Sunday Homily

Jesus is different from any other religious leader who ever walked the earth. No one else has ever claimed to be God. Confucius and the Buddha claimed to offer wisdom and enlightenment, but they never claimed to be the ultimate source of that wisdom and enlightenment. Mohammad claimed to have a revelation from God. But he never claimed to be God himself.  In contrast, Jesus offers something more than wisdom, enlightenment, and revelation. he claims to be God. Not only does he claim to be God but he shows himself to be God by performing mighty deeds that only God can perform. IN your heart of hearts, who do you truly believe Jesus is? Ponder that question today.

God loves you more than you know and wants to help paint the Masterpiece that is you. God is with you and helping you to paint the story of your life.  You are his masterpiece. If we'd been conscious in those first moments of our life as a couple of microscopic cells, a microscopic human being, you may be sure we wouldn't have believed that someday we'd become the complex creatures that we are today.  We couldn't have imagined it, and yet here we are, marvelously made, beings capable of love and friendship, of running and laughing, makers of music and poetry, builders of great buildings and tiny gardens, and oh so much more. All from a few cells smaller than a fly speck. A miracle? Yes, but not a completed one. Let God help you paint the portrait of your life.  You are his Masterpiece and he loves you.

Corpus Christi Sunday (The Body & Blood of Christ) Jesus gives us a meal to connect us with one another as the body of Christ. There is something deeper than a physical connection when we eat together with others. In this message we will explore the power of a meal to bond us together with our neighbors.

One of the core truths of our faith is that God is not alone but a community of three persons who love one another. This is not just an ethereal truth but one that impacts us. Because God is a community we have been made for community. In every area of our lives, we are meant to connect with people and love each other as each member of the Trinity loves each other. Often, we don’t do this because we think we don’t have time or because we are too busy caring for ourselves. The reality is that we cannot ever meet our needs on our own. Our needs are only met by giving and then receiving from others – from a life of interdependence.

The Art of Neighboring, Pentecost Sunday At Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to bring unity among people who were separated by different languages and cultures. Where there was confusion and discord, the Holy Spirit brings clarity and unity. In week one’s message we will introduce the topic of our series, Next Door: The Art of Neighboring. We start by asking the Holy Spirit to give each of us clarity and show us how God wants to use us to bring about unity in our neighborhood.

Jesus wants his apostles to stay and wait for the Holy Spirit who will empower them to go on a mission to help build his kingdom. The word kingdom was confusing to them and it can be confusing to us. We think of a kingdom, and we think of kings and queens, a physical territory, potentially with walls and boundaries and stuff.  But that’s not what Jesus meant when he used the word “kingdom,” It is not a physical kingdom but a spiritual kingdom.

Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Jesus shows us love by laying down his life for us. Love lives for us when we sacrifice for others and lay down our lives for them. Be-loved so that you can be love.

John writes, “Children let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. Put love in action.” Love lives in our lives when we put it in action and serve other people. When we serve, our hearts are reassured of God’s love for us and because our hearts are reassured of God’s love for us, we have confidence in God and receive from him whatever we ask.

God loves us enough to accept who we are, where we are, as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us there. He wants more. God loves us so much that He wants to fashion us into the image of His son.

Jesus appears to the apostles on the night of his resurrection and offers peace to the men who had betrayed him and left him in his time of need. He explains that he came to forgive us of our sins. As God has loved us and reconciled us to him, we are to forgive and reconcile with others. For love to live in our hearts we will forgive and look to reconcile with others. Love seeks to make real peace through forgiveness and reconciliation.

Love obeys because it trusts. We obey God because he loved us first and we trust him. We obey his commandments not to do him a favor but because we trust his way is best. For love to live and grow in our hearts we must continually trust and obey God and put our faith in him.

Jesus was love in action. Whenever we meet Jesus in the gospel, we see love in action. He went about doing good and healing people, but the world could not handle 100 percent pure love and killed him. However, the grave could not keep him and love conquered death. In this message we will look at how the resurrection of Jesus shows that love lives on and that it cannot be destroyed. Jesus lives in us and because he lives in us we can love as he did.

Palm Sunday 2021

In the reading from Jeremiah, God promises to give people a new heart. This is ultimately what we want. We are asking for God to give us a new heart that is not easily offended. We need to drive out the offense that is in our hearts so that we live with God’s grace and love.

Offense usually brings a sense of entitlement. Grace though destroys all sense of entitlement. Grace is a pure gift that we do not own. In this message we will look at the importance of responding to injury with grace as God did. When God had a right to be very offended by all the ways we had wronged him and injured him, he didn’t live in that offense. Instead he responded by sending his Son to us, to reconcile us with him. His Son humbled himself to become human.