Confessing Sin

Sermon Scripture: Acts 8:26–39This week we learn to partner with the Holy Spirit in sharing the good news of Jesus, trusting that God is already at work in every person we meet. Through the story of Philip and the Ethiopian official in Acts 8, we discover four simple movements (listening, looking, asking, and risking) that help us notice where the Spirit is moving and join in.

Sermon Scripture: Acts 1:1-9The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous describes the stories we live and tell in plain terms and they always consist of: what we used to be like, what happened in our lives, and what we are like now. The Twelfth Step in recovery asks everyone who has found some freedom to share that story with the next person who you might encounter under their own burden, and the traditions of AA say that the fellowship grows by attraction rather than marketing, promotion, or some other transactional exchange. This is a pretty good snapshot of what Jesus encourages us to do in Christian witness.

Sermon Scripture: Luke 10:25-37Something shifts in us when our overflowing service is more than a single moment in time.  When we keep coming back and really get to know someone, a connection becomes possible that just might begin to look like kinship.

Sermon Scripture: Luke 10:25-37In Luke’s account of the greatest commandment a teacher of the Law presses for specificity asking: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) In other words, “Who, rabbi, am I responsible to serve?” To whom will I give an account before God? Who has God given me to love, practically, by the very love I’ve freely received?“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” —Antoine de Saint-ExupéryThat’s how Jesus responded to the teacher of the law’s question in the story of The Good Samaritan.

Sermon Scripture: Matthew 7:16–20All the grace, mercy, forgiveness, and generosity we have received, and all the slow, holy reordering of our lives toward the way God made us to live, was always meant to rise until it spills over. A life filled by God moves outward. It shapes our words and actions to bring peace and justice and comfort to the people around us, and in doing so, it opens dry, parched hearts to experience the refreshing love of God in their own lives.

Sermon Scripture: Mark 9:1-8; 2 Peter 1:3-4Humans are created in the image and likeness of God. This means that something within us can respond to God’s divine light, and that we can, in Christ, be restored to the divine image of God.

Sermon Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9Author Wendell Berry had a term for the people in his stories who were born, lived, and died in proximity of one another—the ones who helped one another bring in the wheat before the rains came, who sat with one another through illness, who checked on one another when the river rose outside of its banks. He called them a membership, which is to say, they were community.For four weeks now we have been practicing the way of Jesus in community. We learned to be family around a table. We learned to share our joys and sorrows. Last week we learned to confess our sins. Today we come to the final discipline of community: staying together to grow.

Sermon Scripture: Roman 7:21-8:2 Community can be the best, most beautiful thing in the world, but it also can be the setting for some of our deepest wounds. It’s a frustrating dilemma. It can hurt us deeply, it can be hard to be open with our sin in community, yet the only way he will ever heal from our hurts is by living in community.It's easy to become guarded, or even emotionally allergic to community because of our wounding. Yet, as followers of Christ we know that we can't give up on it. We have to move toward the very thing we fear because that is the place where we are designed to heal and grow.

Sermon Scripture: Mark 14:22-26, 32-34Our culture is pretty superficial. You can spend hours at all kinds of tables, and yet feel totally alone. So, how does the table become more than just another dinner party? How does it become a communion with God, and with one another? Well, one of the easiest conversation hacks is just to go around the table and share the highs and lows of the week.

Sermon Scripture: Genesis 1:26-27, Mark 3:31-35All through Scripture there is a recurring theme that scholars call the messianic feast. It imagines the Kingdom of God as one long table, with Abraham at one end and Jesus at the other, and every tribe and tongue and nation seated together as the family of God, singing and laughing and giving thanks. Yet most of us would say our experience of life feels less like a feast at a crowded table and more like a microwave dinner on a TV tray. Radical individualism, isolation, and loneliness are challenging enough, but it is not the whole problem. The deeper trouble for those of us trying to follow Jesus while isolated is that we simply cannot become people of love by ourselves.