Redeemer Weekend Sermons

Easter Service

April 05, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Sin is when we live contrary to God’s intention for creation.

— Matthew 27:51-54

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf.

—Hebrews 6:19-20

His consecrating life-blood grants believers access to God in the holy of holies, indexing them as co-high priests, and enables them to participate with Jesus…

— Andrew Rillera

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Maundy Thursday

April 02, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown

“Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’

—Mark 14:61–64

“The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers.

—Mark 15:16–19

“At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.”

—Mark 15:33

“At three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’).”

—Mark 15:34

“And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’”

—Mark 15:39

Palm Sunday

March 29, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown

The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the king of Israel.” Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him. Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”

— John 12:12-19

Hosanna = please save us!

Jesus didn’t come to bring the kingdom in the way people expected. He came to redefine what God’s kingdom actually meant.

— N.T. Wright

When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon. “Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!” “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered. Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

— John 19:13-16a

Picture of Jesus

Picture of Galilean Man

When we get the story of God wrong, we get our own story wrong as well.

— N.T. Wright

Lamentations

March 22, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Leanne Benton

Summary of “Your Kingdom Come: From Lament to Participation”

(Based on “Lamentations March 22 2026 Final.docx” by Leanne Benton)

The sermon reflects on Lamentations 5 as the closing message in a series on lament, showing how honest grief becomes a pathway to restoration and renewed participation in God’s kingdom.

1. Context of Lamentations

Jeremiah writes after Jerusalem’s destruction in 586 BC. The temple is burned, leaders killed, families exiled, and the monarchy ended. The chapter outlines a progression of losses—inheritance, leadership, dignity, joy, and spiritual strength.

2. Honest Grief Is the Beginning of Restoration

Israel begins their prayer with raw honesty: “Remember, Lord, what has happened to us.”

3. God Still Reigns

In the center of the complaint rises a theological anchor:
“You, Lord, reign forever.”

4. Participating in God’s Restoration

The people pray:
“Restore us to yourself… renew our days as of old.”

5. Surrendered Suffering Softens the Heart

Suffering can either harden or soften a heart.

6. Hope Grows in the Soil of Lament

The sermon highlights the spiritual mystery that when someone grieves without becoming cynical or closed-hearted, hope takes root.

7. The Larger Biblical Arc

Lamentations ends without closure, offering instead a plea for restoration.

8. Final Invitation

The message ends with a reflective invitation:

Some listeners are in seasons of loss and are reminded that God welcomes their lament.

Others have come through seasons of pain and now carry softer, more compassionate hearts; they are encouraged to move toward others in need.

A closing prayer asks God to meet His people “on the pile of rubble,” helping them grieve honestly, surrender fully, trust deeply, and step into renewed hope and participation in His kingdom.

Lamentations

March 15, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown

To ask questions of God is not a lack of faith, but an expression of trust.

Healing begins when hidden pain is brought from darkness into the light of God’s presence and the care of a trustworthy community.

Discovering hope in hardship by intentionally remembering who God truly is.

An essential part of healing involves honest reflection and a return to God.

Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? Why should the living complain when punished for their sins? Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say: “We have sinned and rebelled and you have not forgiven. “You have covered yourself with anger and pursued us; you have slain without pity. You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through. You have made us scum and refuse among the nations.

— Lamentations 3:37-45

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. “‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.

— Jeremiah 7:3-11

Repentance is part of lamenting: “We have confessed to being followers of Jesus without becoming truly shaped by the values he lived and died for.  We have, in fact, applied our religion in ways that benefit ourselves but bring harm to millions.

— Soong Chan Rah

The sad truth about modern spirituality is that we often avoid feeling our own pain and in the process avoid feeling the pain of others.  When this happens, it’s impossible to do the work of reconciliation…Lament requires us to take seriously the pain we see and feel and to open ourselves to how God might have us respond.

— Rich Villodas

I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit. You heard my plea: “Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.” You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.” You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.

— Lamentations 3:55-58

Lamentations

March 08, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown

The message explains that many people look forward to Lamentations 3 because it finally introduces hope, but that hope has to be understood within the structure and emotional movement of the entire book. Lamentations doesn’t offer quick fixes or simplistic spiritual answers; instead, it honestly portrays how real grief works.

The book follows a chiastic structure — a literary “mountain” that rises toward a central point and then descends in reverse order. In Lamentations, the structure looks like this:

This structure mirrors how sorrow actually feels: pain → hope struggle → pain again — but the second pain is different because it has been reshaped by remembrance.

To illustrate, the speaker tells a story of a brutal bike climb up Smugglers Notch in Vermont. Reaching the summit felt like it should be the end, but instead the road immediately plunged downward into danger, rain, cold, and exhaustion. The lesson: reaching the “summit” didn’t end the struggle, but it changed everything. That experience parallels the emotional journey of Lamentations 3.

In the chapter, we hear an exhausted “strongman” voice say, “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope…” This moment is the theological summit — but the book doesn’t end there. Pain returns in chapters 4–5. The city is still ruined. Exile is still real. But the heart posture has changed. Before remembrance, God felt like an enemy; after remembrance, the people can say, “Restore us, O Lord.”

