The baptism of Jesus. Why is this story in the Bible? He didn't have followers yet - none of his disciples were there. So how did they know this story? Well, probably because this story was important to Jesus. He had a profound experience told the story to his followers over and over again. The story is in there because Jesus was fully gripped by the power of God's love. And because he was gripped by God's love, he figured out who he was and what he would do. "You are my Son, my beloved." It can...
Jan 18, 2023•27 min
Starting off the New Year with a doozie of a story! Ahab and Jezebel have a dude named Naboth murdered and then steal his land. Woo hoo. So, why are stories like these even in the Bible? Well, turns out we can learn from them. In this story we see that one thing leads to another. Greed leads to lying which leads to a whole bunch of other things that lead to murder. We learn that sin gives birth to sin - it multiplies itself. It's a sick cycle that we're all caught up in - all of humanity is caug...
Jan 11, 2023•28 min
The Word became flesh. So why does John tell the Christmas story this way? He's trying to reach as a large an audience as possible. He gives us cosmic Christmas. John used the word "word," or "logos" in Greek. This would have been a familiar concept for John's readers. The word, or logos, is the rational principle behind the entire universe - it gives the universe its reasonableness. You could say that the logos is what holds the universe together and makes things make sense. That word became fl...
Dec 21, 2022•26 min
This is the story of John the Baptist wondering if Jesus was the Messiah or if they should wait for another. It's a curious story because you would think that J the B would know and be clear about this. He leaped in his mother's womb when Mary came to see his mom. He was there at Jesus' baptism. But he wasn't clear, because Jesus turned out to be a messiah no one was expecting. Jesus tells the delegation John had sent to tell John that, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, etc. (He's quo...
Dec 14, 2022•24 min
"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion." Paul isn't just talking about what's going on in this little church. If you read the rest of the letter, he's placing what's going on in the Philippian church within the context of God renewing, recreating, and transforming all of creation. And we get to be in on it. So, how do we get in on it? Where do we start? That's where John the Baptist comes in. Repentance is the key - that's where we begin. Turning towards the Divine. John...
Dec 07, 2022•30 min
The beginning of Advent: Mary travels to stay with Elizabeth for the remaining duration of her pregnancy. So often the materialism and stressful factors of Christmas dominate our focus during this season. It is easier to see what stresses us out, what we could gain, what we could consume. But let us not lose sight of the journey towards the birth of Jesus. Enjoyable as some of these other aspects can be, they won't carry the same lasting joy that we can choose in Christmas when we settle into th...
Nov 30, 2022•32 min
Jesus goes and preaches in his hometown. They're skeptical - they think they know everything about him - so they reject him. Sometimes the ordinary, the familiar, what we think we know can blind us to the extraordinary - can blind us to what God is doing in the world. God reveals things to us through the ordinary. That's a positive thing to think about, but it probably should also make us a bit uncomfortable. How many times do we miss what the Divine is revealing to us because we think we know a...
Nov 23, 2022•26 min
1) There's something about religiosity that can make us prone to being judgmental. But maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's part of the human condition - it's just in us. 2) The religious experts set a trap for Jesus and how he gets out of it. He essentially turns the whole trap back on them. In doing so, Jesus gives us the best antidote to religious judgmentalism: we're all in the same boat - we're all part of the same human family and we're all making a mess of things. 3) He gives the woman g...
Nov 16, 2022•27 min
This is the second of Isaiah's Servant Songs. These songs reveal some things about the nature of God's servants - people like us. First, servants are called and formed for a purpose. We aren't an accident - we were formed by God and called for a purpose. Second, if we're called and formed for a purpose as servants, then we've got work to do. What kind of work? We see themes in this passage of restoration and reconciliation. If we reach back further in Isaiah we see themes of justice. What that l...
Nov 09, 2022•30 min
This is a story that definitely fits in the horror genre. Demon possession, gore, violence, possessed pigs running off a cliff...it has it all. Because it has such heavy and disturbing themes, it's sometimes difficult to approach this story. We'll start with the question Jesus asks. "What is your name? Who are you, really?" It's a loving question - Jesus is approaching the man with compassion. What would happen if we let the Divine ask us that question: who are you, really? The man says, "Legion...
