bethquick.com

Sermon 7/31/22 Isaiah 11:1-9 CreatureKind I’m thankful for Pastor Joyce’s invitation not just to be with you in worship today, but also, more specifically, to talk to you about what led me to become a vegan and to commit to a focus on animals in my studies. I first became a vegetarian in college, years before I became a pastor, but in all of my years of ministry, I’ve never actually focused on why I’ve chosen the path of veganism in a sermon, and so Pastor Joyce’s invitation was a welcome request to think about sharing a passion in this particular way. Because indeed, for me, veganism is a spiritual commitment, and a part of expression of faith.  Before I dive into this topic, though, I want to try to set you at ease. Food - what we choose to eat and why - that’s a really intimate topic. Even though we all eat, every day, for a variety of reasons, what we choose to eat is a topic that has been burdened with a lot of expectation and pressure from society and culture, from our well-meani

Sermon 7/10/22 Colossians 1:1-14 We’ve Heard of You “I’ve heard of you.” That simple sentence can be construed in some very different ways, ways that are completely opposite in implied meaning. When we say we’ve heard of  someone, we can kind of imbue that with a positive or a negative meaning, can’t we? Oh, I’ve heard of you - as in, “I’ve heard all the bad things about you, I’ve heard about what you’ve done, or what you haven’t done that you were supposed to do. Your reputation - your bad reputation - precedes you.” Maybe even now you’re thinking of someone that would make you say - or at least think - oh, I’ve heard of you in this tone.  Or, “Oh, I’ve heard about you! People who know you speak well of  you. I’ve wanted to meet you. I’m excited to meet you.” Can you think of someone you were excited to get to meet, to know, because of all that you’d heard about them in advance? Whose good reputation precedes them? Whether or not the stories we tell about each other might cross

Sermon 7/3/22 2 Kings 5:1-14 The Hard Way I’ve been thinking about the way we talk about whether the situations we experience in life are hard or easy and what kind of value we place on those words. For example, sometimes we talk with disdain about someone trying to “take the easy way out.” Or we might say, “Oh, that person had it so easy.” Right now, for example, I’m preparing for some exams in my schoolwork, and I feel like it has been a lot of work. But there are some students (including my roommate)  in a different area of my program,  - the people who are in Biblical Studies - and their exam structure is much different than my area’s exams. And I will admit I’ve said something along the lines of “you have it so easy” to my roommate. On the other hand, we might say, “hey, take it easy!” if someone is getting too angry about something, or giving someone else a hard time. We might say, “go easy on them!” if we fear someone will give another person too severe of a reprimand or punishm