We welcome you to St. Paul’s, a warm, vibrant, and growing parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee, located in the heart of downtown Murfreesboro.
The power that is ours through Jesus is nothing less than the power of the resurrection. When we pray, we pray for comfort, we pray for strength, maybe we pray for healing. But through Jesus, the power that is at hand is nothing less than the power of the resurrection. It is nothing less than the salvation of the world, the remaking of all of creation.
God invites us to be part of his work, bringing his reign to earth as it is in heaven. God honors us by inviting us to use what he has already given us – our selves, each of us with our own life stories, interests, hobbies, skills, resources. And God is the one who actually draws people to himself. He sends us to people whom he has already prepared to receive him, and us. He sends us into a field where the harvest is already ripe and plentiful, and waiting for us – for our precious, unique selves. And then he brings in the harvest.
Jesus never gives his followers a promise that the storms of life will not swirl around them. Instead, he promises to be with us in even in the midst of the worst storms that life throws our way.
What seems impossible in human eyes, the eighth son being anointed king or the mustard see growing into a great tree, is apparently how God chooses to work. Something new happens when Samuel gets out of his own way and learns how to catch God's vision—the vision of the heart.
“Look! we want a king!” the ancient Israelites tell Samuel. The siren song of earthly kingship, of being like everyone else, of conquering through military strength, this song is undone when we look to the true King. This King beckons us to follow him, not so that he can take from us, but so that we might receive true, abundant life from him.
Paul calls us to a grand vision of our participation in the life of the Triune God. Just as the life of God is more than the sum of its parts when God acts in concert, his love pouring through the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, our lives also take on a greater purpose as we allow ourselves to be drawn into God's life.
Weakness is characteristic of the human condition. But the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, helps us in our weakness. The Spirit comes alongside us so that our weakness might be transformed into Jesus' Resurrection glory.
This healing, this coming back into ourselves, is the physical, relational, spiritual work of the summer. This is the summer for us to allow God to do the slow, tender work of remaking our hearts and minds into the likeness of Christ – to return us to ourselves, to prepare us to be sent out afresh into the mission he has for us to do.
Jesus said, “I do not call you servants any longer. . .but I have called you friends.” John 15:15
Philip noticed a guy sitting alongside the road and noticed a nudge to speak to him, so he did. He asked him a question. He was invited to sit for a spell. So he set aside his plans for the moment and sat. He listened. They chatted. He told a story about himself and a friend he knows. All of this is so simple. And God did something wonderful with the simple ingredients.
In a world full of “wolves,” of things that threaten us and those we love, we have a Shepherd. A Good Shepherd. A better Shepherd than we deserve. When Jesus describes himself as this Good Shepherd, he talks about his love for us, his knowledge of us, and his Resurrection power in us.
Because we belong to God now, we are given over to his holiness. We are drawn into his righteousness. And God’s righteousness is not nearly as much about doing right as it is about being made right. Under God’s care, everything that is broken in us, everything that has gone astray and become wrong, is being made right.
Every single Sunday is a holiday. Every Sunday is set apart as holy, a time for remembrance and celebration of a singular, historical event that changes everything: the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The tomb is open to let us in to our Risen Lord’s new life. The tomb is open, and Jesus calls to us. Jesus calls to you: Come, you who are weary, you who are broken-hearted, you whose bodies are failing and whose spirits are fainting. Come, look into the tomb with Mary. See how it is empty? Our Lord Jesus has risen from the dead, and he means to bring you, too, into the glorious light of his new life.
On Good Friday, our task is not to speak too much. The Gospel writers themselves knew the power of understatement. Rather, it is enough to kneel before the Cross, knowing that we are guilty, and that we are powerless to do anything about it. For only God can defeat true evil.
Tonight, in this meal Jesus binds his dearest friends to himself. Tonight, Jesus counts you among his dearest friends and is pouring out his life for yours. Tonight, his victory over sin and death is now your victory. His resurrection life is now your life. So we eat. Tonight we share Christ’s body and blood, given and poured out for us.