Nov 02, 2022•38 min
We were created in the image of God, in other words, we are icons representing God. When Jesus preached in the temple, he read from the passage that declares good news for the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind. This reading of a proclamation of freedom and healing is one made by a king, and it was significant to the people listening, who would have understood this. Jesus shook up the status quo by declaring freedom was for those who were marginalize...
Oct 26, 2022•28 min
Parable of the widow and the judge. Luke tells us that this is a story about praying and never giving up. Pray always and never give up. But sometimes we don't want to pray - all we get is silence from God. Jesus' story says "keep praying, even when you get silence or inaction from God in return." Jesus teaches us this because it's something we need to be taught! Otherwise we would quit praying. There are a bunch of Psalms about poets praying into the silence, saying things like "How long, O LOR...
Oct 19, 2022•32 min
This is the parable of the two lost sons. A very familiar story, one that we talk about all the time in church. Typically it's called The Parable of the Lost Son, or something similar. We all know the feeling of something being lost. But this parable gives us a different perspective on that concept. The two sons are lost - but not misplaced - only hiding. The first son literally runs away - we live in a world that runs away from the divine. The second son is still home, but he's lost. Lost insid...
Oct 12, 2022•33 min
Passionate faith - what does it look like? 1) Passionate Faith is an absolute trust in the God who loves and protects us in spite of our imperfections. 2) Passionate Faith is a sacrificial faith. 3) Passionate Faith is a forgiving faith. The forgiveness in this case is more than just "I forgive you." Stephen is actually wishing well those who are killing him. He's essentially asking that God would bless them. Speaker: Aaron Vis Scripture: Acts 7:51-60 http://bible.com/events/48963097
Oct 05, 2022•31 min
It's all about love. Jesus says that as the Father has loved him, so also has he loved us. Remain in his love. If we're going to remain in Jesus' love we ought to know what his love looks like. When you boil it down, his love brought him nothing but trouble - danger everywhere, the sick pulling on him, crowds pressing in on him, across every social barrier - and eventually it took him to the cross. If we remain in the love of Jesus we may find ourselves serving in places we might not want to be ...
Sep 28, 2022•31 min
Jesus heals a woman in the middle of a worship service in the synagogue. God is large, unmanageable, and full of surprises. Then, something curious happens. The leader of the synagogue gets upset because you're not supposed to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus works on the Sabbath. He breaks the law and traditions. Something he does with regularity. Jesus rebukes the guy revealing that the leader of the synagogue is just as bent over on the inside as the woman was on the outside. In the name of God's l...
Sep 21, 2022•24 min
The goodness in us isn't a light we emit all on our own - it's a derived light. We are light in the Lord. Light is seen. The writer of Ephesians is writing to a small church much like that churches we encountered in Revelation - and in fact is one of those churches. You might think that the encouragement would be to lay low so as not to draw attention to themselves. Nope - they are called light. Faith isn't a private matter. Light shines. Sometimes it's a small light, like a candle - holding som...
Sep 14, 2022•24 min
This week, Tony comes to us with a challenge to ask questions, to boldly approach the idea of uncertainty with the ability to acknowledge that we may not have answers right away, or ever. Speaker: Tony Vis
Aug 31, 2022•30 min
Raising of Lazarus: what a story. Jesus says, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?" What the heck does that mean? Lazarus is still dead. What's going on here? Perhaps Jesus said those things and then John recorded them for us so that we would open up the way we think - to conceive of the world differently - to understand that things aren't always as they seem, not...
Aug 24, 2022•27 min
God is planning a wedding! The Lamb will marry his followers! Yeah, sounds weird. It's a freaking metaphor. Marriage is about union. So this metaphor is about a union of Jesus and his followers. And it's about a union between heaven and earth. This is a vision of God finally putting things back together again. It ends in a garden city and you know what other story is set in a garden? The very first story in the Bible, the Garden of Eden. Okay, great. That happens one day, what do we do in the me...
