You will be called names. You will be slandered. You will be called names. It is not okay to retaliate. Yes, there is evil in the garden of our lives. What should we do?

Following Jesus is a choice. As we continue with the gardening metaphor in this series, you get to choose whether or not you will be a one season annual or a perennial that comes stronger. We will all have winters in life. Choosing Jesus will bring your return.

Verse 18 in the first chapter of I Peter begin a section we refer to as the household code. It is a hierarchy of relationships from slave to servant to women to men created in the extreme male dominated culture of the Roman-Greco world. We have unfortunately used this hierarchy as the Christian role model for all societies but if we are willing to dig into Scripture, we see such a system is just part of the Kingdom of God.

Peter begins this chapter with an promise of an inheritance that is imperishable but this new way of life will not be accepted by all. This week we look at how the new way of living is very much like a gardener  starting a new garden.

This week's sermon begins a new series on the books of 1 & 2 Peter. It was written to churches who struggle to follow Jesus under difficult circumstances which makes it a very good study in our present situation.

We want resurrection and we want it now. But redemption must preceded resurrection so the world as it will be should not be a repeat of the world as it was.

On this Palm Sunday is the midst of COVID19, the talk of parades might be inspiring but not helpful. Today we need to talk about what happened next at the Temple.

In the seventh of Jesus' great signs in the Gospel of John, we come to raising Lazarus from the dead. How many of us has Jesus tried to set free but we remain in our burial clothes?

There are many blind stories in the Gospels but this one is told with more detail and includes conversations and a discourse. It comes as Jesus is beginning to move towards the cross and it beckons us to check our own blindness.

We call her the woman at the well but she had three strikes against her when she encountered Jesus that day. But she wasn't out. Jesus provided a space where she could experience real living water and it changed her life and the life of that village.