Mosaic Church of Clayton

"Why would someone choose to give us a perfectly good Sunday morning to be present in worship? Why would someone choose to be part of a community of believers, a kind of family that you don't always like, don't always get along with, don't always agree with? Why would be part of anything that requires more from us with everything already pressing on us? "

Sermon preached on April 30, 2023"Diana Butler Bass's book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, says, “The whole message of the Christian scripture is based in the idea of metanoia, the change of heart that happens when we meet God face-to-face. Even a cursory knowledge of history reveals that Christianity is a religion about change. The Christian faith always changes-even when some its adherents claim that it does not.” God did not meet all of those people in the Old Testament, ask them to build altars where they were to mark the place of the divine intervention of God, change their names just to believe that that just happens to them. God did not meet Paul on the road to Damascus and change his name to Saul. God did not meet him, one who was persecuting Christians because he believed in his heart of hearts that was the right thing to do, to just give us an interesting story. God did not meet Peter in a vision and say, “Don't call what I have made clean, unclean” just to show that God did that one thing once. God is a God of movement and change, God is at work right now in ways and in places that we cannot even imagine. We have this changing moments in scripture to show us that it is possible, even probable. What change of heart, what miracle of change is happening in you today?"

This is a sermon preached on May 23, 2021. Due to sound issues it was never posted. In light of the recent decisions by The Southern Baptist Convention, we felt it was important to retrieve it and make sure it was available. If you are looking for another way of understanding what scripture says about women, this will be a great starting place."Here are a few guiding principles when you are looking for what is right and true, students hear this because it will not be long that you are in college and looking for a campus ministry to join or a church to join, If you pull a few verses out of context and make sweeping statement about half of the world's population, it is about power and control. Do not believe it as the truth when they convincingly lob a handful of verses at you as declarative, about anything. Just because it is something that we have come to believe or has been preached over time, does not mean it is right. The Bible is a radical account of a God that is calling the people back in relationship with God and we have too often used it to limit, to put people in their place, to define who are sinners and who is not. And that is not the message of scripture."

I heard a sermon recently by a national leader calling for unity, focusing on the ways we are alike. But the problem is that the ways we are different harm and belittle people groups that are on the margins and I believe that should be where we draw the line. We cannot hold up not speaking our mind, wanting to keep the peace for everything. Unity at the expense of health and humanity is dangerous.

The truth is that we are made in the image of God, just as we are. There are up sides and there are down sides to who we are. But all of that has been made free, has been blessed, is continuing to be reformed for the work of God in Christ. It is in Christ that we can experience freedom from the things that hold us back. It is in Christ that we are lovingly refined to be the better image of God in the world, to rule as God would with love and care, each in our own way. We are who we are and we do not need to wallow in that, or feel shame about that. We are made for this glorious purpose when we are in Christ. In this new place, in this new perspective, when we are in Christ. And that is the glad text this morning. I am still me everywhere I go but when I go there, when I live in Christ, letting the way that Jesus sees me, the way that Jesus keeps shaping me, I am living out my glorious purpose in this world. Just as I am, and just as I am becoming. And in this place, in this in Christ place, the power struggles, the things that shame us in this world, the kinds of burdens we carry, none of that holds the same value here. We are free from those.

"And the words of Paul say that when we feel that pain, we need to lean into grace. Grace for ourselves and grace for other people. We are to be reminded that God has seen us right where we are. Right in the place of where we are lacking, right in the middle of our failures, right in the place of our pride, Jesus meets us there. The point is the grace. The point is Jesus. Rachel Held Evans also wrote, “The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget-that what makes the gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out but who it lets in.” Remember this morning that includes you. Remember this morning that includes the one you would want to keep out."

This is an introduction to the sermon series about Romans. The title of the book I am using by JR Daniel Kirk for guidance says it all, "Romans for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Misused, Problematic and Prooftexted Letter in the Bible."

This honest sermon based on Matthew 3 is my (Rev. Dr Charity Roberson, pastor) story. It is how I grew up in a conservative Christian church but became a pastor and somehow found God different somewhere along the way. This is a word for all of those who feel they are not able to fully themselves or are not fully honored in their churches and where God is in all of that.

