Articles

How Jesus Cleans His Church

Keeping the church building clean is everybody’s job. When I eat something in the parish hall, I need to clean it up so that no one else has to be burdened by my mess. But there are some messes that are too much for anyone to clean. I can wipe up spilled coffee and clean bread-crumbs off the table well enough, but what about my self-centeredness, my pride, my unforgiveness? I’m pretty helpless when it comes to those things. And the bible teaches that you are too.

Adding to that, we all have these sinful messes in our own individual lives and hearts and God brings us together as one body, one church, in Christ. So instead of a lot of little messes running around the world, God gathers us all together in one place so that we can all make messes together. Sooner or later my mess spills over into your life and yours into mine. What are we to do? Give up the church? Jesus doesn’t give us that option (Hebrews 10:25). So it looks like we’re stuck, doomed to be miserable together forever and ever. Or maybe not.

State of the Church: Remarks from the 2012 Annual Meeting

Rector’s Annual Meeting Remarks (notes)

This year is a big one for Anne and me. It will be our tenth year at Good Shepherd and Good Shepherd is our first and only experience pastoring an entire congregation. I’ve never been a pastor anywhere else which means you’ve had to put up with all our mistakes and inexperience…and there will be more where that came from.

How to Pray Like a Disciple (part 1)

This article was originally the first of a series of three sermons on the Lord’s prayer in Luke 11. I’ll be posting the other two parts over the next two weeks…

The Faith that Justifies

What does it mean to be “justified by faith alone”? What kind of “faith” are we talking about? Is it believing all the stuff in the bible is true? Is it going forward for an altar call…what does it look like?

How Can Love Be Wrong?

That’s the question many people ask when they hear Christians raise objections to same sex marriage. The question is often grounded in the experience or observation of genuine loving unions between people of the same sex. How can relationships that seem so good, so life-giving, be wrong?

Answering that question requires that we step back a bit and, by way of background, challenge some of the more prevalent arguments for same sex marriage promoted in both the media and, sadly, by some ordained church leaders.

The Cloud and the Ascension

...both Luke’s gospel and Acts, Luke’s sequel to his gospel, use passive verbs to describe Jesus’ ascent. He did not levitate or fly up into the air. He was “lifted” (Acts 1:9) or “carried” (Lk 24:51) in a cloud…

Is Violence Ever Just?

The biggest news this week, as I am sure you have heard, was the death of Osama Bin Laden. Many Christians have been disturbed, and rightly so, by the street celebrations that broke out in Washington DC and elsewhere. Christians, I think, can and should agree that Bin Laden’s death should not become a kind of nationalistic totem for American power and pride.

But I also wonder whether there might be another kind of knee-jerk reaction going on in the opposite direction.

Can Those who Have not Heard the Gospel be Saved?

Question and Answer: Is it wrong to make absolute truth claims about God?

I’m so happy to have so much feedback from last Sunday’s sermon. Thank you for sending questions and comments. The most recent question I have heard (twice now so I’m assuming its out there more generally) is this:

You seemed to suggest in your sermon that the wise man was wrong for claiming to see the whole elephant. But isn’t that what Christians claim?

Question and Answer: How can finite beings understand the infinite God?

I wanted to clarify something I said based on a few questions I received after the sermon this past Sunday. The claim Christians make, based on what has been given to us in scripture, is that God is fully and completely revealed to us in Jesus Christ. The book we are presently studying, Colossians, makes that abundantly clear both in chapter 1:15-20

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