Intersections

  I was a little lost while I was writing this sermon this week... couldn't seem to put together the right words. Maybe that's why it seemed so easy to put off... out of sight, out of mind. Anyway - so here we are in the second week in our series of "Having Words with Jesus", taking difficult parables and maybe looking at them with fresh eyes to see how they can help us understand what Jesus is talking about. The second we have here in Luke 15 is actually a series of three parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son. The lectionary breaks it up to put the last story at a different time in the rotation, and I suppose it deserves its own commentary. We are left with finding the lost.  It's interesting how Luke begins the chapter, pitting two groups kind of against each other. He starts with the tax collectors and sinners were gathering to hear Jesus speak. The pharisees and the other teachers of the law were somewhere close as well, but they are...

Normally, you think of having words with someone, there is generally a conflict. Those words may not be the most uplifting, but sometimes we need to authentically communicate our feelings. If there’s someone who can handle it, it’s Jesus. Our scripture for this series is out of the Gospel of Luke, bits of chapters 14, 15, & 16.  Sometimes we find the words of Jesus to be more difficult to hear than things that are more common. This can be confusing, discouraging, or even seemingly contradictory. We really need to work hard to see what Jesus is actually saying. We need to take those hard verses and really digest them better. Maybe sit with the verses and meditate on it, letting the Holy Spirit work through you to gain perspective. We want to understand, we want to soak up the wisdom and live as close to Jesus as we can.  So maybe we need to have words with Jesus - through the difficulty, through the uncomfortable. In that tension is where we can find a deeper faith. The wor...

  April is here, and I am ready for it! I don’t care how many showers there will be, I’m just ready for those May flowers. We are witnesses to the changing of the seasons, and how faithful God is in bringing those to us. It may not happen on our schedule, or even when the calendar tells us it’s going to happen, but regardless, our world will SPRING FORTH and bear all the life that it is given for the lively warm months ahead.  Our sermon series this month beginning after Easter will be called “We Are Witnesses”, and it’s a reminder that we witness all the glory that God provides us in our lives, whether we actually see it or not. Our scripture will come from the book of Acts, starting in chapter five. We skip through the book, according to the lectionary, and end on the last Sunday of May in chapter sixteen. The Book of Acts is an extension of the Gospel of Luke, who we have been studying this Lenten season, and is an important book for the fact that it details where the churc...