If we knew what people were going through, would we act with more kindness? Would we walk through life with more awareness of others' pain, and joy, and everything in between? In order to really love like Jesus, we have to carry that kind of empathy. Speaker: Marlin Vis Scripture: Luke 18:35-19:10
This is Matthew's version of the "It is not right to throw the children's bread to the dogs" story. This one is a little difficult to summarize so I'll be brief. Two major points: 1) Can God be bigger than our theology? Is God more loving than we even know? Are there people in our lives that we despise but now we need to show love and mercy? 2) This woman wouldn't take no for an answer - she wrestles with Jesus and wins! Are we willing to wrestle - to show patience, courage and endurance with th...
The take-away is listening to the Holy Spirit - being watchful and prepared for the encounters in which God places us in order to care about the one person right in front of us. In the first 8 and a half chapters of Acts, we see God calling the apostles to preach to the masses - and thousands of people coming to believe in the Gospel of Christ. Preaching to the masses is very important! But the second half of chapter 8 gives us a glimpse of a different kind of evangelism. We are suddenly given a...
So, full disclosure. Remember when Covid happened? Remember that first Facebook live I fumbled through trying to have a conversation about this story cuz I didn't know what to do? Yeah, this is the sermon I was supposed to preach. Now I get to do it live. We'll walk again through the story and I'll have - you guessed it - 3 things to say. 1) Here we are again - Jesus trampling on boundaries to give someone the dignity they deserve. 2) Jesus leads with vulnerability. This is Jesus. The water into...
The Church is a place for sinners who long to be saints, not a place for saints who have long forgotten they are sinners. The Church is a place for celebration and joy, not a place for gloom and doom and somber faces. The Church of Jesus Christ is a place where old ways are constantly giving ground to new ways—where God is understood to be dynamic and fluid, never himself changing, yet ever changing God’s people and God’s church in order to accomplish God’s purposes and fulfill God’s mission in ...
Let us love one another. God is love. There's always something about these words that seems foundational to me. Like, there's something about these words that seems to form what ought to be underneath everything we say and do in this place - like DNA level stuff. It gets me thinking about how ReNew started. Just a few people meeting together trying to figure out who God wanted us to be. We eventually came up with our foundational statement - following Jesus to renew lives that renew the world. W...
We're going to zero in on the first line of Hebrews 11 - faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Everyone has faith. We have a lot of faith in the things that we have created - technologies. It's a lot harder to have faith in things like the promises of God. We find the promises of God in our liturgy of baptism - it takes faith to believe those things. Sometimes it's hard to have faith in a God we can't see. The writer of Hebrews was writing to a community...
James gives a lot of practical teaching up to this point in his writing. Now he changes directions - adds something new. Now he starts talking about the root of it all - he starts talking about the heart, what's inside. Bitter envy, selfish ambition, etc. He calls is false wisdom. We all have it. So what do we do about it? Again, practical teaching. Submit yourselves to God, resist the devil, draw near to God, cleanse your hands, purify your heart. We can sum this up with just one of them: draw ...
More practical theology - practical faith from James. The tongue is a fire. Today we have two things to talk about fire, and one about water. 1) Our words can be like fire that scorches the lives of others. We see this all the time. From the people who lead our nation to the people inside our own homes. 2) Words of gossip can spread like wildfire. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. Gossip spreads and can consume entire communities. 3) Water - our words can be like fres...
Far more than it shows a model for marriage, or for an individual relationship between two partners, Genesis 2 shows God's design for us to be together. Whether it is just a few people or an entire community, we are made to be in regular connection and to share life's ups and downs with those around us. None of us can do it alone. And we don't have to. Speaker: Tony Vis Scripture: Genesis 2:4-25 http://bible.com/events/49093250
James makes it clear at the beginning of his letter that there's a power available to Jesus people. It's a power that has the ability to form a new kind of community that is different from the rest of the world. And that power comes from Jesus. He makes it clear that faith in Jesus changes everything about the way we live our lives. In some ways, we need James right now. Badly. He doesn't let us merely spiritualize our faith or cut it in half seeing it as a free ticket to heaven when we die. The...
