Weekly sermon content from Manito Presbyterian Church in Spokane, WA. Whatever your past experience church has or has not been, you are invited to be a part of our conversations and happenings. We live in confusing, divisive, isolating times and it is o
True Christianity is growth in the life of the Spirit, a deepening of the new life, a continuous rebirth, in which the exterior and superficial life of the ego-self is discarded like an old snake skin and the mysterious, invisible self of the Spirit becomes more present and more active. The true Christian rebirth is a renewed transformation, a “Passover” in which [a person] is progressively liberated from selfishness and not only grows in love but in some sense “becomes love.” The perfection of the new birth is reached where there is no more selfishness, there is only love. –Thomas Merton
God is a missionary God; God's mission has a church. Focusing primarily on the church's mission without a larger discernment of the church's identity with respect to God's mission will get us nowhere. Instead, we need to place God's mission as lived out with respect to a holistic gospel into dialogue with the realities of contemporary culture. –Craig Van Gelder, Craig and Dwight Zscheile
Focus: Discernment is more than gathering and analyzing data. Discernment develops the capacity to perceive where God is at work in the global and local situation in order to choose what better leads to the glory of God, which is nothing other than the fullness of human life. –Arturo Sosa, S.J.
An awareness is growing that humanity is living through a profound change of epoch. The consequences of this change sometimes take us by surprise. We must humbly recognize the inadequacy of our intellectual tools for measuring the effects of epochal change, understanding the present, and visualizing the future. Uncertainty is gaining ground in personal and social life. Uncertainty then sparks fear, provoking defensive reactions that turn our gaze toward an idealized past that never really existed. Fear tempts us to reject the newness of our time. –Arturo Sosa, S.J.
Because we live with hope, we are able to see that what appears to the ordinary eye to be impossible, is possible when we allow the love of God to work in human life. Of course, to place all our hope in him means more than believing that what looks impossible is possible. It means living already, now, as we hope that the life of all will be. The one who has hope not only has faith that another world is possible but behaves as if already living in it. –Arturo Sosa, S.J.
We seem to be faced with a fundamental choice of whether we are going to fully embrace the reality that God has placed before us, or choose to believe and act based on the gaslighting of others. This is a primary ethical choice for Christians.
Typically, we are blind to countless evidence of God's grace; by nature, we are so dull and rebellious of heart that we take for granted our creation, preservation, and salvation as entitlements (cf. Ps 103:2; Isa 40:21; Rom 1:21). In the biblical tradition it is different: “believers do not look at the universe and its fate from the angle of their personal interests but rather contemplate it as it appears in the light of God's will.” —Clifton Black, quoting Otto Piper
Western culture has tended to be an extroverted culture and a “can-do” culture. Prayer too easily became an attempt to change God and aggrandize ourselves instead of what it was meant to be – an interior practice to change the one who is praying, which will always happen if we stand calmly before this uncanny and utterly safe Presence, allowing the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our unconscious, the place where 95 percent of our motivations and reactions come from. –Richard Rohr
Taking a look at what that means for each and every one of us.
The Life of Faith in God's New Creation
Over time, God transforms our desire to control and exert power over others into a spiritual will to use power for the benefit of others, especially for the undeserving and the "least of these."
