The story of the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14) is central to the identity of Isreal who is often told "remember that you were slaves in Israel" as justification for keeping the sabbath and taking care of the widow, the orphan and the stranger in the land. These images of liberation and loving kindness are juxtaposed with the violent drowning of Pharaoh's armies. This week's sermon explores what we do with these two somewhat contradictory images of God in scripture.

This week I had the honor of preaching at the ordination service of the Rev. Angie Kretzer, the pastor of First Christian Church who is finally ordained as a pastor in the Disciples of Christ after a long and winding road! She asked me to preach on Luke 4:14-30 to help set the tone for her ministry. This recording does not include the scripture reading because it was done by another reader at the service.

This week we read a difficult story about Joseph and Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39). What do we do about the fact that sometimes evil and rewarded and virtue is punished? This week's sermon explores that question and how our desire for order and predictability in a world filled with chaos and brokeness sometimes leads us to causing more harm.

This week we continue to explore God's BIG PROMISES by turning to the call of Abram (Genesis 12:1-9) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20). One of the ancient heresies of the Church was the idea that there were two gods in the bible: the god of the Old Testament and the god of the the New Testament.  This week we will see how God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow and how it is sin that clouds our eyes and convinces us otherwise.

The story of the flood and the rainbow covenant (Genesis 9:8-17) are familiar to most. This is a story taught at Vacation Bible School and painted on many nursery walls but how often have we stopped to really pay attention to fact that this covenant is being made not just with Noah and his family but with "every living thing?" What are the implications of that in a world where there are species in danger of going extict, cities with such bad air quality that residents wear masks, and a giant patch of garbage twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean? We'll dig into that this week and pull Paul's Epistle to the Romans (8:18-23) into the conversation.

This week we turn to Solomon's prayer dedicating the temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 8:27-53). Solomon acknowledges that "Even heaven and highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!" He also spent considerably time, treasure, and talent building a temple. How can the apparent contradiction of that help us understand how we spend our time, talent, and treasure on Church buildings?

This week we turn to 1 Kings 3:1-15 as Solomon gets off to a troubling start to his reign marrying Pharaoh's daughter and praying at Gibeon. Fortunately, even though his heart and his feet weren't necessarily always in the right place God was able to able to break through to him wherever he was.

This week we turn to Paul's letter to the Ephesians (4:25-5:2) to understand what he considers to be the basis for moral action. 

On this week we turned our attention to John 6:22-35 as we celebrated the Sacrament of the Lord's Table and started a new school and Sunday School Year. What challenge and promise do Jesus' words, "I am the bread of life?" have for us today? Will we accept that gift that will satisfy the deep hunger within us?

First Presbyterian Chuch had its annual Christmas in July service this week. This year we reflected on the visit of the Magi in Matthew 2:1-12 and what it means for us that the first people in Matthew's Gospel to kneel down before Jesus wouldn't have been on most people's invitation list.