Faith Works: We Don’t Do That Here – Sermon on James 3:13 -4:3, 7-11a

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September 19, 2021
Video

A young musician was substituting for the principal clarinet in the Chicago Symphony. Wanting to make a good impression, she prepared her music carefully, memorized all the hard passages, and when the time came to take her place for her first rehearsal, she played her heart out, dramatically moving with the music and waving her clarinet expressively as she played.

When there was a pause in the rehearsal, she smiled at the player sitting next to her. But he frowned at her, and said, “we don’t do that here.” In the Chicago Symphony, the focus is on the music, not the drama.

We’ve been working our way through the book of James, and I’ve mentioned before that this book, even though it comes in the form of a letter, really has more in common with Old Testament Wisdom literature than Paul’s letters to the early church. James has encouraged us to accept all people without showing favoritism to the rich. He’s taught us to listen first and speak second, and when we do speak, to mind our tongues.

This is all part of becoming more like Jesus, that process we call discipleship. As we work our faith, our faith begins to work in us, and our focus is more and more on Jesus, not the drama. Continue reading →

Faith Works: Mind Your Tongue – Sermon on James 3:1-12

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September 12, 2021
Video

James has been teaching us how to work our faith in order to develop a faith that works. Just before today’s reading, he writes, “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” (James 2:26)

Our faith shows up in our work, what we do, how we live. But work without faith is just work. When our work is an expression of our faith, we grow in maturity, our words align with our actions, and our actions align with God’s will.

In today’s passage from the book of James, he dives a little deeper into the idea we heard a couple of weeks ago: “everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” (James 1:19) It’s that “slow to speak” part that can get us into trouble. When we let our tongues run ahead of us, whether we are being careless or intentionally hurtful, it damages our witness for Christ. Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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 →

Exponential: Eternal Reward – Sermon on Romans 14:7-12 and Matthew 25:14-30

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August 19, 2018
Watch a video of this sermon here.

How would our lives change if we lived like everything belongs to God?

I grew up in cattle country. Whenever we would drive anywhere, we could see cattle grazing. And if those cows happened to be grazing on a hillside, my mother would invariably break into song. Do you remember the little chorus, “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills?”[1] Great song. But do we really believe it? And do we live as though we believed it? Continue reading →

Exponential: Right Place, Right Time – Sermon on Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17

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August 12, 2018

Have you ever found yourself in exactly the right place at exactly the right time? Maybe you think that’s the kind of good luck that only happens to other people. But have you ever pulled into the parking lot just as a space was opening up near the door? Or have you ever arrived in the produce aisle just as the clerk was restocking the lettuce? Those are little wins, aren’t they? You happen to be in the right place at the right time.

And sometimes there are bigger wins. A few years ago there was an ad on television that showed a young man on his way to an important job interview. As he was hurrying to catch the bus, he noticed a man struggling to change a flat tire. He looks at his watch, he looks at the bus, and he looks at the older man wrestling with the lug wrench, and he makes a choice. He takes off his jacket, rolls up his shirtsleeves, and grabs the lug wrench. Continue reading →

Exponential: A Seed of Faith – sermon on Mark 4:1-9

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August 5, 2018

We’re starting a message series today called Exponential. When it comes to faith, when it comes to life, when it comes to God’s blessings, we tend to think addition. We want God to add to our lives. But our God thinks multiplication. And God’s version of multiplication is always exponential. When God multiplies, it’s to the “Nth” degree.

Think all the way back to the Garden of Eden. What did God say to Adam and Eve? God said, be fruitful and … multiply. He didn’t say be fruitful and add. He said be fruitful and multiply. Continue reading →

Living Like Jesus: Take Courage! – Sermon on Mark 6:34-52

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July 29, 2018

If you thought this series on Living Like Jesus was going to be a checklist of ‘Dos and Don’ts’ you are probably disappointed by now. Living like Jesus isn’t that simple, is it? We have to look for God in the interruptions and depend on God alone to provide for our needs. When evil seems to be taking over, it’s only by claiming our identity in Christ that we can overcome that evil.

As we learned last week, we have to stay in the boat with Jesus, instead of running ahead to where we think he’s going. And living like Jesus means having gut-wrenching compassion for those who don’t know him. That means allowing ourselves to be touched as the “fringe of his cloak” in order to be Christ’s healing touch in the world.

Today’s reading gives us the final installment of this sixth chapter of Mark. We’re about to move out of the mundane and into the miraculous.  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.

Continue reading →