Think And Let Think

The Freedom To Be A Sinner by Taylor Mertins

John 21.20-25 John doesn’t earn his belovedness. He’s not the lovable disciple - he’s the beloved disciple. He doesn’t do anything better than the other twelve, he’s not striving after the gold medal of morality or the sanctity of spirituality. He is simply called to a life that he would not have had on his own, and he has fun along the way...

Luke 5.1-11 Jesus knows full and well what a mess Peter is and still calls him anyway. Jesus should’ve absolutely left Peter on the shore that fateful morn, but instead calls him to a life of discipleship that conveys the freedom to be wrong. And it is a freedom. Consider how many of our relationships have faltered if not floundered because we can’t accept wrongness. Think about how many institutions are founded on the fundamental failure to see that we all mess up at some point. Imagine how different our church, or community, or even our world, would be if we took seriously the truth - we are all like Peter, and Jesus never gives up on us. In fact, the only thing Jesus gives Peter is the same thing that Jesus gives to all of us: grace.

Mark 4.35-41 Music is perhaps the greatest technology of the heart, and singing in particular. To lift our voices together is to stand against the disorder of the world. Notice: singing is not a denial of reality. The Moravians on the boat with Wesley weren’t singing in order to pretend like the waves weren’t beating down upon them. No, they were singing because they knew how the story ends - they had seen the whole picture. So too, we stand and sing not out of naiveté, but because we know not all is as it ought to be. We sing in defiance of the wind and the waves because we know, deep down, that God is going to get us to the other side. It might not be pretty. And it certainly won’t go according to plan. But God will get us to the other side because God will always stay by our side...

Mark 4.26-34 In the end the parables are stories that Jesus tells about himself. He is the Good Shepherd off in search of the lost, he is the fatted calf sacrificed for the party, on and on. And the branches of his kingdom are a place of grace for everyone. Grace, as Frederick Buechner was apt to say, is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it, or deserve it, or bring it about, anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream, or earn good looks, or bring about your own birth. And a crucial eccentricity to our faith is that we are saved by grace, by God’s action toward us in the person of Jesus Christ. There’s nothing *you* have to do, there’s nothing you *have* to do, there’s nothing you have to *do*. Which means grace might seem like a small thing, but Jesus does a lot with a little...

Mark 3.20-35 The church is where God assembles us to imagine and day dream about how beautiful the world could be. It’s wild stuff really. It always has been. That people like me can stand up in a place like this and say “Welcome home.” Or: “I declare the entire forgiveness of all your sins.” Or: “You are loved beyond measure.” I sound like I’m out of my mind! But such is the power of God’s grace, it calls into existence things that do not exist, it creates a community where strangers become sisters and others become brothers, a family, where there is always a place for you no matter what. It sounds impossible - but God does God’s best work in the realm of impossible possibility.

Mark 2.23-3.6 Jesus has a word for all of us. A word of gospel rather than a word of law. A word of relief rather than expectation. Jesus says, 'Stretch out your hand.' Whatever it is you’ve done, or left undone, it is no match for the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. Stretch out your hand. Come to the altar to receive the one thing needful, the body and the blood. You are more than your worst mistake or your last slip up. Stretch out your hand. Take hold of the Good News of salvation, this is the day that the Lord has made and we are here to rejoice and be glad in it. Stretch out your hand.

Psalm 29 The church has a word of relief, and that word is the Gospel. It’s a very countercultural word, one that threatens to undo everything we think we know about what we think we know. The church can be safe and secure, unthreatening, unassuming, with our pews bolted to the ground, where we mutter and muster an 'Amen' only once in a blue moon. But God will not let us remain as such. The Spirit will start stirring things up through songs and scriptures and sermons to remind us that God is God and we are not. Jesus will speak right into our heart of hearts the story of salvation and we won’t be able to help ourselves from shouting “Glory!

Acts 2.1-12 To be a Christian is not so much having a certain set of beliefs that give meaning to our lives. Instead, to be a Christian is to be initiated into a community with practices and habits that actually transform our lives. Which is just another way of saying, we only ever learn what it means to be Christians by watching other Christians and doing what they do. To be Christian means being together. Which, of course, isn’t easy. After Pentecost, the story of Acts tells of the great challenge of being the church. The church stand for, preaches, and speaks the language of the heart that runs completely counter to the language of the world. The world worships the first, the greatest, the found, the big, and the alive. God comes for the last, least, lost, little and dead. The world runs on deception and destruction. The Spirit conveys grace and mercy. The world is full to the brim with bad news. Jesus comes bringing Good News. On Pentecost, the Spirit is poured out on all flesh, the tall and t

John 17.11-19 Jesus' prayer in John 17 is rather unlike the compact prayer that he taught the disciples to pray, that prayer we will all pray later in worship. The theologian NT Wright says this very long prayer of Jesus is “so rich that we may choke on it unless we chew it slowly.” One of the people who has chewed slowly on this text is Brian Zahnd. Brian is a gifted writer and the pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. He’s got this knack for focusing the Gospel into bite size pieces. Like this: “God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We have not always known what God is like - but now we do.”

