Thanks for reading Brewing Theology! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Six days after a dramatic journey through Caesarea Philippi – where Peter declared Jesus to be the Son of God, and Jesus foretold of his pending suffering, death, and resurrection – Jesus took three disciples with him up a high mountain. Mountaintop experiences within Israel were known to be where a person would encounter God. Remember, after leading Israel to freedom through the Red Sea, Moses asce...
Feb 22, 2023•13 min
One of the things I love most about the church’s liturgical cycle is the crescendo that builds during the season after Epiphany. If you did not know, today is the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, the fifth Sunday after the glory of the incarnation was revealed to the magi. Lost between Christmas Eve and the New Year, we miss the wise men traversing afar, bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newborn Messiah. In the magi the revelation of the incarnation of God in human flesh l...
Feb 06, 2023•12 min
Thanks for reading Brewing Theology! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. In the fall of 2022, before the fire, before I knew more about in, I would walk through the Sanctuary with my daughter every day after school. Each day we would hold hands as we walked through the hallway of the preschool, and as we made our way into the Sanctuary, Nora’s grip on my hand would get looser and looser. By the time we stepped into the Sanctuary, Nora would let go of my hand and make a b...
Jan 09, 2023•14 min
As far back as I remember, the Christmas story has not changed. A mash-up of Luke and Matthew’s accounts is etched into my mind: Mary and Joseph are both greeted by the angel Gabriel, wise men traversing a far, shepherds keeping their flocks by night, no room in the inn, and the manger. Oh yeah, and sweet baby Jesus. I could tell you the story and leave out one or two parts, and you wouldn’t miss a beat. Everyone knows this story. Every year, regardless of national or global events – during war ...
Dec 26, 2022•17 min
The turkey will be dry. Your end-of-the-year bonus may come in the form of a jelly subscription you did not want. The relatives you dread seeing will overstay their welcome. And, that powder room appliance might be full. No matter how much we try to avoid the broken and messiness of the world and our lives, the birth of Joseph’s boy tells creation that we are not separated from God. Our story is not Jesus’ story; instead, Jesus takes the world's story, our Sin – our the messy side of ourselves t...
Dec 11, 2022•14 min
December 4, 2022 Luke 1:26-38 “Let it be with me according to” the will of God, according to the grand plans of God’s earth-shaking in-breaking. “Let it be with me according to” the Creator of Heaven and Earth. That’s what she said. With three words, “Let it be,” Mary reveals to the world that the way things are is not how things will be when the will of God is followed when the Kingdom of God is fully realized. Let it be. ________________________________ Join me on Substack - https://teerhardy....
Dec 05, 2022•14 min
Luke 21:5-19 The Church has a word to speak in the face of rising Christian Nationalism and all the bigotry that comes with it. The One through whom all creation has been saved has a word for us. Paul wrote to the church in Rome, facing down persecution themselves, “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” The church tells the story that evil does not get the last word. The light of Jesus Christ shines brighter than any of the shiny distractions in Her...
Nov 14, 2022•14 min
November 6, 2022 Ephesians 1:11-23 While we want to control, guide, and strategize our way into what is to come, the truth is that God is the One at the wheel. The role of the saints – past, present, and future – is to praise God, soak up God’s amazing grace, and be open to being used as vessels of mercy, grace, and compassion. Our story, saints of yesterday, day, and tomorrow is wrapped in the unifying salvific work of God in Jesus Christ. Freedom from sin. A life shaped by the fullness of God’...
Nov 08, 2022•13 min
October 9, 2022 Luke 17:11-19 Because we are recipients of a supernatural Grace, something we a difficulty naming but once we have experienced it, we are never the same, our posture and response to God are one of gratitude, shifting our worldview entirely. Worship goes from being a 60-minute weekly hostage situation to being the posture we assume throughout the week. Stewardship becomes joy-filled generosity instead of being a fundraiser where the giver is constantly on the lookout for a return ...
Oct 11, 2022•16 min
Luke 16:19-31 Jesus is not telling a parable about Hell, the final judgment, or heavenly rewards. Our lesson is not a story about the afterlife and how to get to where we all want to go. Jesus is extending an invitation to the Pharisees then and today, to his followers then and today, to live as though the Kingdom of God (his kingdom) is already among us. The Kingdom of God broke into the world through Mary’s womb, which the cross or grave could not snuff out. It can feel as though the chasm is ...
