Sermon Scripture: Genesis 1:26-27, Mark 3:31-35 All through Scripture there is a recurring theme that scholars call the messianic feast. It imagines the Kingdom of God as one long table, with Abraham at one end and Jesus at the other, and every tribe and tongue and nation seated together as the family of God, singing
Sermon Scripture: Matthew 16:21-28 In the world on the other side of Alice’s looking glass, everything works all topsy-turvey, and that is often true to our own lives. This is a core truth about God's Kingdom that Jesus has been showing us for seven weeks, but we often get this wrong. Last week Peter made
Sermon Scripture: Matthew 16:13-20 Jesus sees us the way we rarely see ourselves, and with patience and persistence he fans into flame the image of God in us until it becomes a faith that can carry us past our own limits and into work far greater than ourselves. Peter and the disciples have been on
Sermon Scripture: Matthew 15:21-28 When the Kingdom of Heaven arrives in the middle of our actual lives, it finds old grudges, inherited assumptions, and arguments or misunderstandings that we have been having for generations. All of that can crowd out what God is actually trying to do, which is to bring healing, life, and restoration
Sermon Scripture: Matthew 14:22-33 The parables told us what the kingdom of heaven is like. Now Matthew shows us what happens when that kingdom meets our moments of faith in the face of crisis. Storms rage, the way storms do, even on faithful people doing exactly what we have been asked to and Jesus met
Sermon Scripture: Matthew 14:13-21 We have been listening to Jesus tell stories about what the kingdom of heaven is like. The parables tell us how God and his Kingdom are meant to work and it’s what we have been digesting; asking ourselves, how do these revelations about God and the Kingdom affect our everyday lives?
Sermon Scripture: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 The kingdom of heaven is hidden in plain sight. It is the domain where God lives and the Spirit moves, bringing the treasure of grace, mercy, and love into the ordinary soil of our lives.In our passage today, Jesus offers five more parables that play with this idea from different angles:
Sermon Scripture: Matthew 13:33 (NRSV) From outward appearances, nothing seems to be happening, but a few grains of live yeast, worked by hand into a large bowl of flour, will transform the whole mass by morning. Jesus compares the kingdom of God to this kind of work, hidden rather than announced, growing from the inside
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 Each person who views a work of art will experience it in entirely different ways. Some will barely notice it, others might acknowledge the virtuosity of the artist or admire the quality of the frame or materials, while others might have a truly transcendent experience as they gaze in wonder upon something
Sermon Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:1–13, 1 Samuel 17 This morning, as we close out our centennial season, our children and teenagers are leading us in worship, reading scripture, and preaching; a living reminder of the ancient promise that God's spirit would be poured out on sons and daughters, and that the young would speak and
