Exodus 16:13-30

When God reorients us right-side-up, and we realize that God and God’s beloved community are our overriding values, we find ourselves with a lighter load. Sabbath starts looking like a good idea, and like one of the few things we can do to set down our burdens.

Numbers 21:4-9 and 1 Corinthians 1:18-24

The Hebrew people’s rescue arrives in a bronze serpent lifted high — a foolish, absurd, unexpected deliverance. And now, for us today, we find a life of faith that is still beckoning us to foolish, absurd, unexpected deliverance in the cross of Christ.

What would happen if everyone was a singer? And what would happen if everyone in the church was a pastor?

Romans 13:8-14

Salvation is not a purely personal undertaking; salvation takes relationship. It takes the entire community marching arm-in-arm through the night and toward the daybreak.

Exodus 3:1-15

Because God is so big, and mysterious, and amazing, that we can never fully name or paint God.

Exodus 3:1-15

Moses’ identity—who he is, and where he has been—is exactly what undergirds this remarkable call. Moses is exactly who he needs to be for this calling God is giving him.

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Shiphrah and Puah are unwilling to favor their national pride over their obedience to God. And it is this obedience to God—and disobedience to their nation’s autocrat—that drives them to do what is unimaginably difficult.

Matthew 14:22-33

Sometimes, even though we try really, really hard to trust in God, and live like Jesus wants us to live, we just can’t seem to do it. But even when we can’t get it right, Jesus shows up to help us out.

1 Kings 19:9-18

This is a story about self-revelation: about revealing ourselves to God, and letting God reveal God’s own self to us. It’s about intimacy in a troubled, heartache of a marriage between God and humanity.

Matthew 14:13-21

Do you ever wonder if Jesus gets bothered by us?

Isaiah 55:1-5

The road from Babylon back to Jerusalem can be excruciating. And after its crucible, it doesn’t always feel tidy, or good, or joyful at first. Sometimes we return to rubble, and wonder if it was worth it.

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Even though God’s plan is a tiny little seed, and even though we can’t always see it growing in the ground, that doesn’t mean it’s not growing!

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

In Jesus’ parable, the kingdom isn't being brought about by “real” work, like farming, or craftsmanship, or buying and selling. The kingdom of heaven is brought about by domestic work. The work of a housewife. “Woman’s work,” which becomes the locus of divine activity.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

In a world that’s all mixed up, where the weeds and good seeds are all commingled, it becomes impossible to live as a faithful disciple of Jesus and not ask hard questions about the world.

Matthew 10:24-39

Here, in Jesus’ new household, the animating principle is self-sacrificial love — this fidelity to the pattern of Jesus Christ, even when it brings us into conflict with our own biological families and the status quo.

Matthew 9:35-10:8

What happens on Sunday morning isn’t the culmination of the Church’s calling. Instead, its heart beats through service, and action, and transformation — its heartbeat is the work of healing, restoring, resurrecting.

Genesis 12:1-12

But every way we read scripture—and every way we theologize about God—has a real-world consequence. Every choice has its consequences. We have another choice in how we listen to scripture — one that doesn’t end in war, or violence, or dehumanization.

PENTECOST | 1 Corinthians 12:4-13 and Acts 2:1-21

As the Holy Spirit descends, things don’t get tidy; they get really, really messy. In fact, the disciples’ ways of life fall apart. The status quo—the way things have been, the 'good old days'—it splinters into pieces.

John 14:15-21

In the reaffirmation of the baptismal covenant, we commit to imaginations that are captive to love and not fear. We commit to the hard work or reorienting our imaginations around resurrections and not death, hope and not despair.

1 Peter 2:2-10

So here’s the paradox: baptism is the beginning that never ends, a beginning that is always in front of us. It’s always ahead on the journey, always calling us deeper into what God started.