Jacob wrestles with "God." So, did this one back in 2020 - now from a totally different angle. You could say I really "wrestled" with this one this week.

A little background: Jacob's a deceiver - his life is a mess. He's on the run because his brother Esau wants to kill him 20 years after he stole the blessing. He finds himself alone on the banks of a stream - it's dark. He can't hide behind his wealth, his servants, or his family. Utterly alone in the dark when he's attacked by a stranger. How many times have you found yourself alone in the dark? Once there, how often have you battled with something you won't recognize as divine until much, much later? People have argued for millennia about what really happened to Jacob. But I don't know if it really matters. It doesn't matter because all the epic battles we face in life are on some level with God and about God. They're about God because of the questions under those battles. Who am I? Does my life matter? Who have I become? Where is God? Who does God want me to be?

So they wrestle. All night. This depiction of God isn't something we're used to thinking about. Isn't God supposed to be loving, hospitable, welcoming, inclusive? Apparently not - at least not in the ways we usually define those things. This God is wild and weird and unpredictable. This God wrestles. This is a God who wants to engage - intimately. This is a God we can throw ourselves against with everything we got. Don't know about you, but I need a God who can handle that.

They wrestle. Jacob loses and is left with a limp. But he won't let go. Sometimes spirituality is about not letting go of the God who won't let go until something good happens. Then the strangest thing happens. The stranger asks him his name.

This is the second time he's been asked this question in life. The first time, by his father. Jacob lies. This time, he gets a do over. He tells the truth. He is Jacob. The deceiver. The liar. The cheat. He is Jacob. Maybe being honest with ourselves is the only way we can begin to heal. Maybe it's only in naming the ugliest parts of ourselves that we can begin to forgive ourselves and experience the transformation God longs to give us.

Now, he is named Israel. The one who wrestles with God. That's the blessing. A new name. A new future. To wrestle is to stay close - to remain intimate with - now, we get to wrestle with God as long as we live.

In order to understand the story, we're reading 4:1-12 - I'll need to talk about why Peter and John are in prison in the first place. Essentially, they came across a guy who was lame from birth. The guy asks for money; instead, since they knew that Jesus lived his life with love and compassion and healing and justice, they decided to go deeper. They don't offer him charity - they offer him healing. They give him his dignity back, he no longer needs to beg. They give him his life back - now he can presumably work for a living.

This is where we pick up the story. The religious leaders are upset because Peter and John are teaching about Jesus the resurrected one. They're trying to figure out where their power comes from - presumably they feel threatened. So they bring in the very same people (the high priest) who gave the go ahead for Jesus to be put to death.

Peter defends the two of them - they haven't come to disturb anything, they've come to bring the things that Jesus brought - love, compassion, healing, and justice. In Jesus, God is putting the world back together again. He is the "capstone" - he is unique - in Jesus, God is up to something new in the world and we get to be a part of it.

The message Peter is trying to get across is something like this: you want to make sense of what you think you know about the divine? You want to know what God is truly like? You want to make sense of your own life and what it means to be a human being? Look at Jesus. Love. Compassion. Healing. Justice. That's what God looks like - that's God's dream for us human beings.

This is why I haven't given up on religion - haven't given up on faith, even though Christians have given me lots of reasons to do so. Jesus is unique - extraordinary. We turn our lives toward him and then pattern our own lives after his. We make our own lives about love, etc.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: Acts 4:1-12

It's Pentecost Sunday - the day we celebrate the arrival of the Spirit. Like we talked about last week, Christian means "follower of Christ." We can also understand it as meaning "little Christ." We're all little Jesuses. This happens with the indwelling of the Spirit. The Spirit is nothing more than Jesus moving from the outside to the inside. It's Jesus moving in.

So here we'll walk a bit through the story in Acts 2. How do we know that Jesus has moved in?

1) There will be a renewed sense of community. They were all together in one place. The Spirit arrived to the gathered community. They had everything in common. We'll talk for a bit about the importance of the gathered community. With all of our online options today, the gathered community has never been more important.

2) There will be a renewed sense and passion for loving the world - our neighbors. There was such a diversity of people present at the first Pentecost. They were there meeting the practical needs of people.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: Acts 2:1-13; 42-47

http://bible.com/events/49447317

Speaker: Tony Vis

Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17

http://bible.com/events/49443990

Yeah...I don't know about this one.

As we start by retelling this story, we're going to focus on the line, "If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." Why are we dealing with this idea just five weeks after Easter? Easter is like the most obvious proof that Jesus was and is the Messiah - and yet, the church assigns this story just five weeks after Easter. Already? We're questioning who Jesus is already?

Well, maybe it's perfect timing. The life of faith, more often than not, isn't a simple movement from unbelief to belief and then that's it. It's a constant oscillation between those two things. So it's appropriate that we go from "Christ is risen, he has risen indeed" to "If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." We often don't believe - faith can be and often is a constant struggle.

The story moves on. Jesus says, "I have told you, and you didn't believe. You do not believe because you are not my sheep.": What the what? Ouch. Does that mean that if we don't believe we don't belong? That's only if we make belief primary here, which Jesus doesn't seem to do. What Jesus seems to be saying is belonging comes first - maybe what he's saying is that belief can't come first - belonging leads to belief.

To believe in the Bible is to trust - to depend upon - to throw our lot in with. It's an orientation of our hearts - a willingness to stake everything we have on the person, the life, death, and resurrection of God's Son. It's not an abstract thing - it's a thing best learned (maybe only learned) through relationship.

