Continuing the sermon series Soaring with the Promise of God, Angel Reyes preaches on Galatians 3:15-29, speaking on how the promises Jesus makes in the New Testament supersede the laws made in the Old Testament. Because if Jesus's words are followed: love the lord your god with all your heart (etc.), and love thy neighbor as thyself, then people will not want to kill, cheat on their partner, lie, steal; but instead if they believe, they can be secure in God's promise and will inherit the kingdom of God.

Peter had already been eating at the same table as Gentile believers until certain people showed up, and fear did what theology couldn't, pulling him back into old lines Paul thought had already been erased. Paul answers that fear by retelling an old family story: Ishmael, born of Sarah's own anxious effort to secure the promise herself, versus Isaac, a belonging neither she nor Abraham could manufacture. This is not just freedom from the old markers, but freedom from the need to secure an identity that was never ours to earn in the first place.

Continuing the sermon series Soaring with the Promise of God, Dr. Tom Robinson speaks from selections of Galatians (Galatians 4: 1-20, 5: 5-6, 22-26, 6:14-16), about Christianity being rooted not in law but in faith. The lack of surety can be frightening on one level, but the feeling of a relationship with God is reassuring in its own way.

Dr. Tom Robinson begins a new sermon series in preparation for the upcoming church retreat (There's still time to register. Hint - hint). The first week is on Galatians 3:6-9, 16-29 and the promises of God. Tom speaks on the distinction between a law and a promise, and what a promise from God truly means.

In this message, Associate Minister Carl Garrison unpacks the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15) not as a comfortable story about a wayward child coming home, but as a scandalous portrait of a father who runs, bears public shame to reach his son, and leaves his own celebration to plead with his resentful older brother as well—challenging us to ask whether our commitment to fairness has quietly become resistance to grace, and whether we can learn not just to receive God's extravagant mercy, but to rejoice when it's given to someone we don't think deserves it.

In a sermon on Acts 16:12-34, Dr. Tom Robinson speaks about different people across social hierarchies and subjected to different lords all still are united under a single Lord. Tom compares the independence of God-fearing Lydia with the enslaved oracle woman with a Roman jailor; all of the powers that previously guided them were superseded by the power of Jesus. By putting Jesus at the center of his life, Paul rests easy in the knowledge that the power of Jesus far surpasses any worldly power.

Paul writes to churches he planted in anger because sincere, devout people convinced the Galatians that faith in Jesus wasn't enough. They also needed to keep the torah law to really belong. In defending the true gospel, Paul insists that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but one new family, and that what died with him on the cross was every old marker of identity and belonging. This Sunday, Jason Isbell takes a broad survey of the letter's three-part argument, seeing the whole shape of Paul's case before going deeper into Galatians 3 during our upcoming retreat on September 11-13.

Preaching on Luke 5:1-26, John 8:1-11, and Mark 5:25-34; Emily Cahnmann speaks about heart memories: memories of love and kindness. Emily goes through the scriptures, pointing out the heart memories that Jesus gives, from Zaccheus to the woman sentenced to be stoned to the leper to Peter and the other fishermen. Jesus's kindness and love stands out from a mindless crowd or those pursuing only justice, He takes the time to see individual people stuck out in people's minds and changed many of the rest of their lives. And we should try to be more like Jesus in that way, being kind and creating heart memories in others.

The final sermon in the Beloved Community series turns to John 4, the Samaritan woman at the well, as the story that holds nearly everything this series has been circling: a boundary Jesus crosses first, an exile met where she is, and a hostility answered not with argument but with a request for a simple drink of water. What follows is Jesus meeting her skepticism with abundance, an abundance rooted in her humanity and the fullness of her story, seen, known, and valued rather than judged. The Manhattan Church of Christ is at its truest, most gifted self when it emulates that same quiet exchange, crossing first, asking simply, and answering suspicion with a story fully seen.

In a message by Carl Garrison on John 16:32-33, he breaks down what Jesus really meant by "I have overcome the world." Jesus did not mean that there would be no more suffering, no more pain, no more death; but instead simply that no one would have to go through them alone, and that suffering will not be the end.