Category Archives: Discipleship

FaithWorks: Playing Favorites – Sermon on James 2:1-10

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September 5, 2021
Video

Have you ever needed to make a decision, and you just couldn’t decide? You’d looked at all the options, and there didn’t seem to be one right answer, one perfect solution. You just had to use your best judgment, so you could go forward.

We see it all the time in sports. The referee makes a call on a play that isn’t really clear from the sidelines, so they review it. And as the commentators in the booth discuss the slow motion video of the play from all possible angles, they can’t decide which way it should go, either. But the game has to go on. Everyone depends on the ref’s best judgment to make the final call.

We make judgments all the time. We make choices based on the best information we can gather. Sometimes those choices are good ones, and sometimes we make poor choices. Either way, every choice we make is a judgment call. But there’s a difference between judging and being judgmental.

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FaithWorks: The Implanted Word – sermon on James 1:17-27

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August 29, 2021
VIdeo

Tradition tells us that the author of the book of James was the brother of Jesus. James was not one of the original twelve disciples – in fact, we have no evidence he even believed his brother was the Son of God until after the resurrection. However, James quickly became a leader among the believers in Jerusalem. And let’s remember that the church in Jerusalem was the flagship church of the whole Christian movement, so James was an important figure in the church’s early development. Paul even submitted to his authority (Acts 15:13-21).

In the greeting of this letter, James addresses “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (1:1) so we can imagine that his intended audience includes Jewish followers of The Way who have fled from Jerusalem after the stoning of Stephen. Christianity was in its early stages; it was still considered a Jewish sect. Continue reading →

Stop Going to Church – sermon on Psalm 92:12-15

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August 26, 2018
Video available here.

One day, Pastor Craig* ran into a guy named Matt at the grocery store. Matt was buying groceries with his wife and their two sons, and when they saw pastor Craig, they were really excited. “Pastor Craig, we go to your church!” Pastor Craig said, “I’m glad you go to our church!” “Yeah, we go to your church! We go to your church!” They kept saying it again, and again, and again.

But then Matt pulled pastor Craig aside, and he said, “would you mind praying for me?” Usually when somebody asks me that, they have one prayer request. Matt had a whole laundry list. Continue reading →

Gut-wrenching Compassion – Sermon on Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

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July 18, 2021
Video

We’re working our way through the sixth chapter of Mark’s gospel this month, taking a deep look at what it means to live like Jesus. It’s more than just doing what Jesus does, and saying what Jesus says. Living like Jesus means having the same purpose and identifying ourselves completely with Christ. This is an act of continual surrender.

So far, we’ve learned that we need to pay attention to interruptions, because that’s where God often shows up. But sometimes we have to really look for God in order to see God at work. And we have also been reminded to depend completely on God’s provision for us, if we want our lives to be fruitful. Last week, we learned that when evil seems to be winning the battle inside us and in the world around us, the only thing that can save us is finding our identity in Jesus Christ.

Mark likes to insert one story into another, and the story of John the Baptist’s execution last week was one of those insertions. Now Mark brings us back to Galilee, as the disciples return from their preaching expedition. It’s been a good trip, and they are eager to tell Jesus all about it, but they are also really tired.

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Crossing the Wilderness – Sermon on Mark 8:31-38 Lent 2B

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Watch video of this sermon.

We’re in the second week of Lent. How is your journey through the wilderness going? Or, as Pietists like to say, “How goes your walk with the Lord?” Are you managing to keep up with Jesus? We may be in only the second week of Lent, but for some of us, it feels like we’ve been on this Lenten journey for a long time. If you’re like me, the wilderness can wear you down. So how’s your walk with the Lord really going? Continue reading →

Do You Know Your Purpose? Sermon on Mark 1:29-39

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Watch a video of this sermon here. 

