Edenton Street UMC Sermons: Recent Episodes
ESUMC
Edenton Street is a community of faith inviting all to encounter Jesus, preparing believers to deepen their dependence on God, caring for those who are hurting, and sending ordinary people into the world equipped to do extraordinary things.
How might the invitation of Jesus be exactly what you need to discover ultimate breathing room amidst the relentlessness of modern life?
How might the surprising practice of getting lost be exactly what you need to get on God's path?
God works while we wait in his refuge. Stay with God. Hide in God. Do not leave God's refuge.
"Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." Ps. 27:4
Hope is not found in out righteousness but, in the righteousness of God...in the faithfulness of Jesus
A word of grace and comfort. God longs to gather us up under God's love and protection, so often we dodge God's embrace. But God still longs to hold us near and God weeps over our disobedience. (thinking of the image of a mom trying to comfort and hold her teenage son but he doesn't want it and pushes her away).
How might a moment of extreme clarity help orient us to be faithful disciples amidst the chaos and confusion of our world and everyday lives?
Feel stuck or in a rut? How might listening for a fresh word from God be the key to personal, relational and spiritual breakthrough in your life?
How might your relentless drive to achieve the ideal life be holding you back from chasing after joy, freedom, and life in Christ?
Blessed is the one, who despite everything, still believes. Believing the Unbelievable is a team sport.
Mary and Elizabeth's long-suffering and patience as the source of their unreserved "yes" to God's call.
Massive empire...sprawling tradition...zooming the camera onto these two women and their unfiltered explosion of joy.
Elizabeth: years of infertility and pressure to bear a son to a priest
Mary: Suffering under the powers that be as a young, peasant woman. Suffering under the stigma as an adulterer as she carried Jesus.
God chooses to use for great things the people who trust to him all the little things. God chooses to use those who believe, despite everything, God remembers them.
Will Build on Idea of Covenant and the Covenant King. Jesus fulfilled the covenant even undo death on a cross with and for us.
And How Jesus is the only King who actually fulfills promises...
Bigger/pastoral picture: Covenant allows us to fight for each other with both feet in the ring. With everything that we have. With a holy jealously for the other persons heart.
Typically, we do not fight for each other with "both feet in the ring." We are always on the edge of figuring out what we can do to keep one foot toward the exit.
There are examples of covenant in marriage of course, but the church is also a covenant community. Meant to fight for each other and our lives as if everything in the world depended on it.
Holding together justice and prayer; the already/not yet middle space of doing justice as Christians; what Wesley calls yoking together "piety" and "mercy"
Main point of family ministries is raising up a new generation to praise the Lord
We grow up into Christ when we are the church across all ages
Weaving together stories of physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, sexual healing within the congregation.
Jesus has the power to make us whole. No one else or no other thing has that power, only Jesus.
We are called to bring out the beauty in the broken; to restore hope for the hopeless in the name of Jesus
What if the ordinary rhythms of our culture were seen as an opportunity to stand for abundant life in the neighborhood?
What does it mean that Jesus calls us "friends?" What does it mean that God, who is all-sufficient, chooses to be in relationship with others? Why wasn't Jesus a lone wolf?
Loneliness epidemic in large part because of transience and social climbing of our culture. In our willingness to move from one group to the other, we are not held accountable with our lives to others.
We are made more holy and like Christ in relationship and community with each other. Accountability is key to growing up into Christ
holy friendships?
College students and investing in transient populations
Some of the most significant years of a persons life between 18-22. Faith either grows exponentially or is deadened dramatically
Parable of the Talents
Incarnational Ministry (God WITH us)
Mr Rogers-"won't You be my neighbor?" “We are called to be tikkun olam,’ repairing the creation.” – Fred Rogers (Post September 11 speech)
Theology of "repairers of creation" (Hebrew Word here) within the arena of our neighborhoods...THIS is the ultimate vocation of humanity.
The message version of psalm 127. The warning against making work our idolatry and claiming work as a place where we can co-labor with God.
Make the connection with the idea of "working within the womb of God," or practical spiritual tools for helping people reclaim their daily grind as a way of receiving daily grace. What if we saw our work not as a daily grind, but as a daily grace?
Bob Goff book...."Build a Kingdom, not your own castles" and use an example from book in which he totally transforms the daily grind for a limo driver.
Methodist prayer...."New every morning is your love, Great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world. Stir up in us a desire to serve you, to live peacefully with our neighbors and to devote each day to your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen."
How can you find refuge in God?
How is God our security, our strong shield and protector?
What are the other idols we tend to run to our exhaustion, fear, or insecurity?
Our ultimate refuge is in the house of God..."better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere" the Psalmist says.
Bob wrote a letter to his grandsons about legacy...pay attention, listen more than talk, God is there when no one else is.
-Psalms of Lament/Anger/Confusion/Frustration -These are the songs on the Album of your life that you play in confusion, in pain, in anger, in longing, in emptiness, etc. -The psalm meets us in the seeming silence and absence of God and stretches us to words, to prayer, to hope...
