Highrock Church North Shore: Recent Episodes
Highrock Church North Shore
This week we learn from a new preacher in our Pass the Mic series, Pastor Dani Kilgore. Pastor Dani serves as the Outreach and Missions Pastor at Marin Covenant Church in California, a sister church in our denomination. Pastor Brynn has gotten to know Pastor Dani over the last few years in a leadership cohort they have been a part of together, and she has consistently been drawn to her deep commitment to truth and justice, her bold prophetic voice, and her consistent and timely wisdom, all of which she communicates with a grace, compassion, and love for God's people.
This week, Lainie Battaglie from Highrock Haverhill concluded our sermon series Let Justice Roll: the Book of Amos.
Highrock North Shore, Highrock Brookline, and Highrock Haverhill sermon from November 8th.
Highrock North Shore, Highrock Brookline, and Highrock Haverhill sermon from November 1st.
This week, Pastor Yumiko from Highrock Brookline continued our new sermon series Let Justice Roll: the book of Amos.
This week, Pastor Matt from Highrock Haverhill continued our new sermon series Let Justice Roll: the book of Amos.
This week, Pastor John from Highrock Brookline continued our new sermon series Let Justice Roll: the book of Amos
This week, we are hearing from a Covenant leader, Pastor Gustavo Torres. Pastor Gus serves as Associate Pastor and Praise Leader at Iglesia del Pacto Evangelico Peniel, a Spanish-speaking congregation in Chicago.
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 9am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 9am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 9am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 9am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock at Home resources, check out Kidsrock at Home below.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock at Home resources, check out the June 7th Edition.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock at Home resources, check out the May 31st Edition.
Kidsrock Online
Every Sunday at 10am you can join us on our YouTube channel or watch later at the same place.
For Kidsrock at Home resources, check out the May 24th Edition.
Kidsrock Online
See the full live-streamed service on Highrock Arlington's YouTube channel.
Join us on YouTube every Sunday at 10am, or watch later!
See the full live-streamed service on Highrock Arlington's YouTube channel.
Join us on YouTube every Sunday at 10am, or watch later!
See the full live-streamed service on Highrock Arlington's YouTube channel.
Join us on YouTube every Sunday at 10am, or watch later!
We've made it easy to remember how to connect with Highrock live:
- Daily Devotional: highrock.org/dailydevo
- Sunday Services: highrock.org/highrockathome
Being busy is actually pretty easy when we're on quarantine. It seems like even in times like this, there's the potential for busyness to do a lot of damage to our relationships, our health, and our spiritual lives. It's a habit that we need to unlearn. In the spirit of Lent, we're going to look at the scriptures to see how we can turn away from this habit and trade it for practices that lead to life and freedom.
See the full live-streamed service on Highrock Arlington's YouTube channel.
Join us on YouTube every Sunday at 10am, or watch later!
We've made it easy to remember how to connect with Highrock live:
- Daily Devotional: highrock.org/dailydevo
- Sunday Services: highrock.org/highrockathome
When we allow this Kingdom to take root in us, as individuals, as one new congregation, as new branches on an old tree, the promise we get is new life, growing, deepening, sprouting, offering new hope to all our dead places and holding out light and joy and transformation instead.
This is what we do when we pray, “Hallowed be your name.” We are declaring that God’s character, his reputation, and his honor as the mighty and awesome King of the Universe be held in awe and wonder and lifted up the the thunderous applause of the cosmos. When we pray, “Hallowed be your name,” we’re telling God that our deepest desire is to respond to God’s goodness by having the Lord hold the highest place in our hearts, in our values, in our priorities, and in our world. “Hallowed be your name” is saying that we want God to be known and revered and respected and remembered and honored and to be held in awe above all else.
“Grace is more than being lucky to be on God’s side. Grace is God’s goodness showered on people who have failed. Grace is God’s love on those who think they are unlovable. Grace is God knowing what we are designed to be. Grace is God believing in us when we have given up. Grace is someone at the end of their rope finding new strength. But there’s more to grace. Grace is both a place and a power. Grace is God unleashing his transforming power. Grace realigns and reroutes a life and a community. Grace is when you turn your worst enemy into your best friend. Grace takes people as they are and makes them what they can be. Grace ennobles; grace empowers. Grace forgives; grace frees. Grace transcends, and grace transforms.” ―Scot McKnight
Nothing tangible was so sacred or so special that it wouldn’t be liquidated and given away whenever there was a need in the community. And what's most unbelievable about all this, is that they didn't do this just for the friends or family members they’d known their whole lives. They did this for complete strangers, for former enemies, or for people everyone else in society rejected. In a word, they gave to people who would have no chance of ever giving back the kind of gift they had been given.
Miracles were like an explosion to everything they knew. Miracles interrupted, they disrupted, they were like this sudden flash of light that startle you and change everything in an instant. Like dynamite. These explosive acts change the soul of a person.
In faith community there are others to pray with and for you, and people who need you to be praying for them. Being devoted to prayer is hard, but if we are a community characterized by prayer we are not doing it alone.
And so we call this table a sacrament, not because the bread and the cup somehow magically confers grace to anyone who eats it, but because when we gather at this table, we proclaim Christ’s saving death until he comes again.
The Bible we have is the good news of Jesus told in multiple stories. The stories in the Bible are as epic as it gets, with grand, sweeping implications for our life now and the life to come, and yet it comes to us from the perspective of fishmongers and farmhands, prostitutes and prodigals, tax collectors and little kids.
We want to experience real change and transformation. But so far? It feels just easier to dutifully march in step to the cold order of the Empire. It’s just easier to blend in with the crowd, to stick with the way things have always been done. And so, when considering the change we want, but so far haven’t been able to create, like me, you might be tempted to do one of two things: give up or run away.
It’s fascinating to me how creation responds to the cold. Creation releases into the cold - resting, pausing, waiting, changing. No animal comes into spring exactly the same as they were at the start of winter, they all change. Which made me wonder … How do we respond to the cold of winter?
These songs emphasize different themes. They’re not so much about getting things. They’re not so much about holding things. They’re not about us optimizing or maximizing. In fact, they’re not particularly focused on us much at all. They are songs about Jesus. They’re songs about waiting and hoping for God to do something.
Come Thou Long Expected Jesus is an especially important song for us in this season as it is distinctly an advent song. Advent is a time of expectation and looking forward to the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. This song deals with the longing for Jesus, the expectation and hope for the Messiah. In just two short verses, this song connects the longing and expectation of waiting for Jesus’ first coming that we celebrate at Christmas with the longing and expectation that we currently experience while we wait for Jesus’ second coming, for Jesus’ promised return.
We have covered a myriad of seasons of life in this series but we were unable to cover them all, so my hope is that after today, no matter what season of life we find ourselves in, we will be able to turn to the Psalms and find the words that we need for that season.
The truth is, no matter what clothes we buy, technology we might have, or systems we put in place. Those things in themselves cannot bring the powerful joy we are reading about today. This Joy must come from elsewhere.
When we pray the Psalms, whether or not we identify with the pain personally, we weep with those who weep. We declare that any human tragedy is my tragedy. We cry out to God, together with humanity, to fix it.
I suspect that many of us still know that sense of deadness and dryness David described in Psalm 32. For some of us our experience with sin and shame is every bit as intense as what David described, but for most of us it’s characterized more by a general joylessness in life.
And if we’re ever in doubt, or if our vision is ever clouded, we need only stop, look, and listen for the wonder of the Lord around us. There are many Psalms we could look at that help us do this. They are all an exercise in being wooed by our Creator. They’re all an exercise in seeing God at work in creation around them. And so this morning I want to take a look at Psalm 104 as a case study in the practice of cultivating Wonder.
If the Bible is an answer key, then the Psalms don’t fit. But if the Bible is about leading us on a pilgrimage through faith and doubt and anger and gratitude, then the Psalms are our best bet.
And on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he tells his disciples — his friends — in the same way that God has loved me, so I love you. As God has chosen me for the purpose of healing and redeeming the world, so I am choosing you to go and do likewise. I am choosing you to heal and renew the world. As God has eklégomai’d me, so I eklégomai you.
This verse isn’t just about Jesus and me. It’s also about Jesus and we. We are supposed to experience the same kind of love in our life with Christ that Jesus experiences with the Father. That’s amazing. But we don’t know what God’s love looks like, feels like, should be like. So we’re given each other - branches all around us, weaving around us, to reflect God’s love for us.
And if we choose to just take and consume and be fed, but never offer to feed others — we’ll just end up rotting on that vine and never fulfill the purposes we were cultivated for.
When Jesus says he is the “True Vine,” he is saying that he is and will do all that Israel and the rest of humanity could never be and could never do for itself. Jesus is doing for us what we could never do for ourselves. Jesus is saying, “I’ve got this,” which means you and I do not have to “got this.”
