July 31, 2016, the Rev. Kate Wesch preaching
The greed that is pleonexia is a disordered center or focus for your life. The foolish man suffered terribly from this. It’s happens when we buy into the culture’s myth that the accumulation of stuff belongs at the center, rather than God, love, and compassion.
July 27, 2016, The Rev. Doyt L. Conn, Jr. preaching
God is your Father. God made you. God loves you. God has you because God is hallowed. God is whole, holy, healthy, full, and complete, and in every situation this omnipotent God HAS YOU. And in moments when we aren’t sure about this, when we aren’t sure how to hold the tension between the good and the bad within us, when we aren’t sure how we will keep from collapsing into dualistic, binary, black-and-white thinking, then we pray: Father, hallowed be your name.
July 17, 2016, The Rev. Todd Foster preaching
Are you ever, like me, slow to hear Jesus’ “no?” Are you, like me, reluctant to experience the dissonance and pain of leaving behind the familiar? Are we able to live by faith rather than by sight? Can you and I relax our compulsive need to control everything and trust that letting go, living into our blindness, rather than bringing disaster, will create more space for God to do something even better in our lives? It takes immense courage.
July 10, 2016, The Rev. Doyt L. Conn, Jr. preaching
And I wondered if we, as a people, can so effectively focus on curing disease and saving lives within a body, why can’t we do the same to cure the Dis-ease that lives between bodies, between people, and neighbors, and communities, and around this nation? We know how to choose life for a body, can we do the same thing when it comes to the body that is our neighbor?
July 3, 2016, The Rev. Doyt L. Conn, Jr. preaching
June 26, 2016, The Rev. Kate Wesch preaching
I wonder—how might we be all in all the time? What are those obligations in your life that pull you away from your relationship with God, away from your work and passions, away from self-care? What are the things that take you out of relationship?
June 19, 2016, Charissa Bradstreet preaching
Awe changes us, awe helps us see the world more clearly, to see the world with the eyes of God. When you reflect on your own story, where have you encountered God in ways that have provoked awe and wonder in you? With whom do you share those stories? The gospels urge us to tell these stories because the world needs them.
June 12, 2016, The Rev. Doyt L. Conn, Jr. preaching
Here is the assumption Luke is making: every soul deeply desires freedom from the expectations of their context, whether a hedge fund manager in Manhattan, or a grandmother in Seward Park, or a shepherd in the Sudan. We all have cultural expectations set upon us, and while much of this is good and healthy, some of this can be constricting and onerous and cause us to give away our lives in favor of someone else’s expectations. And that is not Good News. Jesus came to give us Good News. He came to set us free, to liberate us, which is why he introduces us to this woman. Because she is free.
June 5, 2016, The Rev. Todd Foster preaching
It is fascinating to me that when God chose to put on flesh and come into the world in power, God chose not to do so with huge assertions of political influence or military might. Jesus did indeed demonstrate mastery of rulers, kingdoms and death, but Jesus didn’t abolish these things. Still today we lose children, parents, siblings, friends, and lovers. What Jesus, God in the flesh, did was to bring us good news. Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated and confirmed the presence of God with us and God for us. Jesus showed us that the death and loss, the sadness and hurt we experience isn’t the final, defining word in our lives. There are more fundamental forces at play in our existence even than questions of life and death. We are invited into a larger reality, and an allegiance that transcends the here and now. We are invited into a relationship that is bigger than life itself.