And then he goes on with kind of a group of mixed metaphors about the power of the tongue and talk. The bottom line he is getting at is that the words you say have the power to destroy or create. The words you put into the world can seem so innocent. You did not do anything, you just said something or maybe even hinted at something. If someone else chose to take action on your words, you can't control that. And James says no, your words, the messages you send out into the world either build the world up or tear it down.

The power gets the loudest voices. The poor, the people without the power are often treated like pawns in a game. And it is a game that we will never win. That is what James is saying here….don't you get it. These power plays, these games we play to cater to the powerful to get more power to be protected ourselves will never end well. Power and money never find their way to trickle down to us.

There are days where we feel like we are killing it. We are doing amazing. We are loving our neighbors, caring for our world, loving those closest to us well, and we feel the presence of God in our own lives. In these days it is easy to lose site of God's presence with us because we can easily think we are doing it on our own. We deserve the things we have. We may just write off our mistakes because everybody makes them.

We choose every day who we will follow. We choose who we will learn from. We can choose to fall into the stereotypes or believe the stereotypes. We can choose to think that anything other than God can save us. We can chase after the approval of someone who is well connected, has the look, has all the answers. Or we can think outside the box. We can find value in leaders and teachers who do not look like we would expect. We can value in humility and a really good question. We can learn from someone who does not look like us, who does not have our background maybe even is someone that we don't at first agree with

It is helpful to ask our selves if the way they talked about God is to be descriptive of God, or more descriptive of their understanding of God at the time. Remember the culture in which this was written. They really did believe that God, and other cultures around them, their gods, made everything happen. They did not have the science we do today. They had no other language. Now, do I believe that God allowed these things to happen, I certainly do. God gave them chance after chance, tried to show them the way, and over and over again they abuse their power and their are consequences to that. They make wrong choices about how they live their lives and their are consequences. But do you see how that is different that a violent, wrathful God who hates the things that I do, and who has had enough and smites everyone? And I know that language is in scripture but again, is that God or is that the only language they had. I am certain that even today we all know someone who blames every good or bad thing that happens in their life on God. It takes away all responsibility, for the good and the bad.

It takes courage to celebrate. But life without celebration is a life of just wandering around in the dessert, moving from one calamity to another. This morning, let's grab the tambourines and celebrate. Let's have the courage, this isn't just kid stuff. While the world and life are so hard around us, let us engage in the spiritual discipline of laughing, feeling joy and celebrating what God has done, what God has given us, even in the us that God has created. Let us be people who can dream also.

Somewhere in the middle of Joseph's story he recognized the presence of God with him. He recognized the presence of God working to make all things good, working to shape and mold him. It did not make the slavery, the prison, or the deceptions any less awful but it did allow them to have a different purpose. What his brothers meant for bad, what Potiphar's wife meant for bad, what the cupbearers forgiveness meant for bad, God was present in. God worked them for good and somewhere along the way Joseph realized that. Our perspective changes when we can see God in the middle of it with us. In the thick of it with us.

As humans we look for a lot of things to give us our identity and to help us feel secure, our blessing in this world. A position at work, a relationship, the next high grade, getting into the right school. We spend our lives chasing some sense of peace and purpose that God has been offering all along. We think, we would just achieve this next thing, all will be well. When this problem is resolved, when this relationship is fixed, when the next, when the next, when the next. That peace, purpose, that promise is always just out of reach and we become like Jacob, we are just grasping for the next thing that will surely fix it.

But the truth is that life is a series of settling and unsettling. It is a cycle. There is illness, untimely death, a marriage falling apart, a child that makes choices you don't agree with, a job market that drastically changes, families who have different opinions/ways of seeing the world that make it difficult to be in relationship. Abraham's life was the same. The initial promise was go to the land I will show you, which appears to be Canaan. God promises that land to Abrahams ancestors but they don't stay there. There is famine and war that has Abraham moving around. The promise was not just to go and settle. God keeps moving and working in Abraham's life even in the unsettling seasons.