What are we doing here? Why do we come on Sunday mornings when there are all sorts of other things we could be doing to be productive in life? Why do we play this church game at all? One of the biggest reasons is that we come to pay attention to the divine. That's one of the meanings of the word "religion." It comes from the Latin root "lig" which, in part, means "to pay attention." So worship is like a divine alarm clock that wakes us up. But paying attention to the divine isn't just receiving ...
Peter gets a vision that disrupts his reality. Then he gets an invitation to go to Cornelius's house. He suddenly gets the meaning of the vision. God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. He understands that God wants to include the whole world - not just Jews. Divine disruption - it challenges current ways of seeing the world and understanding God and how to follow God. God invites Peter into more freedom, more inclusion, and more complexity. It's hard at first - he even...
Peter gets a vision that disrupts his reality. Then he gets an invitation to go to Cornelius's house. He suddenly gets the meaning of the vision. God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. He understands that God wants to include the whole world - not just Jews. Divine disruption - it challenges current ways of seeing the world and understanding God and how to follow God. God invites Peter into more freedom, more inclusion, and more complexity. It's hard at first - he even...
Many of the smaller stories we find in the Bible are just little microcosms of the big themes of change and transformation. The LORD brings Jeremiah to the potter's house and uses the imagery of the potter and the clay. God wants to transform Israel - but it all depends on repentance - it all depends on their willingness to change. Now, when we hear a call to turn toward God - to repent - we hear it from two different places. First, from the place of independence. No matter how put together we m...
This story is about keeping priorities straight, and keeping a right perspective on life. The rich man, in all of his privilege and wealth, loses sight of what is important in the midst of his excess stuff. Are we paying attention? Are we keeping our eyes on the needs of those around us, and seeing people as Jesus does? Or are we sitting in the middle of our excess of everything and just focusing on our own desires? Speaker: Tony Vis Scripture: Luke 12:13-21 https://www.bible.com/events/49069617...
People in the scientific community live into the theological themes of repentance and sanctification better than most religious people do. They live life and undergo authentic evolution all the time. They're able to let go of previously held beliefs about the world through the scientific method. In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he calls the Jewish church of Galatia out on their inconsistency in connection and acceptance of the Gentiles. Paul underwent and authentic evolution, from thinking wor...
We're walking slowly through the story of Jesus appearing to the two disciples walking to Emmaus. They were talking about everything that had happened. That's a loaded four words. "Everything that had happened." They were there witnessing the previous week ending with the crucifixion of Jesus. Then they heard the reports that Jesus' body was missing, AND that he might be alive. That's a hard thing to believe. They must've talked all about Jesus' life - what he taught and embodied - what he did. ...
Here's a question given to us by Brian Zhand: did you ever notice that the gospel writers don't even attempt to describe the resurrection? They talk all about the crucifixion. But for the resurrection, there's just the announcement that it happened. Then he suggests that they couldn't describe it. Death belongs to the old age - we know all about death. But resurrection is from the New Creation. They simply didn't have the categories for it. Let's talk about the three characters in the story. Nic...
Sometimes we only see what we want to see. The people in the story saw Jesus as the one who was coming to liberate them from Roman oppression. That's why they were waving palm branches. They'd seen this play out in their history with Judas Maccabeus. Of course that's what they saw. But that's not who Jesus revealed himself to be. He was teacher - healer - nonviolent - etc. But we're not that much different than the people in Jerusalem. We see what we want to see. Christian nationalism, anyone? W...