The trouble is...it’s not always clear in our culture what form that victimhood will take. We know we’re supposed to be suffering for Jesus. But for the most part, we’ve had it pretty good. So a lot of American Christians have started to look for ways that we’re being oppressed, that our values are being co-opted, that the world is out to get us. We’re supposed to be persecuted. So we imagine we are.
Hungering for righteousness means having this insatiable ache to see things made right, in all places, for all people. It means having a desire so deep, so intense, that life isn’t possible without it.
Blessed are the people who pursue wholeness, completeness. Blessed are the people who make space for the gathering together of things that are meant to be whole, but aren’t yet. And that’s all things. Because all things - our relationships, our communities, our ecosystems, our selves and our minds and our ways of thinking about ourselves - they were all meant to be whole, to be sound, to be healthy and safe.
But what if the world doesn’t have to revolve around power, greed, violence and retribution? What if the world is actually designed to function in a completely different way? What if there is another way of looking at the world, a proverbial Earthrise, that provides the perspective to see that power, greed, violence and retribution are actually part of the decaying and corrupt Upside Down?
To put it succinctly: To be meek is not to disavow power or fail to use it or to be powerless — instead, it is to be both in control and mighty on behalf of the other.
But, for many of us, it’s our Winter seasons that seem to last the longest - if not in duration, then in intensity. Our Winters are those seasons characterized by darkness. They’re times of forced inactivity and isolation. Our winters are when our circumstances, relationships, and emotions are lifeless, or at least appear to be.
Jesus has inaugurated the Downside Up kingdom into our Upside down world, flipping the standards of self-sufficiency to relying on God, overturning our tendencies from being self-reliant to relying on God in all things, and returning reality from independence to dependence on God.
God sees that we’ll need rest and margin long before we ever recognize it, so God preemptively commands us to take a day each week to rest and worship, pray and play; a day that makes you more alive — a day of “re-creation”
And today, as so many of us face our own suffering and tendencies to isolate and mask pain, we will explore an alternative. What could it look like to open ourselves up to God and one another in times of difficulty, receiving the comfort and strength that our souls yearn for? How would it feel to receive empowerment to such a degree that we have reserves to comfort others? And what is the promise when we do?
And today, as so many of us face our own suffering and tendencies to isolate and mask pain, we will explore an alternative. What could it look like to open ourselves up to God and one another in times of difficulty, receiving the comfort and strength that our souls yearn for? How would it feel to receive empowerment to such a degree that we have reserves to comfort others? And what is the promise when we do?
This morning we are going to look at a concept that on the surface might look like it would produce fortitude or resiliency, but in fact produces fragility. This morning we are going to examine the concept of certainty, or more specifically our need for certainty.
Leviticus doesn’t beat around the bush. Rebuke your neighbor frankly. When you see there’s an issue, when you notice a fire, run towards it. Don’t run away from it. Run straight into it. Rebuke your neighbor frankly. Because here’s the thing. It’s natural - human - for us to have conflict in our lives. Conflict in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can be very, very good.
Just as homeowners set physical property lines around their land, we need to maintain mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries for our lives to help us distinguish what is our responsibility and what isn’t. What is me, and what is not me.
Play serves as a reminder that God is good, and that in God, we get to experience a life that exceeds our capacity to measure or control. God invites us to give a tenth of our resources towards celebrating because it opens us up to the God who is dancing around and through us.
And then we come to the most peculiar line in the story: and when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” Saw how he died. What is it about how Jesus died that so suddenly struck the heart of this Centurion that he was able to see something no one else could?
As we examine the story of Jesus before Pilate, we will look at three characters. All with different “ends” or “goals” and each with a different understanding of the “means” necessary to accomplish their goals.
Most of us, when life gets overwhelming, when something threatens us or feels out of control, when we shoot off a firework we didn’t mean to, we tend toward fight or flight.
Jesus never asked us to wallow in shame, to feel really, really bad about ourselves and carry the weight of it all on our shoulders for the rest of our lives. Jesus never asked us to give him an eye for an eye, to pay him back, because no amount of beating ourselves up or paying him back can undo the damage of our sin and no amount of hard work can merit God's forgiveness. Jesus does not ask you to die for your sin. He already did that.
English doesn’t have a word for this kind of longing feeling, this melancholic yearning, this feeling of being away from your home and not knowing if you’ll ever get back there. So we have steel guitars.
As humans made in God’s image, we are designed to delight in beauty, just like God does. We desire it, we admire it, we recognize it when we see it. We have an innate instinct to respond to it. Beauty can confront apathy and strengthen courage. It can give us vision to imagine hope, and can warn us of the consequences should we just blithely maintain the status quo.
What would you think, if you were Jesus in that moment? What would you be feeling? Would you be pleased with what just happened? Would you encourage others to do the same thing? No. I don’t think Jesus was pleased with what she did. I think he looks at this system that has been oppressing the poor, and he sees the poor being oppressed one more time right in front of him, and I think he’s outraged.
We so badly want to be like Jesus. We love who he is and what he represents. We love how he challenges the status quo and breaks social barriers and fights for what’s right. And we want to be like that. But we’re not Jesus. And that way of being doesn’t come naturally for us. So we settle for the next best thing. Method Acting. We stay in character always. But we never actually become.
This morning we are going to look at another undeniable great: the Greatest Commandment. We are going to learn a little bit about what love looks like, and what it means to be a Christ follower who loves God and loves neighbor. Because when Jesus names something “The Greatest Commandment,” it will probably fall under the essentials category and possibly even the rare non-negotiables category.
And with his opponents whimpering on the mat before him, Jesus goes in for the finish by telling a story about a vineyard, a creative and gracious vintner, and some insanely insubordinate hired help. But before we dig too deep into the passage, I first want to talk about kinetic mobiles like this one here, because it will help us make sense of what’s going on in this passage.
So whether he responded as an unmasked dissident or a Roman shill, Jesus interrogators were content that they had him cornered. Like the question, “So is it true that you are no longer embezzling money from the bank where you work?” there seemed to be no right answer. But then something amazing happened.
Jesus instead just destroys the tree like a hangry kid in the midst of a total meltdown. What the heck, dude? I mean, if this is what God’s judgment looks…
Therefore, whenever Jesus would heal someone or cast out a demon, often it would be followed by the command to keep it a secret, well the time has come to throw that out the window. Jesus is done avoiding crowds and he is done with the secrecy. The Triumphal Entry is the event that marks the beginning of Jesus’s open confrontation with the Religious establishments in Jerusalem.
“There was no longer any sea.” In all honesty, as many times as I’ve read this passage before, I’m not sure I had ever really considered that clause specifically. What does that mean? Why would John include it in this passage of hope and promise?
You can have your true self - the self with all its insecurities and struggles and joys and quirks. And then there’s the chiseled self, the perfect self, the self we wish we were. It’s the self that’s been edited, or cropped, or arranged in the way we think will make us seem the most attractive, or the most lovable, or get us the most acceptance, from those around us.
Celebrating Christmas and remembering Christ at the same time might not actually feel possible for you. Instead of the light of Christ, we’ve substituted the glitzy lights of Christmas. Like the way that smog can hide a beautiful sunset, the light of Christ gets overwhelmed by the dark cover of busy.
Matthew is interested in the WHO of the story: ‘WE saw HIS star…’ Matthew is interested in the Ones who saw the star, and the One who sent it! And ONLY when we understand those two characters can we grasp the MEANING of the Star!
There are certainly parts of our Christian life that happen instantly...but that’s not the kind of transformation I am going to talk about this morning. There is in fact another kind of change, and we don’t like this kind of change as much. We don’t like the kind of change for which we have to wait. The transformations that takes time.
And while we’d all like to get to where Bartimaeus was, sometimes that’s easier said than done. More often, we’re like the other characters in the story who have misconceptions about God that make it difficult to see beyond sight. And those misconceptions, they rob us of the abundant life God intended for us to experience.
What’s your Second Motivation? What motivates you? Just below the surface, what are those other, quieter, more hidden reasons that threaten to drive the things you do?
The Kingdom of God belongs to those who are: Helpless. Completely dependent. Without security.
We read that, and it seems like an innocent enough question. “Jesus, what do you think about divorce?” But it was actually a loaded question. Here’s why. Because at this point in Jesus’ story, divorce laws had become very, very complicated. This was one of the questions of their time.
While there are many things that positively influence the likelihood of a child carrying their faith on into adulthood, missiologists and sociologists have identified three critical things. Third on the list — making sure that in their church, kids feel the safety and freedom to ask whatever questions they have about life and love and God. The second most important factor in the faith development of children is that someone who isn’t their parent and isn’t their pastor take an interest in their spiritual life. And the very most important factor is simply this — that kids see their parents actively loving Jesus, serving their neighbors, and participating in Christian community.
