The Progressive Christian Voice

Luke 20:45-21:4. Whether we’re pledging our time or our financial resources, our pledges when carefully made become the benchmark for how we will stretch ourselves for the mission of Christ’s church. Such generosity of practice – such meaningful stewardship – such justice in the great church celebrates where Frederick Buechner calls “your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” So, your pledge card is a way to keep your eye on Christ and focus your spiritual gifts. Then, as Paul told the Corinthians, “Give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Deuteronomy 26: 1-11 and Jn 6: 1-15. God’s abundance transcends the market economy and so shall the people of God. We are invited to reconsider our place as consumers of God’s abundance. We are invited instead to see ourselves as the stewards –the disseminators of God’s goodness in this world until the next, to work for the people who have their voice drowned out and fight for the cause of those who are desperately in need of daily bread, and to follow the model of Christ who took what was available, gave thanks to God, and gave all that he had knowing that there would be some to spare when we trust in the abundance of God.

Lk 6: 20-36. A lot can happen when Jesus looks us squarely in the eye. Our gospel message reminds us that we are called to blur the lines between brokenness in the world with our love and help to affect a great reversal of fortune between people of poverties of every kind.

Lk 18: 9-14. "God have mercy on me, a sinner." The power of prayer should not be underestimated. Because, if we are to truly believe that we are in need of God's crace, then we find ourselves at odds with the culture around us which promotes making judgments about one another, to know where we fit among the proverbial pecking order. The liberation of knowing that God is merciful and loving means that we can leave behind that perceived responsibility to judge one another and appropach one another, with the humility of God.

Jer 29: 1, 4-7 and Lk 17: 11-19. Jesus was a trailblazer. So was the Samaritan and so is Malala. We can all be trailblazers, but too often we bow to the will of the herd. Jesus calls us to summon our courage and faith, break from the herd and stand up for what is right and good to the glory of God.

Empty file

Lk 17: 1-5. We delude ourselves if we believe that we are not complicit in perpetuating a culture of violence. Let us begin today to discern what peace means to us and hope through an intentional engagement of discernment we are emboldened to work for peace in our own communities and around the world.

Lk 16: 19-31. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus tells us that when we ignore the poor outside of our gate, it is an unambiguously damnable offense. So, once we've debunked the popular excuses for why this parable isn't meant for us, the only question remaining is, "Where do you place your gate?"

Jer 8:18-9:1 and Lk 16:1-13. We are called to be an action-oriented congregation who collect our consciences to expose the horrible truths that bludgeon the most vulnerable in the world and provide sutures on their wounds. We are called to shine our collective light upon the moral imperatives of our day so that our outrage doesn’t end with a hospitality hour rant. - It ends with acts of faith that expose and bring to justice dishonest wealth of every sort.

Jer 31: 31-34 and Acts 20: 7-12. We must make worship a multisensory experience to engage young adults today. And we must remember that it is our acts,and not simply our words, that seal us as a body.

Psalm 139, Jeremiah 18: 1-11, and Luke 14: 25-35. Calling us to actively examine our lives using different lenses, different media and the beauty of the light to understand the ways that we do evil in God’s sight, the ways we drive a wedge in our relationship with God, and the ways we allow our possessions and that which possesses us to dilute our communion with Christ in mission for the world. May our self-reflection be comprehensive, our repentance be forthright and our saltiness maintained as Christ’s seasoning in this world.

Luke 14: 7-14. Our gospel reading this morning tells us that God breaks into the most ordinary moments to remind us that no experience is outside the realm of Christian life. We’re called to the work of the Christian every moment of our lives – even as we enter the dining room of a friend. Our goal is to get to such a level of understanding of and faith in Jesus that our relationship with Christ is what makes life worth living. Then being a Christian is not really work for us at all. It is who we are and how we live and what we strive for in this world of work that can feel so oppressively hard. It’s ultimately what connects us to who God is calling us to be.

Luke 13: 10-17. Jesus stood before the President of his day and demanded that a woman be allowed to stand up straight that day, not in spite of it being the Sabbath but because God’s saving work in creation made it so. In the same way, people of today who have been marginalized for a lifetime need to know that they no longer need to settle for the dreams of tomorrow. The church must join forces in a counter cultural movement that demonstrates that God cares for each one of us as uniquely crafted beings of God’s image.

Mark 4: 21-32. The kingdom of God is like.....we are challenged to be the kingdom of God in the world.

Lk 12: 13-21. Why do we hurt the ones we love the most? The good news is that anytime we turn our backs on our God and one another, leaning instead on the unholy trinity of me, myself and I, God will not let go.