John 10:10-21 Ezekiel 34:11-24 -shepherding- If God is a shepherd and we are supposed to be like God, what does that mean and look like -Protection, being led, provision, comfort, "with-ness" -what do the rod and the staff really mean? -Help us understand the metaphor -"if I don't know how to pray..." this is in the repetoire -What does it mean for God to prepare for us in the presence of enemies
-Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard -Guy at the last gets the same pay as the guy at the first...everyone freaks about it being fair... -God is in the business of grace, not being "fair" We dont get what we deserve...we get far more than we could ever deserve....
every person matters building His kingdom any seed can grow into the kingdom We take a chance everyone so the Kingdom can grow everywhere in anyone.
Compassion is the key to turning the world upside down for the reign of Jesus.
A flip of the lenses of your life...we see everything in the world through the lens of compassion. Greek word for compassion means that your bowels are flipped "upside down" from the pain in the world.
In seasons of business or face paced...we forget the little details...but what we find in the "upside down" is that the compassion of Christ is manifested in the little details.
What if the Kingdom of God were hidden right beneath your feet? How would that fact flip your world "upside-down?"
What happened when the desire of outsiders to respond to the Gospel of Jesus and join the church was so high it almost broke the church? Take a look at how we might learn from the early Christians as they went back to the basics to decide who the church is "for."
Barnabas took the ultimate risk...on a person...on a belief that God can change people, make them new, and use them for the Kingdom.
Disciples were in fear...terrified of this man of his past...feel like this is the default of the church...to call to mind memory of past sins...to explain why certain folks shouldn't be permitted into the fellowship.
But Barnabas took the chance to advocate for miracles...
Imitating Jesus our advocate...
Transition to the table (we don't deserve to be here, but Jesus advocates for our seats).
Practical call to action..
You can't buy the power of God
You can't control the way the HS works, the way the wind of God blows
God is not an idea or a magic to be sold for profit, influence, etc.
"Death to Life"
Miraculous death to life Spirit of life animating the church spirit power
What do we celebrate in a baptism?
For one, we celebrate that the ordinary mundane of our everyday lives has been baptized in the life go Christ so that we can become a part of the extraordinary work of God's Kingdom in the latest chapter of the unfinished book of Acts.
Easter has just happened, we have a task to carry out now Students being witnesses at another campus College students can have deep faith God sends us out to be community is various places Evangelism, Faith, community New life is supposed to fundamentally change us Sharing, Going, doing
-Peacemaking in the world...confirmation Sunday -Peacemaking not same thing as peacekeeping. -Peacemaking for God's Kingdom. For the restoration of shalom. For the flourishing of the world. "Beloved Community" by MLK (koinonia). -From the security of knowing the peace of who we are before God, we are called to go to places of brokenness and pain to be peacemakers in the world....part of our UM tradition. -Christianity thrives on the margins, because we know that when we are on the margins we are with Jesus (where he always chose to place himself). -The outside transforming the center, not the center pushing into the outside. -Images of Peacemakers from Civil Rights movement (dogs biting the guy), Metoo Movement, Student Walkout Movement. -Sometimes we have to disrupt the "peace" (what Jeremiah said was "false peace" or 1 John calls "false prophets") to make true peace. -Peacemaking very often demands a disruption of politeness (i.e. protest).
-Spirits, forces, and the enemy tries to disrupt the peace we have with God and each other. -How to we test the Spirits and discern the voice of God? -How do we resist the lies and live in the promises of God's peace?
The Practice of Forgiveness
You don't want to be the kind of person who dies with a life full of grudges
What really stops us from pursuing peace with others? Pride and Pain
Pride: Of wanting to be in the right
Pain: Of willingly moving into the darkness
1 John lets us know of the imperative of forgiveness and living in peace with your brothers and sisters.
Resentment destroys...its a participation in death
Forgiveness gives life...its an imitation of Christ...dying and being raised to life again
-With all the light/dark imagery, "Here I am to Worship" would truly be great. I know its an oldie but the lyrics are good. -Bible leads us to this terrifying revelation: your life could actually be a lie. -1 John tells us the one true life is to walk as he walked...to in the words of John 1, live "full of grace and truth." -1 John outlines how we can live a life of grace and truth: confessing sin, asking God for forgiveness, walking in the light.
Acts 27:27-28:5 -What happens when you royally screw up? -When for all intents and purposes, your life is shipwrecked. -Grace makes us new, but grit is what is required to live into this newness of life. You have to hear the hard truths, crawl out of the hole, and fight like hell for a new shot at life. -God parts the red seas, but you have to have the trust and grit to walk through.
The toughest kind of grit is the grit that binds us to people. Its the commitment to be with and for people. The people you love and adore, the people who rip your heart out and stomp on it, the grit that demands the most courage and perseverance is the kind that commits us to people.
Within the context of last week's question...how can we get gritty about developing people of virtue....or the church's BETTER question....how can get more gritty about working with the Spirit to build people who reflect the character of God....who are holy.