So even when we win, even when we achieve our goal and get that thing we’ve always wanted, we still don’t have what we really desire or really need….a sense of security at the core of who we are, that we are loved no matter what honor we have or what honor we don’t. Honor is a Race we lose, even if we win, because to “win” the Race for Honors is to destroy all hope of love - love of myself, love of my neighbor, love of God - love, the very thing we’re craving in the first place.
So even when we win, even when we achieve our goal and get that thing we’ve always wanted, we still don’t have what we really desire or really need….a sense of security at the core of who we are, that we are loved no matter what honor we have or what honor we don’t. Honor is a Race we lose, even if we win, because to “win” the Race for Honors is to destroy all hope of love - love of myself, love of my neighbor, love of God - love, the very thing we’re craving in the first place.
Glory is a promise we are given, but it does not come without suffering and pain; however, God is loyal, trustworthy, and faithful. He knows the road is hard because he has travelled it and travels it with us. Be encouraged this morning that He does provide respite when the road is hard, because He’s good.
This father, already no stranger to heartache, was again! crushed under the weight of one more disappointment. One more failed hope. One more heartbreak. And the religious enforcers pounced on his pain so that everyone watching would know just how much of a crock Jesus’ way was. The scene Jesus walks into is not a pretty picture. It’s a scene filled with pain. The emptiness of the gloating scribes. The disappointment of the disciples. The powerlessness of the father.
If I’m supposed to love my neighbor, like you say, if that’s how to build a better neighborhood, then…who exactly is that? Who exactly is this “neighbor”? It’s a great question. Because if I’m supposed to love this nameless faceless “neighbor” with the same passion and urgency and radical care that I love myself, I want to know who that “neighbor” is. Where do I focus this radical love?
So today I want us to camp out on this question Paul raises for the Corinthians and for us: How are we building? What are we building with? And this is the image that Paul has in mind as he is writing to his friends in Corinth.
When I hear you describe God, occasionally I wonder if you understand what our Savior is really like. Some of you see God as rigid, irritable, or aloof. Some of you don’t describe God that way directly, but the way you relate to God suggests that underlying assumption. Saint Athanasius described what God is like with a simple metaphor that’s ironically prohibited in some churches today: a dance.
Because when desires become expectations, there isn’t room for joyful gift giving and receiving. There’s only room for dissatisfaction and disappointment in their absence. And over time, disappointments become resentments, and resentments become bitterness. And bitterness kills. Because marriage has stopped being about what we’re dreaming and hoping for, and instead has become about me and my expectations that you aren’t living up to.
This week's lie is a sneaky lie - as lies go. It implies that the only place children can or will learn about God is in Sunday School - which we call Kidsrock here at Highrock.
Instead, we believe teaching children about Jesus is the responsibility of every adult in church. We don’t get a mulligan on this - the faith of the children within our community is impacted by each and every one of us, for better or for worse.
No, in the face of tragedy and suffering, for most of us, this belief - that everything happens for a reason - it shows up in the form of a question, a question that has driven more people away from faith that probably any other question in the history of Christianity. “Why?”
Ask yourself: what do I admire so much that it becomes the fixation of my thoughts, the longing of my heart, the master of my will, and I value it more than my own self? What do I put my hope in for lasting satisfaction?
In our attempt to do good things and to be good people, Salem has bought into a different kind of religion: humanism. Humanism: the idea that if I do good things, I will be a good person, so - in the end - good will come back to me too. Humanism is karma with skin on; karma with flesh and bones: it’s the idea that as long as I keep doing good things, I will be considered good enough, so whatever happens in the future, surely goodness will come to me.
For most of us in this room, I imagine, there is an unhealthy form of family first. From positions of privilege, with relatively unlimited resources at our disposal, we can make family the center of our universe. We can turn family, which God created to be a good thing, into the very reason for our existence. The dangers is when we make family first our religion - when we treat family AS our mission.
The people who did answer mostly said that the commandment they knew was: “God helps those who help themselves.” That phrase is no where in the Bible, but most Americans think it is. It’s this idea that my good destiny, my good fortune, my good reality is really up to me. Sure, God will help me too - but ultimately, I have to get the ball rolling first. And if that’s true, the opposite is also true - anything bad that happens to me is really my fault.
Today, we’re going to look closely at this lie “God won’t let you face more than you can handle,” because the truth beyond it has reminded me a lot about God over the last few months.
Devotion isn’t about emotional or passionate attachment. It’s about a commitment to meeting together anyway. It’s about staying close to God and God’s people, about syncing up our heartbeats together regularly. It’s about reminding ourselves over and over that when it comes to the most vital thing in life - our God - we’re not alone, even if we’re alone everywhere else in the world.
All told, many of us spend a good portion of our lives exploring and re-exploring our identity, and at each turn or transition, it’s easy to find ourselves asking this question again...Who am I?
We’ve been preaching through the gospel of Mark and today is pretty exciting because we’ve reached a turning point. This passage is the hinge on which the whole gospel turns. The fundamental pivot point centers on the question that dominates the gospel: Who is Jesus?
But in every city, in every country, in every culture the world has ever known there are those things we just kind of…get used to. Maybe we don’t see them after awhile, or if we do, they start to feel normal, even ok. Social divisions. Gender gaps. Racism. Injustice. Fear. They’re monsters, walking around our cities. And lots of us just kind of feel powerless to change them. So, we don’t. We accept them. We live among them. They become normal after a while. And when this is how we approach the seedy systems of our city, and the world? Everything kind of stays the same as it’s always been. Monsters become normal. But what if God is inviting us to do something about it?
And so here, now, before this woman, Jesus enacted for his disciples the logical conclusion of that form of exclusionary tribalism. It’s kind of a “here’s what this actually looks like when the theory is confronted with real life” moment.
The world seemed to be against them in that moment. As much as they tried to strain and fight, they couldn’t seem to get where they wanted to go. And so many of us, when we look at our lives, at our world, the wind seems to be against us too. We try and we try to get out of debt and we just can’t. We try and we try to find a home to live in and we just can’t. We try and we try to lose weight, get healthy, make the grade and we just can’t. We try to make the relationship work and we just can’t. Everything we do to climb out, make the break, make things work, and it just doesn’t. Everything we do to try and better our lives, to get out of the storm, and over and over, we get shoved back to where we started, or further back. The wind is against us. We just can’t catch a break…
Whether you’re telling someone what you’re studying in school, what you do for a living, why you’re busy on Sunday mornings, why you have so many Scripture references around your house, you’re opening yourself up to someone and sharing the one thing you hold most precious. And why is that so awkward, so terrifying? Because we might be rejected.
And though today we’re going to look more specifically at grieving the death of someone we love, as in the story of Lazarus, the principles of grief that we’ll look at can be more broadly applied to most any loss we face.
A few weeks ago, it happened. A terrible, no good, very bad thought crept inside my head. This new place? This perfect place? This promised land place we JUST moved into? It’s not big enough. This place, this perfect place, it’s just not enough. This is the story of my life, I guess. The story of not enough. It turns out that there is no enough - no safe enough, or free enough, or clean enough or big enough for me. There’s just not enough of anything, really, to keep me happy. And so I move, I adjust, I fight, I pray, I beg for more…for enough, finally…to be content, with life. I think moving to a new address will be enough. Moving to a new title will be enough. Taking on a new job or friendship or accomplishment will be enough. But no matter what I try, I can’t find the address I’m looking for. And I know I’m not the only one. Because this is the question we all ask, at some point or another. What address, what home, what foundation will be enough so I can finally just go on living?
This week, we’re looking at Nehemiah as we consider what it means to be “A. P.O.In.T.” Leader”
Accept God’s Calling
Pray God’s Promises
Observe the Problem
Interpret the Findings
Take Action
Jesus, the word made flesh. Super and natural. God and man. Grace, God with skin on. Truth, God with a backbone. The skin and bone of God incarnate. All grace, all truth, all the time. That was Jesus. That was one of the things that made him unique. Because for most of us, that blend of grace and truth isn’t always so seamless.
Whether you get aggressive or get avoiding, refusing to forgive kills. The stockpiled bitterness will poison my soul. My reactive aggression will kill off my relationships. Time does NOT heal all wounds. The garbage stays under the rugs until it’s cleaned out. It doesn’t just go away on its own. Because if we don’t do something with it, that hurt WILL cause more hurt to either our relationship to God, or to ourselves, or to others. So what do we do?
If we turn the page to the first option, she keeps the lepta. Or at least one of them, right? This is the safe thing, the prudent thing, the wise thing, to do with her last lepta. She should stay alive for at least one more day because then maybe she can figure out another day after that. She can try to buy food with it, try and invest it somehow, save it for when she’s really, really truly starving - and really, that won’t be a long time from now. Maybe in the meantime, she can find a way to multiply the lepta, get a little bit more, keep going a little while longer. Keep the lepta, most of our world would say. Keep the lepta, most of us would say. But there is another option, another ending to the Choose Your Own Adventure.
