Did you know that “Do Not Fear” is the most common commandment in all of Scripture?

In fact, some variation of it appears at least 365 times in scripture - one for every day of every year of our lives. Though it's God's most common commandment, it’s also often the most difficult for us to follow. After all, there are many justifiable fears and anxiety (generalized fear) that can become a way of life. And yes, I see the irony that we are exploring this emotion on Mother’s Day as that particular role has caused me more worry than almost any other role in my life! But fear is used and felt in every aspect of our society from personal relationships to politics, from family systems to social media. So what are we to make of these many divine commands and our natural, reasonable human response to the risks in our world as well as the manufactured fears often directed at us?

In this sermon, as we continue in our series “Anger and Other Invigorating Emotions,” we will explore why God asks this of us and how God intends us to live it out.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.“

- Maya Angelou

As the brilliant poet suggests, feelings have incredible, lasting power. Interestingly, in our post modern world, our response to our emotions range the gamut. Some still choose to bury them, uncomfortable with their power to “distract” or “redirect.” Others completely submit to their power with statements like, “I can’t help it, it’s just how I feel.”

How about you? What’s your approach to the emotions that fill your day? What is God’s?

This May, a month of weddings and graduations and lots of emotion, we will explore some of our more powerful feelings like anger, fear, joy, anxiety, etc. in light of our faith and Scripture.

For this sermon, we begin the series looking at Hosea 11:1-11 and John 21:14-19. As you read those passages over, consider all the emotions of God in Hosea: what he/she feels and how God responds to those emotions. Then, consider all the emotions Peter must have seeing the resurrected one and how Christ instructs him to respond.

The disciples of the early church were rule-breakers!

Last week, Jesus broke the laws of science by coming back from the dead. Now his disciples, proclaiming his resurrection, find themselves consistently at odds with the rulers of their time. In our Scripture for this sermon, Peter, who had denied Jesus previously, explains to the Jewish leaders trying to keep him silent, “We must obey God rather than men.”

Easter People, as you prepare to listen to this sermon, please read both the Acts passage as well as the Gospel, and ask yourself, "Where in my life am I being asked to put God’s way, law, desire over a law, practice, or expectation of those around me? Where is God asking me to ‘obey’ in my life that is especially challenging?" If you don’t know, take time to ask God about it.

We wandered through Lent and Holy Week and found our WAY to the celebration of Easter! Hallelujah!

In this sermon, we explored the movements of Mary of Magdala. With the chorus of Beyonce’s remake of “Before I Let Go” as our soundtrack to Mary’s story, we saw how Mary SHOWED UP, filled with love for Jesus at the tomb just like she had at the crucifixion and burial. Then, though the other disciples ran off, she STAYED and, rather than letting go, opted to look in the tomb one more time, staring into the impossible. When she did that, she turned back only to be completely SURPRISED by the impossible made possible - encountering Jesus risen from the dead.

Best of all is that Mary’s movements are just a shadow reflecting the movements of the Light of the World, Jesus. Christ always SHOWS UP for us even if we don’t see him and especially in unexpected places. Jesus STAYS with us even when we deny, ignore, or pervert his teachings and love. And, Jesus never fails to SURPRISE us with what is possible through his love and power - both the transformation of ourselves and the world.

In fact, I can almost hear the Resurrected One singing to us,

“You know I think God's sun rises and shines on you.

You know there's nothing

Nothing, nothing I would not do, whoa

Before I let you go, woah

I would never, never, never, never

Let you go before I go"

(From Beyonce’s remake of Maze’s Before I Let Go)

And so let us hold tight to the truth of the Resurrection - God can and will do anything to heal God’s people and connect us with God and each other. This Easter Season, let us SHOW UP and be SURPRISED about how God is at work.

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 45:19

Rivers in deserts are rare and essential. With less than 10 inches of rain a year, desert life depends on run-off from on high to survive.

In this sermon, we explore how God makes a way into unlikely places in our minds, hearts, and lives. God paves paths, previously unknown to us, that we need to follow as desperately as desert life needs the rare river.

We do this in this sermon through a celebration of Our Daily Bread’s 10th Anniversary - a ministry that sprang up like a geyser in a desert. It was completely unplanned but by God who spoke to and through: Walter, a man who’d been living on the church grate for 20+ years; Lester, who spent each night sleeping on a city bus, and Rob who was simply trying to help out the church Trustees on his way to work downtown.

So read the Scriptures for this sermon, and ask yourself how God may be seeking to do a new thing in you and who God may send along the way that appears to have nothing to offer but in truth will lead you to “the resurrection of the righteous”(Luke 14:14).

Where’s home for you?

Is it the place you grew up or where your folks now call home? Is it the home you’ve built with your own salary, maybe with a partner and kids or roommates? Is it more of a feeling or a relationship than a place?

In this sermon, we will explore “The Highway Home” through the likely familiar Prodigal Son Story. Interestingly, in the story, it is the older brother that doesn't feel “at home” even though he never left his father’s land. The older brother is simply not comfortable with this lavish, reckless, reconciling love of his Father towards the younger brother.

