Sermons - Seabold United Methodist Church

Continuing from last week, we dive further into this issue of how to think about who's in and who's out. And this week, we see Paul going ballistic on his church that didn't go in the direction he wanted. How do we modern Christians make any sense of this book of the Bible?

What can a contentious dispute in the earliest Church teach us about our own socially/politically fraught moment?

In the midst of our socially chaotic world, where do we find Resurrection this Easter?

Why are we so cheery when we talk about Palm Sunday? We dive into that question today, which takes us through guerrilla theater, the Passion story, anti-Semitism, social bandits, and a dive into humanity's existential condition.

Never shying away from a tough subject, we dive headlong into The Little Apocalypse, a discourse where Jesus is delivering this bizarre speech about the end time and signs. What do we as modern folks make of that?

This week, we dig into the complexity of the Lazarus story, trying to figure out why Jesus acted the way he did, and why it was so important to John to show Jesus in this way.

This time, we take up the Transfiguration: this mysterious event with so much meaning that it's confusing. So we dive into a couple of ideas to help flesh out what's going on.

This week, we departed from our regularly scheduled programming to reflect on the mass school shooting in Florida this last week. Rather than joining the fray, however, we're looking at the deeper ideological structure underlying the whole thing: the ideology of self-defense. As Christians, why can't we rely on guns (or anything else) as our self-defense?

Today, we dig into the three different temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry: selfishness, political power, and trying to control God.

Right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, he visits a fiery preacher named John the Baptist. However, he had his own followers, which shaped how the gospel writers depicted him. But he and Jesus both had the same message: the imminent coming of the Empire of God.

This week, we cannot help but get into the weeds. Because John's prologue is the Scripture that kicks off the New Testament. And it loves philosophy! So we go through and break down, piece by piece, exactly what John is saying here.

Even though we ran short on time, we still were able to have an abbreviated conversation this week about the Intertestamental Period. The two testaments stand 500 years apart, and a whole lot happened in that time, including stuff that must shape how we understand the New Testament.

For our last week in the Hebrew Bible, we look at Daniel. When we bore down into it, Daniel is resistance literature of a subjugated people living under an oppressive empire. And it introduces us to apocalyptic literature, a genre written by those with no earthly chance of vindication—and which we'll see all over the New Testament.

This week, we take a look at Ezra. Last week (for which the audio recording did not work), we looked at the Babylonian Exile that the Judean elites were taken to. However, now they come back to Judah. But there are major class divides that rock the returning exiles, pitting rich against poor. Ezra's religious reforms simply exacerbate this conflict.

This week, we take a pause from our meta-narrative to step back and look at some of the implications of these stories. Rabbi Paul Strasko joins us to give us a helpful perspective on how we should think about these stories about which we so often feel squeamish.

This week takes a somber turn, as we have to work through the grief that the people of Judah experienced with the starvation and subsequent exile brought on by the protracted Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Along the way of, we look at Jeremiah and Lamentations to give us some insight into how they grieved—and what we can learn from them.

After spending a month up with the Northern Kingdom, we have witnessed its demise. So we saunter down to the Southern Kingdom, where King Josiah is busy enacting sweeping social and theological reforms. We explore a little bit of the clash between "YHWH only" religion and folk religion.

We stay again with the Northern Kingdom this week. They're experiencing an economic boom and tons of prosperity as a country. But the prophet Amos wants us to pause and take a look at whose expense this wealth is being created. His answer: the poor.

We're spend our time this week with the Northern kingdom. After the split between North and South, Jeroboam attempted to make the North into a utopian state. However, it soon devolved in chaos and political turmoil. This coincides, however, with the rise of the prophets as social critics. This week, we take a look today at how all of these forces coincided to make a time for the North that was prosperous, but had an unsettling undercurrent being brought to the surface by the prophets.

This week, we dive deep into one story: the schism between the North (Israel) and South (Judah) that pits a hard-line, merciless ruler against a utopian dreamer.