These are the thoughts that I wrestle with...especially when the stakes get high, when I face uncertainty, when I’m in uncharted territory, when I’ve never done this before. I’m afraid. I doubt. I want to know the worst case scenario…and I want to be ready for it. I want contingencies and audibles and backup plans and cushions and safety nets.
The real evil, the real scandal in this story isn’t only found among the demons instead, much of the very worst evil in this story was hidden safely at home or safely at work or safely at the market and safely far awayfrom this man. Here’s the thing. Like the townsfolk, there’s a certain false security in believing, “I know where evil is! It’s over there!” To chain evil to a name or to a people or a place creates a false hope that at the very least it can be controlled, if not avoided altogether.
And here’s the thing. These ARE all big storms. We don’t need to minimize the enormity of our circumstances, of our struggles, of our fears. Let’s call it what it is. None of us are exempt from facing big storms in life. We all have, and we all will.
They did it all because they knew that what gets illuminated, what we shine a light on, or cover in bright highlights that’s what will capture our attention, affection, and devotion. What is capturing your mind's attention? What is capturing your heart's affection? To what are your hands devoted?
Given our experiences, questions, insecurities, anxieties, and the overwhelming circumstances we find ourselves in… we don’t really know if we can name specific places God is moving anymore. We aren’t really sure we hear His voice. We know we can’t just stop. We have to keep chugging along. So maybe it’s time to put out heads down and figure things out for ourselves. I mean, how else are we supposed to respond?
If you ask a Christian today what the Gospel is, they might tell you what you have to do in order to be saved. But it’s only relatively recently in church history that the good news has been reduced to just what you need to do to get saved. Yes, individual salvation is part of the good news, but it’s just a part. The larger story is that Jesus is the promised and true king, and his birth signals the beginning of a new age! We are invited to celebrate this new king, to be citizens of his kingdom, and to join with him in building his kingdom and spreading the good news.
Whatever you’re facing, whatever you fear, hear the message of the angels today; don’t be afraid. God has given us good news of great joy. A savior has been born to us, the Messiah, our Lord. May we receive him into our hearts and our lives this advent.
There are lots of people who are called out to be disciples but they stay in the crowds. They like the story of Jesus, they like to see him and experience him and receive from him, but they don't really like to join in the mission or be changed. They want to be tourists, but they don't want to be travelers.
The supporters of Herod were friendly with the Romans and politically connected. They took little interest in the Pharisees religious concerns, but managed to find a common enemy in Jesus. So what exactly did Jesus say or do to make both the religious establishment and political powers of his day riled up enough to plot his death?
Fear is much different. Fear are those negative things that hang onto you and drive you. Fear are those pressing, gripping, controlling thoughts that shape the way you view the world and interact with other people.And these fears?I can be honest, here, right? Because this is church and that’s what you do. These fears? They so often control so much of what I do and who I am.
If we are longing for community and longing for connection, we have to let others in. We have to admit we have needs and can’t do life all on our own, we cannot face challenges all on our own. We cannot fix ourselves. God has given us each other for support when we are weak and to celebrate together when we feel strong. If we only engage superficially with God and those around us, we will be stuck in superficial relationships.
Every time I say no to serving, I’m saying yes to spending my time elsewhere. So I need to be clear on my why for existence, Before I start saying yes to investing everywhere And so never truly investing anywhere.
For more information on developing a life thesis statement, go HERE.
For more information how to say no to what you're not called to, go HERE.
If you’re a Christian, you might even go to church each week to pray these words, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” And then we wait, holding out hope for God’s kingdom to come and fix everything, never really expecting that God’s answer to fixing all this? God’s answer to fixing all that, is actually to fix me, first.
I think we all live, not out of an overflow of love, but out of a deficit. We live, not as if we are loved, but desperately needing love, craving love, even hoarding love - love that we can only get if we do all of the right things. And continue doing them, forever.
Here’s the thing about clanging cymbals. When everyone’s clanging their own pair of cymbals, declaring their own views and condemning all others, no one can hear each other anymore. We stop listening. And as much as it seems like we’re communicating - over communicating it seems - we end up in a world where anger is the prevailing climate, and loneliness is the pervasive epidemic.
We all have people we’d rather shun or ignore, than run to help. We all have people or teams or tribes who we secretly (or not so secretly) cheer over when things don’t go the way they wanted. Who is that for you? Who do you have a hard time loving?
In the next two weeks, we’ll see how the story wraps up. But this week is about the middle part, the in-between part, the part where Jonah’s in trouble and as readers, we’re just not sure how he’s going to get out of it.
The invitation is to remember God’s scandalous grace, and so become a people who are present to the depths of each and every moment, seeing God in more and more and more people, places, and events, each and every day. And in the midst of the storms that arise around us, we now get to be a people who are willing to die to our own preferences and privileges, laying our lives down for the sake of our neighbor, just as God did for us when we were still his enemies. And because of God’s dangerous grace, we now get to jump into the storms of sin and shame that threaten to drown our neighbors.
Their story starts in the 3rd century. The Roman Empire was still in power, and it was still making life a little difficult for Christians, and it was still representing values that Christians didn’t. So a group of early Christians ran away to the deserts of Egypt and the Middle East. They ran to escape the heavy hand of Roman rule on top of them and to finally live free. They ran from their wealth toward a life of poverty, from comfort toward a life of wilderness wandering.
Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general of the United States, has said many times in recent years that the most prevalent health issue in the country is not cancer or heart disease or obesity. It is isolation. Let's take a look at how Jesus directs us to fight loneliness together.
This week, we’re going back to the fourth century to study a human who was given the label heretic. His name is Donatus Magnus, and he was the leader of the movement that has been given the name “The Donatist Heresy.” As I spent time with the story, it captivated me. The Donatus story is a story of trauma, pain, bias, and politics. At its core, the Donatist Heresy asks the question, “How far does forgiveness reach? How far must we extend it?”
St. Catherine of Siena's story is one of God using the uneducated to stump the wise, and the weak to shame the strong. Her’s is the story of God using the lowly and powerless to nullify the high and mighty. But -- her’s is also a story of tragedy. A story of a debilitating eating disorder driven in large part by an unrelenting quest for perfection. She is a hero that the world couldn’t see coming, didn’t really know what to do with, and in the end, couldn’t be without.
Flannery O’Connor had a lot of the acerbic wit of Twain, and certainly wrestled with some of the same fears about the future. Being a devout Catholic, this writer wouldn’t abide me calling her a saint, and being humble and self-aware she wouldn’t abide me calling her a hero. But she offered something to me and many others that most great American authors couldn’t offer, something that repositioned her whole view of humanity and existence.
The Feast of St. Nicholas became Sinterklass...became Christkindle...became Santa Clause, Kris Kringle, and jolly old St. Nick. Let's finally peel back the historical layers and ask who was the real Santa Claus -- Sinterklass -- St. Nicholas?
Today I want to introduce you to a similar young man. Zealous and tenacious and, like Anne, familiar with tragedy from a young age. His name is Origen....with an E (05 Origen with an E). One of the greatest theologians in Christian history that perhaps is only rivaled by Augustine in genius and only by Anne Shirley in his imagination. More than anything what I love about Anne Shirley is that she is a learner. She and Origen share a ravenous love for learning and for books. And like Anne, his speculation got him into some trouble.
Today we’re going to begin our series by looking at my favorite anti-hero, the arch-heretic: Marcion, the Bishop of Sinope. A man whose influence we still feel today, and whose lesson is just as important today, nearly 1800 years after his death.
Remaining faithful to a difficult boss, a selfish friend, or a wavering spouse is the exception to the rule in our culture today. Not so in God's culture. Let's take a look at His response to an unfaithful people in the book of Exodus.
On the very day of the Lord’s passover, Israel was saved from her slavery. It was a night of deliverance not to be forgotten. And for generations upon generations, the Israelites celebrated each Passover as a way to remember God’s promise of protection and as a reminder of where they came from so that they would never forget how they got out Egypt, Mitzrayim, out of the narrow straits, and into the wide and spacious land promised so many years before.
It was a day so profound — so unlike anything the world had ever seen before — that even the calendar would be re-written, and the years would be marked from this moment onward. A new hope is about to burst on the scene.
History is about to start over and a new age is about to begin.
Evil will be used for good, mourning will turn into laughing, sadness into surpassing joy. Injustices will be righted. Equity will be established. Righteousness will reign.
Because God has come down.
This is what the Exodus offers as hope for a different future.
What does it mean to be great? Is it something based on achievements? Meaning, becoming rich? Well liked? Well known? What if I told you that the key is associated more with words like embarrassed, weak, and rejected? Let's see how this applied to Moses in our passage in Exodus.
Sometimes we build up the courage to dare greatly, putting ourselves out there and bravely going where we have not gone before, but the ending is not what we hoped for. What happens next? When God invites us to step forward courageously, does he promise a happy ending?
