Sermons Out of Rural Ministry

The sermon is rooted in a recurring frustration that we so often hear hopeful words from people we cheer on, only to be disappointed. Again. Nathaniel in our preaching text gets word that Jesus is in town and his response is to shrug and disbelieve. He's beend dreaming of days to come when his life will matter, when the government that has been oppressing his people will be vanquished, when his hope will be more than political speeches by people who already know power. Nathaniel is done with the hype. Maybe you are, too. And then, Jesus finds us. Our sermon series "Walking in Light" continues. #WalkinginLight #hope #justice #blacklivesmatter #equity 

Our reading this week is a great example of what happens when Game of Thrones takes over the gospel. The reading is a bit of a mess, full of chaotic scenes and confusing turns. What do we do when we encounter a story in the Bible that does not easily offer a hint of good news? Our #sermon for this week on Matthew 22.

What we long to hold onto is what we cannot hold. What we work hardest to keep away from others is what was never ours to keep. The ones we are rooted hardest against turn out to be us. These are the twists and turns we encounter in our parable from Jesus. He is taking this old story that we could easy lock into history and lifting it to our gaze so we can see how much we strive against God. Our hope, it seems, doesn't lie with us, it lies at the foot of the cross we've carved. The first in our series, Tales of Transformation. Matthew 21.33-46

What story do our sacred spaces tell? This question is worth pondering, yet its better to be asking our neighbors. How do our people experience God through our buildings and our words? Sometimes the stories fade because they are not told, and sometimes it is how they are told to others. God's people have a notorious history of injustice, inequality, and violence in the name of love. Our reading is an old, old story given life through a fundamental question as simple as it is to speak. What are we about? Our final sermon in our #TravellingMercies series from Joshua chapter 4.

God hits pause in the midst of a good trip and reminds us of how we got this far (God) and how we'll get to our destination (yep, God). The reason our Lord does this to us is because we'll forget. We probably already forgot. We might then assume that who we are is mostly our doing. We might then assume that our neighbors are who they are because of their doing or not doing. We might then assume that its okay to keep separated from our neighbors because our path is best. Maybe we forget God's mercy more than we'd care to admit.

We have no idea where we are going, but we are being moved. With that in mind, what will you leave behind? What will you carry with you on the journey? As a congregation, Trinity is being moved and the changes we'll experience will be exciting and terrifying because we are not the same. Normal is being rewritten and it can be painful to let go of what we expect. All this month during our Travelling Mercies sermon series, we'll be wandering in the wilderness with the Israelite nation as they are moved from their past into an unknown future. Thankfully, no one wanders alone.

Can we imagine a day when God's people no longer need to protest in the streets against racial injustice? Can we imagine God's promise of peace and equality will come without the death of black and brown bodies? Maybe. Or maybe we're getting exhausted carrying all the names of the slain and the news of the violence rendered against God's own. God has a word for our exhaustion and we can find it in Revelation. God is already working to transform our world, the promise is already made and kept. We are the ones who have the responsibility to speak the names and carry the healing God gives us out to our people who are suffering.

Do you ever find yourself bouncing from task to task with a small sense of dread that what you're doing is not enough? Yeah, all of us have it. Most of us feel it with our relationship with God, too. We convince ourselves that we need to do a little more to demonstrate God's love AND to hope that God will continue to love us. In our reading from Revelation 7.9-17, God approaches the problem differently, with a promise and not a threat. The sermon for August 23 2020.

It is okay to get pissed off with God. Its perfectly fine to ask a whole bunch of questions of God, especially the dense, deep, doubt-ridden ones. Sharing our lament with God is part of our relationship with God, and Jesus knows it. He names it in our reading, John 4.19-26. "You worship what you do not know." Yeah, we really don't know anything about God. Maybe the good news is, God knows us.

No one wants to be alone. We are wired by God to live in community. These are strange, frustrating, even fearful waters in which we are wading. Today we are encountered by a fearless, dynamic woman who approaches Jesus, names the distance the exists between them, and leads Jesus to share a vision of hope for the future. We are apart in this moment, but we will not remain in this moment.