Isaiah 58:1-12 | Psalm 112:1-10 | 1 Corinthians 2:1-16 | Matthew 5:13-20

Jeremy Richards

I should tell you upfront that I have limited time this morning, due to our congregational meeting, so I’m unable to dig into our Scriptures to the extent that I would like to. But that’s okay. I learned pretty early on that people don’t get too upset over short sermons.

Micah 6:1-8 | Psalm 15 | 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 | Matthew 5:1-12

Jeremy Richards

Watch video: https://youtu.be/HnQ89jZvZD0

In the song we just listened to – “Getting Ready to Get Down” – Josh Ritter tells the story of a young girl whose parents and pastor are beginning to worry about her. Apparently, she isn’t fitting “proper Christian girl” mold, so they send to a “little Bible college in Missouri” thinking a Christian education will straighten her out.

Isaiah 9:1-4 | 1 Corinthians 1:10-18| Matthew 4:12-23

Jeremy Richards

I remember the first time I heard Isaac Villegas preach. Brie and I had recently moved to Durham, North Carolina, and a friend we had made back in Portland told us she had a friend who pastored a small Mennonite congregation in Chapel Hill, so we decided to check it out.

Isaiah 63:7-9 | Hebrews 2:10-18 | Matthew 2:13-23

Jeremy Richards

We love to put things in categories, don’t we? We love to draw boundaries, to section things off. It’s how we understand the world. We divide everything! Cities into neighborhoods, animals into species and sub-species, academic subjects into specific schools of thought (continental philosophy vs. analytic philosophy), and so on. But there’s nothing we love dividing more than people. We divide people up by race, gender, sexuality, culture, class, country of origin, ability, hair color, musical preference, hobbies, and the list goes on. Just think of high school: you’ve got the classic categories like nerds and cheerleaders and jocks. And then you’ve got sub-categories – not just jocks but the soccer kids and the basketball kids and the baseball kids.

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 | Romans 1:1-7 | Matthew 1:18-25

Jeremy Richards

The great Catholic lay theologian G.K. Chesterton said, and I apologize for all the gendered language, Chesterton said it not me, but when he says “man” know he means “humanity.” Chesterton said,

Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but…free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.

Isaiah 35:1-10 | Psalm 146:5-10 | Matthew 11:2-11

Jeremy Richards

Our Psalm reading this morning begins: “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.”

The question we might pose, though, is: Who is God? Perhaps it’s true that we’ll be happy if our hope and help is in the God of Jacob. The problem however, is we don’t know exactly who this God is. It seems like every time I think I’ve got my finger on just who God is, God goes and surprises me – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.