The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon. Life in Christ Includes Praise and Lament Though we may prefer to think of God giving us lives of joy and ease, a full life in Christ also includes sorrow and grief. To the extent we are willing to…
God Comes First. The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon. God is, the theologians say, transcendent—beyond us, always exceeding our easy grasp. Recognizing God’s awesome transcendence brings a reevaluation of other values. The God of vertigo-inspiring infinitude is also the God who know the hairs of…
2nd Sunday after Pentecost The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks of the church’s mission with images drawn from daily life. The harvest is already plentiful, he says, but laborers are needed for work in the fields of daily…
Celebrating Our God beyond Understanding The festival of the Holy Trinity celebrates the wonder of relationship with God while leaving us distinctly dissatisfied with our limited understanding of what God is. While guarding against the idolatry of language, we survey our scripture, doctrine, creeds, and symbols of our heritage. Equally important, we pray for God…
The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon.This is the day the Lord has made! Christ is risen, and through him all creation is made new! Indeed, “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34): Christ’s resurrection truly brings life to everyone. We sing hymns of praise, gather…
No one believes in the existence of the devil these days, do they? Do you? Perhaps we can thank Hollywood and Halloween’s marketing blitz for our casual if not incredulous approach to the devil’s existence. Pointy horns, pitch forks, red costumes, and box office ticket sales continue to shape our culture’s collective consciousness of the…
With ash and soot we begin this Lenten season with confession; we begin with Psalm 51; we begin on our knees. Today this ancient prayer placed on our lips becomes new again: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” We speak our truths…
We often speak of mountaintop experiences as those joyous times we look forward to with excitement and look back upon fondly, such as summer camp or an annual hiking trip. The mountaintop moments in today’s readings were different: awe-inspiring, yes, but also full of devouring fires, clouds, and fear. Vision is obscured, the familiar becomes…
Time after time we are called through the scriptures to leave behind familiar and predictable ways of life, risking a journey into the unknown and unknowable. Risks often have a very big and exciting “upside” which is matched by an equally steep and daunting “downside.” Many good and faithful people have a healthy fear of…
This is a strange time of year. The days are short, the nights are long, and even though we dream of more daylight, we walk around hoping against hope that there won’t be enough sunshine produced for a rodent (okay, a groundhog!) to see its own shadow. A quick scan of today’s news can be…