It’s a pretty good story. A baby born under a death sentence becomes a prince of Egypt…becomes a Hebrew Batman bringing vigilante justice…becomes an exile…becomes a hero…becomes a shepherd.
Something interesting stands out to me about Exodus 2. For 22 verses, we read the incredible, you-can’t-make-this-up-if-you-tried story of Moses’ life…and at no point in the story do we read single reference to God. Not once.
I wonder if Moses ever sat on a hillside and asked the questions that we ask: How did I end up here? Is all of this random? Chance? Luck? Does it mean anything? I wonder if Moses ever took stock of his life, looked towards heaven, and asked, “Why did all of this happen? Why has the road been so crooked? Why didn’t you show up more?”
But when I read Exodus 2, the text starts to ask me a question, “What if God did show up? What if He shows up all the time...but I just miss him? What if HE is moving, but I don’t see him?”
The Hebrew word for "Egypt" in Exodus is Mitzrayim, meaning narrow straights. The same place known to the ancient world as verdant, majestic, a center of culture and progress, this place was remembered by Israel as a place of suffocating limitations, a place of oppression.
Egypt had been a place of great promise for the Israelites, when Joseph rose to power long ago. And it served them well as a home for generations, and became a place of growth and fruitfulness. But in time, it became Mitzrayim, narrow and constricting.
How often is this pattern seen in our lives? The very land of promise, the fledgling relationship, the acceptance to that prestigious school, that perfect home: at first, it felt like freedom, like promise. It felt like a joy and calling so substantial that you could unpack your bags and live forever in it, burn the ships, make a home in that new opportunity, that new life. And then that verdant delta, that source of new life, starts ever so slightly closing in on you. With every new disagreement, with every new impossible assignment, with every new spike in property taxes and every new unexpected repair, the broad acreage of your joy becomes your Mitzrayim, narrower and narrower with each added demand, and what gave you hope and happy thoughts now steals your sleep and takes up far too much square footage in your daily thoughts.
There are a bazillion things, a bazillion times a day competing for our attention. Some of us are close to burning out or burning up, trying to keep up. Others of us find ourselves stuck in the rut of routine, managing boredom. Do we notice the burning bushes that God places in our paths?
Whether it’s an external or internal front, most of us work really hard to hide our real selves behind some kind of projected persona. We’re not all that different from the biblical character Jacob, who is the main player in the start of our new sermon series, "Out of Egypt: Liberation from Life's Narrows."
Every Easter, year in, year out, so many of us come to church, and we shout, “Christ is risen!” And lots of us, we believe that. But others of us, we hear that, and we think…that’s a nice tradition. It’s a quaint story, perhaps. But we haven’t really ever seen that, heard that, experienced that, someone rising from the dead.
Some things just have to be seen, heard, felt - experienced - to be believed.
You are likely, like me, where you are today because somewhere along the way, someone showed up for you when you needed them to. For whatever reason, theirs was the voice you needed to hear, or they were the friend you needed by your side. Let's take a look at Christ's final command before ascending to heaven, with this in mind.
We’re never given a guarantee that prayer will change our circumstances.
For sure, sometimes it does. Sometimes, for reasons unknown to me, prayers for a change in circumstance gets answered. Sometimes the sickness is healed. Sometimes the addiction ends.
Sometimes you find the job of your dreams or you find “the one”. Sometimes the relationship is healed and restored.
But other times our prayer for a change in circumstance doesn’t get answered, and the sickness isn’t healed. The addiction doesn’t end. We don’t find the one. The relationship stays broken. We not only don't get the job we want, we lose the job we have.
What gives?
What difference does prayer make? Why even bother with it?
When we hear the word "repent," many of us immediately think of street preachers and televangelists shouting about God’s wrath and judgment. Maybe even some of us think of our own experiences in the church - moments when we’ve felt shamed for our choices or thoughts or habits. And yet, we cannot escape the fact that, according to Scripture, repentance is a necessary part of experiencing God at work in our midst. So that begs the question: what does “repentance” actually mean?
We’re hardwired to stick with the status quo. We like what we know. And we don’t like…what we don’t. It’s uncomplicated. It’s not hard to understand. It doesn’t challenge us. It’s why so many of us make the same mistakes over and over again. In other words, we are often comfortable being dry ground. What can God do with that? The prophet Isaiah shares exactly this.
A few weeks ago, Pastor Brynn made a joke about how conversations with me have a tendency to wind up on the subject of Judgement Day. And you all laughed because you thought she was kidding.
Well today, that IS where our conversation is going.
Judgment Day.
The church is a web of relationships - and just like is true in any relationship, sometimes the church is hard to love. The second that we sense inauthenticity, we feel lied to. Cheated. We feel unsafe and tempted to run in the other direction. Christians are still fallible, broken human beings with diverse and diverging opinions. Fallible, broken human beings who can still hurt us quite a bit. How then, should the church respond to inathenticity?
We can and should debate all day long on immigration policy. The ability to love one another while being united in mission in the midst of disagreeing viewpoints is one of the hallmarks of a strong and healthy church. But what is the role of the Church when politics and what seems clear Biblical teaching collide? I wish to give you a framework to approach this discourse.
All day, every day, we’re surrounded by people making judgment calls about us. We’re led to believe that the key to our success is in being memorable for all the right reasons. We don’t want to feel forgotten. Or worse - that we, ourselves, are forgettable. So what does God say to a group of people afraid of being forgotten, afraid of being left behind, to you and to me in those moments?
More often than I care to admit, I find myself driven by the worry that (Rev 20:12) when the books are opened and the final analysis of my life is declared to the Cosmos, the heavenly host will look at my life and all just collectively... yawn… Is life and work all about generating stats that matter or is there more to it? Let's start by taking a look at where work began ... at Creation.
Because regret, these if onlys; that’s not how the story starts. The story starts with God. And God had invited the people to a life of shalom.We usually understand shalom to mean something like “peace,” like the absence of war or violence, but the Hebrew word actually meant more than that.
We want to experience the New Hope promised to us in the Gospel. When considering the change we want, but so far haven’t been able to create, like me, you might be tempted to do one of two things: give up, or run away. What comes next?
Though commentaries write a lot about the encounter between Mary and the angel, most of them skip the final phrase like it’s not even there. Let's call our attention to it now, because it may be key to understanding more than just Christmas, but what the spiritual life is all about. Also, join us in praying by using theDaily Examen.To download a PDF for your phone, clickHERE
When we are desperate, when we are longing, when we want to know HOW God is going to show up and help, it’s no wonder that we respond with some ambivalence!
For most of us, the Spirit is either...this intangible mysterious gift better left unopened...OR this super-dramatic, even scary force that I better keep my distance from.
AND YET, the angel’s answer, the answer of Scripture again and again, to all our “How” questions, is the Holy Spirit.
So who is this Holy Spirit, and why is this Spirit good news?
The good life was still within my reach, I reasoned. I just needed a little bit more and I’d be all set.
When times get tight, financially, do you ever spin out like me? Start wandering down the paths of “if only …” and, “I’d be set if only...”
I would bet that most of us have gone down this rabbit trail at some time or other.
But here’s where we get it wrong. Here’s how I got it wrong.
We think that the connection between money and contentedness comes down to this one word: security.
I think, if I had more money, I would feel more secure. If I had more security, I would be happier. Therefore, more money would make me more happier.
Or maybe for you, it’s not about money. It’s what that money can get you.
Musician John Mayer was interviewed awhile ago when he was 25, and he said, “The odd thing about having this kind of money at 25 is that everything always works. My watch works. My car works. Everything around me always runs smoothly. Things are supposed to break when you’re 25, but they don’t break for me.”
So many of us, we don’t want money in and of itself. It’s not about that for us.
We just want everything to work.
We don’t need the nicest stuff. We just need the nicer stuff. The stuff that doesn’t break all the time, that we don’t have to worry about.
That would make us happy. Is that too much to ask?
And you know, sometimes that logic works out, and for a while we find happiness.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
When big, unexepected transtions like these come, they usually come with a whole lot of big existential questions like, “Who am I now? What does this mean for us? How do we go forward? What do I do now?” And so I can’t help but wonder if that’s a little of what Mary might have felt when Gabriel shook-up her life that one night some 2000 years ago.
Many of us have heard the recounting of Mary being visited by an angel, many years ago. She was likely 12 or 13, living at home with her parents, and engaged to a man named Joseph. When the angel reported that Mary was "highly favored" she was not greatly thrilled, but rather "greatly troubled." And yet, at the conclusion of their exchange, she responds, "I am the Lord's servant." Let's take a look at this powerful, five word phrase.
Our passage this morning finds us deep in the middle of a courtcase, like Pastor Angie introduced last week. But this isn’t just any court case. The witnesses? Are the nations. The defendants? Are the gods. And the question before everybody is which nation’s god is the real god?
