Sermons from Ankeny UCC

In Pastor Nathan's final sermon before his term as pastor ends, he reminds us of Christ as the invisible God, sustaining us and providing us with a model not only of hope, but of service in the church and the world.

Christmas marks the shift between the world of anticipating Christ and the world of fulfilling Christ. This year, and every year, we can keep the spirit of his birth alive by keeping Christmas well.

What happens if we put John the Baptist in conversation with Bob Iger? What lessons in leadership do we learn?

Just because something is comfortable doesn't make it good, and just because something is uncomfortable doesn't mean it should be unwelcome. John urges us to reject complacency as we prepare to change our lives.

As we think about Jesus as the eternal sovereign, we remember that this promise came about in times of distress, and that it can provide not only challenge to those in power, but comfort for those who see no future.

On All Saints, we remember the hopes we have of a future beyond our understanding, and in which the final barriers between God and ourselves are removed. And we pause to give ourselves a chance to mourn what the busyness of our lives prevented.

The protestant reformation, begun in response to exploitation of the poor, reminds us to always look for opportunities to hold ourselves accountable to the demands of justice.

Jesus lays out what it looks like to forgive as we ought to forgive. In his trying examples, he highlights all the de-escalation we can do much more easily.

The Holy Spirit empowers us all in different ways. When we are most alone, know that the Holy Spirit remembered you, too.

Today's text is graphic, painful, and destructive, concerning sexual violence against Tamar by her half-brother Amnon. When looking at this too-familiar act and responses to it from 2500 years ago, we are compelled to ask, "why is this still so current?"

In the election season, as we become focused on the group we are a part of and our righteousness, it is important to remember that it is what comes out of our mouth that shows who we are.

It's the creation of a new heaven and a new earth that puts Revelation at the end of the Bible. We begin in creation and end in re-creation.

Hebrews 2 illustrates what it means that Jesus was fully human, and why it was important that he was.

If only we'd listened to Paul's admonitions about judgement in Romans 2! These verses not only lay out the ways we could have avoided millennia of antisemitism, but also how to avoid the misguided notion that our actions are okay because "it's us doing them."

The story of Abigail and Nabal reminds us that the prophets and scribes of old often remembered the women, left off the lists of kings, who made the events of ancient Israel and the ancient church possible.

Romans 12 contains Paul's illustration of what he thinks it looks like to embody the grace we have received, leaving us with some of his most famous and memorable turns of phrase. In the midst of a world that excels at telling us what to hate, his reminder to always seek the good is indeed countercultural.

The dichotomy of insecurity and inspiration that came into Jersualem's royal household serves as a model for our reactions to disruption throughout our lives--including in the national parks.

Sometimes, we want SO HARD to make people be other than what they are that we lose sense of who we are in the meantime.

What is the nature of Christian Faith?

In communities, including families and congregations, we sometimes encounter people who seek to disrupt and even abuse other community members. How do we engage with them? Do we name the behavior, or walk on eggshells?

As a people, we so often want to avoid the burden of making decisions. God is there to remind us that we're never alone when we do.

The book of 1 Samuel reminds us that power tends to corrupt. One antidote to the corruption of power is the vesting of it in all of God's people.

All actions come with unintended consequences. As we celebrate a patriotic holiday, we should remember how often victory carried with it the seeds of destruction, and pay attention to winning not only for ourselves, but for the whole world in a non-zero-sum game.

Throughout the Bible, we see women's stories subsumed into the stories of their sons and husbands. Taking them independently, we can glimpse pictures of the ways power is enforced upon them. As we do, we should see glimpses of the way God subverts and undermines the control societies and family structures place upon the bodies of women in God's care.

The church described early in the Book of Acts exemplified caring for all. For them, it meant the sacrifice by those who had much to create equality among the whole community.

What is the Holy Trinity, exactly, and why is it important to understand? One reason is that it informs our understanding of God as beyond the bounds of our easy definition.

