on the walk

I got to hear two great sermons today. The first was at our main service. I hope to post on it in a couple of days. The second was at Fuel which is the Sunday evening youth service at Mountain. Seth Harkins was the speaker and he spoke on Jesus walking on water. Continue Reading »

This post continues from signs 4a In that post we were reflecting on Luke 8:40-56 and the sermon based on that topic. We are noticing that this is miracle that happens in a context of access issues. (We did not get to the biggest access issue of all which is also dealt with in this passage: death.)

The flip side of these access issues is the issue of faith. Jesus credit the women’s faith as instrumental in her healing. Then when the bad news comes for Jairus, he challenges, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” Just believe. Just do faith. This is the new access card. Trust Jesus. Faith in Jesus is all that a leprous woman needs. Faith in Jesus is all that a desperate father needs. Continue Reading »

Our final sermon in our series on Luke was this week. You can find the whole series here. This week we encountered two miracles wrapped up into one story. Our text was Luke 8:40-56. It is a wonderful story with two great miracles wrapped into one story. I hope to reflect on the sermon itself in a following post, but first a reflection on the miracle. Continue Reading »

I was talking with my friend Kevin Bobrow about the encounter with the woman and Nain and he reminded me of one of my favorite treatments of this text. Instead of focusing on the miracle as we did in the last post, instead we focus on the actions of Jesus that created the context for the miracle. Let’s take a look. Continue Reading »

Today we encountered Jesus on his way, followed by disciples and crowds, when he meets a funeral procession. This is the third sermon in a series from Luke. It is called Grace Anatomy and it is looking the nuts and bolts of grace through the eyes of Luke.

The text today was taken from Luke seven, and describes the encounter that Jesus has with a widow from Nain. In that encounter Jesus raises her son from the dead. There is a lot to learn from this text. I hope to have a follow up post to talk about how we can learn to live in this way. But first, whenever we encounter Continue Reading »

Our current sermon series at Mountain is on the character of Christ as great healer and is based on various accounts from Luke chapters 5-8. This last Sunday Ben talked about Jesus’ encounter with the paralytic. You can check out the text and the sermon online.

This is a perfect story to examine as we try to understand the signifying nature of miracles. Continue Reading »

I got to speak last night at Mountain’s student ministry, FUEL. It was great fun. I love to preach and I love to be with students. One of the special blessings of last night was that I got to lose a game of ping-pong. I love ping-pong and have not played in many years. It was great to play again. (Shout out to Wesley Barnes for being willing to play with the old guy and for letting me score 17 points. I am aware that the last five were just out of mercy.)

Continue Reading »

I am on a metaphor hunt.

I posted about gun barrels a few days back. I can’t stop thinking about this issue but the metaphor doesn’t sing for me.

First a few more thoughts on the issue. I easily can get drawn into an institution growth mindset. I love the church. I love Bible studies, and pot lucks. I love softball games and theological debates. I love weddings, and choirs. I love cantatas and seminaries. But in that love there is a great danger. I might be so excited to be in the church that I lose sight of God’s purpose for me. Continue Reading »

Parables can be tricky. It is hard to know where to focus and what parts matter most. Sometimes it is even hard to know what they mean. Part of this difficulty is inherent to any teaching that happens through stories.

When one tells a story to teach a point, there are necessarily lots of details that flesh out the narrative but are not necessarily essential to the point narrative teaching works for lots of important reasons but not because it is efficient.  Continue Reading »

I was invited to share a word on reading parables to a women’s Bible study group at Mountain Christian Church. In my next post I will share a short version of that talk, but first I want to comment on the text.

The text I was given for this exercise was Luke 15 and 16. It is a great text for practicing parable interpretation. I has several important parables. It has a few with reasonably obvious meanings and then a few that can be pretty tough for people.

I went into my preparations with a pretty technical attitude. After all, I was asked to come teach a skill not preach a sermon. Continue Reading »