Every year we realize that we need to tell and hear the story once more. Every year we find ourselves surprised by it, overwhelmed, and yet comforted in a way that’s hard to explain. Every year we are drawn back to humble worship, and the pledge of renewed commitment. We invite you to take time to embrace the story: Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday as we celebrate Jesus’ enterance into Jerusalem. ★ Support this podcast ★...
Most of us know the Sermon on the Mount. The foundational sermon Jesus gives as he launches his public career. It’s a masterful invitation into the life of God. Most of us are less familiar with the Sermon by the Sea. An enigmatic sermon Jesus gives later in life as he is preparing to head toward the cross. If the sermon on the mount presents us with the common sense life of God and the practical steps we can take to experience it, the sermon by the sea presents us with the strange and paradoxic...
I have been loving our current series in the parables but one of the questions I am often asked is how do you read these stories well? How do you notice the subtleties that Jesus embedded in the story? Well, certainly I get the benefit of spending a lot of my week studying and preparing but there are some simple reading practices like lectio divina that can help us become more aware of what is happening in the text as we read. Here's one of the ways I like to approach the Bible when I read. I ho...
Most of us know the Sermon on the Mount. The foundational sermon Jesus gives as he launches his public career. It’s a masterful invitation into the life of God. Most of us are less familiar with the Sermon by the Sea. An enigmatic sermon Jesus gives later in life as he is preparing to head toward the cross. If the sermon on the mount presents us with the common sense life of God and the practical steps we can take to experience it, the sermon by the sea presents us with the strange and paradoxic...
Most of us know the Sermon on the Mount. The foundational sermon Jesus gives as he launches his public career. It’s a masterful invitation into the life of God. Most of us are less familiar with the Sermon by the Sea. An enigmatic sermon Jesus gives later in life as he is preparing to head toward the cross. If the sermon on the mount presents us with the common sense life of God and the practical steps we can take to experience it, the sermon by the sea presents us with the strange and paradoxic...
Most of us know the Sermon on the Mount. The foundational sermon Jesus gives as he launches his public career. It’s a masterful invitation into the life of God. Most of us are less familiar with the Sermon by the Sea. An enigmatic sermon Jesus gives later in life as he is preparing to head toward the cross. If the sermon on the mount presents us with the common sense life of God and the practical steps we can take to experience it, the sermon by the sea presents us with the strange and paradoxic...
On Sunday I threw out a quick statement about our relationship to money while I was talking about Jesus' words in Matthew 13. That seemed to intrigue a lot of people so I pulled together a quick video with some of the thinking behind what I was saying. ★ Support this podcast ★
Most of us know the Sermon on the Mount. The foundational sermon Jesus gives as he launches his public career. It’s a masterful invitation into the life of God. Most of us are less familiar with the Sermon by the Sea. An enigmatic sermon Jesus gives later in life as he is preparing to head toward the cross. If the sermon on the mount presents us with the common sense life of God and the practical steps we can take to experience it, the sermon by the sea presents us with the strange and paradoxic...
There are two letters to the city of Thessalonica in our Bibles. Both are traditionally held to be written by the apostle Paul and yet some scholars have questioned that because of the apparent contradictions in the content. One letter seems to encourage its readers to prepare for the imminent return of Christ. The second letter seems to be putting the breaks on and reminding the readers that they will still have to engage in culture, keep their jobs, and pay their bills. But is this really a co...
There are two letters to the city of Thessalonica in our Bibles. Both are traditionally held to be written by the apostle Paul and yet some scholars have questioned that because of the apparent contradictions in the content. One letter seems to encourage its readers to prepare for the imminent return of Christ. The second letter seems to be putting the breaks on and reminding the readers that they will still have to engage in culture, keep their jobs, and pay their bills. But is this really a co...
There are two letters to the city of Thessalonica in our Bibles. Both are traditionally held to be written by the apostle Paul and yet some scholars have questioned that because of the apparent contradictions in the content. One letter seems to encourage its readers to prepare for the imminent return of Christ. The second letter seems to be putting the breaks on and reminding the readers that they will still have to engage in culture, keep their jobs, and pay their bills. But is this really a co...
There are two letters to the city of Thessalonica in our Bibles. Both are traditionally held to be written by the apostle Paul and yet some scholars have questioned that because of the apparent contradictions in the content. One letter seems to encourage its readers to prepare for the imminent return of Christ. The second letter seems to be putting the breaks on and reminding the readers that they will still have to engage in culture, keep their jobs, and pay their bills. But is this really a co...
If reconciliation is always the hope of forgiveness how do we start that conversation? Supplemental Content: The response to this series was very encouraging. It was amazing to see people in the community and online interact with the material and share stories of struggle and forgiveness in their lives. Out of those stories a number of questions emerged and so we've decided to put together some additional content to address ideas that weren't touched on fully in the series. ★ Support this podcas...
You can't forgive an organization so don't try. Let yourself name the person who hurt you and work to forgive that person. Supplemental Content: The response to this series was very encouraging. It was amazing to see people in the community and online interact with the material and share stories of struggle and forgiveness in their lives. Out of those stories a number of questions emerged and so we've decided to put together some additional content to address ideas that weren't touched on fully ...
Like anything other discipline forgiveness is a skill you can practice and get better at. Supplemental Content: The response to this series was very encouraging. It was amazing to see people in the community and online interact with the material and share stories of struggle and forgiveness in their lives. Out of those stories a number of questions emerged and so we've decided to put together some additional content to address ideas that weren't touched on fully in the series. ★ Support this pod...
