Continuing in the season of Pentecost, this sermon follows up on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, with teaching on how the early church reimagined life together as a multiethnic community, confronted opposition from the broader society, and challenges from within. Two of the challenges from within were some self-interested disciples centering…
This sermon is about the liberating power of the Holy Spirit, who is symbolized by breath and fire. This message is also about Jesus, who was crushed by the unjust power of empire, just like George Floyd. And this message is about the alternative society of shalom God is forming among the ethnically diverse body…
In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. There he confronts the devil and resists three temptations. These three temptations aren’t just instructive for us personally, they also describe perennial temptations the church faces in relationship to society. They are: 1. Empire Economics; 2. Idolatrous Nationalism; and 3.…
Lent is a season of the Christian calendar in which we are once again invited to be formed by the pattern of Jesus’s life. In this series we will not only explore the personal application of Lenten practice, but also the corporate application. A framing passage for this series is from Isaiah 58: Shout it…
Romans chapter 9 has been misunderstood as a passage about individual election, predestination, and personal salvation. But Romans is not a book of abstract, systematic theology. Romans is a pastoral letter written to a church with factions along cultural and ethnic lines. Paul is writing to the so-called “Weak” and “Strong” to reframe the stories…