Palm Sunday is a day of paradox, the most striking of which is the contrast between the cacophony of human noise and the thunderous silence of God. Holy Week bids us enter in this holy mystery: that Jesus inhabits both sides of this defining contrast, and he does it for the sake of the whole world.
“You were dead,” the Apostle Paul writes to the Ephesian church. Not sick, or list, or misguided. Dead, but like zombies, still walking around following the cravings of the flesh. But. God made us alive again in Christ.
The New Jerusalem – Revelation 21:1-22:21
Messages to the Churches – Revelation 2:1-3:22
A Voice and a Vision – Revelation 1:1-20
We have wonderful news. Jesus – his precious humanity, his death on the cross, his resurrection, these are the signs to us humans that God is here. It turns out, Jesus is the temple now. Jesus, crucified and risen, is where God is to be found. So, in the breaking of Jesus’ body in the bread of communion, God is here. In the body of Christ, the Church – the community of believers filled with Jesus’ spirit, God is here.
The Love of God, the Love that loved us from before the foundation of the world, looks like the Crucified Messiah: God Incarnate becoming ransom for sinners, accepting the utter humiliation of the Roman cross. Jesus bids us to exchange our old life ruled by idolatrous “loves” for the new life governed by the love of Christ crucified.
New Creation in Christ – 2 Corinthians 4:1-6:2
The Most Excellent Way – 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Coming of the Lord – 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11
All Scripture is God-breathed – 2 Timothy 3:10-4:8
Good Soldiers of Christ – 2 Timothy 2:1-26
The Love of Money – 1 Timothy 6:3-21 Growing Up Appendix 4
More than anything, for the disciples, for us, the journey is a journey to the foot of the cross and through it. The cross is where our spirits are refined. It is where our longings and our loves are purified and returned to first things. All that we love more than we love God is captured, it is captivated, it is reordered, it is immersed in dying to self and brought again into new life. “If any want to be my followers,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
In the strange and mysterious ways of God, it is precisely in coming back out of the glare of the sun, into the rest of Jesus, the son, that our lives are raised up. It is precisely in returning to ourselves as created selves, dusty selves, that we are brought into the full stature of the kingdom.
Jesus speaks into our forgetfulness. He teaches us to hear his voice as he whispers to us, “I am the one who is the everlasting God. I do not faint or grow weary. I am the one who gives power to the faith and strength to the powerless. I am the one who flung the stars across heavens and I call them by name. I am the one who has named you, too. Who you are is numbered in each grain of sand. And you are called beloved.
Jesus’ favorite name, his favorite way of talking about himself, was “Son of Man.” But what does this mean? This mysterious title draws on Old Testament traditions that speak to both glory and humility, and reveals the essence of who Jesus is and what He is about.
The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ upon the mountain is a glorious promise, the assurance of God’s divine protection for his Beloved; given precisely because the road back down the mountain leads straight to the Cross.
The Word of Jesus is powerful and effective. When Jesus speaks, reality itself changes. What a demon-possessed man has no hope of doing for himself, the Word of Christ accomplishes.
No longer does our story end with Jonah and with all the Jonahs of the world, sitting in the desert wrestling with God, angry enough to die. We are no longer people who have to wait for new hearts. Because the time has come. Jesus is here. The king is here. His heart has broken for us. He has poured himself out for us, so that his heart could become our heart, so that his eyes could become our eyes, his hands, our hands.
The Supremacy of Christ – Colossians 1:1-23
Rejoice in the Lord – Philippians 4:2-9
The Fruit of the Spirit – Galatians 5:16-6:10
More Missionary Journeys – Acts 16:1-20:38
The Council at Jerusalem – Acts 15:1-41
The First Missionary Journey – Acts 13:1-14:28
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