Archive for category: Sermons

Scripture:  Jeremiah 18: 1-6 (The Message)

God told Jeremiah, “Up on your feet! Go to the potter’s house. When you get there, I’ll tell you what I have to say.” So I went to the potter’s house, and sure enough, the potter was there, working away at his wheel. Whenever the pot the potter was working on turned out badly, as sometimes happens when you are working with clay, the potter would simply start over and use the same clay to make another pot. Then God’s Message came to me: “Can’t I do just as this potter does, people of Israel?” God’s Decree! “Watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you, people of Israel.

God’s creative activity is described as an ongoing active force for good. Rather than fashioning us of something that could not change, the biblical metaphor is that we are fashioned of clay, a malleable substance that can be reshaped again and again. When life requires change of us, let us embrace our ability to roll with it, for we were made for this! 

Step One for Change: believe we are created for change

 

Scripture:  John 17:1-11

This is the seventh Sunday of Easter: the final “of.” It is time to turn back to the one who is “chosen and precious,” except, as you’ll see, he turns it back to us. Even when talking about himself, his own glory, he turns back to us. It’s amazing, really. in this moment, you’d think he would be focused on himself. But even in the final moments on this earth, were the objects of his attention and his prayer.

Scripture:  1 Peter 2:2-10

But we are living stones, so what does that mean? How do we carry this foundational presence out into the world? How do we commit to building a church that transforms not just those inside, but those outside as well? How will our body-building strengthen our whole neighborhood and not just ourselves? This is the challenge of the living stones: discipleship for the transformation of the world.

Scripture:  1 Peter 1:17-23

The season “of Easter” is not a time for worm thinking! It is a time for claiming the gift of abundant life. It is a time or picking ourselves and one another up when we have fallen to get our feet back on the path toward the kin-dom of God (or back on the dance floor where we can express our joy in whose we have become).

Scripture: Matthew 28:1-10

The grand and glorious reversal of all we thought we knew about life and about death, Easter is God’s yes to love and to life eternal through the Son, Jesus the Christ. This is a day of color and light and joy as we celebrate resurrection with all that is within us.