Jesus may be gone, but the Holy Spirit continues to push us toward changing ourselves, our church, and our world.

We're a church that serves beyond. What does that mean? It means doing the work of Jesus outside the doors of the church, and being bold to try and change the world for the better, both through charity and through agitation.

Paul writes about the tomb dedicated to an unknown (really an unnamed) god in Athens. How often do we treat those around us in church as unnamed and unknown?

In a world beset by unstable institutions and changing bedrocks and assumptions, we need a faith that teaches us how to adapt and change to meet the challenges of different eras. Listening to how God speaks through time, and watching the ways God's people have changed themselves and their faith helps us to find new ways to be faithful in our own context.

Progressive Christian Theology means learning from the stories in the Bible that life is complicated and messy, and that the only thing in front of us is to understand the people that present themselves and find ways to help them be whole.

Even before Pentecost, Jesus told his disciples that they'd have to do the work of building his ministry in the world. As a welcoming church family, we recognize that the people we encounter make us grow as much as they make the church grow.

The story of Thomas's encounter with the risen Christ shows us not only what our own reactions to good news can often look like, but the hope that there is always time and opportunity for us, too. No matter what we think we've missed.

Christ is Risen! In a new body that reminds us resurrection is not restoration, but the beginning of something new.

Christ enters Jerusalem in community. He exists with God and the Holy Spirit in the community of the Trinity. And we exist in community with them and with one another. As we conclude our series Merely Christian, we reflect on the necessity of community to understanding Christ.

What does morality demand of us that come into a windfall? What does it demand of us in our interaction with others? And how do we square our grand idea for where we are going with the choices that confront us daily?

Christians believe a lot of things. That's part of the deal with having free will. Central among them all is that something miraculous happened on the cross. We may not fully understand what, or how, but the world changed underneath our feet.

As we continue our theme of Merely Christian, we look at what Jesus says about people who reassure themselves that they are good people because they are, at least, better than others.

C.S. Lewis starts Mere Christianity by laying the groundwork for all religion: is there some morality outside ourselves? How might this question be illustrated in this story of Jesus feeding the 5000?

As we embark on our Lenten practice and Study of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, we ask ourselves, "what is the center of our faith?" In a world where faith is weaponized, we must understand our own core and be prepared to understand how our faith interacts with the world around us.

We like to think that the world around us changes based on who we think is helped by the reality we choose to inhabit. War, violence against bodies, and acts beyond interpretation show us that this is vanity and that we must accept that, behind our interpretations of the world around us sometimes live things that we cannot explain away. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is an invitation to us to reconcile ourselves to the world as it is.

We often fool ourselves into thinking messengers who challenge us are flawed and should be dismissed. But Jesus tells us that being only human is an opportunity for hope.

Song of Songs reminds us that editors of the Bible throughout the ages have found it important to acknowledge the whole truths of our existence, and not to give into the idea that we are disembodied.

Paul and Silas went to help a woman and free her from (some) exploitation. Then they got thrown in the stocks. What happens when we challenge systems that exploit people?

It's easy, when reading the healing stories of Jesus, to miss the stories of the people being healed. It's important to listen to the details, so that we can hear the stories of the people we'd like to help, too.

In 2022, what actions can we take that take you back to the moment you were first called to the church universal or to Ankeny UCC in particular?

We choose the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we came from. As we look at America today, let's look at our past and recognize truths we'd like to throw away, so we can tell a story of liberation with our lives and our faith.

The urge to always be more, to always find the extra 2%, to live up to expectations of others or ourselves, can be overwhelming. Sometimes, it's better to simply show up and be present.

In a Christian world, we sometimes miss the wonder and the challenge of a Christ born into his own world. How can we experience and feel the transforming love Christ represents?

The event is over, but Christmas continues. In the wake of our gatherings, find hope.

It is another in the increasingly misnamed Plague Year. We are gathered again at Christmas, and yet we are not. Is the night half-bright or half-dark (much like our Christmas lights)?