Theologian Henri Nouwen, feeling for the steely, distant brother in Rembrandt’s painting of the moment the younger son returns, asks this about his own soul: “Have I really ever dared to step into the center, kneel down, and let myself be held by a forgiving God, instead of choosing over and over again the position of the outsider looking in? There are so many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, ‘Go out and prove that you are worth something.’ Do you know these voices like I do? They cut deep inside into those vulnerable recesses where we doubt our worth, where we know we can never achieve enough; they wrap ‘what I do’ around ‘who I am’ and cruelly lie to us. They suggest that I am not going to be loved without my having earned it. They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worthy of being loved. They deny loudly that love is a totally free gift.”

Have you? Do you dare step into the center of God’s story of forgiveness and love? Ask yourself why or why not. Then come to this sermon where we will let God lead us to the home God has for us, which may or may not look like the ones we have known.

Do you ever use Open Table? If not, it's a reservation app that helps you locate a restaurant with “open tables” at the time and place you would like to dine.

I love the app in general, but given I’m occasionally making plans last minute, I too often type in the restaurant and day of my choice and am given the options of an “open table” at 5:30pm or 9:00pm. The rest of the slots are full. That’s life…the way of our world…a place with limits. There simply isn't always an open table.

But that’s not how God works. Our passages for Sunday depict not only an open table at any given time or place but a free one. Isaiah concludes this passage with God saying, according to The Message translation:

“I don’t think the way you think.

The way you work isn’t the way I work.”

God’s Decree:

“For as the sky soars high above earth,

so the way I work surpasses the way you work,

and the way I think is beyond the way you think.”

Come to this sermon to explore God’s way of hospitality, of opening anything and everything to us that will raise us above our own limits into God’s possibilities for us.

“Go and tell that fox for me....” says Jesus.

Wow - JC is really amping up the rhetoric in this week’s Gospel Lesson. He is suggesting that Herod, the appointed ruler of the region of Galilee under Roman, is a hated predator, a fox. This doesn’t seem like the way of God, does it? Perhaps, our Savior is reminding us that this world is not without risks.

Although Herod is redeemable, his current practices are abhorrent and hurting God’s people. The assigned leader is actually just a follower, falling prey to the temptations Jesus overcame in last week's sermon Scripture. Therefore, Jesus must go about “casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow.” Because the risks of Herod are real, Jesus must risk himself to help those harmed by the Herods of the world. Jesus spends each day and the next one facing the "foxes" for us.

So what does that mean for you and me? This second sermon in Lent, we consider the vulnerable way of Jesus and the tender love of God we encounter when we walk this risky way with him. We will also explore loneliness and what comes when we, like Jesus, opt to take a different way than the one that makes the most sense to the world around us. We will pray for Herod's violence in our world today, like in Christchurch, New Zealand and wrestle with how we respond together.

And we are especially blessed by Eric Patton, a young man who Facebooked his story of salvation and CHUMC’s role in it. He concludes this sermon. You will not want to miss it!

Will you take a pilgrimage with me and, more importantly, with the Holy Spirit?

Many months ago, your worship team discerned we would walk “The Way” of Christ this Lenten Season. Based on both a) the Lectionary Scriptures (chosen verses for this Holy Season) that all include “the way” and b) the movie The Way, based on the famous pilgrimage, Camino de Santiago, we will explore how we can take a spiritual journey intended for revelation about ourselves, God, and God’s desired way for us. The Lenten Journey is intended to end at Easter with salvation.

So do you feel like you need to be saved? And by this, I do not simply mean eternal salvation - that is God’s work - but rather earthly salvation, such as being saved from personal struggles like crippling anxiety, communal issues like the great harm done by our denomination, and/or global issues like devastating poverty? As you prepare for this sermon, pray and ask God, “Where in life do I need revelation and salvation?” Then on a simpler note, simply consider if there is something in your life about which you are wondering: "What path should I follow, or which way should I go next?"

Then read the passages for this sermon and consider how both the Israelites in Deuteronomy and Jesus in Luke found themselves in the wilderness. As Marcia Mcfee puts it, "After Jesus’ baptism, he went on a pilgrimage into the wilderness. A common practice among spiritual leaders of his day, this was a time to dig deep into the humanity of his soul. Along the way he encounters what we all encounter along the paths of life – temptations to stray from the path that God has intended for us.”

Last week, I felt like we welcoming and affirming United Methodists were dropped in a desert wondering which we way to go. But it was not God who led us there. Rather, a slight majority of the delegates at our General Conference fell into temptations that have caused great harm both to our LGBTQ siblings and also our church and its witness. I still struggle to put into words all the hurt, pain, anger, confusion, and more that I have both heard and felt these past days. But please know that a small CHUMC group has begun to prayerfully chart our course for discernment as a faith community. And to this point, I am grateful God had already given us the image of pilgrimage for this season long before we knew the wilderness in which we would find ourselves. We may be feeling like a “wandering Aramean”(Deut 26:5), but our Scripture passages promise that the Holy Spirit will lead us through wilderness to the promised land. God will show us the "the way.”

So come to this sermon to explore afresh how to journey with Jesus and “the way” God moves in us as individual pilgrims and as a community on pilgrimage together.