Those seasons when the workload and responsibilities pile up. And the demands of your relationships feel daunting. Then you receive that unexpected call from a doctor or family member with that “not-so-good” news. And to top it all off, it seems like nearly every major household appliance breaks all at once.
When it rains, friends, it pours.
And I imagine this phrase was not lost on God’s people as they found themselves exiled in Babylon during the time Isaiah wrote the words from our passage this morning.
For the last few weeks, we’ve been going through a series on the book of Isaiah called One Hope. And throughout the series, we’ve considered the promises God makes to His people in the depths of despair. Because, for God’s people, the events leading up to the exile were not simply a minor rain storm…When it rained over Israel in the 6th century BCE... it poured.
Whether it’s online or in real life, we have our true self - the self with all its insecurities and struggles and joys and quirks.
And then there’s our filtered self, the self we wish we were.
The filtered self might look like our true self, but maybe isn’t totally what we’re actually like. Maybe we picked The Smart Filter, or the Put Together Filter, or the Hipster Filter. Some of us are wearing the Don’t-Hurt-Anybody’s-Feelings Filter, or the Perpetual Critic Filter, or the I’m in Control Filter.
But whether or not we hang outside office buildings in creepy cloaks and masks, or filter or photoshop our lives, to an extent, we all do this kind of life editing in one way or another.
If you’re like me, it’s hard not to see all this, and start to despair about the current state of our political system.
Government seems to be failing everyone, and everyone seems either too emotionally charged to too checked out to meaningfully solve any of the real problems facing us.
And it’s so easy to feel cynical, and want to avoid politics at all costs. And yet. And yet, the Bible generally, and Isaiah specifically, has a lot to say about it.
So as much as I'd sometimes rather, we can't avoid it.
The scriptures are chalk full of invaluable wisdom for our thinking about government, and offers tremendous hope regarding many of the most troubling problems facing our nation today. And like I've said already, my goal isn’t to push any particular, quote, agenda, but simply to address the questions: does God care about politics? And if God does, how should we?
If you’re like me, it’s hard not to see all this, and start to despair about the current state of our political system.
Government seems to be failing everyone, and everyone seems either too emotionally charged to too checked out to meaningfully solve any of the real problems facing us.
And it’s so easy to feel cynical, and want to avoid politics at all costs. And yet. And yet, the Bible generally, and Isaiah specifically, has a lot to say about it.
So as much as I'd sometimes rather, we can't avoid it.
The scriptures are chalk full of invaluable wisdom for our thinking about government, and offers tremendous hope regarding many of the most troubling problems facing our nation today. And like I've said already, my goal isn’t to push any particular, quote, agenda, but simply to address the questions: does God care about politics? And if God does, how should we?
Many of us know the feeling of drowning in the guilt, shame, or regret from something that we have done.
Make no mistake about it. We all mess up. We all make mistakes. This is part of the human experience.
We do things that we aren’t too proud of. Things that hurt others. Things that break trust and destroy relationship. Things that force us into places we do not want to be. Some are little things. But some...aren't so little.
Mistakes. Pains. Moments we do too much. Or too little. Things that are part of our human experience, but can very easily become define our whole human experience.
One beautiful aspect of being made in the image of God is that his people are creative. Instead of a sermon, this recording contains a compilation of songs and readings that highlight the creativity of the Highrock church family as we continue to learn from the parable of the prodigal son.
I have plenty of stories where my soul was disrupted by something powerfully painful. But the disruptions that I’d fight and die for?
They were the beautiful ones.
It’s the day i met my wife at Starbucks up in North Beverly.
The day I married her.
It’s the day we found out we were pregnant, even though the doctors had told us we’d never conceive on our own without medical intervention.
It was the day my daughter was born.
Holy Lord but I couldn’t stop crying.
For days. I mean, I was way worse than my infant.
I still can’t not cry when I think about it four years later!
It’s the day we birthed this church. The day we baptized Zhenyang.
The beauty of it all forever changed me, because in each of these moments, I saw, if even through a mirror dimly, the most powerful kind of disruption the world has ever known -- the wholly disruptive power of God’s love.
And it's this disruptive love that we witness and remember in the character of the Father that Jesus painted in his parable.
We all have a propensity to be younger brother-ish in the way we approach responsibility, sometimes.
But other times, we have a different problem when it comes to responsibility.
We tend towards being over-responsible.
We want to live up to and even exceed every expectation put on us. We never want to disappoint others and are perpetually looking to please those who we look up to. We play by “the rules” and never step out of line.
We’re dutiful and obedient to a fault.
But here’s the thing.
Eventually we start keeping score about our responsibility.
And if it looks like they’re getting ahead and we aren’t?
Well…a tiny, tiny seed of envy and resentment starts to sprout. But even the tiniest seed can grow into a field of bitterness.
Before long, all we see are the ways we’ve stepped up and they haven’t.
And before we know it, we’re lost in self-imposed exile of bitterness, just like the elder brother did in today’s scripture passage.
When it comes to choosing churches or neighborhoods or schools or companies to work for, most people place a premium priority, usually without realizing it - on whether or not they think can belong there. But fitting in is not the same as belonging. Belonging means telling our whole story - the triumphant parts AND the messy parts - and being embraced in it. Belonging means being at home where you are.
Repentance was this idea that we can look at what we’re doing, realize it’s very wrong, feel reeeeally badly about it, and then do the opposite thing. This was virtually the universal understanding of repentance among Jesus’ contemporaries, and clearly, it still lingers to today. But then Jesus gives the Pharisees and us these three parables about kids and coins and sons that together, tell quite a shockingly different story about repentance than anyone would have heard before.
Of all the people groups that are described in the New Testament, the group that those of us who consider ourselves Evangelicals are closest to in terms of ideology and theology, political activism and pragmatism, Evangelicals are more akin to the Pharisees of the New Testament than to any other group.
But here’s the rub.
Just like the Pharisees were then, Evangelicals are now known for what and who we’re against, rather than who and what we’re for. Evangelicals, just like the Pharisees, are known more for demarcating who’s in and who’s out, rather than reaching out.
Does this seem unfair?
You tell me.
It makes sense to rely on others’ expertise or experiences that we don’t have. We’re made to do that. The trouble is - so many of us go through life not really thinking about whose reviews we’re listening to. So many of us go through life, just kind of listening to the most convincing argument of the moment, or the most confident people without ever developing a firm foundation in what to think. Have you ever thought about what truths are shaping you? As Christians, we claim that it’s the Bible that shapes us, that it’s this truth and this story that tells us how to live.
There are too many things going on in our world that just aren’t fair.
Pick up today’s newspaper or simply listen to your coworkers discussing current events.
Our world is broken.
Black lives are being mistreated, children are being abused, mass shootings are at an all time high, and natural disasters are destroying cities around the globe. Bad things happen to good people all the time.
So it doesn’t really come as a surprise that some people, maybe even many of us in this room, question if God is fair, or if he even really cares.
This unfairness changes the way we view life, the way we view our world, and the way we view God.
Do we throw our hands up in defeat? Why bother trying to better myself and my life if I don’t really have any control? Do we see the injustice in our world and feel the urge to join the fight against it? Do we donate money to a non-profit, or move to a third world country to minister to others? Or maybe we just turn off the TV because we can’t handle the horrific news.
And what about our view of God?
How do we respond to God in light of this unfairness; in light of devastating earthquakes,
car crashes, racism, terrorist attacks.
Where is God in that kind of pain?
Where is God when life’s not fair?
Evangelism. Sharing our faith. Not really the most fun thing to hear, imagine, preach, or practice.
I think our intentions are good. I think at the heart of it we want to talk about our faith that is meaningful to us. I truly believe that we want to “...go and make disciples of all nations…”. I do believe Christianity is the way to live a full life and to bring God’s healing to a broken world.
But…evangelism is hard. Evangelism is uncomfortable. The idea of going out and sharing our faith can very quickly make us feel embarrassed. Sheepish. Afraid.
Sharing our faith with others means that we attach ourselves to the “Christian” label, and who wants to do that? We’ll feel like fakes. Failures. Frauds. And that hurts.
So we don’t. We keep to ourselves.
So what are we supposed to do? How do we reconcile this discomfort? How can we take a step away from the Christian Atheist lifestyle and begin to match our life with what we really believe?
Play doesn’t seem like something we should take seriously as Christians. Even if we want to play, so many of us don’t - I think Tim Hansel said it so well in the title of his book for Christians, "When I Relax I Feel Guilty."
So we keep plugging away at the to-do lists and timers. We’re supposed to be productive.
Useful. Purposeful. Which is all well and good…to an extent.
But what if Scripture is inviting us into even more?
We’re in a series called the Christian Atheist, and we’re considering today the Christian who doesn’t show change - progress from their former life outside of Christ, and outside the church. This is the Christian in stalemate. On one hand it seems clear that this Christian has been claimed; won over by Christ. They declare it in word. They go to church. They mind plenty of the manners of the Christian life. But in one way or another, the patterns of the world still live unchallenged in pockets of their lives.
