JR.'s Sermons

The idea that the Bible contains mythology makes a lot of us uncomfortable. But just like other genres, myth is there on purpose - and vital to our formation as God's people. So how does myth work, exactly?

Faith doesn't have to be an esoteric, theoretical thing. In fact, the letters in the Bible present us a window into how the earliest followers of Jesus navigated the complexities of faithfulness in the real world. How can these letters help us navigate our own faithfulness today?

How are the powerless to make their way in the world? Folktales - literally stories of the people - record tricks and traps those with no social or political capital use to shape the world around them. But... why are such stories in the Bible? And can they really form us spiritually? Michelle Reyes takes us into the story of Tamar to explore the tricksters and trickstars who enact Biblical justice - whatever it takes!

We look to books like Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes for rules to help us live more godly lives. But these books don't want to make us smarter. They want to make us more wise. The difference is in how we see the world, and how these books can be guides to us, to help us live as God's people in even the most complicated situations.

Biblical history doesn't hold up to our modern standards for history. So how can we trust history in the Bible? And more importantly, how can these stories of ancient peoples and events help us know God better today?

Many of us find poetry to be an impenetrable genre. But the purpose of poetry is to point beyond the limits of language to deep truths of our existence. The Bible is more than a quarter poetry - how does biblical poetry invite us to know the God who is beyond our words about God?

Can we all admit we skip the legal codes in the Bible? It's hard to imagine texts that have less to do with our daily lives... isn't it? How can we read the Bible's legal codes for spiritual formation? Leviticus 19 illustrates just how relevant these ancient legal texts are to our world today.

Acts is a history book. But it’s ancient history that has a clever twist: the main character isn’t Peter, Paul or any other human. Acts is the story of how the Holy Spirit empowers Jesus’ first followers to take his good news to the whole world. How can we read this story so that we take part in that transformation?

One of the most challenging genres in the Bible is Apocalypse - in large part because it's a genre we don't really use anymore. But surprisingly, political cartoons can help us understand this bizarre biblical genre. We explore Revelation 14 as an example of some very good news.

We imagine the Biblical prophets as fortune tellers promising far off blessings. But the prophets were political activists, called to speak truth to power. So how do we read their ancient messages for spiritual formation today?