I preached today about Ephesians 2:11-22 and why in the world it is that the blood of Jesus can tear down the walls of the Jerusalem temple. You have to understand the nature of sacrifice for that to make any sense and for it to make any sense why Jesus’ blood could tear down the walls in our lives today. Here is the audio for what I preached: Tear down this wall. Read more
Last weekend, Scot McKnight shared a guest post from Jeff Cook entitled “They Don’t Believe Because Your God Isn’t Desirable,” which argued that Christian apologetics should pay attention to beauty in addition to logic in making a case for God. Cook quoted Pascal who said, “Make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.” Some comments were thoughtful but others took the line that we shouldn’t “try to make God pretty” because that... Read more
This past weekend for my message on Ephesians 2:1-10, I decided on a zombie theme since I can get away with that in my contemporary service and because zombies are “in” with the young people. The inspiration was a phrase that Paul uses to describe people who are enslaved to sin: “children of wrath,” which sounds like the title of a bad horror movie. He also tells the Ephesians that they “were dead through the trespasses and sins in which... Read more
Monday is my Sabbath day. I almost always walk around and talk to God either in the Basilica of the National Shrine of Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, or at Lake Acotink near my house. On a lot of Mondays, I get thoughts in my head that it seems like God is revealing to me so I put them into 140 character format and blast them out to the universe over twitter. Maybe it’s wrong to be engaged in social... Read more
In a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos, Congressman Paul Ryan said that he had a basic philosophical difference with the Democrats: he believes that rights come from God while they think rights come from the government. Setting aside the question of whether this distinction is fair, I think it captures the source of the visceral rage of Teavangelicals who have made Paul Ryan their hero. They have defined their battlefield as a contest between Christianity and secular humanism, God vs.... Read more
I don’t know Methodist pastor Rev. Lorenza Andrade-Smith personally, though she is a facebook “friend,” but I have a feeling she would be embarrassed to hear that a blog post was written about her. Since it’s the Fourth of July and others are probably writing about American exceptionalism, I thought I would write about an exceptional American instead. The concept of American exceptionalism bothers me when it’s a manipulative tool that politicians use to one-up each other or stifle legitimate... Read more
This past Saturday, I preached on the meaning of church. We’re going through the book of Ephesians in a sermon series, and Ephesians 1:23 defines the church as the “fullness of Him who fills all in all.” Since my theme was “rethinking church,” I decided to check out what resources were available from the United Methodist “Rethink Church” campaign. I found a three-year-old promotional video that I have embedded below. The video gets one thing very right when it says... Read more
In the second sermon of our church’s “Big Picture” series, we looked at the meaning of church as described in Ephesians 1:23 — “the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” It’s often been said as part of the Methodist “Rethink Church” campaign that church is a verb, not a noun. This is literally true in the Bible’s original Greek. Paul uses the word kleseos in Ephesians 1:18 to describe the “calling” of God’s hope. Ekklesia, the word that... Read more
What does the battle between good and evil look like? Who or what evil entities are we supposed to fight against? When I was a young social justice activist, the Bible verse I pulled out for an answer to this question was Ephesians 6:12, where Paul writes, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers.” Instead of seeing the battle of good and evil in terms of concrete, identifiable adversaries on a battlefield, I figured our... Read more
I preached a sermon a couple of weeks ago about a passage from 2 Corinthians 5 in which Paul uses a phrase that has dominated my mind ever since it jumped out at me at my Monday small group two weeks ago. Paul says that he longs for “what is mortal [to] be swallowed up by life.” Our lives in the world are oftentimes overwhelmed by things that create spiritual death, that keep us from being the vital, dynamic people... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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