BIGGEST IDEA HERE - We belong to each other, and together we belong to the divine. So even if belief, trust, faith falters - we still belong.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: John 10:22-30

http://bible.com/events/49437424

Jesus is the gate. Once you walk into a relationship with Jesus the gate, there's a transition that takes place. You go from one place to another - you walk across the threshold. This is like the story of when Saul turned into Paul. In Paul's words, "If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come!"

Walking into a relationship with Jesus the gate - there's new life ahead - a life that is abundant. This is where we can talk about what abundance means - it comes from living the Jesus way - love God, love people. We experience that through this community of Jesus people. It is a life that is full - abundant, as we give ourselves away to one another and together to the world.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: John 10:1-10

http://bible.com/events/49434224

These first 4 verses are a jumbled mess. It's really one run-on sentence with a bunch of dependent clauses at the beginning and doesn't get to the main subject and verb until what we have as verse three. In other words, John is really excited to write about what he's writing about. So instead of going verse by verse, we'll talk about the main things he's trying to convey.

1) This Jesus thing really happened. They saw it. Heard it. Touched it. It really happened. John is writing in the late first century to 2nd and 3rd generation Jesus people. By the time they learn about Jesus, it's been 50 years since Jesus physically walked on the planet. You can imagine them having questions - did this really happen? Was Jesus real? Are these stories real? John is giving them reassurance as someone who was with Jesus. He understands it's hard to believe - so he's saying, trust me. I was there. Doubt is there - for all of us. Especially 50 generations or so later, if I have my math correct. Lean into doubt, but don't go alone. Lean into questions, but do it in community.

2) We experienced him. I'll do some 'spaining about the grammar here. He's using the perfect tense - that is, talking about something in the past that still continues to have an impact in the present.

3) John wants them to experience, too. John's experience of the joy that Jesus brings is incomplete unless he shares it with community. It's one of the reasons we gather week after week. It's a shared experience of the divine that continues to transform us in the present.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: 1 John 1:1-4

http://bible.com/events/49430871

What is this story about? It's about failure and forgiveness - not one or the other, but both. The disciples spent three years with Jesus; in that time, they learned from him every day and spent all their time with him. After Jesus left them (after giving them his Spirit - his presence), they went back to the way things were - fishing. Sometimes we do the same - we experience the presence of God - we know what to do next, know the changes we need to make, know the conversations we need to have, and then we don't - we forget - we lose the nerve.

Then there's Peter - Jesus asks him three times if Peter loves him. Echoes the three betrayals. Jesus meets Peter right where he failed him. God meets us in our failures, too - with his nonjudgmental presence offering grace, love and forgiveness.

This story is also about going where we might not want to go - and it's in those places that God meets us. In fact, it's in those places where God becomes flesh again - this time in us.

Finally, this story is about a sense of calling. Not in a big sense - like, you're now a missionary on fire for Jesus saving the world overseas. No, not like that. Jesus calls us to feed his sheep - show love like he showed love. No matter where we are - we have a calling to love.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: John 21:1-19

http://bible.com/events/49427418

It's Easter Sunday! We're getting started here with a brief retelling of the story. Then we get to the part where the angel says, "Do not be afraid." I have trouble with this. Maybe we all have trouble with this. There's so much in the world that causes us fear. So what makes this angel think he can come into our place of worship, look us straight in the eye and say with all seriousness, "Do not be afraid?"

After he tells us not to be afraid he makes an announcement and then a promise.

An announcement that, if true, changes everything. He is risen. What if that's true? If it's true, it changes everything and all things are possible.

Then he makes a promise: Jesus is ahead of you. Most of what causes us fear is in the future. It's an uncertain tomorrow. Jesus is ahead of us. Jesus promises to be with us in whatever we face in our uncertain future. And that gives us hope.

Of course, hope isn't something we can just sit back and enjoy. Welp, I hope everything turns out okay tomorrow! Welp, I hope God shows up tomorrow. That's wishful thinking. Hope, real hope, is to throw ourselves into the struggle for the realization of that hope.

And that's how Matthew's story about Jesus ends. It ends with an invitation to live into resurrection - to live into hope - an invitation to let it define our lives.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: Matthew 28:1-10

https://www.bible.com/events/49422813

A note: there are some audio issues in this one that are unfixable in editing. Our apologies!

Palm Sunday! There's a connection between Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, and Palm Sunday, as the season of Lent draws to a close. Both will lead us into contemplating our own mortality - the fact that all of us will one day die. THAT always leads us to the realization that we live in a complex, uncertain, and sometimes unfair world.

That's what makes Palm Sunday so odd. It starts with a celebration - a parade - then ends in the unjust death of Jesus. And the entire parade - the entire celebration, Jesus knows what's ahead, knows he's going to die.

So we're going to notice how Jesus carries himself as he makes his way in a complex, uncertain, and unfair world. We'll notice that he comes to bring peace and reconciliation. Jesus rides into the city on a donkey, not a horse, indicating a nonviolent intention. He didn't come looking for a physical fight, so does he force the issue? Yes, but the world didn't have to kill him - and yet it did.

This leads us to notice that Jesus was going to fulfill the Father's call on his life no matter the consequences.

What does that mean for us? If we're following Jesus and living as passionately and as fully as he did when he walked on this planet - it'll look like we don't quite fit in - like we're fish out of water. We live in a world where violence and aggression rule the day - if we're living like Jesus we're living on a different plane of existence, where peace and reconciliation rule the day.

How do we do that? We pay attention to our cultural moment. That's what Jesus was doing. He was protesting Roman occupation - he was protesting empire - he was protesting might makes right. What does that look like in our day?

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: Luke 19:28-40

https://www.bible.com/events/49420259