Aug 17, 2022•34 min
So...judgment is coming! Armageddon, bowls of wrath, and the great prostitute - woo hoo! What will judgment look like? John seems to be saying two things. First, God is going to take away everything gained by the ways of the empire - gained by taking advantage of people and creation. What happens when your stuff gets taken away? Weeping and gnashing of teeth. Second, John seems to be saying that God will eventually contain evil and those who love evil in a place outside the new heaven and new ea...
Aug 10, 2022•34 min
Every healthy relationship simultaneously develops more connectedness and more independence. Parent - Child. Friend - Friend. Spouse - Spouse. Jesus - Peter. The story of Peter being told in a vision to take and eat what had previously been labeled as unclean for the people in his culture is a story of removing barriers that previously were in place to keep order. It isn't that Peter had been doing the wrong thing by not eating the unclean food, it was just that Jesus was offering an expanded wa...
Aug 03, 2022•31 min
So at the time this books was being written, the churches in Asia Minor would have been witnessing a great deal of suffering and oppression, both around them and within their communities. They would have looked around at the world and thought, "What is going on in the world?" We ask that same question today, as we witness the constant violence and oppression and brokenness everywhere. John's response is to tell a story revealing that there's more going on in the world than meets the eye. And thr...
Jul 27, 2022•36 min
Chapter 8 of Revelation - the 7th seal is broken. We expect the world to be put back together again. Not yet. Instead, we get silence in heaven. We live in a noisy world - but is anyone truly listening? Think about what it's like when you're listened to. You get a sense that your life matters. You get a sense of dignity. When we pray, heaven is silent and God listens. This world matters to God. Then we get more destruction. God is judging evil by exposing it. But it feels like it takes forever f...
Jul 20, 2022•32 min
When you experience knee pain and you go to the doctor, what do they do? They diagnose the problem and find a solution that will help ease the pain. They try to get to the bottom of what's really wrong so you can heal. That's essentially what we have going on here in chapter 6. We expect God's plan to be enacted - we expect the world to be put back together. Nope. We get violence. All the evil around us has to be exposed. God is getting to the bottom of what's really wrong so that the world can ...
Jul 13, 2022•35 min
This is a continuation of the invitation to worship. John sees that the one on the throne has a scroll that is sealed. This is like an architect with the plans for a great building. Only the one who can enact the plans can open the scroll. John weeps because there is no one worthy to open the scroll. Israel couldn't do it and neither can any of us. So, apparently God's plan to renew the world and set things right will not be enacted. But then the angel says, "Hold up - the Lion is here - he'll o...
Jul 06, 2022•33 min
Worship is something larger than we expect. When we worship together we're joining in on a reality that is already taking place: all of creation is giving honor and glory to God, is already worshiping. When we meditate on creation we eventually get to the awe inducing question, "Who did this?" Worship gives us a center. There's a lot of talk about the throne - an occupied throne. The throne is in the center and everything else is around the throne of God. God wants us to recognize that God is th...
Jun 29, 2022•33 min
This is the famous hot, cold, lukewarm letter. Often this is portrayed as hot being good, cold and lukewarm being bad. You're either on or you're off, there's no in between. But what if it's something different? Let's talk about the place: Laodicea. They had no water source of their own. They got their water from two different places. One city nearby had a hot spring. One had a cold spring. So, once they pumped the water in it was lukewarm. Jesus is saying, be hot, or be cold. This is another in...
Jun 22, 2022•28 min
Philadelphia. There's some really cool stuff here about the city being a gateway or a doorway to the east. Jesus is essentially saying, "I've opened a door for you. Will you walk through it?" He's inviting the church to partner with God in making the world like God's kingdom - love, grace, healing, etc. We're taught to open doors for ourselves, to make things happen, to create our own destiny, to work hard and move up the ladder. We're always looking for doors to open...how often do we miss the ...
Jun 15, 2022•27 min
Pentecost: the Spirit was present in the midst of Jesus' followers, and they preached, prayed, and served together. We think of the Spirit coming down to be in the midst of the people, but what more can be applied to our current existence from this story? The Kingdom of God is here, now, and the Spirit is among us as we go through every day. So what will we do in this Kingdom? Well, hopefully we are speaking in love, seeking justice for the oppressed, finding healing and welcome for those who ar...
Jun 08, 2022•28 min
