City Church Eugene (Shaynor Newsome): Recent Episodes
Shaynor Newsome
Sermons from Shaynor Newsome; formerly with Baylor RUF now at City Church Eugene (CascadePCA), OR. www.citychurcheugene.org
Luke 1.26-38
“The disappointment, bokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in the present world is held in dynamic tension with the promises of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension the church lives its life.” —Fleming Rutledge
Genesis 32.22-32
“Is it possible, I wonder, to say that it is only when you hear the Gospel as a wild and marvelous joke that you really hear it at all? Heard as anything else, the Gospel is the church's thing, the preacher's thing, the lecturer's thing. Heard as a joke—high and unbidden and ringing with laughter—it can only be God's thing...Blessed is he who is not offended that no [one] receives what he deserves but vastly more. Blessed is he who gets the joke, who sees the miracle.” — Frederick Buechner
Genesis 18.1-15
“Is it possible, I wonder, to say that it is only when you hear the Gospel as a wild and marvelous joke that you really hear it at all? Heard as anything else, the Gospel is the church's thing, the preacher's thing, the lecturer's thing. Heard as a joke—high and unbidden and ringing with laughter—it can only be God's thing...Blessed is he who is not offended that no [one] receives what he deserves but vastly more. Blessed is he who gets the joke, who sees the miracle.” — Frederick Buechner
Acts 1.6-11
The previous sermon failed to download, but a manuscript can be read here:
https://shaynor.podbean.com/e/telling-the-truth-1574211023/
John 11: Love and Lament
A Bible trivia answer—It’s anything but trivial. “The shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus Wept. It’s easy to pass over. And difficult to understand. So stark. Simple. Profound. Jesus steps into the moment of his friend’s grief, his friend’s death. He steps into the void. Into this great absence. The questions. The groaning too great for words. The regrets. The lost time. The lost smiles. The lost warmth in bed. The lost partner in life; companion for moments such as these. He takes it all in. Sees it all. And he weeps. He feels. He longs. He grieves. He angers. Not simply at the circumstance or consequence of sin. But with. He weeps with you. He weeps with us. And he weeps for. For you. For us. He knows our sorrows. He carries our grief. He, in short, loves us. He loved Lazarus. Mary. Martha. And it is that love that leads him to weep. It is that love that allows, and more importantly invites us to weep. Ir is that love that then lifts the heavy heavy heads. Heads too heavy for our own shoulders. And draws our eyes toward a horizon of hope. A horizon maybe we’re unsure is there or how to see it. But Jesus enters our sorrows and then takes them on his own shoulders to bear them for us. Jesus Wept.”
Romans 12.9-21: "Everyone always wants new things. Everybody likes new inventions, new technology. People will never be replaced by machines. In the end, life and business are about human connections. And computers are about trying to murder you in a lake. And to me, the choice is easy."—Michael Scott
Romans 12.1-8
"I speak of promised lands Soil as soft as momma's hands Running water, standing still Endless fields of daffodils and chamomile Rice under black beans
Walked into Apple with cracked screens And told prophetic stories of freedom
Found warmth in a Black queen for when I get cold Like Nat King, I'm doing the dad thing
I speak of wondrous unfamiliar lessons from childhood Make you remember how to smile good"- Chance
John 13.1-20: “Why is power a gift? Because power is for flourishing. When power is used well, people and the whole cosmos come more alive to what they were meant to be. And flourishing is the test of power.”—Andy Crouch
Isaiah 9.1-7: The story of Christmas is not about a teacher who shows the way out of darkness but a God who enters the darkness to give us light.
Matthew 21.1-14: Jesus drives out the money changers to make room to welcome those on the outside in.
Luke 7.35-50: we're all believing a fear story somewhere. See how the love of Jesus flips the script for us.
John 2.1-12: Why is it so difficult for us to actually believe that the party is the point?
Matthew 7.7-12: We're prone to think it takes spiritual gymnastics to receive God's good gifts. Jesus says it's way more simple than that.
