The expert in the law wants to know how to experience life to the fullest. No, he's not talking about heaven when he asks about eternal life. He's asking about how to experience life deeply - now - in the present. Jesus turns the question around on him (we'll have a little fun with this here). He responds, "love God, love your neighbor." Jesus says, "good - do this and live!" Then the expert asks another question (again, we'll have a little fun with this), "Who is my neighbor?"

Maybe what he's asking is, who is NOT my neighbor? How much love are we talking about, Jesus? Where do I draw the line? Surely you don't mean everyone is my neighbor.

Then Jesus tells the story. One of the most famous stories ever told. At the end - he asks the expert, "who was the neighbor?" Yeah, the one who showed mercy. Jesus: "go, and do likewise." Do it. Draw close. Feel empathy. Let that move you into showing mercy - showing kindness. Do it.

Bottom line - love. In everything - love. In all things - love.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

http://bible.com/events/49463266

Speaker: Brian Gelder

Scripture: Jonah 3:10; 4:1-4

https://www.bible.com/events/49460035

A little different kind of sermon for Sunday. I'm gonna talk a little bit about what Jesus said about the heart - the idea is that it's the controlling center of people. You can tell a lot about where a person's heart is by the things they do - especially when they're tested. So we'll walk through the story of Naaman and leprosy and see if we might discern some things about each character.

We'll start with Naaman - he's a four-star general in the Aramean army. He's normally the one in control - he calls the shots. Then, he gets leprosy and finds out that his sworn enemies are the ones who can help him. When he gets there he's told to dunk himself in the Jordan - 7 times. It's humiliating. It's tough when we struggle with humility - it's hard to admit you can't control everything, you can't heal yourself - at times, we all need to ask for help.

Maybe you're like the servant girl. She's the one in the story - a nobody - who has the guts to point someone in the direction of healing.

Maybe you're with Gehazi - gee, I hope not! - but you're always looking for an edge, looking for a way to take advantage of situations and people in order to get what you want.

Or, maybe you're with Elisha - you're the one of the ones who humbles themselves and works with the divine to bring healing into the lives of others - to help put things back together.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-27

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