Will Willimon tells of having once served a church where there was a long standing tradition in which lay leader would rise at the conclusion of the sermon to offer a prayer. And, one Sunday after preaching a tough sermon on a difficult text, the lay leader stood up and prayed a simple, clear, and direct prayer. “Lord, today we’ve heard your word. And we don’t like it.”

We don’t like this Word of the Lord because it cuts right to the heart of our faith.

It’s impossible to live like this, we think. How could we ever really love our enemies? They’re our enemies for a reason! Shouldn’t we be doing the opposite of love toward them? Have you ever tried to pray for those who mistreat you? Better to run away and never think of them than to pray for them! 
It’s impossible, what Jesus wants us to do.

Thankfully, though, nothing is impossible for God...

The Commands

It’s by grace, and only by grace that Jacob makes it to the well and to the banks of the Jabbok river. It’s by grace, and only by grace, that the conniving, heel-grabbing, con-artist extraordinaire receives the name that names the nation: Israel. It’s by grace, and only by grace, that this flawed and fantastic figure fathers the twelve tribes of Israel and is the many-times great-grandfather of Jesus.

The church is like a well - it is the nexus where everything happens. 

We gather, like Jacob, in order to come to grips with what we’ve done and left undone. We are given the promise, like Jacob, that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any more, and there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any less.

The church also gives us the space, imagination, and wonder to wrestle with the Word. One of the surest signs of the Spirit at work is contention. There’s a reason Jacob is given the name Israel.

Lastly, as Stanley Hauerwas notes, whatever the church is, it is at least the discovery of friends we did not know we had. The church is where strangers become sisters, and others become brothers. God gathers us here together not just to hear a message, but to be God’s message to the world.

The Church Is God's Message For the World

Baptism is the gift of God’s living water that never runs dry. And it’s not just a sign of God’s love. It’s a sign of God’s love for the ungodly. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus knows every little thing about us, the good and the not so good. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves and Jesus still goes to the cross for us anyway. The living water seals us in the Spirit and nothing can ever take it away for, as Paul reminds us, there is nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thanks be to God. 


The Story Behind The Story

God uses music to help us enter the mysteries of life, death, and life after death. 

We sing our faith. The words and melodies of our music transcend space and time; they tunes us in to God’s frequencies in the world. Music gives us the space to experience what we believe and how we pray when we don’t know how to put those things into words - music gives us the opportunity to feel whatever it is we are feeling without feeling like we’re not allowed to feel what we feel.

When Robert Jenson said the End is music, he went on to add how that particular music does not end, and so is always our beginning.

One day we, with all of creation, will be transfigured into God’s music. That’s the promise of the story of the Gospel.

The End is Music

A saint is simply someone whose life manages to be a crack through which God’s grace peaks through.

At The Same Time

I’ve joked before, though its not really a joke, about how despite the beauty of the wedding liturgy, it would be far more appropriate if the couple made this public affirmation together: 

“We are both broken. We have been idiots and we will be idiots again. We are both difficult to live with. We sulk and get angry and hold grudges. We both blame other people for our own mistakes, we’re not very good at compromise, and we are definitely not as nice as we think we are. And yet, we are here together hoping against hope to fight against the loneliness our failings tend to create.”

Marriage isn’t easy, but it might become easier if we realize that our partners are fallible creatures just like us. 

Jesus says “Marriage isn’t heaven nor will there be marriage in heaven.” Not because marriage isn’t a good thing, but simply because the goodness of heaven transcends the goodness of everything we can know in our earthly lives. 


One Bride For Seven Brothers

“Jesus always comes to us in the brokenness of our health, in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. Jesus saves us in our disasters, not from them.” - Robert Farrar Capon


The End Of The World (As We Know It)

Let there be no mistake, we, all of us, stand on the threshold of God’s kingdom. We never really know from moment to moment when an opportunity will come our way. It’s a mystery, but that’s where the real power lays. The Lord is always out in front of us. God’s futures approaches us, God’s future in which we will all be made new. 

We wait with hope by lighting whatever little lights we can, for no light is too small in this ever darkening world.

Things Without Mystery Have No Power

Lent and Advent are the most challenging seasons of the Christian calendar because during them we receive the most difficult, demanding, bad news ever to be called good - The Cross. Twice a year our worlds are rocked, our tables are turned, demons are put to wrought, and dead dreams are brought back to life. 

Jesus is the reason for this season, and frankly for every season. And lest we domesticate the Lord to mere flannel graphs and perfectly manicured manger scenes, we can’t forget Lent during Advent, the shadow of the cross lingers over the manger.

For, the baby born king we worship here and now grows in spirit and wisdom enough to call the powers and principalities to task. J the B might hit us with some harsh words here in December, but they can’t hold a flame to what J the C says and does. Jesus will not relent to the world. In fact, Jesus overcomes the world.

The promise of Advent is that no matter what stumps us in life, no matter how many dead ends we encounter, God is going to make a way where there is no way. Predator and prey will dwell together. Peace will reign. A child will lead us. 


Keep Lent In Advent

Whenever we come to the table for communion, we share this short and ancient creed: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. 

We live in the in between, right smack dab in the middle of the already but not yet.

The dawn from on high has come upon us, and it will come upon us.

Whatever our personal darkness may be, whatever it is we are sifting through and trying to navigate, whatever keeps us awake at night and makes us nervous for tomorrow, it will be redeemed. The desert will bloom, light will shine in the darkness, the dead will be raised.

It might not be today or even tomorrow, but one day God will make all things new.

Hear God’s promise at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel: “By the tender mercy of the Lord, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to whose who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Or, as Auburn Sandstrom said, “In the deepest, blackest, night of despair and anxiety, it only takes a pinhole of light and all of grace can come in.”


The Hopes And Fears Of All The Years

What happens when the preacher preaches an unwritten sermon?

An Unwritten Sermon

thirty something pastor, podcast host, and fan of parables

The Commands

Taylor Mertins