So much of my life, I spend comfortable with being comfortable.
I mean, I feel like I’m a pretty good person. I’ll call my dad today on Father’s Day, I do date nights with my husband, I tithe and I volunteer and I make meals for friends when they have babies. But when it comes down to it, I’m pretty comfortable with being comfortable.
I look around at the way the world is, the brokenness and the sin and the shame, and I know God has and is doing something about it. But I’m pretty sure, so much of the time, that God is doing something about it through someone else.
Sure, I know that Christians are supposed to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and set the captives free in our world (Mt. 5:25). And I try to do that from time to time, for sure…as I have time.
But I can come up quickly with a long list of reasons why God isn’t calling me to do anything all that crazy.
So many of us, we know about God. But what we really want is to know God.
Because so many of us claim to follow Christ, but the way our inner lives are, you might never know it.
And this morning, we’re going to explore that foundational question - what does it look like to know God instead of just knowing about God?
In Deuteronomy 6:5, the sense we are left with is this: It is with our very selves that we are to love God. All that we have at our disposal: our power, our emotional health, our relational influence, our physical strength - all of it - our VERY SELVES - can be oriented in love toward God and toward our neighbor.
Opportunities to love God and others with our strength come around everyday, but we are not always ready to be faithful when they do. We are not ready, because we too often waste our strength on selfish things instead of on loving God and our neighbor in these ways. Believe me, I know.
Like we talked about last week, The Shema speaks of one, unified God: "Hear O Israel, The Lord is our God, the Lord alone."
And in the next part of the verse, Jesus invites us to love God with all of ourselves.
Not a part. Not a fragment. Not a piece. Not sometimes. Not in between appointments. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, all of your strength.
All. All of you. All the time.
This means my heart, my soul, my mind, and body - they’re all meant to work together toward one unified purpose. One me working toward one purpose. Loving one God.
One of the biggest struggles we face in our society is that we have so much freedom that a lot of us don’t know how to choose one option and not another.
But what would it look like for us this morning to make some hard choices about what matters most, even if it meant surrendering good things in our lives to choose the things that really matter?
This week, we are starting a new sermon series called “Whole Self In” and we’ll be spending the next few weeks looking at a passage in Scripture that Jesus called the Greatest Commandment: The Shema.
It's part of a pattern that we can no longer NOT see. It's the racist jokes. It's the unwritten prejudice. Most of us are honest, hardworking, and not racist. But there is an implicit racist bias that inflicts all of us. The snap-second judgments. The things that we assume about other people.
Where is Christ in this? What does progress towards reconciliation look like?
This morning, we’re continuing our sermon series by taking a look at what it means to experience intimacy in the family of God. A few weeks ago, Pastor Aaron defined intimacy as the desire to know and be known by others, and while I think many of us associate this kind of relationship most explicitly with our immediate families, our text this morning is an invitation to a broader, more holistic understanding of familial intimacy.
For various reasons, celibacy was regarded highly and pursued fervently by the Corinthian Christians. As a result of the glorification of celibacy, some women left marriage and engaged couples hesitated to proceed to marriage, thinking marriage was wrong way to live as Christians.
Paul was writing this letter to this church. To the people who glorified celibacy excessively, because their view on celibacy and marriage was built upon the incomplete understanding of the God’s kingdom. To the brothers and sisters in Christ who had the incomplete understanding of the God’s kingdom and, as a result, were over zealous about celibacy for wrong reasons.
With the particular context in mind, how does this passage sound to you? What’s Paul saying here?
Whether you’re in a sexually active relationship or not, the reality is that we’re all sexual beings. God designed our bodies to make sexuality possible, pleasurable, and compelling, so this is something that applies to all of us, regardless of our position in life.
Captured within our sexuality is the desire to know and be known, to love and be loved — the stuff of the heart of intimacy. In it’s ideal, our sexuality contains the urge to create and to learn, to lead and be led, to rest in the safety of unswerving commitment towards one another and to communicate how significant the other is to me.
At the same time, contained within sexuality is the urge to explore and to play, to be soft and tender, and yes, to sometimes be a little daring or even be playfully mischievous. In its idyllic expression, within sexuality we find passion, purpose and power, playfulness and pleasure.
The stuff of life. The stuff of intimacy. A glorious echo of our relationship to God and the mysterious union we all share as the bride of Christ. It turns out that in many respects, sexuality and spirituality are in fact two sides of the same coin.
And when God decided to confront the problem of our sin face to face, adding rules, it turns out, was never God’s intended solution. Resurrection was.
Getting better. Being better. Doing better. Finding better. Looking better. was never God’s demand for us to conquer the power of sin. A new chance. A new start. A fresh beginning. A new life.
Resurrection has always been God’s answer to free us from the crushing power of deadly sins.
Our vice for the day - envy - is uniquely dangerous, because it targets our core. Envy targets our center, our identity, our stability, the core of who we are, the foundation that holds up everything else. The writer of Proverbs put it this way: “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” (Prov. 14:30 NIV)
Neque est uiloentius ullum terrarum Vitium, of all the vices there is none more frightening, Prudentius writes, for Greed warps the lives of men into such calamities that they ultimately can only escape when they are thrown into Hell’s fire. Hear how we can be free from Greed from this message on John 11 and 12.
Listen as our own Brian James talk about Gluttony. Not only the "classic" gluttony, but also the glutton that our society produces.
Lust. Of all the vices, it’s one of the ones we find most deplorable when we see it in others, and the most shameful when we discover it in ourselves. And so, Christians have tried to squash it for centuries.
Did nature simply overload us in the mating department, hotwiring us for the sex that is so central to the survival of the species, and never mind the sometimes sloppy consequences?
Or is there something smarter and subtler at work, some larger interplay among sexuality, life, and what it means to be human?
And there, I think, is the ticket. Why are we so fixated on sex? Maybe it’s because something about our sexuality gets at the core of what it means to be human.
While “Can I go back and do that again?” is a question I’ve gotten accustomed to hearing on the golf course, for sure, it’s also become a question I’ve gotten accustomed to hearing when I meet with people. “Gah. I don’t know what happened! I mean, in hindsight I can see all the warning signs were there! I just didn’t pay attention to them. Why didn’t I pay attention to them? I wish I could go back and do it all over.”
I wish I could go back and do it over.
Have you ever felt this way?
To an outside observer it looks as though Naomi is suggesting that Ruth arrange a kind of Pretty Woman set-up with Ruth and Boaz having the ancient equivalent of a Vivian Ward/Edward Lewis type of relationship.
It’s risqué. But really. What could possibly go wrong with Naomi’s plan?
Well. Potentially, just about everything.
Whether Naomi's decision to return would yield prosperity or continued deprivation, for richer or for poorer, in shack or in mansion, Ruth was all in. What does this relentless mentality look like in today's culture where exits from sadness and loneliness do not open? Listen in to hear more.
True love, Gospel Love, is a commitment to do the best by, and believe the best about, another, and to do so without a desire to know where the exit doors are.
This Gospel love is at the heart of Jesus’s relationship with the Lord. It’s at the heart of Jesus’ love towards us. It’s at the heart of Ruth’s decision to stay with Naomi, and it’s at the heart of Jesus’ command to love one another. This is the heart of everything — everything — we are and try to do as a church here at Highrock.
Last week for the holidays, I had an unusually long amount of time to reflect on the past year. I drove eleven hours from Ohio to Boston with a friend. On the way back, we took turns asking one another questions that made us reflect on the past year. I’ll be the first to confess. I had to sift through many dark memories before I could recall the joyful ones. I’ll be honest with you.
When reflecting on these dark moments of the past year, I can’t help but ask…is God missing?
God makes great promises, but for now, like Anna, a lot of us are still waiting.
And against this backdrop God declares, “this is not the way it’s supposed to be. You were not made for a world like this” - and inside we know it’s true!
Which is why we love it when, (Isaiah 25:6,8) God promises: I’m gonna fix it! I’m going to wipe away your tears, I’ll remove your shame and destroy death forever. I’m going to satisfy the hunger in your bellies, and your souls with a feast that will never end!
It’s a great promise… but we’ve been waiting for so long, how do we know we can trust it? Are we fools to keep waiting?
5 months! That's how long Mary and Joseph were apart before he learned that she was "with child" ... but not by him. Can you imagine what Joseph must have felt? Can you imagine sending your fiancé off to study abroad — a fiancé you’ve never slept with, mind you — only to have her come back VERY pregnant? Not exactly the Christmas present that Joseph was expecting...
We live in a competitive culture. We’re natural scorekeepers. We naturally compare. And naturally, we want to win. Trouble is…games like these ones keep you working.They keep you working to fit in but stand out. Working for significance, working for acceptance, working to matter, because there’s always someone who could pass you by. And anyone who’s ever played a Game like this knows it’s a hard Game to win and an easy Game to lose.
