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Desire & Longing Sermon

This past week at Vermont Hills, we started into a new series about Practicing Faith.

The first week’s topic is “Times of Yearning” and I took the opportunity to have some fun talking about different ways of talking about desire.

Here are 4 ways that I have heard desire talked about:

  • God Shaped Vacuum

You may be familiar with the famous quote by Pascal:

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.”

  • Competing Desires

In evolutionary terms, and for those of us influenced by Darwinian thought, we may talk about ‘competing desires’ and the different urges, motives, goals, and weaknesses that compete within us and within our societies.

In the end, however, we usually end up sounding a lot like the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:15-20 (NIV)

“15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

  • Eternity In Their Hearts

In missionary circles there is a popular idea that comes from Ecclesiastes 3:11 that says God has put eternity in the human heart. It is a beautiful and poetic way of talking about our desire for the transcendent, divine, eternal, beyond.

Every human civilization that has ever existed has some concept or narrative about this deep longing.

  • God will give you the desires of your heart

Another popular way of talking about this concept comes from Psalm 37:4 (ESV)

4 Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

People love to quote this passage as some sort of a promise that they will get what they want … and it has been misused badly in a consumer society like ours.

It is helpful, however, to realize that in the original language there is a much better way to interpret that passage:

Delight yourself in the Lord and God will give unto your heart its desires.

Another more pointed way says, “God will give desires unto your heart”. This is helpful because if we follow God, God will help our heart by authoring our desires.

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I would love to hear from you about other ways to talk about this that you have found helpful or unhelpful.

Listen to the audio of this sermon below OR from VHUMC [link to the podcast here] and read chapter 1 of Practicing Our Faith.

Feel free to comment, question, or offer suggestions.

 

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Amazing Grace

Grace is by far my favorite topic of faith. It is so contrary to our normal ways of doing things.

Grace is a gift economy that is counter the way we think about things normally.

Grace is shocking. Grace is extravagant. Grace is scandalous.

SO I was very excited to wrap up our Summer Sermon Series in the book of Galatians at church yesterday. Here is a 12 min video of yesterday’s message.

The working thesis is that grace and forgiveness have lost their shocking greatness because we have grown too comfortable with them.

My hope is to remind everyone how scandalous grace is.

So in this short sermon you are going to hear that:

  1. grace is irrational
  2. grace is immoral
  3. grace is unethical

I hope that you will give it a listen with an open mind! You might be surprised by what you hear.

 

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Practicing Faith

We are gearing up for a Fall series that will stretch from Labor Day till nearly Christmas.

It is based on a book edited by Dorthy Bass called “Practicing Our Faith” (the 15 topics are posted below).

I can not tell you how excited I am to enter into these conversations. Here are the 2 biggest reasons:

First, ours in an age of anxiety. I can sense not only people’s anger, insecurity, and agitation … but their collective fatigue and exhaustion. These are moments in history when our faith really should be making a big difference in our cultural engagement but I sense from many people a confusion and a hesitation around how exactly that should look.

Second, I am increasingly convinced that practicing faith is more important and consequential that what faith you have. Unfortunately, we live in time when believing the right things and subscribing to the right doctrinal formulations is not the primary motivating and organizing factor for action and behavior. As a professional theologian, this pains me to say.

 

I want to invite you to pick up the book – it is really affordable used or on Kindle. It is even cheaper on Audible if you prefer listening.  There is even a cool PDF of a study guide.

There are several churches collaborating on this project, so there will be lots of great content and conversation around it.

I hope that you will join the conversation. Let me know if you want to contribute to the weekly blog and we will set you up as a partner!

Sept 9              Times of Yearning, Practices of Faith (1)

16                    Honoring the Body (2)

23                    Hospitality (3)

30                    Household Economics (4)

Oct 7               Saying Yes and Saying No (5)

14                    Keeping Sabbath (6)

21                    Testimony  (7)

28                    Discernment (8)

Nov 4              Shaping Communities (9)

11                    Healing  (11)

18                   Forgiveness (10)

25                    Dying Well  (12)

Dec 2               Singing Our Lives (13)

9                      Practicing a Way of Life  (14)

16                    A Way of Thinking About a Way of Life  (15)

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Poetic Language in Faith

Here is an 8 minute sermon that I preached last week about belonging, identity, and faith.

The Bible is full of poetic language – including metaphors and metonyms.

I have some fun with those examples before getting into the idea of “the Law” as a much bigger concept.

When you don’t understand the poetic language in the Bible, you can do some harmful stuff with the Old and New Testament.

There is a lot of grace in the ‘Old Testament’ – God is really gracious with the People. Likewise, the New Testament has a fair number of rules and standards for holy living. So you can’t say “the Old Testament is all rules and a wrathful God while the New Testament is full of Grace and kindness”. It is not that easy.

Paul in Galatians uses ‘the Law’ as a metonym for Jewish belonging, identity, and faithfulness. We do the same thing with “grace”, the cross, and “church”.

Check out the video and let me know what you think

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Liberal & Conservative Christians Must Be Born Again

I was in the pulpit this last Sunday at Westwood UMC and I chose to preach on John 3. It was the first time I have ever engaged that text outside of an evangelical environment.

You can take a listen here [link]. It works to stream it, download it, or get it on Itunes.

I began by addressing an awkward pairing:
– On the one hand, the phrase ‘born again’ has fallen into disrepute and disuse among many believers.
– On the other hand, Jesus is pretty clear that we ‘must be born again’.

Two other aspects that I attempt to overcome with this approach are:

A) We too often read both John 3:3 and 3:16 through a lens of individualism.
B) We have been taught to think of ‘eternal life’ as life after you die.

In order to correct these severely limited and limiting readings, I look at 5 key words/concepts.

  • Kingdom
  • Flesh
  • Eternal Life
  • Salvation
  • Repent

Continue reading “Liberal & Conservative Christians Must Be Born Again” →

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