The Grove Charlotte — Podcast

Scripture:  Matthew 7:7-14

Dear Church,

There’s an old Spiritual that contains the line ‘Everybody talking about Heaven ain’t going there.’  I think the only proper response to that is…ooof.  It seems like the kind of thing Christians, people who believe in the power of grace and forgiveness and new life, shouldn’t be singing.

Except, Jesus said things like that all the time. There are two paths, and not everyone is on the right one.  There are true disciples and false disciples, true prophets and false prophets, wise builders and foolish builders. Jesus said not everybody who calls, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will be saved. He told a story about people coming to him at the last day, showing their Christian credentials, flexing that they had preached and prophesied and worked miracles in his name. His response, ‘I do not know you.’

I’d like to ignore this part of the gospel, but the stakes are too high.  Jesus was preparing us, from the very beginning, for the reality that…not everybody talking about heaven is going there. He was teaching us that his name was powerful and so a day was coming when many would use it and claim his authority to fight against the very Kingdom he came to establish.

Wise followers of Jesus need to be able to spot the difference between those who build on the words of Jesus and those who twist them to support their own agendas.  We need to learn the difference between the promises of Jesus and the promises of those who claim to speak for him. We need to know the difference between the truth of the Kingdom of God and the truths of earthly authorities.

And we need to learn how to hold the truth without deploying it as a weapon or using it as a dividing wall. We need to learn how to use the truth of Christ in the way of Christ. In other words, we need to learn the culture of the Kingdom of God.

I hope you’ll join me as we launch into a new worship series focused on the final portion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture:  Luke 12:1 & 13-31

Dear Church,

Two brothers came to Jesus desperate for his help. And after listening to their plea, he said:

No.

No way, I’m not helping you.

I don’t want anything to do with this.

Can you imagine? Having a problem and turning to Jesus and then watching him turn away? What in the world could have inspired our gentle and compassionate savior to be so…harsh?

Money.

They were fighting over their inheritance and Jesus didn’t want any part of it. He refused to intervene. Instead he told a story about the danger of wealth.

Our definition of a bad economy and Jesus’ definition of a bad economy are not the same. In the Lord’s eyes, having too much money is far more dangerous than having too little.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture:  Leviticus 25:1-24; 35-38

Dear Church,

The summer before I headed off to college, I told my youth pastor that I wanted to read the entire Bible. He said, ‘that’s great–but don’t waste your time with Leviticus, it’s got nothing to do with Jesus.’  In my youth pastor’s defense, I’m certain he just didn’t want me to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of complicated descriptions of the proper way to hem the garment of the high priest and give up on Bible reading altogether. In a real way, he was right–we really should be focusing first and primarily on the gospels and the words of Jesus.

BUT…

The revelations preserved in Leviticus have everything to do with Jesus. In fact, the words of Jesus’ first sermon, ”The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’ are a quote from the prophet Isaiah who was himself quoting, you guessed it, portions of the book of Leviticus.  Specifically, verses from Leviticus 25 which contains God’s commands to the people about how to use the land, how to treat the poor and powerless and the forgiveness of debt.

In other words, Leviticus gives us a detailed description of God’s economy. And how we use resources, live, work, use money and respond to the poor are some of the things Jesus talks about most.  Because God calls us to a faith that shapes all our choices and is enacted in our daily lives. As the scholar Richard Boyce puts it, when the chosen people live by the precepts in the book of Leviticus ‘God’s light shines as brightly in the sales of property as in the sounds of prayer.’

Everything that exists is a gift from our generous Creator. How we think about God is often more accurately revealed by what we choose to do with God’s gifts than by the words we pray and the theology we claim to believe.

The precepts of God’s economy laid out in Leviticus 25 are wild!  It’s almost impossible to imagine how different life would be if we took them seriously.  Just this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States, which has the most powerful and prosperous economy in the world, is on track to set a new record of 650 thousand unhoused people living on the streets. So it’s worth spending some time soberly contemplating whose version of an economy is actually unimaginable.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture:  Exodus 16:1-18

Dear Church,

“Gather as much as each of you needs”

Those were the instructions that Moses gave the children of Israel on the night before God fed them with manna–the bread of heaven. There’s a lot to ponder in this story. The people were in a strange place. They couldn’t take care of themselves. They were worried and angry and attacking their leaders. They were longing for a past that never existed, and they couldn’t see any future but death. And then the ground around them was covered with a strange mysterious substance that God told them was the bread of heaven. The people tried it and found that it tasted like honey.