Preface it with a quotation by David Brooks concerning the greatest builder of virtue is commitment. He says commitment to a partner, a vocation, a place, and philosophy. Yes, and I would add that as Christians, God's love commits us to people.
Naomi's question: Why would you want to commit to me when I'm of no use to me? You are in your prime, the world is before you, why would you want to sign up for this?
Offer all the cultural context and background for this question.
Ruth's response: "your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you go I will go."...of all the great kings and heroic warriors of the Old Testament, I think Ruth might be the most gritty.
God is committed to us far before our usefulness to God. God commits and pursues after us with an "everlasting love."
Ex. from marriage vows...we ask couples to pledge before the covenant community that they will love their spouse even when its not useful or beneficial to them....again....not because we know this will make them happy in the long run, but because the purpose of Christian marriage is to make us holy....to reflect God's covenantal love in a world that shuns commitment.
Share the story of why the pastors chose "grit" to define the essence of ESUMC. We are a church committed to seeing the gritty love of God take hold of all the people of our parish. We see the love shared in the Trinity, the love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as full of grit. We see this as a congregation full of "grit."
Pastoral Challenge(s): Who have you given up on that you could recommit to? Praying for? Being with?
-The only way you grow is with grit. No pain, no gain....weve heard them all. -But how do you grow as a virtuous culture in a world that loves everything quick, easy, and efficient. Is there a shortcut to growth in virtue and Christ? -Virtue does not necessarily equal victory. Quotation about the long defeat from Paul Farmer. -Peter calls it "the genuineness of a faith that is tested by fire." Key verses are 1:6-8.
-The coming of Jesus initiates a great exchange. -Invitation into receiving the gifts of God that are inexchangable. -All of God's promises are activated in Jesus, they are alive and available to you. -a garland instead of ashes -the oil of gladness instead of mourning -the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit -Let this be the Christmas where God breaks you out of the rut, lifts you out of the pit, and restores you to the enter fortunes of life with Christ.
-Why is the return of Christ and God's impending judgement Good News? -"Summer is near," not "winter is coming." -Story about a mediocre ending to a long movie not being worth the wait. -God will make right what we have made wrong. -Folks have used the ending for control, for fear, for conformity....knowing the ending is good gives us freedom to live in the reality of our lives with God today. -The return of Christ allow us to face the future with hope, not afraid of the ending....always waiting and looking for the God who works to...quote the song "Jesus We Love You." -Because we know the end of the story, we can keep AWAKE, watching and living, and waiting to see what happens. -Where in your life can God offer the courage to keep watching and waiting to see what happens?
-Imagine Immeasurably More For Your Family/The Holidays -Growing up in Christ within your own Family -Growing Up=Holiness -Holiness...all the negative connotations we have about it....how we think it might actually hurt our family relationships instead of help them. -Holiness....rooted in the desire to grow in love of God because you have tasted the "kindness of the Lord." (1 Peter 2:3). -God's kindness makes us whole (reminds me of "ever be" from Bethel), and holy as we grow up into people full of grace and truth. -God's kindness is not our politeness...Jesus says, "But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be called children of the Most High; for he kiss kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."
-Kingdom does not break out beyond or around us, but within and through us. -Its time to get in the game, what are you staking your life on...that God has a purpose and power within your waiting to be unleashed -Because Jesus dwells in our hearts. -Witness to all that God is doing... -Call to action....to invest in the kingdom....when you find it, why would you not with joy do whatever it took to grow it?
-What it means to be a "Sending Church? -It means we exist for those not already here. We are willing to sacrifice for the "one." -Reaching the whole world with the whole gospel is more important than anything else we could ever do. It is as the essence of our life together... -It calls all of us to sacrifice with our offerings of prayer, resources, time, service, etc.
We Think scarcity, God works abundance. Story about my economics professor: "I bet for a certain amount of money, I could get you to kill your mom...."
We are called to abundant generosity.
Miracle doesn't happen without our gift. even what little we can give.
Miracles happen out of acts and lives of sacrifice.
Lisa Y. "God's exchange rate is different than our own."
Key question of life with God is: "Can God lay out a table in the wilderness?"
Ephesians 3:14-21 -Our imaginations are pained, fractured, ruptured by the pains of life and the world. -Prayer and the healing power of the Holy Spirit in us heals our imagination. -Ultimately, prayer allows us to see people, ourselves, and the world as God sees them, We tap into the eyes of God.
Genesis 32:22-32
Israel means "struggle?" Jacob came face to face with a God who is real, living and active. A God who could be questioned, and even wrestled. In the end, you can't ever come out of the struggle the same.
2 Corinthians 5:17
What do you do when your faceplants keep finding a way to haunt you? People keep bringing them up? You can't seem to shake them?
We are made NEW in Christ. No going back to the old. Turn off the record that tells you you are a failure. Saul becomes Paul. Abram becomes Sarah, etc.
Story of David "What NOT to do" Don't try to cover up Only way to freedom was confession "I can figure this out in my own" (don't do this)