Sermons - Seabold United Methodist Church

Continuing from last week, we dive further into this issue of how to think about who's in and who's out. And this week, we see Paul going ballistic on his church that didn't go in the direction he wanted. How do we modern Christians make any sense of this book of the Bible?

What can a contentious dispute in the earliest Church teach us about our own socially/politically fraught moment?

In the midst of our socially chaotic world, where do we find Resurrection this Easter?

Why are we so cheery when we talk about Palm Sunday? We dive into that question today, which takes us through guerrilla theater, the Passion story, anti-Semitism, social bandits, and a dive into humanity's existential condition.

Never shying away from a tough subject, we dive headlong into The Little Apocalypse, a discourse where Jesus is delivering this bizarre speech about the end time and signs. What do we as modern folks make of that?

This week, we dig into the complexity of the Lazarus story, trying to figure out why Jesus acted the way he did, and why it was so important to John to show Jesus in this way.

This time, we take up the Transfiguration: this mysterious event with so much meaning that it's confusing. So we dive into a couple of ideas to help flesh out what's going on.

This week, we departed from our regularly scheduled programming to reflect on the mass school shooting in Florida this last week. Rather than joining the fray, however, we're looking at the deeper ideological structure underlying the whole thing: the ideology of self-defense. As Christians, why can't we rely on guns (or anything else) as our self-defense?

Today, we dig into the three different temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry: selfishness, political power, and trying to control God.

Right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, he visits a fiery preacher named John the Baptist. However, he had his own followers, which shaped how the gospel writers depicted him. But he and Jesus both had the same message: the imminent coming of the Empire of God.