Jesus once issued a difficult description of being a disciple, which requires loving God above all other loyalties and loves that we have. Jonathan is a hero who did just that, betraying his father and giving up his own right to inherit the crown out of love for David, God’s chosen one. Saul, on the […]

In the tragi-comic story of Esther, Queen Vashti is a hero (Shero!) because she is commanded to display herself as eye candy before the king and his drunken consorts, and she refuses. At the cost of losing her royal status, Queen Vashti finds the power to say ‘no’ when confronted with an unjust command.

In our first “Heroes and Villains” story, we hear how God is heroic by mingling mercy vengeance when punishing Cain, the first murderer. Later, we will read how Lamech usurps God’s words and applies them in vain to himself, to give legitimacy to his penchant for vengeance.

In our last sermon on the church in Acts, we hear the story of Paul and Silas, singing from the depths of a prison. And we imagine, “What were they singing?”

Following Jesus can be a scary experience sometimes, because Jesus takes us to places we never thought we would ever go. Some of those places can be quite terrifying like when Jesus took his disciples to see the demon-possessed man in such an unclean place (a graveyard).

The Scriptures are filled with creation stories, each of which is a hymn of praise to the God whose beauty we experience with our inner and outer sense. Proverbs 8 is a beautiful creation story told by “Wisdom,” a young child who delights in God’s creative work – especially in humanity.

On the way to the river again, Paul and his friends encounter a young girl with a “Pythian Spirit.” It is an encounter between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a religious world far different than what the church ever encountered back in Israel. The church is dislocated and relocated outside of its familiar boundaries.

When the Apostle Paul and his companions go down to a river, “where they supposed there was a place of prayer,” they encounter a merchant named Lydia who responds to their gospel by opening up her home to them. This story can instruct us in several ways that God can be at work in us, […]

Simon Peter’s account of his visit to the house of Cornelius is a story about crossing boundaries and differing perspectives. SueJeanne Koh-Parsons and I try to capture the spirit of this story through a dialogue sermon.

Since Simon Peter is instrumental in raising Dorcas from death, it is easy to see this story as another “hero of the faith” story about Peter. If we see it is a story about Tabitha, it opens up a way of seeing “the sainthood of all believers,” and not just the sainthood of the well-known […]