Taylor Mertins

The church isn’t supposed to do or make anything. We’re not a factory or a company. We’re the church. We’re in the business of being. All the doing or making we’ve ever needed has been done and made by Jesus.

The witness of the church, straight from the lips of the Lord (and Paul), is that there is always a space for you in this place of grace because our differences make us the church. We have eyes and ears and fingers and toes. We have friends and family and strangers and foes.

In other words, the church is an antidote to the loneliness of the world, and the loneliness that far too many of us experience. It’s here, among this body, that we learn of our shared story, that we are not alone, and that we are valued not because of what we can do, but because of who we are.

The church opens us up to a future we cannot conceive on our own. It trains us in the habits of gratitude for one another. And it sets us free to delight in diversity.

Remembering your baptism, whether you actually remember it or not is just the same as taking time to consider who loved you into being. In baptism you enter into the oneness of the community of faith we call the church, in which you are surrounded by people who care about you and want the best for you.

In baptism, your eyes and ears are opened to those whom God delights sending into your life just for you.

We say that the Good News of the Gospel is for the world which is true - but it's also just for you. You. Regardless of who you are, whether or not you even understand it, whether or not you are a good and pious person. God loves you, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Ephesians 4.1-6 & Deuteronomy 6.4-9

Jesus offers us an alternative epistemology: Love God and love your neighbor. Paint those words on your doors, talk about them with your kids, get them printed on stickers and adhere them to your water bottles.

Unlike what the world tells us over and over again: think for yourself, make your own way, don’t worry about anyone except yourself… Jesus frees us from having to bear the burden of everything.

In the Kingdom of God ’tis better to receive than to achieve.

You see, the Shema, even as a commandment is actually a gift, a gift just like the one that we will shortly receive at the table. It is a new way of knowing, and of being known, that helps us makes sense of this strange world. And we make sense of it together..."

God is not sitting idly by, far away, waiting for us to pray. Prayer isn’t putting pressure on God, or persuading God. It’s not about getting God’s attention, or changing God’s mood.

God’s mood toward us never changes. God yearns for a world that looks more like the kingdom than all of this. That’s why God gives us these songs to sing and prayers to pray. That’s why God give us Jesus, to embody the new future so that we see what we’re actually praying for...

Psalm 51.1-12

Confession is often nothing more than telling the truth about ourselves to ourselves, to one another, and to God. The community of faith that confesses is not a church without sin (for there is no such thing), instead the church that confesses is a church without secrets.

And yet, it’s important to talk about what we talk about when we confess. For, confession has nothing to do with getting ourselves forgiven. It’s not a transaction, it’s not a negotiation in order to secure mercy, it’s not the first step on the road to perfection.

Confession is the last step - it’s what happens when we are finally able to confront the truth: we are not as we ought to be, and yet we worship the Lord who looks beyond what we've done to what's been done for us by Jesus.

Exodus 3.1-6

Prayer is what happens to us when we encounter the inconceivable surprise of living - it is a conversation born out of the realization, just as Moses discovered in the burning bush, that God is with us, always.

The Freedom To Be A Sinner by Taylor Mertins

John 21.20-25

John doesn’t earn his belovedness. He’s not the lovable disciple - he’s the beloved disciple. He doesn’t do anything better than the other twelve, he’s not striving after the gold medal of morality or the sanctity of spirituality. He is simply called to a life that he would not have had on his own, and he has fun along the way...

Luke 5.1-11

Jesus knows full and well what a mess Peter is and still calls him anyway. Jesus should’ve absolutely left Peter on the shore that fateful morn, but instead calls him to a life of discipleship that conveys the freedom to be wrong.

And it is a freedom. Consider how many of our relationships have faltered if not floundered because we can’t accept wrongness. Think about how many institutions are founded on the fundamental failure to see that we all mess up at some point. Imagine how different our church, or community, or even our world, would be if we took seriously the truth - we are all like Peter, and Jesus never gives up on us.

In fact, the only thing Jesus gives Peter is the same thing that Jesus gives to all of us: grace.