February 13th, 2017
John Chandler, thanks to the apostle Paul, spent a great deal of time talking about circumcision and excrement.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- Saul clung to his zeal and force of will. Sounding like the prototypical Enneagram Type One that he was, after his conversion he described this as his desire to attain perfection by the strength of his efforts. What a relief it must have been for him to replace the perfection he had sought through hard work with “the perfection that comes through faith in Christ, and is from God”. — David Benner in The Gift of Being Yourself
- But, like Paul, awareness of the flesh helps us understand how it can be a conduit for God’s purposes. For example, Paul used his status as a Roman citizen in to avoid a flogging and imprisonment (Acts 22:25-29). — MaryKate Morse in Making Room for Leadership
- On Ramp podcast
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February 6th, 2017
John Chandler took us to the halfway point in our trek alongside the Philippians.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- “But what does that mean? Work out our salvation? With fear and trembling? If we shrink salvation down to a ticket to heaven, Paul’s exhortation makes little sense. But if we understand salvation as Maximus the Confessor described it—“an entirely new way to be human”—then it makes perfect sense. Salvation is not securing a seat for the bus to heaven, but a thorough living out of resurrection implications. Paul is telling the Philippian Christians that, regarding their salvation, they are to work it out, walk it out, live it out—and to do so with fear and trembling. Why fear and trembling? Because what we have involved ourselves with in Christ is so utterly astonishing!” — Brian Zahnd in Beauty Will Save the World
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January 31st, 2017
Chris Morton continues our discussion of Philippians.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- “Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.” Francis of Assisi
- “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Teresa of Calcutta
- “I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.” Napoleon Bonaparte
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January 22nd, 2017
John Chandler played his history nerd card for a sermon on Philippians 1:12-26.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- The Cult of Mithras
- “The Christian message in this situation can be reduced to a simple formula: by virtue of his resurrection, Christ’s end in the catastrophe on Golgotha became the true beginning of his new life for us. His raising from the dead shows the divine power of beginning in the end.” — Jurgen Moltmann
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January 16th, 2017
John Chandler began a series in the letter to the Philippians from the New Testament.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- And knowing, of course, is the cessation of thinking. There is this epidemic of listicles. Why think about what constitutes a great work of art when you can skim the list of the 20 most expensive paintings in history? I’m very guided by this desire to counter that in myself, because I am, like everybody else, a product of my time and my culture. The reason we’re so increasingly intolerant of long articles and why we skim them and why we skip forward even in a short video … is that we’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge, but not to have the work, to do the work, of claiming it. — Maria Popova
- Maria Popova on the On Being podcast
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January 9th, 2017
John Chandler invited us to consider what it means to rest in, and share, a blessing in 2017 — no matter how it compares to 2016.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- Whatever the technological advances of modern society — and they’re nearly miraculous — the individualized lifestyles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit. — Sebastian Junger
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December 19th, 2016
John Chandler rounded the corner to the home stretch of Advent as we read an ancient story (or two) of God proving trustworthy through the birth of a child.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- “We are living in the most peaceful era in history. International wars have dropped to an all-time low. With few exceptions, since 1945 states no longer invade other states in order to conquer and swallow them up. Such conquests had been the bread and butter of political history since time immemorial. It was how most great empires were established, and how most rulers and populations expected things to stay. But campaigns of conquest like those of the Romans, Mongols and Ottomans cannot take place today anywhere in the world. Since 1945, no independent country recognized by the UN has been conquered and wiped off the map. Limited international wars still occur from time to time, and millions still die in wars, but wars are no longer the norm. … Today humankind has broken the law of the jungle. There is at last real peace, and not just absence of war. For most polities, there is no plausible scenario leading to full-scale conflict within one year.” – Yuval Harari in Sapiens
- Benefit of the Doubt, by Greg Boyd
- “God is capable of appearing in history through the normal means of marital intercourse. The virgin birth does not seem necessary for God or for us; but it is an impressive doctrine, enshrining the important evangelical truth that God can, and in fact regularly does, come to human life without the initiatives of human nature.” — Dale Bruner
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December 14th, 2016
Recorded before the sermon in our December 11 liturgy, John Chandler gave a preview of our 2017 budget. A printed version of the budget will be available in liturgy for the next few weeks.
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December 12th, 2016
Jamie McCormick continued us in the Advent season with a sermon on the story of young Mary meeting her cousin Elizabeth and breaking out in song.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- “It’s the gospel before the gospel, a fierce bright shout of triumph thirty weeks before Bethlehem, thirty years before Calvary and Easter. It goes with a swing and a clap and a stamp. It’s all about God, and it’s all about revolution. And it’s all because of Jesus — Jesus who’s only just been conceived, not yet born, but who has made Mary giddy with excitement and hope and triumph.” – N.T. Wright
- “Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am. Enflesh Me. Give birth to me. And the artist can either say, ‘My soul doth magnify the lord,’ and willingly become the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily the conscious one, and not everyone has the humble courageeous obedience of Mary… Mary did not always understand, but one does not have to understand to be obedient. Instead of undertanding, that intellectual understanding which we are so fond of — there is a feeling of rightness, of knowing, knowing things which you are not yet able to understand.” – Madeleine L’Engel
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November 28th, 2016
April Karli welcomed into Advent…and into the longing and hope of an ancient prophet named Isaiah.
Quotes and links mentioned:
- The French author Simone Weil writes in her notebook: ‘Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.’ Without patience our expectation degenerates into wishful thinking. Patience comes from the word patior which means to suffer… What seems a hindrance becomes a way; what seems an obstacle becomes a door; what seems a misfit becomes a cornerstone. To wait patiently therefore means to allow our weeping and wailing to become the purifying preparation by which we are made ready to receive the joy which is promised to us. — Henri Nouwen
- “Of all types of waiting, the waiting of pregnancy is most like the waiting that we do during Advent. The waiting of pregnancy is like the waiting we do for God.” — Wendy M Wright
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