Sep 26, 2022•13 min
Luke 16:1-13 Through Grace, Jesus saves those respectability says are beyond saving. This parable is not about finances or management. It is a parable about new life. New life free from the weight and guilt and consequences of our sin. New life that comes to us by way of the unjust steward’s death to self. New life that is a gift from God, given to respectable people but also to the people ignored, exploited, and forgotten by the respectability our world demands. The unjust manager is inviting u...
Sep 18, 2022•12 min
Jeremiah 2:4-13 According to Swiss theologian Karl Barth, all scripture and the entire Christian faith hang on the integrity of four little words from our text today: “Thus the Lord said….” Everything we believe as Christians stems from these four words. “Thus the Lord said….” God said creation would happen, and it did. God said Israel would be the shining star to the nations, and it is. God did not forsake or abandon Israel when they turned to the gods of Baal or ignored their set-apartness. Go...
Aug 28, 2022•14 min
Isaiah 5, Isaiah 27, John 15 Parables of judgment always feel like a smack on the nose. Like a teammate, launch a firm chest pass your way when you are not ready, and instead of a quick layup, you have a broken nose and blood on your new sneakers. But the Good News in the doom and gloom of the parables of judgment is that judgment does not equal punishment. God does not tear down the walls of the vineyard and allow the beasts of the wild to trample the vineyard. Isaiah does not forget the second...
Aug 14, 2022•13 min
Hosea 11:1-11 We often turn toward God’s love or God’s justice. This leads us to the thought that the God of the Hebrew Bible and the God of the New Testament are somehow different – the God of the Hebrew Bible is focused on justice and vengeance, while the God of the New Testament is concerned with love. Ignoring this tension ignores that tension reveals even more to us about God than we imagine. We know that God does not seek justice at the expense of love, nor love at the expense of justice. ...
Aug 02, 2022•13 min
Amos 8 Amos declared that the superficial religion of many – their Sunday morning best while not caring for the poor, going so far as to make a profit off the backs of the poor – was about to end. Resulting in their destruction. While it may not seem like it, the sending of Amos by God to the northern kingdom was an act of compassion and grace. God was all out of patience, and the summer fruit represented Israel’s end, looking delicious and inviting on the surface but rotting from the inside out...
Jul 17, 2022•13 min
Amos 7 The prophets point out to the people of God where God is calling us to go when complacency takes root, and we miss the movement of God happening before our eyes. The prophet, then and now, has the task of bringing a word from God to the people. In the case of Amos, this word from God was to return to the will of God. Amos is one of six minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. “Minor” describes the length of Amos’ writings compared to the more loquacious “major” prophets. Still, it does not dim...
Jul 11, 2022•15 min
Galatians 5 Paul’s letter was not written for you. Paul’s letter, Paul’s letters, and all of the Holy Scriptures were written for the Church. The Body of Christ is assembled through the love of God our Creator, the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul writes, “the fruit of the Spirit is.” Singular. Not the “fruits of the Spirit are.” Do you notice the difference? The Fruit of the Spirit is one gift, requiring one another, produced through the Holy Spirit and not i...
Jul 11, 2022•12 min
Trinity Sunday John 16:12-15 June 12, 2022 The Holy Spirit will guide us. Jesus tells us the Holy Spirit will “take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is.” The Holy Spirit will not “draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen, indeed out of all that” Jesus “has done and said.” Jesus tells his disciples that they, we, will not be left on our own to make sense of the work of God. We are not left to ourselves to decipher what a faith-filled life...
Jun 14, 2022•12 min
Pentecost Acts 2 God takes the most fragmented parts of our modern “post-Babel” lives and makes them whole. This is part of God making all of creation whole. We bear witness to this when we gather around Christ’s table. This is our witness in our worship, mission, and teaching. The unification of the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit – bringing people who speak different languages or only listen to siloed voices together to speak the one language of the Holy Spirit, the one language of God. ...
Jun 06, 2022•11 min
May 22, 2022 Acts 16 There is no such thing as a “self-made Christian.” A heart opened to the works of God, along with our conversion or faith, are acts initiated by God. This is why when the church speaks of repentance, we remember that we have been repented, that it is the inward working of the Holy Spirit that enables us to turn toward God. Jesus’ life and ministry testify to this. Jesus called his disciples. They did not seek him out. People would come to him only after he began his ministry...
