Sermons

He may have been partially motivated by self-interest. But he also was able to do good in a way that benefitted the poor and his boss, by making his reputation better. As his master recognizes in the end, he was really shrewd with what he was given.

The lesson is not that we can find the ruins of Eden if we look hard enough, but that Eden can still find us.

We try to look our best in public, but even the best among us has qualities and moments we would just as soon no one else ever sees. If the psalmist is right, then God knows everything, including the ugly and imperfect things about us: our short fuse in traffic and messy piles under the bed, our quickness to judge, indulge, or deny, and our reluctance to change. We have no secrets because God has known us since even before we were born.

In Western culture especially, we value independence and self-determination very highly and see dependence as weakness. Do you think of yourself as dependent upon God?

Paul believed that our ability to endure, even thrive in the face of difficulty, is the proof that God is with us, extending live-saving grace.

To be a faithful, obedient, living, awake disciple, you must nurture your faith and relationship with God, and do the work of Jesus Christ. If you do not constantly refuel your lamp, you cannot be a light for Christ.

The hard truth is that it can be very difficult to discern false prophets from true ones sometimes. History is littered with horror stories that demonstrate this.

It is hard to be a counter-cultural Christian in the world because the choices we all make every day are so complicated.

Whenever and wherever people lose their sense of community, love of diversity, and commitment to generosity and compassion, whenever people celebrate greed and cruelty, domination and exclusion, the Gospel becomes by contrast more and more counter cultural.

n their determination to keep out corrupting influences, the Ephesians had reduced living the Gospel to defining and defending orthodoxy, instead of sharing and embodying the love of God in Christ. As a result, they viewed each other more with suspicion and judgment than with empathy and compassion.