Grace Chicago Church

Each week we confess in the creed that we believe in the world to come. What do we mean when we say that? How does the promise of the world to come inform us in the here and now? We will address these questions as we look at our homily text from Revelation 21.

This week, guest and friend, Rick Hunter explores a text that may be familiar to many. Here we explore the story of Zacchaeus found in the book of Luke and what we can learn from a man who pushed through the opinions of the crowd.

You'd think that summing up this week's short parable from Luke 18 would be as simple as saying, "Be Humble." For better or worse, it isn't. The pharisee is the classic antagonist, looking down on others. The tax collector once again plays the protagonist, humbly praying to God. Unfortunately, we don't fit into either role neatly. And actually, I'm not sure the pharisee and tax collector do either. Let’s explore the simple complexity together.

The text for this homily comes from Luke’s gospel. In the reading from Luke 17, Jesus instructs his disciples about the importance of forgiveness. Here is an excerpt from the text: “... if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive. ”Forgiving those who have wronged us is perhaps the most powerful way that we can be imitators of God. Arguably, it is also the most powerful demonstration that God is at work in the world.

The text for this homily is from Luke 16. In this text, Jesus tells a bizarre parable about wealth that ends with the familiar verse, "No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." This text is about financial wealth, which we will touch on. But its truth gets at something more fundamental. We often feel so divided? How can we live a life singularly focused on the things that truly matter?

The text for this week is from Jeremiah 18. In this passage, the prophet Jeremiah is brought to the studio of a potter where he watches a potter working a piece of clay. It becomes a metaphor for God's people being shaped in the hands of God. It is at once both a frightening image of God's power and control over all people, and an encouraging image of a God who won't give up on any piece of clay. Caleb offers a way to think about how the image of God as a potter and we as clay is both encouraging and challenging.

Keep the faith. This week's homily comes from the 11th chapter of Hebrews. We will be focusing on the second half of chapter 11 where the author names a handful of men and women who have kept the faith before us, leading to the iconic verse: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every weight that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith."

What is faith? What does it feel like to have faith? What is it supposed to feel like? I find that in many conversations, the idea of faith raises more questions than it answers. Here, Caleb will explore how we think about faith, what it looked like for the cloud of witnesses that surrounds us and what it looks like for us in 2019.

In the third chapter of Colossians, Paul sets a fairly lofty bar for the Colossians in terms of what their lives ought to look like. We will think about whether Paul's admonitions are relevant for us and how they translate into our day to day.

From time to time at Grace we have made the point in our teaching and preaching that God loves YOU - the real you and not the idealized version of you that one often imagines one needs to be in order to be lovable. This spectacularly good news is at the heart of the gospel and is simmering just below the surface in these remarkable words that Paul writes to the Colossians about Jesus and us: “.... in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him.”

Caleb continues in the book of Colossians this week with the book's most well-known passage. This iconic text offers us a beautiful vision of who Christ is and what the impact of Christ's identity is for the entire world. How do the words of Paul in Colossians offer us hope in a broken world? We will carefully consider that question together.