519 Church Sermons

This week we take a collective look at a most important question: why/how can a good and all-powerful God allow pain and suffering. Pastor Owen explores three different aspects/types of God's will.

While Creed (our previous series) focused on the internal questions our church folk are asking, Exploring God focuses on the questions that folks outside the church are asking. Creed taught us what unifies all Christians at all times and places. Exploring God is meant to demonstrate the uniqueness of Christianity compared with other religions, secularism, and maybe even other denominations of Christianity. Join us as we begin this journey of exploring God by starting with the question: is there a God?

“It’s been said that what you believe about death changes how you face life. It leads us to face death with courage and to take risks we might not otherwise take. It puts this earthly life and what we do with it in perspective. And it helps us to grieve as those who have hope.” Creed pg. 164

Hey friends- Familiarize yourself with the songs that we'll be singing on Easter morning (April 1st, 2018). Then, come ready to sing and rejoice with us as we celebrate the risen Christ!

Today is sort of a unique day as far as worship goes. As I said last week, we are celebrating today the palm-passion story. Today is historically the day we celebrate Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. We are also going to tell the whole passion story today. Just so you know, we are going to start up here and follow this story to the depths…and that is where we will leave it today until next week when we hear the resurrection story. I mean, we all know what comes next week…we are an easter people, after all. But, to really begin to grasp what this story is all about, I think it is important for us to sense and feel some of what the disciples and the others of Jesus’ followers were up against.

“When Jesus came, he did not simply call individual disciples; he formed a community, a family, a people chosen to love and continue his work in the world...The church is holy because she belongs to God...She is catholic because in God’s eyes there is only one church...God’s church is a communion of “saints below and saints above” who are bound together as members of God’s family.” Creed pg. 127

“...in our daily Christian life, it is the Spirit that nudges and beckons us this way or that. It is the Spirit that helps us pray. It is the Spirit that equips us with gifts to serve others. It is the Spirit that grants us the strength and grace to become increasingly like Christ. When we open ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit, we find power to be transformed and to be useful in fulfilling God’s purposes.” Creed pg. 100. In John’s Gospel, Jesus refers to the Spirit as an advocate who will “teach” and “remind” us about everything Jesus has said. The theme of remembrance is central to lent. To remember our sin. To remember our fragility. To remember our need for Christ’s redeeming work. The Spirit is the abiding presence of God with us. To believe in the Holy Spirit means to believe activity in and through us. The Spirit shapes and influences our living.

“Jesus demonstrates who God is, what God is like, and what God’s will is for our lives. His life and ministry, his death and resurrection shape how we see ourselves and how we see the world.” Creed pg. 75

“For those who shaped the Apostle’s Creed, belief in God is meant to fundamentally change our perspective on the world, on our place in it, and on our own lives. If there is a God, then we are creatures who are not nearly as important in the scheme of things as we might think.” Creed pg. 30

Enjoy this FIRST EDITION of our brand-new podcast, "For Me, Right Now". The purpose of this podcast is to give a space for our 519 community to share stories of loving well and living differently where they live, work and play. Listen in as Neil Amato interviews Bob Kastl about 519 soccer.

“Before we explore what Christians believe, why they believe it, and why it matters, let’s pause to think about belief itself. What do we mean when we say we believe? How does belief affect the believer? What are the sources of belief—the reasons for belief.” Creed Pg. 11 To kick off Lent, I thought we could frame this conversation on belief around Jesus temptation in the wilderness, which frames out Lenten journey. Jesus’ continual pointing to God demonstrates his belief system and how that system orders his life. When we find ourselves in the wilderness, how does our belief guide our living?

In order to be the church, the followers of Jesus had to be bound together by something far greater than the strength of their incredible differences. This is no less true for us – and our greater common self/purpose is to be the body of Christ whose mission is nothing short of redeeming the world...but we cannot do this if we are divided. Let’s lead our community to be the church.

Jesus saves the world by taking the first step in reconciliation and teaches us to do the same, no matter how deep the wound. He reminds us over and over again as if we can’t or don’t want to do this. But this power to forgive is the very power to unbind the world.

The bible is full of unusual friendships between complex people. The world simplifies people to make things less awkward, but that strips away the image of God within them and separates what God wants to bring together. When we really get to know each other we can break through the world’s barriers.

Jesus used the power of table fellowship to reorder relationships. When we eat together, we share a common experience, which can reorder our relationships with each other. N. T. Wright captured something of this sentiment when he wrote, “When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.” A liminal space: kingdom banquet: When the Pharisees called Jesus a glutton and a drunkard, they didn’t make up that depiction. They were referring to Deuteronomy 21:20 and implying that Jesus’s table fellowship with people who were far from God made him worthy of death. But for the Lord, that table fellowship was a demonstration of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God

Jesus is God’s response to the “cry of his people.” God’s listening heals. When we use the power of listening to each other, we learn how to better love and serve each other, which is the very power to heal the world.

The power of Jesus transformed enemies into friends and friends into an unstoppable movement. Come discover how you can use the simple act of friendship to change the world. Friendship is a redemptive act, at least according to Jesus. When we make friends, we experience and share the fullness of God’s hope for the world. The power to save the world. "And now, may you go and bear witness to the love of God in this world so that those to whom love is a stranger may find in you a generous friend."

We are a restless people until we find our rest in the source of our life – God alone. We try to find this “peace/shalom” in many places, but will come up empty until we submit our searching to the giver of every good and perfect gift.

If we invite Jesus into our lives, we should expect to be liberated from the sin that binds our hearts and from the fear (other?) that capture our imagination and stains our assumptions. Are you willing to allow Jesus to challenge them?

God’s promise is fulfilled in the coming of Jesus – to liberate all people and set us free to worship. God’s promise is already started, but it is not yet complete, and while we wait for its fulfillment, we work expectantly for the things that God is about in our world.