerusalem University, no financial capital to invest. They have nothing, really. Nothing except a message. And, thankfully, the message is always greater than her messengers...…
Notice: On Easter, Jesus’ response to the sins of his followers isn’t to berate them or judge them or even damn them. He doesn’t give them a list of things to do, or programs to start, or even prayers to pray. Instead, he just comes back to them, to us, with love. How odd of God. Easter invites us to do nothing more than trust that the Good News really is that good - that God in Christ refuses to abandon us regardless of how good or bad we may be. If Easter becomes anything less bizarre than that, then we can’t call it the Gospel.…
Perhaps a night like tonight would be easier to handle had Jesus offered himself to the eleven but not to Judas. Maybe it would sit better with us if Jesus had drawn the line between those who are in and those who are out. But no, there’s our Lord caressing the feet of his betrayer, who will shortly use those feet to march out of the room and deliver Jesus to death. Maybe this is Jesus’ way of parabolically embodying another commandment - to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If we assume that being Christian is somehow synonymous with do-goodery, victorious virtue, and modest morality, then this night is a rather robust rebuttal. If we think that, as Christians, we sit at Jesus’ table with clean hands and a spotless resume, if we think that our feet are washed because of our good behavior, well, then we’re wrong. John is begging us to see the scene, to take it all in, the feet, the hands, the hope, the loss, all of it. It’s a ringing reminder from the strange new world of the Bible that Jesus came to seek and to save sinners and only sinners. Or, as Robert Farrar Capon wonderfully put it, even the worst stinker in the world is someone for whom Christ died...…
Karl Barth once said that “To clasp our hands in prayer is a beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” When Jesus enters the holy city the crowds sing their prayer, much like we sing and pray before we come to the Table: Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Do you know what that word means? Hosanna? It means “Save us!” The crowds call for salvation, for Jesus to save them and, by the end of the week, that’s exactly what he does...…
That Jesus teaches us how to pray is the wild declaration that God wants us to speak up, to voice our opinion, to ask for God’s intervention. And the claim of prayer is far more astonishing than we make it out to be as we mumble our way through the Lord's Prayer every week - the author of the cosmos listens and acts according to our prayers! Therefore, let us boldly pray prayers that are big enough that only God can bring them to fruition.…
It’s one thing to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses,” and another thing entirely to add, “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness always comes at a cost - it’s not cheap and it isn’t easy. The hurt we experience is consequential. Therefore, when Jesus teaches us to pray this way, he’s not implying that we should shrug things off as if they don’t mean anything. It’s just that Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, refuses to let sin be the first and last word in our story. Instead, the first word and the last word is forgiveness.…
We’ve said the Lord’s Prayer so many times in so many places with so many people that we often no longer think about what we say when we pray. And I think a similar sentiment is true of the Lord’s Supper. How many times have we come forward with our hands outstretched? How many times have we received the grace of God through food and drink? Enough that we know what we’re doing when we do so? The truth of the matter is that we do not know what we are doing. Not even the most theologically sophisticated among us knows what we’re doing. And that’s actually Good News. The disciples surely had no idea what they were getting into, and what was getting into them, when Jesus said, "This is my body and this is my blood." In the Eucharist we are confronted with a reality that confounds our speech. These things are more real than real. They cannot be contained by our words because they are the grace of God. Which is another way of saying: our most important business as a church happens at the table.…
To pray “Your kingdom come” is to be willing to become part of a rather weird gathering of motley, mediocre, and messy people who were once considered outsiders but who have discovered their insiderness in Jesus. And yet, we pray for God’s kingdom to come because it is not yet here in its fullness. It’s the whole “already but not yet” thing. To be Christian is to be unsatisfied with the status quo, with how things are. We are unsatisfied because our faith is eschatological. That is, we are a people who insist on leaning into God’s future.…
Jesus’ rebuke against practicing our piety publicly, particularly as we enter the season of Lent, it cuts straight to the heart. But sometimes that’s exactly what we need. Our hard-heartedness often renders us convinced that we have to earn our ticket to heaven whereas the crosses on our foreheads reminds us that heaven has already come to us. In the end, we are not called to be good, or virtuous, or even pious. We are called to be disciples. And discipleship is often nothing more than following Jesus toward the cross. The cross reminds us that we can’t fix ourselves. In any other place and any other institution that is unmitigated bad news. But here, in the church, it’s the Gospel. It’s good news because nobody, not the devil, not the world, not even ourselves can take us away from the love that refuses to let us go.…
For some reason, we (that is preachers) like to take this miracle, and instead of focusing on it, we focus on Peter. We make our theology into anthropology. Focusing on Peter makes this extraordinary story ordinary, which undermines the miracle that is the Transfiguration! The Gospel isn’t found in Peter cowering on the mountain, and it’s certainly not in the idea of doing good works (which we all know we’re supposed to do whether or not we know the Christ on the mountaintop). The Gospel is Jesus Christ and him Transfigured.…
