United with Jesus for New Life

Romans 5:15 - 6:8

And Death Shall have No Dominion 
Paul is unfolding the meaning of what God has done in Jesus – what happened in his death and resurrection. The event is there. The God of the universe has intervened. For us the challenge is to grasp what he has done and experience its full effect. We understand the event through the great biblical narrative from creation to Abraham, Moses, David... Also our experience of our human situation – suffering, brokenness, alienation, violence.

Paul has been taking us through Abraham (Israel’s story) and Adam (all humanity’s story) to help us re-imagine who we (Romans, New Yorkers) are in the light of what God has done....

God’s Gift of Life in Jesus

Romans 5:6-17

Out of Death – Into Life
Today is a focused concentration of all Christian faith. It marks its distinct character. All flows first from events announced as “Good News,” Gospel – actions of God in his world. Thus deeply miraculous! Not in the common idea of a distant god breaking into the orderly laws of nature to do something strange. But the Creator of that wonderful order, who also pervades it, working within it to show a deeper reality than we ordinarily perceive. 

Jesus’ Death and the Love of God

Romans 5:1-11

A Week of Death and Life – All comes Together 
This is Palm Sunday. In a.d. 30 (1,985 years ago), it was just a work day, crowds were pouring into Jerusalem for Passover. Jesus approached the city. Every action of ‘the prophet’ meant something. He begins the week that changed the world. Events happened – ordinary, wonderful, horrific, impossible – irony, paradox, multiple layers of meaning...

Deep Peace from Trust in God

Romans 4:20 - 5:5

The Story of God Connecting our Lives to His
The world is always in pain. Some is just part of a world with sharp edges, earthquakes, disease, gravity. Most pain is created or magnified by us humans, from personal hurts to global structures. In the Bible is the long, ongoing narrative of God taking human life seriously and leading us out of self-inflicted pain and into God’s own eternal life.

Paul shows how God unites righteousness and faith in his own actions by reaching out to a human, Abraham, in making promises that establish a right relationship across worlds (God – human) and by faithfully fulfilling the promises. In response, Abraham is called to faith/trust  in God’s promise that God counts as righteousness and begins a personal journey and one across generations with God. 

From Abraham's Faith to Ours Today

Romans 3:28 - 4:12

Back to the Scriptures...Questioning Old Assumptions
Who am I? What's the story within which my life has its meaning? Paul is helping Jews, Romans, Greeks, others in Rome to see how what has happened in Jesus opens a window into the reality of God that shows their life and the world in a new light. Part of that is that Jesus' life is both surprising and anticipated. He lives within a great story of God's faithfulness that he now calls both his fellow Jews and all peoples into. Because it is God's story it is vast enough for all people to be themselves, Romans, Jews, Chinese, Africans. But God shows its unity by narrowing the story down to a single point, a person: Jesus. From that one, the event explodes out for all the world. Jesus' own disciples were astonished.

Faith in One Living God

Romans 3:21-31

Can I really trust God?
The OT scriptures are the story of one God, creator of the world and all people, a living, involved God who cares about his creatures, all that destroys life and the hope that life can be renewed, healed, made right. The very center of scripture is the affirmation that God is one. That must mean God belongs as much to all nations as to Jews. Yes, God working through Israel's long history, narrowing it down ultimately to the messiah embodying Israel and the whole world.

“Lord, Please Open Our Eyes!”

Matthew 20:17-34

What Do You Want Me to Do for You?
Jesus nears Jerusalem and the final confrontation. In Mt, this is last teaching before he arrives. Mt tries to help us to see Jesus in his depth and reality, no simplistic cliché, and through Jesus to see the real world of God, his grace, challenge, radical difference from our ways of thinking, seeing. The last two episodes Mt tells are requests to Jesus. One from a mother for her sons about Jesus’ kingdom. The other from blind beggars at Jericho. Jesus focuses on “What do you want?” Mt wants us to think about them and Jesus’ responses.

God's Kingdom and the Strange Employer

Matthew 19:28-20:19

A Story with the Wrong Ending
Mt is describing the final stages of Jesus’ ministry as he is nearing Jerusalem and the final confrontation in the temple. In these sections Jesus says something that leaves his hearers (disciples) wondering – like that camel going through a needle’s eye: it’s hard for those ‘blessed’ with money to be saved (19:24). Here he tells a parable about the Kingdom of heaven – a wonderful example of the challenging way Jesus’ parables work...

Squeezing Through the Needle's Eye

Matthew 19:16-30

What just went wrong?
We are looking at a section of Mt in which people listen to Jesus’ teaching and are agog, wide-eyed, at what he says. This is one of the most striking because of the incident and the famous image that Jesus creates. A man comes to Jesus, a young man, devout and honorable, wealthy. He seeks Jesus’ instruction. He goes away grieving. What happened?

Gospel of Gratitude

Luke 17:11-19

Lewis Smedes, who was my ethics professor at Fuller Seminary, described it this way: “Ingratitude decays the spirit, spoils the soul, decomposes life itself.”

In this sermon Amy looks at the story of the lepers that Jesus heale from leprosy. Nine went on their way and only one returned to thank Jesus. What made this man return to Jesus? What did he see and experience when Jesus responded to his cries for mercy with healing grace? And how can we live in gratitude everyday, seeing our lives as gifts from God?

Broken Humanity in the Absence of God

Romans 1:18-32

Looking into the Darkness of the Human Mind
Paul is unfolding God's announcement of Good News of what he has done in Jesus, Messiah of Israel and Lord of the world. That event / proclamation is his power to save everyone who trusts it, thus showing his faithful righteousness in keeping his ancient promises.
But the event corresponds to the need. The death of the Messiah, who is God, and his resurrection fit the profound darkness of the human plight. Paul looks at that plight in vv 28-32: humanity's unfit mind' produces destructive relationships, alienation from each other, violence, injustice, broken families, worthless promises, finding new ways to hurt. We not only do destructive things, we come to believe that that is normal and good.
This deep brokenness is why God has intervened in Jesus. God's wrath, ultimately seen in judgment, now is the basis for his intervention in Jesus to forgive, heal, reconcile.

Key Ingredients

Matthew 12:43-45 and John 7:37-39

This sermon explores the implications of Jesus' brief parable in Matthew 12:43-45 in which a soul that is left empty after an evil spirit's departure is subject to an even worse state when the spirit returns with 7 others.  Following God is not simply about abstaining from evil, but also replacing that evil with all the good that Jesus has promised us, and with the promised Holy Spirit in particular.  The sermon includes an illustrative demonstration of jars (representing souls) being filled with dried beans of different colors to represent the forces of darkness, the world, and the Holy Spirit.

Fallen is Babylon the Great!

Revelation 18:1-24

Patriotism, Love, and Allegiance
July 4th Weekend. Time for reflection on the relation of our faith to nation, power, politics, justice, cultural values, etc. Important ongoing discussion for U.S. Next Week some are traveling to Washington – “Worship in a spirit of Justice.” 
How does our faith relate to political power in a pluralistic society of private faith? Two pictures from the early church in the midst of the Roman empire. Not the same as ancient Israel (covenant with God), nor as participatory America with sovereign people and separation of secular state from religion.