Sermon Video: The Parable of the Tenants: Don't Ignore God - Mark 12:1-12

In this allegorical parable, Jesus recounts the history of the Abrahamic Covenant and the Israelite people leading up to his own arrival as the Son sent to 'collect the rent' who will end up being murdered by the corrupt tenants. The meaning is straightforward and was not lost on the original audience: God's isn't messing around, repeated disobedience will be punished, and rejected blessings will be bestowed elsewhere. A fit message for any Age, and as applicable to the Church as it was to Israel.

Sermon Video: Jesus walks on the water - Mark 6:45-56

 After taking an evening alone to pray, Jesus walks across the Sea of Galilee as his disciples row across. When they see him they are terrified, but after he assures them that it is him, they remain amazed even as their fear dissipates. Why? "Their hearts were hardened." Even though they had seen numerous miracles from Jesus, the reality of his divinity had still not penetrated their hearts and minds. What Truths is God attempting to communicate to his people today through his Word that they aren't hearing? Where are our hearts/minds hard? Introspection is needed, mentorship and discipleship is necessary. The Church needs to hear God when he speaks, needs to be open to the Spirit, for this need we pray.

Sermon Video: The Parable of the Sower - Mark 4:1-20

 In the well known parable, Jesus explains that the 'seed' of God's Word falls upon various 'soils' representing differing human beings.  How do they differ?  Some are hostile to God, some have other more pressing concerns, and some readily respond.  Those who fully respond, the 'good soil' produce 'fruit', that is they work to reproduce in other people what God has done for them.  Healthy churches need to make disciples, they need to cultivate open and dedicated hearts (good soil) that encourage service and self-sacrifice.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

If I say anything about guns...

As a minister of the Gospel, if I say anything about guns, whichever side I take, half of you will no longer listen to my proclamation of the Word of God.  You will dismiss me as either a socialist or a fascist, and allow your opinion about guns to taint what I say about anything else.  The same danger exists if I say anything about abortion, taxes, immigration, gay marriage, or whichever hot button issue next consumes our political consciousness.  As a minister of the Gospel, I take my oath to proclaim the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ seriously, very seriously, it is the most important idea that I could share with anyone, anywhere.  That being said, I've made no secret of my own decision to self-limit my public comments upon the political/culture war issues, precisely because I don't want to allow anything else to affect the ability of others to hear the Gospel.  There are limited exceptions, when a public issue impinges upon the Church itself, or the discussion at hand is what the Bible itself teaches about an issue, I have no issue with weighing in; hopefully in a constructive and God-honoring way.

Last March I saw firsthand the danger of treading close to this political read line when I wrote a post entitled, "God loves you too much to ignore your sexuality".  In that post, I wrote about God's perspective on human sexuality, not about American laws or politics, focusing upon sexual sin as defined in God's Word in both its heterosexual and homosexual forms, but one comment that I saw in response to my post was, "I used to respect this pastor until I read this..."  Although I was able through conversation to repair that impression, and I think keep that individual from ignoring my words in the future, it pointed to the grave danger facing pastors and Christian apologists all over America today, when we involve ourselves in anything remotely political, half of the audience are hearing our words with their own political rose colored glasses, and the other half are plugging up their ears in disgust.

What does it say of Christians, and those purporting to be Christians, that so many of them are willing to place their devotion to political issues above the Gospel, the Word of God, and the men and women called by God to proclaim it?  It says we're in grave danger as a Church.  There is no such thing as a Republican Church and a Democrat Church, but we've fooled ourselves into thinking that God's Church is really so limited, that God is on our side, whichever one that is, and against their side, that the issues advocated by our politicians are 100% Christian, and those advocated by their politicians are inspired by the devil.  We've cheapened the Church, cheapened the Gospel, and fooled ourselves into thinking Christ died only for people like us.  I say we have done this because it is so widespread in the Church today, I hope that I and my church are free of this disease; I've striven to keep my own mind free of it, and to keep such partisanship out of our congregation, but I'm not proud enough or naive enough to think that it could not infect my own mind or my church in the future.

When Pope Francis spoke out against the danger of the love of money and the need for God's people to have compassion upon the poor, he was branded a communist by loud-mouthed political pundits, and that antipathy toward the Pope was cheered by many Christians.  The problem here is, the Bible absolutely says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and demands of God's people that they show compassion to those in need.  The only way to justify condemning such concerns from Pope Francis is through either anti-Catholic bias (i.e. condemn the message because we hate the messenger) or a rejection of what the Church, and Israel before it, have preached (if not always followed) for the past 3,500 years.  

We should not be overly surprised by such things, however, when Jesus declined to choose sides in the contentious issue of his day regarding the paying of taxes to Rome, it only angered further those who wanted to use him for their own narrow purposes, or condemn him based upon his politics.  Throughout the Gospels, Jesus remained focused upon his mission, the one thing that he needed to do that nobody else could, not allowing himself to be distracted by today's issues when eternity was at stake.

If I tell you what I think should be done about school shootings and other gun violence, half of you will no longer listen when I proclaim the Gospel.

If I tell you what I think America's immigration policy should be, half of you will no longer hear me when I proclaim the Word of God.

And so I hold back, not because I don't have the right to my opinions, not because I can't ground my opinions in Christian theology and a Christian worldview, but for your sake because you NEED to hear the Gospel from God's Word far more than you need to hear my political opinions, whether you agree with them or not.

Can we get past the past?

I was working on my sermon for this week, from Acts 10:1-29, where God is in the process of convincing Peter that Gentiles deserve to hear the Gospel too.  Peter, and the rest of the Jewish-Christians of the Early Church, had a blind spot in their thinking that made Jesus' prediction that the Gospel must go to the ends of the earth hard to digest.  These sincere believers were victims, some through their own prejudices, some through simply living in an era where this was the prevailing thought, of the inability to see that God was planning on massively expanding his outreach effort.  God was ready to move forward, his people needed to be shown the Truth so that they would follow.
Earlier in the day I was taking a look at the extra verses in Daniel that are part of the Bible of Catholics and Orthodox, but not Protestant, Christians.  This split goes all the way back to Martin Luther and is now so caught up in our theological differences (especially over Purgatory) that it seems likely that Protestants will never see the value of the Apocrypha with clear eyes.  Are these writings on par with CS Lewis, useful but not Scripture, or are they ancient writing from Godly men that were considered part of Scripture for centuries that we've thrown out for the wrong reasons?  How can a Protestant hope to answer that question without getting mired in the theology that the Catholic Church has built upon these texts?  In case you're wondering, the Catholic Church has the same, "we do this because the Protestant do that" problem as we do, just in reverse.  I don't have any problem seeing us all as part of the family of God, I've known enough siblings who act this way.
The same sort of observation could be made in many of the translation issues, cultural issues, and theological issues that often are so intertwined with our own thoughts and preferences that we have our minds made up long before we weigh the evidence, or we only weigh the evidence that conforms with what we're hoping for.  Do we all do this, is it just the guys in the church across the street, or is that a problem here too?
In the end, are we any different than Peter?  We may look back at silly ol' Peter and thank God that we're not like him, we don't have blinders on, but are we just kidding ourselves?  What message is God trying to get through to us, what plan is he itching to set in motion, if only we would hear him and obey?