"community" Tagged Sermons

"community" Tagged Sermons

Gracious Religion

We honor God with our choices. We are all held accountable to God for the way we live and the way we love. The moment we stop striving for peace and love, they will know that we aren’t practicing what God wants from us.

Living Graciously

Just because we welcome everyone doesn’t mean we accept all behavior. We still need to love people even if we can’t accept their behavior. We need to show grace even if for our own safety we need to put distance between ourselves and certain others. God loves them, too, even if we need distance.

Let Us Not Grow Weary

Who belongs? Who gets to decide? Our story is bigger and more complicated than we realize. God welcomes all of us, it is we humans that need to work on that. We need to tell the whole story and do what is right.

On the Seventh Day, God Rested

Note, the sermon starts with about 4 minutes of (mostly) silence. We are biological machines that need to power down and rest perioically. God is not a workaholic, the purpose of creation was relational, so we can rest in and with creation and our neighbors. Savor it and give thanks for it. All we need is already here.

So, What?

Our needs shouldn’t come first. God calls us to love all, seek justice for everyone, no one left behind or pushed aside. There is something more powerful than we are, something we can’t explain. The world needs us to embody this love.

Believing

Jesus brings the Good News. Our job is to get out of the locked room and take Jesus’ message to the world. We need to open the door and go out and spread the Good News, not just saying the words, but living them.