This morning, as we look for guidance in the racial tension so prevalent today, we look for God’s heart in the Old Testament law. What is the purpose, spirit, and goal of the law, and how does God show his compassion through the law?
Repent
With the deep racial tension in America today, how do we respond? The answers aren’t clear, especially in a majority-white church in one of the whitest states in America. We feel that we have to do something, but we’re not sure what.
Our first step is to listen to the stories of our brothers and sisters of color; our second step is to lament as we hear their stories of being treated unjustly. This morning we begin to look at repentance. To repent means to change—it’s a change of mind and a change of action. Both must be present. How does God call us to repent of the racial sin present in our world?
Love One Another
Love is at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love God with our whole self, and the second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. But it’s very easy to leave love in the abstract.
This morning Doran helps us to see more of the specifics. What does love actually look like, not just as an abstract idea, but as a concrete reality? How does love change your life?
Lament
With the deep racial tension in America today, how do we respond? The answers aren’t clear, especially in a majority-white church in one of the whitest states in America. We feel that we have to do something, but we’re not sure what.
As we take time to carefully listen to our non-white brothers and sisters, we will inevitably find ourselves drawn toward lament. Although lament seems dark and hopeless, it actually paves the way forward. Hear how the gospel empowers us to lament well.
Stop and Listen
With the deep racial tension in America today, how do we respond? The answers aren’t clear, especially in a majority-white church in one of the whitest states in America. We feel that we have to do something, but we’re not sure what.
Our first step as Christians is to stop and listen. To hear the stories of our non-white brothers and sisters, and even to lean into the discomfort we may feel. And as we listen, we can become like Christ to our brothers and sisters whose voices have for so long been ignored.
Relationship and Right
How should Christians disagree? Disagreement is inevitable, especially in gray areas where right and wrong isn’t clear.
Paul gives us a window into two disagreements that early Christians faced: whether it was ok to eat meat, and whether they should still observe a Sabbath.
When we sacrifice our relationships on the altar of our rights or being right, Paul says we get it wrong. How will we relate to one another, and potentially disagree, as we think about our response to the coronavirus?
The Word and Work of God
God wants to transform us—to make us more fully human. He transforms our lives through his Word. This morning we look at how God uses his Word to draw people who are far from him near to him, and to draw people who are near to God nearer to him.
Remember and Persevere
When we’re stuck in the wilderness, and there’s no end in sight, what do we do? The Israelites are at the beginning of a 40-year “exile.” How can they cope with that?
God gives the answer: perseverance comes through remembering. Here’s how one simple practice can sustain us almost indefinitely.
God on Trial
In this third of three consecutive stories, God leads the Israelites further into the wilderness, they find themselves without water, they complain to God, and he provides water.
It sounds familiar, but now the Israelites are really fed up. So, in effect, they put God on trial, accusing, convicting, and sentencing him.
How does God respond when his people put him in the defendant’s seat?
Give Us This Day Tomorrow's Bread
Why would God lead his people to the desert where they have no food? That’s what the Israelites are asking in Exodus 16. When we find ourselves in the Wilderness, we often ask the same question.
“Why have you brought me here, God?”
“Are you still even there?”
This morning, as we look for God in the Wilderness, we see that God is not only present, but his mercy is over the top.
Bitter Mercy
As the parched Israelites get to a desert spring so bitter they can’t drink it, they assume God is cruel, not merciful. Yet this water is the greatest mercy imaginable.
Today, with the benefit of hindsight, we realize God’s mercy is sometimes so lavish that it’s beyond our understanding and even offensive. Will you allow God’s sweet mercy to overcome the bitter taste in your mouth?
The Week After Easter
The week after Jesus rose from the dead his followers were in disbelief. Some had seen him, but most hadn’t. They were tentative. Afraid. Unsure what to think. Thomas famously insisted, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”
“Doubting Thomas” often gets a bad rap, but don’t we often feel the same way? When we have to see something to believe it, what happens when Jesus shows up? Can doubt and belief coexist?
Afraid Yet Filled With Joy
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were the first to discover Jesus’ empty tomb. After suffering the disorientation and fear of watching their Lord and friend killed, they were further confronted by an earthquake and an angel “whose appearance was like lightning.” What was their response?
They went where God called them, “afraid yet filled with joy.” Fear and joy are not binary opposites. They coexist, but because of the empty tomb, our joy outweighs our fear.
The Far Side of Suffering
Palm Sunday is a day filled with tension. We rejoice that Jesus our King enters Jerusalem triumphantly, yet he is only days from being sentenced to death. Why would God allow worship to coexist with suffering, and how can we reconcile the two?
Browsing for the Kingdom
Jesus teaches us to spurn anxiety about our physical needs, but in the middle of a virus outbreak, that seems difficult. How do we avoid anxiety?
Jesus tells us to shift our focus. “Do not seek after those things, but seek God’s kingdom.”
What does it look like to seek his kingdom? Does that mean we shouldn’t think about the virus at all?
Suffering and Hope
The COVID-19 virus has emerged as a sudden and unavoidable part of life, and many of our life rhythms have been thrown into chaos. Although we are only at the very outset of this outbreak and do not know how severe it will be, many of us feel anxious about both the present and the future. How ought we to think about anxiety? This morning we look to the example of Job, who found a way, in profound suffering, to insist, “The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
How Will This Make Me Look?
St. Augustine noted that pride is the root from which all other sins grow. As we think about the seven deadly sins this Lent season, we ask, “How can we ‘achieve’ humility?”
This morning we look to the story of Saul, the first king of Israel, whose downward spiral forces us to confront the possibility that our hearts might also be deceived. And we ask, “If something like this can happen to Saul, where do we find hope?”
Shifting Sand
Most everybody understands the importance of having a firm foundation under their house. And most would agree that we should build our lives on a firm foundation. But what is that foundation?
This morning we think about what it means to build our lives on a solid foundation—a foundation of stone, and not of sand, in Jesus’ words. Jesus says the firm foundation is not moralism or behaviorism, but knowing him. Which begs the question, how do we know Jesus?
The Straight and Narrow
Have you ever heard someone talk about trying to stay on the “straight and narrow?” The Cambridge Dictionary illustrates the phrase in this way: “The threat of a good beating should keep him on the straight and narrow.”
Often we think about staying on the “straight and narrow” as a way to avoid punishment. But Jesus presents the “straight and narrow” as a path to a rich, joyful life. How do we know if we’re on the straight and narrow, and if we’re not, how do we get on it?
Civic Life and the Church: An irreconcilable difference?
It has been said that you should never discuss religion or politics in polite company. This morning we wade into both streams. During an election season, how does our faith affect our politics? How should we think about voting, and about civic life as Christians and as political citizens?