May 23, 2022•12 min
Acts 10 and 11; Revelation 21 May 15, 2022 “Will we allow the Holy Spirit to prod us today, to give us a vision, to drag us, as it dragged our apostolic forebearers before us, kicking and screaming, all the way toward the wideness of God’s mercy?”[7] In just a few minutes, we will pray that Charlie is so filled with the same Holy Spirit that moved the home of Cornelius that he is never the same. And because he will not be the same, we pray that we will not be the same. The work of the Holy Spiri...
May 16, 2022•11 min
May 8, 2022 Acts 9:34-34 Our fixed structures often lead to paralysis and death for those on the margins or lower rungs of the social ladder. But the One who ordered the chaos of creation, was worshiped in a manger, and carried a cross telling fishermen to drop their nets, and the ill and dead to get up. In Aeneas’ healing and Tabitha’s rising these social systems have been rendered null and void. And church, we bear witness to this. We are witnesses to how Jesus Christ has overcome the power of...
May 10, 2022•7 min
May 1, 2022 Acts 9:1-20 Our stories of encountering the risen Lord are how we bear witness to Mary’s Easter morning discovery of the empty tomb. We are witnesses to the very voice that knocked Saul on his behind, who spoke to Ananias, who overcame the power of Sin and Death, and who continues to speak to us today. Luke tells us Saul was completely changed – from Enemy-Number-One to being the person who would carry the Good News of God in Jesus Christ to the Gentile world. To people like you and ...
May 02, 2022•12 min
Today is a celebration of the Gospel Good News that Sin and Death do not hold the last word. The very thing Mary went to the tomb to confront and mourn is no more because of Christ. Easter is not just the celebration of the tomb being empty. In the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see how the darkness of this world has been and will be overcome and ultimately annihilated by God. Mary arrived in the garden at night expecting to weep and mourn the rising of the sun yet revealed the...
Apr 17, 2022•11 min
April 10, 2022 Palm Sunday Luke 19:28-40 In our procession of fools, we miss that there is so much more to this story. In each stop between the Mount of Olives (Palm Sunday) and The Skull (the cross), Jesus is gathering all of humanity into him. The best and the worst we have to offer. No prayer or ritual must first be spoken or performed on our part. If last Sunday, Mary’s anointing of Jesus with perfume was the prelude to Holy Week, then Palm Sunday is Act One of a larger story. A story that w...
Apr 10, 2022•12 min
April 3, 2022 Luke 12:1-8 I want to be Mary, we should all want to be Mary, but none of us are., all the time. Yes, sometimes we are Mary but other times we are either Martha busying ourselves with work, or we are Judas, wanting to attach Jesus to our political agendas. Nevertheless, Christ gathers all to himself when he goes to the cross. Adoration, gratitude, and worship while in the next breath being made righteous, still being a recipient of the grace of God when we reject or betray the gift...
Apr 03, 2022•10 min
March 27, 2022 Lent 4 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Both sons forgot who they were, first and foremost, who they were before the world applied its labels and new identification. The father in this parable must have been looking for him, Junior, to see his son returning. On top of the family home, he watched, looked, waited, and then ran; in the same way, God continues to seek us out, gathering us in, calling us child, calling us beloved. This is the same Father who at his Son’s baptism shouted, “You are m...
Mar 27, 2022•10 min
March 20, 2022 Luke 13:1-9 Lent 3, Year C The hope we need in a world broken by sin is that our fruitfulness comes by the laboring of the divine gardener, the One who is devoted to the flourishing, the fruitfulness of all creation, despite what our sin says about us. By gathering all of creation up in his mercy and grace, Jesus is cultivating us toward fruitfulness, answering the question pastors love to debate with one another in large arenas and dank church basements – “how has God has dealt w...
Mar 21, 2022•8 min
March 13, 2022 Luke 13:31-35 Transformation through the faithfulness of the One who did not turn his back on us after lamenting that we had turned our backs on him. And the good news is that as you have been gathered and sent, you are not sent out covered in the dirt the world has smeared on you by puppets who would like to think they can leave a lasting impact on your life. In Jesus gathering us up, we are made clean. The cause of Jesus’ lament, our sin, does not hold the final word. Jesus has ...
Mar 13, 2022•10 min
Luke 4:1-13 Lent 1, Year C The Gospel good news is that there are no ifs. There are no buts. No fine print. We have begun our journey through Lent in the wilderness because Lent is a time of being in the desert, being in the wilderness. We live in the wilderness. We live in a world where the temptation to assume Christ's throne as our own is always present. We opt for the most reasonable decision, planned entirely, leaving nothing to chance, and in doing so, push God entirely out of the picture....
Mar 06, 2022•13 min