I grew up in a culture where if you didn't believe in a literal creation of the earth in six days with a day of rest, you weren't really Christian. In fact, we were trained to argue it in our schools….to not let that scientific education get the best of us. Now, I believe that God could have created the world in six days if God wanted to. But I do not believe that arguing that was ever the point. I think that is also why we have two creation accounts. In the chapter immediately following this one, there is another account and in some traditions, like the one I grew up in, we mix the two, picking and choosing and saying that you have to understand just what we have picked from the two stories literally.

Sermon from June 5, 2022Together we commit to being present for each other. Present on Sunday mornings, present in life. We commit to remembering that we cannot do this alone. I believe today in our culture we have lost site of the fact that the work of God, the work of the spirit, the work of the local church gathered on a Sunday morning is not just one of the many options we have available to us, but it ought to shape our we see the world, shape how we use our gifts, shape how we use our time. It should be the starting point out of which everything else flows.

It has been awhile since we have uploaded a sermon due to our expanding technology. This was an important one to start back. "In our little worlds we stand up to those who would harm or belittle or make fun of others because we know that each person is made in the image of God. In our own little worlds we stand up to racist jokes, to jokes about peoples appearances, to the vilification of women and girls because those that abuse power are propped up by large systems of people who are often never lovingly challenged them to think or act differently. We have the hard conversations, we stick our necks out, we call or email or send letters to our politicians because they need to hear that we care.Our silence in these moments will be deafening. Benjamin Cremer said, “Our public witness as Christians should make people say, ‘look at the power of their love,” not “look at how much they love power.” What is your love motivating to do today?"

"And if there was anywhere we should be able to fall apart it is at church. But somehow we have this belief that God expects us to be able to handle it all, to have it all figured out. We tried to brush away vulnerability and weakness maybe because of our pride, maybe because of something we learned along the way that God is only for the strong, there is not room for weakness and vulnerability in Christianity. But to be the church, we have to learn how to do that together. We will only be able to go alone so long until like Moses, we are collapsing under the weight and wondering where God is. We have to be doing the hard and messy work of caring for each other."

"And as we remember that there is room for everyone at the table, we need to look around and see who is not here. What people are we just not paying attention to, where is God moving outside of our normal ways of understanding him as we try to keep things neat and tidy? Life with Jesus is messy and the miracle, the love of Jesus cannot be contained. When we have open hearts to engage, to listen and learn, the power of Jesus spills over the table, it makes room for everyone and moves in ways we would not expect."

Here is our teaching and sermonette for our Sunday focusing on enneagram twos, the helpers among us.

Enneagram ones are known as the fixers, the reformers and the perfectionists. Here is our teaching and sermonette from July 25 as we learned more from our enneagram ones.

This week we learn about enneagram nines and their desire for keeping the peace.

Here is our interview, teaching and sermonette for Enneagram 8, the challengers and/or protectors amongst us.

Enneagram Sevens are our enthusiasts. They seek to make the most of life and to enjoy themselves as much as possible. Listen to learn more about this point of personality and about how to use these forces for good. We need more whimsy and holy curiosity in the world, but we also can know that even when life is not fun, when life is hard, God is still with us.

This week we look at the enneagram six point of personality, the loyalists.

Know as the investigator, enneagram fives seek to understand their place in the world through knowledge. This podcast includes an overview of an enneagram five, a spiritual practice and a short sermon on Thomas, who behaves a lot like an enneagram five, and what Jesus says to him.

Today we kick off our summer series all about the enneagram. In this recording we talk about how we got the enneagram, why we are studying and what it actually is. This is an overview to kick off the rest of our summer series.

And it matters because we know that persecution of women, discrimination and mysogony are problems world-wide. Christians should be leading the way in elevating all of God’s people. All of God’s image bearers. And instead in a week when we should have been speaking out on social media about 85 young girls killed because they were seeking an education, some religious leaders chose to take to social media to argue about women preachers and yoga pants…yes, I said yoga pants.

"God is going out of God’s way here to show the extent of who is invited. God could have sent anyone to the farthest reaches, God could have ignored the farthest reaches. God chooses a dark, black person who is not a man, but also not not a man, a person who had no power on their own, or even personhood, to be the one who has an encounter with Jesus and shares that with the Nubian people. God is going out of God’s way to make a point here, a point that God makes throughout the gospels, Acts and the letters of the New Testament, by furthering the kingdom through the foreigner, the one of the outside of the Jewish tradition, the women, the ones without power."

