bethquick.com

  Sermon 7/25/21 Ephesians 3:14-21 Measuring God’s Love Our scripture lesson for today is from the letter to the church at Ephesus. Some scholars think Paul wrote this letter, and others think it was written latter by a follower of Paul’s in Paul’s name. Who is right on that doesn’t really matter for us today though. What matters is the content of this letter, and what it means for us as disciples today. The author is writing to Christians at Ephesus. The Ephesians are one of a number of new faith communities planted by the apostle Paul and other apostles of Jesus, and many of the communities Paul was connected with were unique because they were made up primarily of Gentiles - that is, folks who weren’t Jewish , and didn’t convert to Judaism upon becoming followers of Jesus. That second part - not converting - was a matter of debate among Paul, Peter, James, and the other early leaders of the church, with Peter and James first believing that following Jesus required being part of the

  Sermon 7/11/21 Mark 6:14-29, Amos 7:7-15 Bearing Hard Words What first comes to mind when you hear the word “prophecy”? Often, people think immediately of predicting the future, a kind of fortune-telling. We seem to have a fascination with anything that suggests we could accurately predict the future. And what’s the appeal of trying to predict the future? Why are we fascinated by anything that appears to be a prediction of future events? I can only imagine that it is our general anxiety over things unknown, and our general dislike of things that we can’t control that makes us want to believe that something, someone, somewhere can predict the future with accuracy. Otherwise, we have to live with the unsettling reality that things outside of our control, like disaster and illness, can just come on by and bring upheaval to our lives with there being nothing we can do to stop it. The idea of predicting the future, I think, is about control and security.  That’s not, however, what the p

Sermon 7/4/21 Mark 6:1-13 Shake It Off My brother Todd is a theatre professor, and these days, he’s more likely to be directing a show and teaching young actors than performing in the shows himself, but he spent a lot of years as a professional actor before falling in love with teaching. The theatre life meant many short gigs for him, where he would go do a show for six weeks, and then have three or four weeks in between before his next job started. When I was serving at a church in New Jersey, about 45 minutes from New York City, it was really convenient for him to live with me - where he could audition and get to rehearsals, and have a free place to live while he was between jobs. For my part, I liked to put Todd to work at my church. Over the years, on most Christmas Eves and Easter Sundays, I would get Todd to perform dramatic monologues as Joseph or the Innkeeper or a Wiseman or Herod in the story of Jesus’s birth, as Peter after his denial, or after the resurrection. My congreg