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.

Matthew 14:13-21

Do you ever wonder if Jesus gets bothered by us?

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.

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.

John 20:19-31

In revealing the broken bones and bloody toes we experience, we are drawn into a great circle of healing and being healed. There is this constant dialogue—constant dance—of us caring for one another and being cared for.

EASTER SUNDAY | Matthew 28:1-10

When the truth is proclaimed loudly and boldly, like we see at this empty tomb, it causes an earthquake. But it also brings Christ into closer proximity to our fear, and doubt, and pain, and brings us into closer proximity to his love, and grace, and freedom.

MAUNDY THURSDAY | John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Tonight, we will hear a long, painful story about the Passion of Jesus. But we aren’t hear to simply know that Jesus loves us. We’re here to go, and act, and change the world for his sake.

Matthew 14:13-22

The crowd is faced with a similar temptation as Jesus: should we leave this wilderness out of hunger...? But this time, Jesus doesn’t need them to martyr themselves. Jesus lets them be hungry, and meets them with compassion.

Matthew 12:1-14

Here we are, still having a two-thousand year old argument, still tempted to hold others up to the measuring stick of our own sense of faith. But if suspend our judgment, what might we learn from others’ supposedly-wayward faithfulness?

Matthew 5:1-13

There is no blessing for those who place order above wholeness, or the law above what is truly right. But there is a blessedness beyond reason to those who place wholeness and righteousness above human whims.

John 1:1-14

We will only be able to worship this tiny, fragile baby Jesus, when we dwell in his presence with those who are vulnerable.

Luke 2:1-20

Christ is brave enough, strong enough, powerful enough to stand the smell of this world, the ugly reality we know, the darkness all around us, and invite it into his eternal light.

Romans 13:8-14; 14:1-4, 7-10

We join the Church today in remembering our mortality and that we die in the same manner that we were born: held in love, shepherded by the Lord of all, and part of a communion of saints that is far bigger and more beautiful than we can ever grasp.

Matthew 25:31-46

One of the most unexpected divides in this story is between those who were trying to discern which people were “deserving” of grace and those who were extravagantly indiscriminate in their care for others.

LUKE 16:1-13

[Today's] parable stands out from the others, because it shows us that money can also be used to sculpt new relationships, mend the breaches of our community, and give unexpected freedom to those who are burdened.

Luke 12:32-40

Christ will not come again as a militaristic punisher. Christ will come again as a guest from a wedding banquet — Christ will come from a place of abiding joy and unmeasurable love.

Luke 9:51-62

Let the dead bury the dead, and let’s start making room for the living. Everything depends on plowing a furrow ahead, getting ready for the Spirit’s seeds of hope, and anticipating a harvest that our children and grandchildren will reap.