Raising of Lazarus - yeah, we're doing it again. So we've got a new spin. This is a hard story to wrap our heads around. It's a strange story that raises all sorts of questions that are difficult, if not impossible, to answer. So even though this is a confusing story - hard to understand - there is something we all can understand. Two words. Yup, a sermon on two words in a story about Jesus. Those two words? Jesus Wept. That's it. What do the tears of Jesus teach us? 1) The tears of Jesus legiti...
The burning bush story! In the midst of being overwhelmed by the presence of God, facing a bush burning brightly and white-hot, Moses hides his face, and God speaks. 1 - We're all functionally blind, just like Moses. We have no idea what the future holds. But God sees. God sees reality for what it is - and God has a preferred future for all of us, a future with milk and honey. That doesn't mean it will be easy - but milk and honey will be there. 2 - Okay, so what do we do? God says, "Go." Even t...
When a widow's son dies, Jesus sees the desperate situation she is now in and ministers to her needs. The miracle of the story is only one part of it. Understanding that this woman is not only grieving, but now in a place where she will have no one to support her is a heavy knowledge, one which Jesus does something about. People matter to God. Jesus had compassion and acted upon that compassion, even at great risk. So, how will we do the same? Speaker: Tony Vis Scripture: Luke 7:11-17 http://bib...
The clearing of the temple: Jesus disrupts our thinking. Causes us to ask questions. What are we doing here? He disrupts our thinking in two ways (more than two, but we only have time for two here). First, Jesus disrupts our thinking about the other. The system of exploitation that was set up blocking access to the divine in the temple made Jesus angry. The marginalized, the poor had no access to worship in the temple without paying an outrageously inflated price first. Blocking access to the di...
The story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness features three temptations. It's a pretty solid narrative structure, but it also can be applied to more general situations that we find ourselves in. First temptation is to go after short-term immediate gratification rather than trusting that God will provide what we need when we need it. We can have whatever we want whenever we want it without thinking about it. Whether it's buying something with one click on our online account, or upgradin...
Here we are again bumping up against this theme of crossing lines and boundaries. The reason we bring it up so often here is because we see Jesus doing this all over the pages of the Bible. He's constantly crossing lines and boundaries. And this story is no different - we'll notice all the lines and boundaries that mark off territory - and Jesus is inviting us to step out and learn that our line drawing has consequences. 1) Our line drawing causes us to be blind to those who are different or are...
There will be no better summary of this week's message than the closing paragraph: "That, friends, is why I love what we get to do here and why I don’t give up. We get to create a community that loves. We get to create a community where our doors are wide open just like Jesus’ arms. Anyone is welcome. Everyone is welcome. And we’ll do our best to provide the right type of atmosphere where all of us can live full, happy, healthy, flourishing lives with the ability to contribute to God’s good worl...
God invites us into conversation with God and one another through God's creation. The first chapter of Genesis has been interpreted in many ways, but the one that we are examining here is great and beautiful poetry. Through the building of the world in words and patterns of rhythm, we can be carried through the beauty before us and learn a whole lot about who God is and what God wants the world to be like. Speaker: Tony Vis Scripture: Genesis 1:1-31 http://bible.com/events/49027088
So we've spent a couple of weeks looking at the beginning of the Jesus story. His baptism in Mark - Jesus leaving home and calling the first disciples in Matthew. Now, back to Mark just after Jesus had sent the disciples on a local mission trip. They get back from the trip and they're so excited to tell Jesus what they had accomplished that they talk all over each other. So, Jesus says, "Come away with me - y'all need some rest." Jesus commands rest - commands Sabbath. Sabbath is important. When...
Leaving Nazareth. The story of Jesus leaving home to do his thing. What would cause a young guy, 30 years old, to leave his home, his family, his business? Maybe he remembered his baptism? Maybe he remembered the voice? Maybe he sensed that God was up to something new? He was beginning to sense that God's reign wasn't passive, but active, powerful, revolutionary. So, he began to talk about it. Preach about it. His message was clear and simple: The time has come. The kingdom of heaven is near. Re...