Don't confuse forgiveness with giving someone unfettered access to your life. For a whole host of reasons we sometimes need to create and maintain healthy boundaries even as we forgive those who may have injured us in the past. Series Outline: In the Hebrew Scriptures ashes were used as a sign of grief or mourning. There are many forms of grief that we experience in our lives. Confusion or despair, lament or pain, loss or even death come crashing into our lives. Yet, one of the deepest experienc...
Revenge is when we try to take our pain and recreate it inside someone else. This never works and leads to more despair. How can we defuse this instinct in order to work towards wholeness? Series Overview: In the Hebrew Scriptures ashes were used as a sign of grief or mourning. There are many forms of grief that we experience in our lives. Confusion or despair, lament or pain, loss or even death come crashing into our lives. Yet, one of the deepest experiences of grief we can have is the act of ...
Sometimes our more abstract. high-minded concepts can make it hard for us to access forgiveness in our lives. The Scriptures actually speak in very concrete images of forgiveness. Perhaps this can help us. Series Overview: In the Hebrew Scriptures ashes were used as a sign of grief or mourning. There are many forms of grief that we experience in our lives. Confusion or despair, lament or pain, loss or even death come crashing into our lives. Yet, one of the deepest experiences of grief we can ha...
Forgiveness is not a moment. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is not for them. In order to understand forgiveness in our lives sometimes we need to start with what it isn't. Series Overview: In the Hebrew Scriptures ashes were used as a sign of grief or mourning. There are many forms of grief that we experience in our lives. Confusion or despair, lament or pain, loss or even death come crashing into our lives. Yet, one of the deepest experiences of grief we can have is the act of forgi...
It's New Year's Day! Let's 2017 together, on the right foot, facing Jesus. ★ Support this podcast ★
Every year we rehearse the Christmas story. The baby and manger and sheep and the goats and it’s meaningful every time we do. And yet, as John reminds us in the opening of his gospel, there was a beginning before the beginning. A Jesus whose story runs throughout the entire story of creation. This year as we prepare for Christmas we want to read back Before Beginning to remember the stories of Jesus before the manger.” ★ Support this podcast ★...
Every year we rehearse the Christmas story. The baby and manger and sheep and the goats and it’s meaningful every time we do. And yet, as John reminds us in the opening of his gospel, there was a beginning before the beginning. A Jesus whose story runs throughout the entire story of creation. This year as we prepare for Christmas we want to read back Before Beginning to remember the stories of Jesus before the manger.” ★ Support this podcast ★...
Every year we rehearse the Christmas story. The baby and manger and sheep and the goats and it’s meaningful every time we do. And yet, as John reminds us in the opening of his gospel, there was a beginning before the beginning. A Jesus whose story runs throughout the entire story of creation. This year as we prepare for Christmas we want to read back Before Beginning to remember the stories of Jesus before the manger.” ★ Support this podcast ★...
Every year we rehearse the Christmas story. The baby and manger and sheep and the goats and it’s meaningful every time we do. And yet, as John reminds us in the opening of his gospel, there was a beginning before the beginning. A Jesus whose story runs throughout the entire story of creation. This year as we prepare for Christmas we want to read back Before Beginning to remember the stories of Jesus before the manger.” ★ Support this podcast ★...
This week we concluded our study of Leviticus. Every week in this series we have pointed/oriented ourselves back toward Jesus because without that the story is incomplete. This week we talk about the Year of Jubilee, a full socio-economic reset in Israel every 50 years. In much the same way that the day of atonement was designed to wipe the slate clean when it came to sin, jubilee was designed to wipe the slate clean economically. In Luke chapter 4, Jesus arrives on the scene and he tells us a e...
The two perspectives on the origins and meaning behind sabbath hold two complementary views: on one hand sabbath is about stopping and resting in God’s presence that we might know him and be formed by his holy character, and on the other hand sabbath is a reminder that we were not created to be slaves, in rest we remind ourselves of everything that God has done for us. In Jesus, we get reminded that ritual is never really just about ritual, and we are invited into the heart of the ritual by both...
God is revealed in the totality of scripture; but God is revealed perfectly only as the story comes together and reaches it’s culmination in Jesus. And when Jesus comes and looks back on the law, when God himself interprets the law for us, what he sees is a mission to love the world. You can’t follow God by not sinning. You can only ever follow God by living and loving and allowing him to transform you as you move through the world. Especially those who didn’t seem to be your neighbour at first ...
Part of what we need to explore in the Day of Atonement is how these ancient Levitical rituals informed how the early Christians thought about the death and resurrection of Jesus. We always need in the back of our minds as we read Leviticus the idea that God was seeding the story even in this ancient primitive culture but that the story would only fully blossom in Jesus. Part of the good news of the gospel is that we don’t have to participate in these scapegoat rituals anymore, because in a sing...
Distinction and difference, these ideas were very important to the ancient Israelites. The point of the levitical purity code was to signal a people set apart for God. Once upon a time that looked like ritualized religion and rule following. Today what that looks like today is the counter-cultural, boundary-crossing, surprising love of Jesus. A love that shocks the world into noticing just how near God has come to each of us. Series outline: Be honest, when was the last time you looked forward t...
In Leviticus there was always a concern that we might bring some contamination, unintentionally or otherwise, into God’s presence. In Jesus we learn that God is Spirit and therefore God is with us, and in us, and through us at all times and in all places. Through that, we come to understand that sin does not contaminate God. In fact, God wants to enter into our brokenness so that he can heal it. But that doesn’t mean we’re off the hook when it comes to sin. In one sense the Jesus story shows us ...