We take a brief hiatus today from our plot to examine the Wisdom Literature of the Bible: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. These three are all trying to get at the same question: Why are things the way they are? But they have very different takes on them, and that disagreement gives us license to try to solve these issues on our own.

In our last week of the United Monarchy, we examine the powerful and rich figure of King Solomon. But with that swell of power, we have to ask the question: On whose backs was that power gained?

What have you heard about David through church or through the culture? Most of what we hear about David is that he's an exemplary character. However, when we actually dive into the story, we see a much different story.

This week marks the beginning of the wonderful David saga—one of the finest pieces of ancient literature around. The first half of the saga focuses on Saul, a man chosen reluctantly to be king, who slowly slips into madness and instability at the prospects of his fate. He's one of the greatest tragic characters in the Bible.

Our sermon this week mixes it up a little bit from the plot we've been mapping. Whereas last week we saw the military might of the Israelites conquering Canaan, in this week's sermon, we look at a different story. The indigenous people are still around and thriving, and the Israelites have to fight them off again and again. A cycle of judges rise and fall, but eventually show the limitations of this form of government.

This week's section of the Bible is troubling on several fronts. On one hand, we have to figure out what to do with a text that commands Israel to commit genocide. And on the other, we have to figure out what to do when the historical evidence disagrees with the Bible's story.

This week we move from the Exodus to the Land of Canaan. We examine how these ex-slaves unlearn that which they internalized in slavery and learned a new way of being.

This week is all about myths. Not the myth vs. fact kind of myths, but the ancient stories that inform your life. For the Israelites, this myth was the Exodus story. We dive into it to look at what kinds of things the Israelites learned about who they are as a community.

In the Joseph story, we find ourselves a complex, ambiguous protagonist. He's proud and get exploited and becomes a powerful elite through economic manipulation. We dive into the contours of his story in this last sermon on Genesis.

We keep moving through Genesis, this time taking up two sets of stories about our spiritual patriarchs. One, Isaac, only exists as a prop for other characters' storylines. But the story of Jacob and Esau and Leah and Rachel and Zilpah and Bilhah—that gives us enough intrigue to really sink our teeth into. But just like last week, we have to make sure we're paying attention, so that we don't silence those voices that have traditionally been overlooked.

This week, we tackle difficult subjects. We look at Abraham and Sarah, and how they tried to work out their covenant with God. But then we also look at their collateral damage: Hagar, their slave. We try to hold to the former while not minimizing the latter.

This week, we turn to the story of the Tower of Babel. It's a myth about the origins of language, but what does meaning can modern readers get out of it? Surprisingly, in order to make sense of it now, we have to go way back to ancient cosmology. And then we need to examine how empires function. All to help us to realize that as finite beings, we must come to terms with the fact that world is fundamentally not under our control.

For our second week of our trek through the whole Bible, we look at Noah and The Great Flood. Many of us have this Sunday School version of the story in our minds. But the real story is completely different from that—violent and weird and profound. However, the real version in the Bible is not a story that we can affirm. So we examine what it means to hold these in tension.Next week's reading is the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11). As you read, consider these questions: How does this story relate to the previous two weeks?What reasoning did God give for confusing the languages? Do you agree with that reason?What is the purpose of this story?

This week, we kick off our massive, 14-month sermon series, going from cover to cover of the Bible. We'll look at the huge narrative world going on and dive deep into the characters and themes that run throughout.Of course, we begin this week with the stories of Creation. We take a look at the two different stories that start off the Bible, and how they are trying to grapple with the violent creation myths of their time. These stories contend that, instead, Creation was really a peaceful, love filled act that renders everything with an inherent worth and dignity.

For our last week of this sermon series, we look at humility. More specifically, how the Church, on the level of institutions, fails to heed its own advice on being humble. But the future of the church looks like a deep, integrated humility, which leads to partnering and diversity.We will now post the discussion questions or reading questions from the service if they are relevant to the sermon. Discussion questions:What about the future of the church scares you? Excites you? Is most uncertain? Has the most potential?