“God wants humanity to be His creature. Furthermore, He wants us to be His PARTNER...God wants light, not darkness. He wants cosmos, not chaos. He wants peace, not disorder.” ― Karl Barth
"The covenant is not only quite as old as creation; it is older than it. Before the world was,before heaven and earth were, the resolve or decree of God exists in view of this event in which God willed to hold communion with man, as it became inconceivably true and real in Jesus Christ" -Karl Barth
"On the basis of the eternal will of god we have to think of EVERY HUMAN BEING, even the oddest, most villanous or miserable, as one whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God is Father; and we have to deal with him on this assumtion. If the other person knows that already, then we have to strengthen him in the knowledge. If he does not know it yet or no longer knows it, our buisness is to transmit this knowledge to him." -Karl Barth
"To be pilgrims means that men must perpetually return to the starting-point of that naked humanity which is absolute poverty and utter insecurity...The veritable pinnacle of religious achievement is attaned when men are thrust down into the company of those who lie in the depths. Where this is overlooked, the first must become the last, for only the last can be the first" - Karl Barth
"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world" - Karl Barth
CreedGod has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family. In his reconciling love, God overcomes the barriers between sisters and brothers and breaks down every form of discrimination based on racial or ethnic difference, real or imaginary. The church is called to bring all people to receive and uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment, housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the exercise of political rights. Therefore, the church labors for the abolition of all racial discrimination and ministers to those injured by it. Congregations, individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize others, however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which they profess. Scripture Readings Karen BartOld Testament: Genesis 45:15 (Link to text: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=611754268)New Testament: Luke 15:20 (Link to text: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=611754296)Homily: To receive and uphold one anotherScott Starbuck Focus: “The area of the Church stands in the world, as outwardly the Church stands in the village or in a city, beside the school, the cinema and the railway station. The Church's language cannot aim at being an end in itself. It must be made clear that the Church exists for the sake of the world, that the light is shining in the darkness.” ― Karl Barth
"Religion is the possibility of the removal of every gound of confidence except confidence in God alone." - Karl Barth
"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousandfibers connect us with our fellows; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects" -Herman Melville
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” -C. S. Lewis
“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The ordinary think inside of the box, the extraordinary think outside of the box, but genius thinks inside, outside, below and above the box.” -Matshona Dhliwayo
Scripture Readings Shirley Russell Old Testament: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 (Link to text: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=603296864)New Testament: Luke 14:28-33 (Link to text: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=603296917)Sermon: Detachment or Focus?Scott StarbuckFocus: “The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self–all your wishes and precautions–to Christ.” -C.S. Lewis
“You've got to think about big things while doing small things so that all the small things go in the right direction.” -Alvin Toffler
“This is our great challenge and consolation. Jesus comes to us in the poor, the sick, the dying, the prisoners, the lonely, the disabled, the rejected. There we meet him, and there the door to God's house is opened for us.” Henri Nouwen
"It is said that the age of a tree can be reckoned by looking at the bsrk - one can also truly know a person's age in the good by the inwardness of the repentance."- Soren Kierkegaard
“The True Self is not our creation, but God's. It is the self we are in our depths. It is our capacity for divinity and transcendence.” -Sue Monk Kid
"Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving." -Albert Einstein
Old Testament: 1 Samuel 1:1-19 (Link to text: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=603295174)New Testament: Luke 18:1-8 (Link to text: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=603295198)Sermon: Self AdvocacyScott StarbuckFocus: “It keeps our hearts chasing after God's heart. It's how we bother God, and how God bothers us back. There's nothing that works any better than that.” -Barbara Brown Taylor
Scripture Readings Jill CatheyOld Testament: Deuteronomy 15:7-11 (Link to text: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=603295429)New Testament: Luke 16:1-13 (Link to text: https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=603295453)Sermon: Heavy RealismScott StarbuckFocus: “Perfect is the enemy of good.” -Voltaire
"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." -Albert Einstein
“Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.” -John Muir
“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb
The goal of our lives is not simply self agency or mastery but even more surrender to and embrace of God's will and being.
Tonight; we remember and anticipate all of the things that can happen in God…suddenly!
At Christmas, we celebrate and honor those who are culturally considered lowly but are exalted in the love and work of Christ.
Joy is to be found in accompaniment rather than control and exploitation.
Advent is the time of your to hold lights of mercy in any and every darkness to guide all feet in the ways of peace.
Advent means “coming.” Advent is our yearly exercise of preparing our hearts, minds, homes, and schedules for the in-breaking of Jesus Christ.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
