Thirteenth Sunday of Pentecost - Live Prayerfully: Putting on the Armor of God

On this Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost we continue our series on life in Christ through Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus.  We live out our lives as the people of God as we are "in Christ."  This series in Ephesians challenges us to live out our lives as a community of God's people rooted "in Christ."

Connect to Live Prayerfully: Put on the Armor of God.   The focus is on Ephesians 6: 10-20.  How do we go about living prayerfully in a world that is overwrought with struggle - against rulers, authorities and powers, against evil?  We do not war against flesh and blood, but we do struggle for flesh and blood.  To live prayerfully is to put on the "armor of God" - living a life of praying in the power of the Spirit.

Twelfth Sunday of Pentecost - Live Wisely: Be Filled with the Holy Spirit

On this Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost we continue our series on life in Christ through Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus.  We live out our lives as the people of God as we are "in Christ."  This series in Ephesians challenges us to live out our lives as a community of God's people rooted "in Christ."

Connect to Live Wisely: Be Filled with the Holy Spirit.   How do we live wisely, making the most of every opportunity, recognizing that “the days are evil?” To live wisely is to live being drunk/filled with the Spirit – living a life full of worship in the presence of Jesus Christ. 

Second Sunday of Pentecost: The Holy Spirit - We Are Not Left Alone

On this Second Sunday after Pentecost we continue our series on the Holy Spirit.  

As Mennonites, as well as other Christian communions, we do not have a very developed theology of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of God is the presence of Jesus Christ with us.  Over the first few weeks following Pentecost Sunday we are exploring how are living as disciples of Jesus is integrally connected to living in and by the Spirit of God.

Connect to Promise of the Holy Spirit: One Who Comes Alongside.  Jesus promised upon his leaving (ascension) that he will not leave us as orphans - but that he will send another Comforter - another Paraclete.  Paraclete is a Greek word meaning, "One who comes alongside."  Jesus sends the Spirit to be with us always - and no matter what we encounter the Spirit comes alongside of us.  In fact, the Spirit, in taking up residence in the Body of Christ comes alongside of us through one another.

Seventh Sunday of Easter: The Lord's Prayer - Lead Us Not into Temptation

On this Seventh Sunday of Easter, we finished our series on the Lord's Prayer.

Connect to Lead Us Not into Temptation: Depending On God to Be with Us.  The Lord's Prayer ends just as relationally as it begins.  In the beginning of the prayer we prayed expressing our relationship with God - "Our Father who is in heaven" and now in praying, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" we are praying for God to be with us who are on earth.


In praying the Lord's Prayer, we are praying in opposition to the principalities and powers - and so now we pray for us not to be alone but for God to be with us as we confront and are confronted by these powers, which were created to serve humanity, but now act to dominate and oppress.

Third Sunday of Easter: Co-laboring with God - Illinois Mennonite Conference Annual Assembly

On this Third Sunday of Easter, I preached at East Bend Mennonite Church which hosted the Illinois Mennonite Conference Annual Assembly from April 20 - 22, 2012.  Our theme for the Assembly was from 1 Corinthians 3: 1-9: We are Co-laborers with God.

Connect to A Vision for God: Seeing Whom God Sees.  Paul addressed the Corinthian Christians that they were fighting about which ministry and which leader was more important.  In so doing, they missed seeing God and they missed seeing whom God sees.  Ministry fails when we quarrel about what we believe to be important in ministry because we miss God and what God is doing and whom God is embracing.  May we not lose our vision of God in participating with what God is doing and whom God is embracing.

Second Sunday of Easter: The Cry for the Kingdom - The Lord's Prayer

On this Second Sunday of Easter Sunday, we move to a focus on praying the Lord's Prayer.  In being reoriented by Resurrection, we live praying a prayer that leads us into reorientation.  

The Lord's Prayer is a prayer that prays for the making visible of a new reality, a new reality that reorients creation through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  As a people who are now in this Resurrection community, we are a people of the new creation and so we pray for God's will and presence to be manifest on earth as it is in heaven.  The Lord's Prayer is a cry for the kingdom of God to reorient all creation - our economics, our security, our politics - in relationship with the Living and Loving God.  

The message for this Second Sunday of Easter focused on Matthew 6: 5-15 and Luke 11:1-4.


Connect to The Cry for the Kingdom: The Lord's Prayer.  In this message we discover that what the disciples of Jesus wanted to learn from Jesus is how to pray to God as personally and intimately as he did.  For Jesus praying to God was more than reciting the right words to God - it was entering into a personal, relational, family conversation with God.  This is what the disciples desired - may we desire to communicate with God in the same way - as family.  

Easter Sunday: Resurrection - The Ultimate Reorientation

On this Easter Sunday, we move from our Lenten focus on Psalms of Disorientation and Reorientation in which we were preparing ourselves for the new life that comes through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ at Easter, to celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus as the ultimate act of reorientation.  Our lives on our own are so often disoriented from the ways of God, but in being joined with Christ in his resurrection from the grave, we enter into a radically new orientation as human beings in human community.


The message for Easter Sunday focused on Acts 10.


Connect to Resurrection: The Ultimate Reorientation .  In this message we focused on the Spirit being the main character in Acts 10 who brings about transformation not according to our political or theological agendas, but according to what the Spirit desires to do in bringing a diverse human together as a community in Christ.  In the example of Peter and Cornelius - a Jew and Roman soldier, we as a community of Jesus are to be open to whomever the Spirit of God brings into our midst so that we might all be transformed in ways the Spirit desires. The Resurrection and transforming work of the Spirit are the ultimate acts of reorientation in our lives.