This week, we examine how the Church is transformational. We begin by looking at the economics of the Church. With our changing world, the Church now has a much higher standard to hit: it must show its effectiveness to earn its keep. The main way that the Church can be effective in its task is through transformation, in terms of individuals, communities, and the world.

As we continue to think about what the future of the Church looks like, we turn now to thinking about space. Rather than maintaining the church building as the center of our world, we should de-center it, going instead into our communities where we serve and love and live. We can learn a little bit about what this might look like by examining pub churches to see how they work.

This week, we kick off a series exploring what we know about what the future of the church looks like. To do so, we explore the theme of authenticity, why it's so important in our newly emerging culture, and what it might look like in practice.

This week, we welcome Helen Pitts, who works with the Jesuit Volunteer Corp. She draws upon her tradition to share with us some of the wisdom from the greats of Christian tradition. Drawing from S.t Francis, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and Richard Rohr, she discusses with us what it means to live simply in our complex world and the freedom that it can lead to.

For Easter Sunday, we dive into a curious text from Jesus, featuring him railing against his opponents. Although not a particularly nice passage, it still does have something interesting to teach us about resurrection, transformation, and bringing forth the new Creation.

For this week's text of terror, we look from one end of the Bible to the other: the command in Genesis to "subdue" the Earth, and the idea that at the end of time, the whole Creation will be destroyed. Looking at the Industrial Revolution in light of these texts, we see one way that people have legitimized the wanton destruction of the environment—and harming people in the process.

This week, we were blessed to hear from Rev. Sarah Casey. She continued our series of wrestling with some of the hardest texts in the Bible and trying to figure out what to do with them. She takes up the topic of women, examining how the New Testament has been used to keep women out of ministry and leadership roles in the church.

Continuing our series about Biblical texts that have been used to cause great harm, we take up the poor this week. More than any one text, what has been harmful has been the way that we interpret the whole Bible in the first place. Allegorical readings shift the focus from the real material conditions of the poor to a spiritualized realm that ignores these problems.

During the Lenten season, we are taking each week a text that has been used to cause great harm, examine its use without trying to excuse it, and then figuring out how to move forward from there. This week, we take on the legacy of slavery and how Christianity has been used to justify it.

This week, we begin our Lenten sermon series. Each week, we are taking up a Biblical text that has been used to brutalize a group. We unflinchingly look at it and how it has been used—not trying to sugarcoat it or make it easier to handle—and then try to figure out how to move forward from there. This week, we discuss Native Americans and the genocidal legacy of the Conquest of Canaan.

Today we take on a portion of the Sermon on the Mount. We start off with a little review from Pastor Colin, reminding us what's in them. And then we switch to discussion on the questions as a church. In this recording, you cannot hear the congregants, but usually Pastor Colin repeats the gist of the speaker.

Today, we take up the ancient practice of Lectio Divina—divine reading. Join in this meditation on the famous passage: "Love is patient, love is kind..."

This week gets weird! In order to understand our passage from 1 Corinthians 11, we have to go back to the ancient Watchers tradition, which talks about rogue angels breeding with human women to create a race of giants. When we look at this passage through this light, we all of a sudden see a different view, and we have new questions about how we think about the passage applying to us.

We continue exploring 1 Corinthians, which shows us on of the earliest churches in all of their foibles and flaws. This week's story takes up the issue of The Lord's Supper, which has changed from a meaningful rite to a way to exclude and marginalize members of their community. This passage calls us to examine our own rites and religious practices with just as close of scrutiny, to make sure we aren't harming others in our own devotion.

This week, we take up 1 Corinthians 8, where Paul discusses the problem of meat sacrificed to idols. Apparently, it is creating a massive rift between the rich and the poor. We examine what's going on and how Paul tries to respond to it.

We started off worship today with a discussion of what we mean by LGTBQ and why we care as Christians. If you need a primer on what the acronym stands for or are unclear of what these sexual orientations are, we get everybody on the same page.