Sermon from April 18, 2021"The miracle though, the proof that all of this is more than just something we do to feel good about ourselves, is that Christianity keeps going. Despite all of the wrong things that have happened, despite the ways that it has been misrepresented, the Christian movement keeps going. We are invited to be part of that very real movement. In order to do that we have to face the whispers of our ancestors, of our contemporaries and the ways they do not represent Jesus because we might find a little racist ideology, a little sexist ideology, a little of the power we like that motivates the way we judge others and see and operate in the world. We cannot fix all the sins of the world and Jesus did not ask us to take that on. But in order to really be a part of this world altering movement, we have to be humble, keep learning and keep asking for forgiveness from others. That is the gospel. That none of us are perfect and that we will do our own work to know how to better represent this Jesus movement we are a part of."

Sermon from April 11, 2021"The stories we tell matter. The echo chambers we create matter. In a conference I was in recently, we were asked to share something we had had to give up about ourselves, something we had learned about ourselves during the last year. One minister said, “I’ve had to give up seeing myself as the one with all the answers.” In conversation after conversation these past few weeks, I’m hearing that a number of us feel mixed with this great hope we have for the end of the pandemic, this enormous pressure. We are telling ourselves stories about how we should have done more, taken up that new hobby, saved more, lost that weight, done more with our families, gotten that extra education…and the list goes on."

Luke 23:53 to 24:12"And this is how God makes beautiful things out of us. Out of the ashes of our lives, when we think there is nothing left to give, no hope left, beautiful things happen because God is still a God of resurrection. That is the hope this morning. Whatever you are feeling, whatever is in your soul, know that we still serve a God that is the God of resurrection. We serve a God who loves us and loves making beautiful things out of our lives, out of our world, out of our church, out of our community. God is still in the business of resurrection and invites you this morning to believe the impossible could be true."

Luke 19:1-10"As we move closer to the cross for Easter, may we know the power of the gospel. May we go all in on the right kingdom and quit chasing the things of the kingdom of this world. May we care more about others, about love, about a world where everyone is seen and treated as a child of God rather than pursuing power, beauty, money, success and all of the things this world says matter."Monologue was written by Rick McKinley from the Imago Dei Community, Imago Dei is a non-denominational church in SE Portland, striving to love God, each other and our neighbors well.

Psalm 98"If the pandemic had a soundtrack what would it be? Maybe it would be horns from drive by celebrations, the oven dinging to tell you that the banana bread is done, the sighs from one more thing cancelled, the sound of our loved ones through a zoom call or the phone, birds at bird feeders we started watching, the voices of our family members all the time because we are all in the house together, or more silence that we are used to, the voices of government officials as they give us the latest reports and updates."

Luke 15"Jesus is telling these parables because of the Pharisees and their scribes who were listening to this because they have criticized him for the time he spends with those they would consider sinners, it is up close and personal kind of time. Bumping elbows at a table, sharing food that you would all reach in and eat with fingers, hugs or handshakes of greeting at the door. Jesus is intimate. If there was ever a season where we knew the power of touch, it is right now. We see videos of people who have created huge plastic bubbles in order to be able to hug and touch grandparents, when we know what it is like to not just reach out with our normal handshakes but instead to awkwardly wave or bump elbows, when we know what it is like to want to reach out and hug someone, sit close to them but we have to stay six feet away, grandparents finally able to hold and cradle a grandchild after waiting months. We know how valuable touch is."

Luke 13:1-9, 18-19, 31-35Sermon for February 28, 2020"Here is the joy and the beauty of these scriptures, Jesus is not being crazy. Jesus is not being wrath filled or vengeful, Jesus is trying to be a prophet that says, You cannot separate yourself from the suffering but neither will I. Jesus says, “I will not separate myself from your suffering. I will not separate myself from you.” Theologian Frederich Beuchner said, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen.”"