Psalm 22.25-31 & John 15.1-8 The odd proclamation of the Gospel is that there is no hope in us. We are all withering branches in need of some pruning and care. We’re all sinners. We’re all incompatible with the Messiah because we tend to make such a mess of his message. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay because Jesus comes to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He says, Abide in me as I am in you. All of you. God meets us where we are, not where we ought to be. That’s the difference between the bad news of religion and the Good News of the Gospel...

Psalm 23 & John 10.1-18 The first task of a Christian is not to forgive, but to learn to be forgiven.

Luke 24.36b-48 I don’t know the last time you took a stroll through the strange new world of the Bible, but let me tell you, it is strange! It tells of cosmic creation, rainbowed repentance, kaleidoscopic covenants, profound prophets, geriatric geniuses, sacred psalms, liturgical litanies, paradoxical poems, and one heck of a messy Messiah. What begins on the day of Easter, and is continued through the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of the early church, is the stark claim that knowing the scriptures does little good unless we know it as part of a people constituted by the practices of a resurrected Lord. In other words: our faith is always faith seeking understanding...

Psalm 133 & John 20.10-31 The story of Thomas seemingly ends with his triumphant and faithful declaration: "My Lord and My God!" But John isn’t quite finished. For he actually concludes with a strange note about how “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.” But, John continues, “These are written so that you may come to believe, to trust, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through faith you may have life.” Do you see? Faith is a gift given to people like us. And it makes people like us exactly what Thomas insisted he required to belief. This wondrous church, this body of Christ, wounded and weary, bold and beautiful, we are what the world beholds and knows that Jesus is the something more they’ve been looking for.

Unexpected by Taylor Mertins

Matthew 26.17-30 Music has this almost magic quality to it. It can bring forth emotions we did not know we had, or that we did not know we needed to feel. God uses the songs we sing to remind us who we are and whose we are. And the same happens here at the table. We do this in remembrance not only because we are commanded to, but also because, in so doing, we become Jesus’ memory for the world. The Eucharist is the feast that makes Christ’s time the time in which we live. A time meant for singing. And so, it is here in this ferocious fellowship of differents God says, “Behold what you are! And become what you receive.”

Matthew 21.1-10 One of the craziest parts of what is already one of the craziest parts of the Bible, is the fact that, on Palm Sunday, Jesus doesn’t say anything. Have you ever noticed that before? It’s a bit odd coming from the one who has lots to say in his Sermon on the Mount, the one who parades out parables every chance he gets. Jesus doesn’t say anything while the crowds say everything. And when Jesus doesn’t meet their exceptions, when he doesn’t meet our expectations, the result is the cross...

Matthew 6.25-34 It is to a people obsessed with themselves, with too much and too little, that Jesus speaks this powerful word: Why are you so worried about what you eat and drink? About what you wear and how you look? Look at the birds of the air. They are not terrified of these things. Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? Consider the lilies of the field! They neither toil nor spin and they are more gorgeous than anything you have in the closet. You need not worry about these things because your worry is eating you alive. Your heavenly Father knows what you need, and it is to you that the kingdom is given. The proclamation of the Gospel is that we need not worry, like the birds or the lilies, because God provides. But our desire to live lives without fear cannot but help create a world of fear because we are told, and often believe, there is never enough. Which is perhaps why, for millennia, the church has insisted on reminding people of these words from Jesus. The songs w

Matthew 26.14-16 A rich man comes up to Jesus and he says, “Teacher, I follow all of the commands of God. What more must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus, looking on the man with compassion, says, “Because I love you, how about you try selling everything you have, give the proceeds to the poor, and then you can follow me” The man walks away from Jesus, grieving, because he has many possessions. As far as I can tell, this is the only time in the strange new world of the Bible that Jesus invites someone into discipleship and they turn it down. The story doesn’t end there, of course. Jesus goes on to talk about how difficult it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven. As difficult, in fact, as it would be for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. What a wondrous moment in the Gospel! It is quick to makes us squirm sufficiently in our seats. It is an uncomfortable word to hear because we, compared to the rest of the world, are rich beyond imagining, and then Jesus drops this

Matthew 26.36-46 “Thy will be done” is the enemy of sloth. It’s the recognition that though we might not have eyes to see any new possibilities, we worship the God of impossible possibility, who makes all things new. “Thy will be done” sets us on an adventure in which we never quite know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future. Perhaps that’s why Jesus is forever telling parables about those who fall asleep, and why he is forever commanding the disciples to wake up. When it comes to the Gospel, the only thing we have to do is wake up to God’s new possibilities, God’s new day, God’s new way. “Thy will be done.”