Sunday, November 1
Worship is not optional; everyone is always worshiping something, and we become like whatever we give our attention and devotion to. The sermon traces how idolatry deformed Israel into the image of a calf, and holds out worship of Jesus as the way that deformation is reversed.
Sunday, October 25
A woman pours out a year's wages on Jesus days before his death, and the room splits over whether it was waste or worship. The sermon holds her up as the picture of a life that holds nothing back, and asks what we are actually in this for.
Sunday, October 18
Jesus finishes the sheep and goats with the king welcoming the merciful into a kingdom prepared before the world began, and the sermon presses that the obedience which changes us is not how we earn salvation but the evidence we received it. It then walks out what co-ruling with Jesus looks like now, food and drink and welcome and clothing and visits, and what it means that the same scene ends in age to come fire.
Sunday, October 11
Jesus separates the sheep from the goats not by their correct beliefs but by the simple, unselfconscious love they showed to the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner, and he invites us to become the kind of person who does that without even knowing it counts.
Sunday, October 4
Jesus curses a fig tree in leaf with no fruit and then clears the temple courts, and Mark ties the two together as one picture of religious appearance without the fruit it promises. The sermon turns that on us: the leaves of visible righteousness are not the point, bearing fruit is.
Sunday, September 27
Discipleship to Jesus is not another obligation but an apprenticeship that leads to abundant life, and it comes with one condition: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him. The sermon walks through being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what Jesus did.
Sunday, September 20
Apprenticeship to Jesus doesn't stop at being with him and becoming like him; it moves out into doing what he did, which Luke describes as making space for the gospel through hospitality, speaking the gospel with plain words, and demonstrating it through prayer, healing, and ordinary faithful relationships.
Sunday, September 13
Because Jesus has taken back all authority, his followers are sent into the world to carry on the work he started: going to those who are lost, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to make disciples and not just converts.
Sunday, September 6
God is shaping his people into the image of Jesus the way a sculptor uncovers a figure already in the marble, and he does it through three furnaces: intimacy with him, life in his family, and the mission he sends us on.
Sunday, August 30
Caring for the poor and hungry is not optional for an apprentice of Jesus. God's own heart is set on the poor and the vulnerable child, and scripture treats neglecting them the way it treats idolatry.