Luke 10:25-37"Realizing that we are all connected is how we love our neighbor as ourselves. It is as simple as that. When you thrive, I thrive. When you offer me help, I can take it, knowing we are connected. You will need help someday. This is why I don’t think Jesus gives us any details of the man who had been attacked on the road because it allows us all to see ourselves as him."

Luke 9:28-43"This is how we find mountain top moments when we are just stuck in the valley. We pay attention. We look around at the ordinary for the beauty, for the work of God, for the ways in which God is still speaking to us. Jesus moves in the middle of the health crisis at the bottom of the mountain too."

Luke 7:1-17In these stories of healing we are reminded that it is really all about Jesus and that we all need him.

This morning was our first sermon in the series of a Month of Miracles. Here we talk about the miracle of calling beyond where we are comfortable. Our scripture this morning was Luke 5:1-11.

This sermon gives an overview of where Mosaic has been in the last year and what lies ahead for us. This would be a great sermon to listen to if you want to learn more about who Mosaic is.

Luke 3:1-20In the midst of a world that feels like it is on fire, we celebrate epiphany and find a word from John the Baptist on what we are to do, right where we are in the middle of difficult times.

Learning from the story of Jonah, what is our Nineveh in the middle of this political climate.

Exodus 32:1-14"In our lives, it would be easy to go back to just what we know. To fashion idols. To lift up political leaders that will get us out of this, that have all of the answers. To expect them to lift up policies that will fix everything. To try to go back to our lives before March. To try to numb ourselves, or soothe ourselves and make us feel comfortable by going to things we used to know that brought us comfort and purpose. But God can do something in this dessert, in this time where we out off balance, if we only have the patience to wait and look for his presence in new ways."

Sermon for October 4, 2020. This morning's sermon focuses on Exodus 13:3-8 and the celebration of Passover. What does it look like to follow a God who is saving? To set up the sermon, I used a video by Mayim Bialik on youtube as she defines the basics of passover.

September 6, 2020The first sermon in our "A God Who Is" series looks at Genesis 1:31-2:4Sabbath in this unique times really looks like finding ways to remind yourself of that truth, “God will never love you any more or less because of anything you manage, or fail, to achieve.”My devotional prayer for this morning was, “May this day bring Sabbath rest to my heart and my home. May God’s image in me be restored, and my imagination in God be re-storied. May the gravity of material things be lightened, and the relativity of time slow down. May I know grace to embrace my own finite smallness in the arms of God’s infinite greatness. May God’s word feed me and his spirit lead me into the week and into the life to come.” That is what Sabbath is about. It is about taking time regularly to remind ourselves of our place in the world and to marvel at God. That is Sabbath. And that is what it means to follow a God who rests.

Sermon on August 30. Matthew 5:13-16"I didn’t know that as the week went on, scripture would be loosely used in other ways to defend certain political decisions and behaviors. We have seen the name of Christ, the name of the Spirit and scripture coopted this week. This is not a political sermon. I am not telling you who to vote for or who not to vote for, but I am speaking specifically of the name of Christianity being co opted for what some would say are American values. We call this Christian nationalism. It is where we put the worship of power, the worship of our political leaders, the worship of our flag, above our God. You can love your country, your flag, your political leaders but when that love gets caught up in an inappropriate way with your worship of God, that is the problem. God, Christianity, Scripture all speak to who we are as a nation but who we are as a nation does not sum up what God, christianity and scripture have to say. Our faith, our worship should be bigger than just our country. I am calling us this morning back to being salt and light, back to bringing out the God colors of the world."

August 23. 2 Corinthians 8:1-15"I wanted to be in a place where the church was actually being the church and so I don’t mind the financial sacrifice. It doesn’t make it less easy some days to hustle and figure out where the salary is going to come from to support myself but I wouldn’t go back to that full time job with the benefits for anything. I wanted to be in a church where we talked about racism, where we were really welcoming of all people, where the programs were not driving the church and keeping us busy and numb from what was happening in the world. I wanted to be in a church where we were nimble and creative. I wanted those things because I believe the world wants and needs those things and that is why I tithe. I tithe because I believe this community needs a church like Mosaic. I believe we all who are on this call need a church like Mosaic."