12/18/2016 1 Kings 1:11-31 Chris Breslin   Scripture John 1 Matthew 1 Hebrews 4:15     This Sunday’s Songs Hail to the Lord’s Anoinnted by Montgomery/McCracken What Child is This? by Dix/Traditional Hark the Herald Angels Sing by Wesley/Mendelsohn Joy to the World by Watts/Mason Canticle of the Turning by Cooney/Traditional O Come Emanuel by Traditional O Come All Ye […]

12/11/2016 Ruth 4:5-22 Sarah Neff   This Sunday’s Songs Singing in the Land arr. by Mitchell/Littleton Higher Ground by Oatman/Gabriel Joy to the World by Brooks/Redner Steadfast by McCracken It Came Upon a Midnight Clear by Willis/Sears O Holy Night by Adam/Dwight O Come All Ye Faithful by Wade   Further reading on Women in the Bible The Gospel of […]

12/04/2016 Joshua 2:4-21 Chris Breslin   “The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free.” –Henri Nouwen   Scripture Matthew 1 Galatians 5:1 Exodus 12 Matthew 2:13-15 Hebrews 11:31   “You Are Safe With Us”: How Ordinary Iraqis Rescued US […]

11/27/2016 Genesis 38:11b-26a Chris Breslin   “When God’s righteousness is mentioned in the gospel, it is God’s action of declaring righteous the unrighteous sinner who has faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness by which a person is justified is not his own but that of another, Christ.” –Martin Luther   Scripture Matthew 1 Luke 1 2 Timothy 3:16-17 Genesis 37 […]

The kingdom and the power and the glory, The very things we all want for ourselves! We want to be the hero of the story And leave the others on their dusty shelves. How subtly we seek to keep the kingdom, How brutally we hold on to the power, Our glory always means another’s thralldom, But still we strut and […]

11/20/2016 Ephesians 3:14-21 Richella Parham     The kingdom and the power and the glory, The very things we all want for ourselves! We want to be the hero of the story And leave the others on their dusty shelves. How subtly we seek to keep the kingdom, How brutally we hold on to the power, Our glory always means […]

11/13/2016 Luke 4:1-15 Chris Breslin     God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.   These are the words we dimly hear:   You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.   Flare up like flame and make big shadows I […]

11/06/2016 Acts 9:1-21 Joey Morningstar     Repentance, to be sure, but of a species far less likely to oblige sheepish repetition.   Repentance, you’ll observe, glibly bears the bent of thought revisited, and mind’s familiar stamp   –a quaint, half-hearted doubleness that couples all compunction with a pledge of recurrent screw-up.   The hearts metanoia, on the other hand, […]

It is for all ‘literalists of the imagination,’ poets or not, that miracle is possible, possible and essential. Are some intricate minds nourished on concept, as epiphytes flourish high in the canopy? Can they subsist on the light, on the half of metaphor that’s not grounded in dust, grit, heavy carnal clay? Do signs contain and utter, for them all […]

  10/30/2016 Isaiah 55 Chris Breslin (with artists and creatives from the Communion Arts Project: Alexandra Harper, Jessina Leonard, Alex Burchette, Josh Neipp, Nate Hood, Austin Wilson, & Marcus Walton)   It is for all ‘literalists of the imagination,’ poets or not, that miracle is possible, possible and essential. Are some intricate minds nourished on concept, as epiphytes flourish high […]