Hope doesn’t erase hardship — it reorients the heart within it.

Lamentations 3 shows that hope is not automatic. The strongman speaks hope to himself:

Hope is fought for, practiced, and rehearsed, not simply felt.

The passage reveals three essential truths about biblical hope:

Hope is intentional remembrance.

Hope doesn’t replace lament — it deepens it.

Hope provides endurance, not instant relief.

By the end, the writer’s circumstances remain unchanged — Jerusalem is still in ruins — but something inside him has stabilized. That inner steadying is itself an act of grace.

The message concludes by reminding us that many of us are somewhere on that mountain: climbing, descending, exhausted, or caught in unexpected weather. Lamentations gives permission to tell the truth about pain. Hope is not pretending everything is fine but speaking covenant truths into unfinished stories.

The lament tree in the lobby symbolizes this: a communal place to name sorrow and reach for hope together.

Finally, the message points to Christ, who personally entered lament and suffering. So when we rehearse hope through clenched teeth, we are not failing— we are walking the same honest path God Himself walked. The storm may persist, but God’s mercies remain new every morning, and that is enough.

Lamentations

March 01, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown

A healthy spirituality is always an honest spirituality.

Healing begins when hidden pain is brought from darkness into the light of God’s presence and the care of a trustworthy community.

My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within; my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

— Lamentations 2:11

What can I say for you? With what can I compare you, Daughter Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, Virgin Daughter Zion? Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?

— Lamentations 2:13

A healthy spirituality is always an honest spirituality.

The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. You walls of Daughter Zion, let your tears flow like a river day and night; give yourself no relief, your eyes no rest. Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint from hunger at every street corner “Look, Lord, and consider: Whom have you ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? “Young and old lie together in the dust of the streets; my young men and young women have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of your anger; you have slaughtered them without pity.

— Lamentations 2:18-21

Pray as you can.  Not as you can’t.

— John Chapman

A healthy spirituality is always an honest spirituality.

Laments are prayers that erupt from wounds, burst out of unbearable pain, and bring it to language.  Laments complain, shout, and protest.  They take anger and despair before God and the community.  They grieve.  They argue.  They find fault…Although laments appear disruptive to God’s world, they are acts of fidelity.  In vulnerability and honesty, the cling obstinately to God and demand for God to see, hear, and act.

— Kathleen O’ Conner

God’s silence in Lamentations leaves wounds festering, open to the air and possibly to healing.  The benefit of exposed wounds is that they become visible and unavoidable.  Left exposed, they require us to see, acknowledge, and attend to them, and then perhaps there can be energy to attend to the wounds of the world.

— Kathleen O’ Conner

A healthy spirituality is always an honest spirituality.

For you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.

— Ephesians 5:8-12

It is easier to let God heal my sinfulness than it is to let him heal my woundedness.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:5

A healthy spirituality is always an honest spirituality.

Healing begins when hidden pain is brought from darkness into the light of God’s presence and the care of a trustworthy community.

Lamentations

February 22, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Daniel Bunn

LAMENTATIONS 1:1-7

Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem (587 B.C.)

Tisha B'Av

Lamentations is meant to be felt.

"How?"

Lamentations names the pain and looks it in the face.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long (Psalm 32:3)

What is hidden cannot be healed.

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1)

Lamentations invites us to name our pain before God.

Truthfulness is not the absence of faith. Truthfulness requires deep faith.

Where are you pretending everything is fine?

What would it look like to be a little more honest?

REVELATION 21:1-4

Teach Us To Pray

February 15, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

— Matthew 7:7-12

The aim is not to get God in on what I think he should be doing. Rather, the aim of prayer is to get us in on what God is doing, become aware of it, join it, and enjoy the fruit of participation.

—Tyler Staton

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

— Mark 2:1-5

A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

— Exodus 32:14

God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.

— Numbers 23:19

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

Romans 8:33-34

Teach Us To Pray

February 08, 2026

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

— Matthew 7:7-11 (Luke 11:9-13)

3 Reasons for Unanswered Prayers:

1. Not “no” but “not yet”
2. Complex Goods
3. Evil Exists

God does not delay to give what he has promised; rather, by delaying he stretches desire. By stretching desire he enlarges the soul. By enlarging the soul he makes it capable of receiving what he is preparing to give.

— Augustine

God always gives us just what we need, himself.  He even works to stretch our hearts so that we are able to receive what he gives.

Safety and security are two idols we let go unchecked in the American church.

“Safe? ... Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you”

— C.S. Lewis

Gracious Father,
you are the God of peace,
the sovereign King who gathers one Kingdom from many nations
and calls us to belong wholly to you and to one another;

Teach us to be with you before we strive to do for you.
Quiet our anxious hearts,
loosen our grip on lesser allegiances,
and form in us the mind of Christ.

Where opinions differ, give us charity.
Where fears rise, give us trust.
Where we are tempted to divide, make us one.

As we seek the future of Redeemer Church,
guide us by your Spirit.
Grant us wisdom in discernment,

patience with one another,
and courage to follow wherever you lead.
 

Make us a praying people before we are a decisive people,
that our life together may reflect the peace and unity of your Kingdom.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.
Amen.