Things to Ponder

Sermon Text: Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Matthew 19:13-15

 

God wants to reach you and teach you in those spaces that you thought were for someone else.  Spiritual formation is never one person or group doing something for another person or group.  It is always a communal work.  We are shaping and are shaped, iron sharpening iron.  So what does a great week of VBS look like?

 

 

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Sermon Text: Luke 8:43-48

 

Roe v. Wade thrusts the local church back into the work of addressing national issues. When the issues come close, we discover we aren’t talking about ideas, but about people who want healing, relationship, peace.  And there's a small, unnamed saint who draws near to Jesus for that healing, and invites us to do the same.

 

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Sermon Text: 1 Kings 19

 

When we live our lives tethered to a deep contemplative life and God’s ongoing provision, we will walk with the wisdom and grounding of Elijah.  This is the deep life to which we are called if we are serious about a life of meaning, purpose, virtue.  It’s either that, or be swallowed by the darkness of ignorance, folly, and destruction that defined Elijah’s world and ours.  But we can make a choice.

 

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Sermon Text: Proverbs 8

 

Trinity - three persons, one God.  It's not just a way to understand God, but also ourselves – we are one, we are ourselves, living moving and breathing in this world.  And yet we are inextricably part of a community – the community that is God, and the community that is one another.  And only when we embrace that tension do we discover our truest selves, and get called deeper into the mystery of our faith. 

 

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Sermon Text: Acts 2:1-21

 

Pentecost exists prior to the Church.  But on this Pentecost, we weren't given a book, or a new law, but the Holy Spirit.  The message is clear:  the law we live by is the Holy Spirit, who is making everything a new creation.  Pentecost is a call to new life and a creative spirit.

 

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Sermon Text: Acts 1:1-11

 

Ascension invites us to imagination.  If Christ is king of all, and all things are under his feet, what is possible?  Is it possible to have a world without shootings, without war, without violence? The church is called to be a prophetic witness and embodied presence of the King of kings who is over every nation, every economics, every politics. 

 

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Sermon Text: John 5:1-9

 

Meritocracy leaves bodies in its wake.  Mercy seeks out the most vulnerable and brings healing.  The question is:  do we, the Church, want to be healed?

 

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Sermon Text: Acts 11:1-18

 

Peter's mystic vision wasn't about dietary laws, or some particular piety.  It was about people.  Less boundaries, more inclusion, more discovery of God's goodness everywhere.

 

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Sermon Text: Luke 15:1-10

 

Our pictures of Jesus are often so tame.  Leave it to a religious icon to show us a rambunctious, unruly, undeterred Christ, who grabs for everyone with unrestrained love.

 

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Sermon Text: John 20

 

Mary Magdalene mistakes the resurrected Jesus for the gardener.  Is it possible she spoke more than she knew?

 

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