Sharing about who Jesus is and what he has done, and then inviting someone to make a decision about Jesus was then, and is today, the most fundamental first step in the long journey of discipleship. But even so, the early church knew that turning to Jesus as the messiah was only the first step of a lifetime’s worth of steps. So, what comes next?
Choosing to live out God’s hesed in our lives means moving away from our tendency to surround ourselves with people like us and isolate ourselves from people like them. It’s moving away from our judgments of “deserving” and “undeserving.” The invitation to follow Jesus is an invitation to see others through God’s eyes, to remain committed to them and have compassion on them, to love them without reservation, regardless of whether or not we agree with them all the time.
Because the truth is, at one time or another, we have all been the “other.” At one time or another, each of us has been undeserving. The truth is that when we consider the greatness of God’s hesed, we are all undeserving. But the good news of the Gospel is that God has not given up on us. In Christ, God has put to death all of our brokenness and undeservedness so that He might pour out His hesed upon us.
My guess — and this is just a guess — is that in the last two years you’ve been hurt. You’ve been misunderstood. You’ve been misrepresented.
Which likely means that in the last two years, you’ve also probably gotten angry. Safe assumption?When you were angry, did you act more godly, or less?
It has been said that money can't buy you happiest. But is this completely true? Does Jesus believe this? Listen as Pastor Aaron talks about money.
There’s a huge difference between acting and being. In Matthew 6, Jesus is warning us that we often miss out on the kind of life we most want because far too often, instead of embracing a life changing encounter with God’s life-giving, life-changing Holy Spirit, we settle for acting spiritual instead.
Jesus calls us to be salt and light, but what does that really look like? What relevance does this have today? What are we to do in those days when we are not feeling like a disciple?
Lots of us have met Jesus.
And lots of us believe that he’s pretty great and maybe we even believe that Jesus can change the world.
But so many of us meet this life-changing,
world-changing person of Jesus… and then we just go back to the same old nets.
The old nets of people pleasing, of pretending to be something we’re not to avoid rejection. The old nets of judgmentalism when we’re feeling inadequate about ourselves. The old nets of workaholism because we’re not sure we matter without it. The old nets of trying to control our future
or the futures of those we love.
Like Ruth, immigrants to the United States are often seen as problems to be managed, rather than people to be supported.
But in the same way that God loves the orphan, the widow, and the impoverished, God also makes it crystal clear that he loves people just like Ruth -- people just like you and just like me -- people whose hunt for their true home has put them into vulnerable situations.
(Deut 10:19) And just like God loved and protected us when we were foreigners to Him, we are invited to love and protect those like Ruth who are foreigners among us.
Matter of fact, welcoming the Ger’im — the immigrant — is one of the most often repeated commandments in scripture, appearing 92 times, with only the imperatives “do not be afraid” and "worship only the Lord your God” appearing more frequently.
God commands his people -- us -- to love and protect those who are like Ruth, the immigrants making home among us.
Fostering relationships is hard work. Today, friendship can be traded or dropped with a single text. So many of us feel lonely every day and self-medicate to keep pressing on. It's costly to "lay down my life for my friend." What should it look like and how can I find the strength to do it?
We don’t have to go far in the Christian life before we’re impacted by this kind of polarization - either by giving it or receiving it but usually both - and the entire character and dignity of another person gets reduced to a nameless, faceless “other” which makes it easier to marginalize them and dismiss their views. So many of us do this.
And when this becomes our way of interacting with the world?
We end up with a culture of culture wars, where people no longer feel safe to dialogue, or to learn and ask questions…or to explore new opinions, or to be who they truly are.
For some of us, worshipping God once felt like a wide open land in which we were free to run, love him, and serve others. But now, that freedom is gone.
Now, God feels like a military inspector who, at any moment, could throw open your door and surprise you with a room inspection - ready to penalize you for not having your bed made, your uniforms cleaned, or not following the rules.
And so we retreat even more into rules. Before you know it, our list of rules becomes pretty long and our fences become pretty high. We forget what worship in that wide open looked like, because all we know about worship are our fences.
Worshipping God once was about loving him and serving others. Now, it feels like nothing more than following a Christian to-do list. In this rigid, legalistic, fenced in way of living, we feel trapped and isolated. We begin to believe our only purpose is to DO all the right THINGS. We lose track of God, and begin to treat other people differently.
And I believe God is heartbroken because of it.
Words have power; they can suck the life out of us, but they can breathe life into us too. David and Michal used their words to cut and destroy relationship, but Jesus used his words to heal and rectify relationship, eternally. How will you use yours?
Often times we label and stereotype based on race, upbringing, background, or finances. We stereotype and label based on parenting choices, spending habits, living room layout, or sexual orientation. Name the category, and it’s likely that we have some sort of stereotype associated with it.
But Jesus invites us to see things His way in our relationships: to lay down our tendency to apply labels on others and to choose a better way. A way that is not characterized by categories, but a way that reflects his love for the world.
What happens when our expectations for others go unfulfilled? How does this affect our outlook on our relationships, our dreams, our hopes, and our aspirations? And what in the world do we do with the ensuing disappointment?
Because, more often than not, our expectations are often the driving force that moves us from freedom to captivity, from prioritizing our love for God and our neighbors towards an imprisonment to our own desires, fears, and anxieties. We become so bound by expectations that we're unable to hear the truth Jesus offers us: there is another way, a better way… a way rooted in sitting before the Savior who fulfills all our desires, hopes, and aspirations.
It’s fine and good and free from scandal to talk about God the Living One, or God the Comforter, or God the Redeemer, or God the Artisan, or God the Abba, or even God the Shepherd, but to Consider God the Judge?
No way. No thank you.
That’s the metaphor most people don’t like. But why?
Some of us are following Christ, but our fists are still raised. We’re still living defensively, wary of the world and afraid to trust because we might get hurt again.
And if you’re following Christ but you’re still living that way, if you’re still living afraid, it might be that you haven’t released those hurts to Jesus, who charged into the threats and wrestled them to death, even death on the cross.
We were invited and empowered to live lives overflowing with love, and to follow God’s example by out anyone who doesn’t know that we have a Father who created them, loves them, and is eager to adopt them as His very own children, and inviting them to move into a new home with a new family and a new name and a new purpose. Galatians 4:1-7
God is the Great Artisan who takes joy in creating something new and recreating what’s been broken for no other reason than that it gives him great pleasure to imagine new possibilities and bring about new realities.
Philippians 2:5-12. No one thinks, "Slave the Great." We think Alexander the Great or Herod the Great. What I accomplish makes me something. But Jesus shows us that what makes us great is what we give up and how we serve.
I know the yearning to believe that what I'm doing matters and how easy it is to confuse that with the drive to be extraordinary. But to that, Paul says, "I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News."
We are to be peacemakers for Jesus - not peacemakers for our own solutions. We are to walk into hopelessness and scandalously declare that peace has come.
As peacemakers of Jesus, we conquer darkness through love and service. We are not discouraged by helplessness or considering ourselves as failures, but instead choose to be reassured by his rule. We proclaim confidence IN God by letting go of the need to BE God.
God says, "Do it again!" And like Jesus did, we rise out of our tombs, and we dance. Again, and again, and again.
“I am a bundle of paradoxes. I love and I hate,” he said. “I get discouraged and I hope. I lie and I tell the truth. I’ve been a homeless drunk and a successful evangelist. I’ve broken all the commandments six times Tuesday.
Yet God loved me not because of any of this, but simply because he is the Creator; he is the source and author of love. And in loving me, God has made me lovable.”
Contrary to how we love, God does not extol love on people in response to their good and put together lives; nor is it that only good and put together people are the ones he loves.
Instead, God loves because he himself is already perfectly good and completely put together. And that's enough.
Reformer of hearts and societies, lover of Jesus, but a man with a bit of a temper, please meet Martin Luther.
Marcion, the Bishop of Sinope, is arguably the arch-heritic in the history of the church.
marcion2.jpg
To Marcion, the person of Jesus was great, and so were his teachings. But the Old Testament and the Gospel of Jesus, Marcion argued, cannot be reconciled to each other. And in light of all these apparent contradictions, Marcion came to the only conclusion he could tolerate: we shouldn’t try to reconcile Jesus with the OT. Instead, let’s just dismiss out of hand the entire Hebrew Bible as something inspired by a lesser and juvenile god, not the Supreme God revealed as the Father of Jesus Christ.
And so Marcion spent 15 years of his life doing what no single follower of Jesus had done to date: he created a creed and compiled a single source of new scripture for the church, his version of our New Testament.
Marcion had gotten rid of what he didn’t like or what he didn’t understand, so that he could make God into his own image. Something we're all tempted to do. We're all tempted to be Marcionites at least a little bit.