Mark’s gospel sometimes seems a bit rough around the edges. Mark wastes no time telling his story, and his urgency comes through, even when we divide his writing into short passages to examine them one by one. In the first chapter alone, we’ve already found Mark’s favorite word “immediately” twelve times. There is so much activity packed into this first chapter, it’s hard to remember that most of these events all happened on the same day. We get the impression that the people who were following Jesus had a hard time keeping up, too. Here’s what has happened so far in Mark’s gospel – and remember, we’re still in chapter one: Continue reading →

Selfless In Service – Sermon on John 13:1-17

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January 28, 2018
Watch a video of this sermon here.

We’re in a message series called Self-less, We live in an incredibly selfish, self-centered, self-gratifying, self-promoting culture. In fact, if you look up the work “self-promotion” on Google, right on the first page, you will see article after article teaching you how to promote yourself.

One is called, “The Art of Self-Promotion: “6 Ways to Get Your Work Discovered.” Forbes wrote one called, “Self-promotion is a Skill.” In other words, if you want to make it in this society, you better learn how to promote yourself. Then there’s this is one: “40 Ways to Self-Promote Without Being a Jerk.”

It seems like everyone in today’s culture wants to be the GOAT. Raise your hand if you know what that is. I’ll give you folks over the age of 50 a hint: Muhammad Ali made this claim back when he was still known as Cassius Clay. Continue reading →

Selfless: Bold in Witness – Acts 4

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Message on Acts 4:8-13, 18-20, 29-30 for Epiphany 2B
January 14, 2018

We’ve made it a couple of weeks into the New Year, and maybe some of us are working on forming some new habits. Things like losing weight, or at least eating healthier food and exercising more; maybe getting out of debt or doing a better job of taking care of the house or the car… I know someone who has resolved to drink less diet soda this year. These are all good things, good habits to form.

When you think about it though, the New Year’s resolutions people make mostly focus our attention on ourselves. We might even ask God to help us keep our resolutions for self-improvement. Instead of surrendering to God’s will, we see him as a tool to get us what we want.

God, help me. Bless me. Protect me. Make my life better, make me happier, make me richer. And then when things don’t go our way, when God doesn’t perform according to our expectations, we reject God. “Yeah, I tried God, I tried church, but it just didn’t work. It didn’t help me.”

And the tragedy is that, when we focus on what we want God to do for us, we miss out on the real blessings God wants to pour into our lives. Continue reading →

Identity Markers: Whose Image? – Sermon on Matthew 22:15-22

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October 18, 2020 video available here
We’ve learned a lot from Paul’s letter to the Philippians over the past few weeks, but this week we jump back into the gospel according to Matthew. We’re discovering the identity markers that tell others we belong to Jesus. We’ve explored the markers of humility in obedience, surrender, and joy. In today’s reading, Jesus teaches us how the image we present to the world is a key indicator of where our allegiance really lies. Continue reading →

Discipleship 101: Through Christ – sermon on Philippians 4:8-13

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October 15, 2017

This week concludes our Discipleship 101 series with an introduction to our next season of focus. We could call it “Discipleship 201” and bring everything to the next level, but in reality, this is more of a graduate course in following Jesus. From this point forward, we have to decide if this Jesus-following path is really something to which we want to commit our entire lives.

I’m reminded of the time that Jesus’ teachings became too difficult for his disciples to understand, and some turned away from following him. Jesus looked at the twelve and asked, “What about you? Are you going to leave me too?” And Simon Peter answered with a question of his own, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:66-69)

Coming to know Christ in the same deeply personal way as those first disciples did brings us to a new level of maturity in faith. This level can only be found when, like those first disciples, we decide to be fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul addresses this kind of Christian maturity in his letter to the church at Philippi.

It’s interesting that the verses we will read in a few moments do not appear anywhere in the Revised Common Lectionary cycle of readings. The lectionary only goes as far as verse 9 in this 4th chapter of Philippians. I find this curious, because it omits one of the most popular verses found in scripture – right up there with John 3:16 and the 23rd Psalm: Continue reading →