Matthew 5.43-48: “The problem with hatred is that it sees others as the great problem: self-righteousness infects all crusades.” (Bruner)
Luke 13.1-9: On the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11 we look at how Jesus responds to similar questions as ours from his disciples.
1 Peter 2.4-10: When the ground shifts under our feet, what does it take to remain stable?
1 Peter 1.22-2.3: We cannot watch the news or follow our FB feed and not have this question screamed at nor from it bubbling to the surface of our own hearts. What then?
1 Peter 1.22-2.3: 1 Peter 1.22-2.3: It is holiness, not judgmental hypocrisy that enhances the plausibility of the gospel to our neighbors. And by holiness the Bible means Love.
1 Peter 1.13-21: It is holiness, not judgmental hypocrisy that enhances the plausibility of the gospel to our neighbors.
"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” - G. K. Chesterton
Ecclesiastes 11.1-6: “Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter. With an average life expectancy of 78.2 years in the US (subtracting eight hours a day for sleep), I have around 250,00 conscious hours remaining to me in which I could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles. I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths, to my wife and my children and my neighbors, or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. And, like Adam, I will still die in the end…Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give. Almost. It is death by living.” (N.D. Wilson)
Ecclesiastes 9.1-12: “Matter is real. Flesh is good. Without a firm rooting in creation, religion is always drifting off into some kind of pious sentimentalism or sophisticated intellectualism…The physical is holy.”—Annie Dillard
Ecclesiastes 6.10-7.14: Eucatastrophe ("good destruction"): Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love."- Tolkien
Ecclesiastes 5.8-6.9: “Here is what we need to discover about power: it is both better and worse than we could imagine…Why is power a gift? Because power is for flourishing. When power is used well, people and the whole cosmos come more alive to what they were meant to be. And flourishing is the test of power.” ―Andy Crouch
Ecclesiastes 3.16-4.3:
Though the earth cried out for blood Satisfied her hunger was Billows calmed on raging seas For the souls of men she craved Sun and moon on balcony Turned their head in disbelief Their precious love would taste the sting Disfigured and disdained So three days in darkness slept The morning sun of righteousness But rose to shame the throws of death And overturn his rule Now daughters and the sons of men Would not pay their dues again The debt of blood they owed was rent When the day rolled anew He has cheated hell And seated us above the fall In desperate places he paid our wages One time once and for all
On Friday a thief On Sunday a king Laid down in grief But woke with the keys To hell on that day First born of the slain The man Jesus Christ laid Death in his grave "Death In His Grave" by John Mark McMillan
Ecclesiastes5.1-7: The Church: Who Needs It? Ever been hurt, abandoned, confused by the church? Its hypocrisy? Its leaders? Its members? Again, Ecclesiastes shows itself to be in touch with the modern world and our struggles.
Ecclesiastes 2.18-26: Your vocation is a gift to be given away for the life of the world. It's yeast (Luke 13:20–21). “The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining the shadows away. Do not try to hide your children from the world forever, and do not try to pretend there is no danger. Train them. Give them sharp eyes and bellies full of laughter. Make them dangerous. Make them yeast, and when they’ve grown, they will pollute the shadows.” ― N.D. Wilson, Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl
Ecclesiastes1.12-18;2.12-17--Knowledge and wisdom madness and folly all end in death. So. what's the point?
Romans 8.1-4: The simple, clear, and objective voice in the middle of our complicated difficult life.
Romans 6.15-23: How our notions of freedom actually enslave, and conversely how slavery to God is where we find our true freedom, our true humanity.
Hebrews 13: Holiness is not defined by keeping a list of dos and don't but our hospitality to strangers.
James 1.19-27 pt. 1:Hearing the word is doing the word and doing the word is hearing the word.
Romans 3.21-26 pt.3"Many seem to be put off by the fact that [Jesus'] invitatation list includes 'both good and bad alike' (Matthew 22:10). The...'flesh' would prefer to join a private country club or gated community." (Richard Rohr)