The Law functions to drive us out of our propensity toward sinful self-sufficiency. That’s why Jesus preaches his offensive sermon. Otherwise, we are doomed to remain exactly as we are. And the Lord doesn’t arrive to keep things the same - the Lord arrives to make all things new. Including us. But there is no resurrection without crucifixion. Hence the expression: The Gospel can only make alive those whom the Law has killed.…
The Gospel does not promise the possible - it deliver the impossible. The Gospel gives what the law demands. That’s why the love of God is strong enough to change things, even us. Or, as Luther put it: God accepts none except the abandoned, makes no one healthy but the sick, gives sight to none but the blind, brings life to none but the dead, and makes no one righteous except sinners.…
Blessed are those whose anxieties overwhelm, who can barely muster the strength to make it through a day, for only those in need of help will be helped. Blessed are those who know not is as it should be and who yearn for things not yet seen, for that yearning is what we call hope, and hope does not disappoint. Blessed are those who don’t insist on getting what they deserve, otherwise they just might get it. Blessed are those who refuse to condemn others for what they do or leave undone, because they understand the parable of the publican and the Pharisee. Blessed are those who suffer for the sake of peace, for they already live according to the terms of the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who are mocked, hated, belittled, and beleaguered for the sake of their faith, for they rest in the shadow of the cross.…
There’s a big difference, a huge difference, between trying to convince someone of the Gospel, and living according to the Gospel. For, living according to the Gospel, puts us in relationships with people we would otherwise ignore and, because God has a sense of humor, it usually results in someone seeing how we live and then asking, “Why are you the way you are?” And the answer, of course, is Jesus.…
The Lamb of God brings a kingdom the world doesn’t want - the blood of the Lamb makes a difference and that difference means we are now different. God does not accept the current realities of the world. God is still contending against the powers and the principalities. God will get us to the Promised Land. It’s like God is saying to us today: “Come and see what I can do - come and see what we can do together! It’s going to be messy, but change always is.”…
In the end, becoming and being a Christian is something done to us and for us before it is anything done by us. In other words: faith requires others. Just like baptism. Someone has to hold us, pray over the water, tell us about Jesus and the promise of what he has done, is doing, and will do. Someone has to model that faith, a whole life of faith. Otherwise, we would have no idea what we are baptized into. To know who Jesus is and what he means has got to come to us through others as a gift - a gift like grace.…
There’s a story that passes around this time of year every year about a certain pageant and the child who played the innkeeper. For weeks and weeks all the children practiced their positions and their lines, they were ready. But when Christmas Eve arrived, and the little Mary, Joseph, and plastic Jesus arrived at the cardboard cut out entrance to the inn, they knocked on the door and the innkeeper froze. Little Mary kept repeating her line, “Please let us in. We’re cold and we really need a place to stay!” getting louder with each repetition. Until, finally, the innkeeper looked out into the congregation and said to the pageant coordinator, “I know I’m supposed to say, ‘No,’ but can I let them in anyway?” Kids get it.…
The great joy of Christmas is that we do nothing to make it happen - Christmas happens to us. Even the biblical characters that we read and sing about, they are all so wildly passive in the story. They are recipients of God’s grace made manifest in the manger - just like us.
The world will tell us again and again and again that we are not worthy, that there is always more to do. Christmas tells us the opposite. God makes us worthy. There is nothing we have to do, except open our hands to the gift that is Jesus Christ. That is how the Good News works, it’s *good* news.
It’s rather extraordinary that we know the name of the Lord’s mother! And yet, even more extraordinary is the fact that God chose to come and make time for us, redeeming out time, and making possible the salvation that disrupts time forever. Our time is so redeemed because Mary’s son is Immanuel, God with us. No matter what. Whether we are on the naughty list or the nice list, God is with us. Whether we have gobs of presents under the tree, or if we haven’t had the time to get a tree at all, God is with us. Whether we have more Christmases ahead of us, or only a few left, God is with us.…
Joy is what happens when we dare to trust the Lord to do for us that which we cannot do on our own. Joy is what happens when we are able to look at what we have, and had, and know that all of it, the good and the bad, came as a gift. Something rather than nothing. Joy is what happens whenever we encounter water in the midst of the deserts of our grief.…
The promise of Advent is that new life always starts in the dark, whether in the womb or the tomb, whether underground or the lost being found; new life starts in the dark.
It was almost 100 years ago when Christians across the globe needed the first Christ the King Sunday. They needed a day set apart to reflect on how the Lordship of Christ outshines even the most devious dictators and the most devastating depressions. Today, we need it just as much. We need Christ the King Sunday because it reminds us, beats upon us, that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. It forces us to confront the strange reality that our King rules from a cross. It compels us to hear the Good News, the very best news, the strangest news of all: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God’s love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!…
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