SO. MUCH. TO. UNPACK.

But in these first days of their new life as freed people chosen to be salt and light and a source of blessing to all nations on earth, God slipped in an economics lesson.

God, always a generous provider, opens the storerooms of heaven and pours out goodness to the people. Bread everywhere–they don’t have to harvest it, bake it or buy it. There isn’t a catch, but there is a non-negotiable way to use it:

Gather each day, for that day.

Everyone gets what they need

Everyone gets to rest.

This is God’s economy. God’s instructions for handling God’s abundance. Because God isn’t just feeding the people here. God is also re-forming them as a peculiar, holy people who won’t live like all the other nations.

And God is still reforming God’s people. I hope you’ll join me as we submit and surrender once again to God’s strange and holy way.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture:  Genesis 1:1-31, Matthew 6:25-34

Dear Church,

In 1992 James Carville was the key strategist for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, hung a sign on the wall to get campaign staff to remain focused on three key points with potential donors. The second bulletin point read, ‘The economy, stupid.’* 

And so ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ became a rallying cry in that campaign and every presidential campaign since.

But what if we don’t believe the economy is the greatest force shaping our lives? And given that Americans are divided about what facts indicate that an economy is good, whose opinion on community and right use of resources should be most influential for Christians?

As the first kid to raise their hand during the children’s sermon would tell us, God’s wisdom should be the foundation of our own.

We’re not stupid, but Carville was right, the economy is fundamental. The way we make use and share wealth shapes our world. These choices are deeply spiritual. And so over the next few weeks we are going to seek the Spirit and turn to the word of God to help us see the economy through the eyes of Christ.

What kind of economy does God call good? And what choices are we willing to make to help create it?

This Sunday, it’s Holy Economics 101, and we’re starting at the very beginning.  And immediately after we hear about it, we’ll have a chance to participate in it. Come, taste and see!

Peace,

Pastor Kate

*the other two points were (1) Change vs more of the same and (3) Don’t forget about health care! You’re welcome.

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Scripture:  Luke 7:36-50

Dear Church,

This Sunday we wrap up our six-week session of ‘Sin School,’ and I’m sure that some of you are wondering what the point of it all was. Given all the harm that has been done in the name of condemning sin, shouldn’t we be retiring this dangerous and arcane theological concept? Don’t we need to focus more on grace and justice? Shouldn’t we be learning about generosity and healing?

The gospels are clear, Jesus came to save sinners. So if we don’t know sin, we don’t really know Jesus.

And once we know sin, we’ll know that we all are sinners. Each one of us is a person separated from God by our individual choices and by the broken and destructive powers and principalities (read: systems) of our culture. if we are too squeamish or precious to wrestle with the hard truth that each one of us is a sinner, then we cannot accept, rejoice and participate in the new life that Jesus is offering us.

The gospel of Luke shows us it’s almost impossible to love Jesus until you know yourself as a sinner.

Without a mature, sober understanding of sin, we might be like Simon, confident in our own ability to live a righteous life in an unrighteous world, carefully, and critically considering Jesus, unaware that we need forgiveness, healing and new life.

But once we know ourselves as people who have been forgiven an insurmountable debt, we are transformed like the saint at the center of the story. We mirror Jesus’ extravagant love. We worship exuberantly.  We become witnesses, sent to break in to inhospitable dinner parties, sent out to live joyfully in peace.

It is one of the strange and holy paradoxes of the gospel life: only a church full of sincere self-acknowledged sinners can become a source of Christ’s forgiveness and grace-fueled new life. 

I hope you will join me in seeking God’s truth and grace so that together we can be a living sign and source of the glory of God.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture:  John 8:1-11

Saints,

Sin is offensive.

Jesus is a disruptor of sin.

When we put those two together, we’re left with a conundrum. How could Jesus, deemed Lord of Lords, Holy Magistrate, Counselor, and Friend, be of statute and judge people who aren’t caught actively sinning? And yet, be gracious, merciful, and kind to what seems like a crime against humanity for the woman caught in adultery?

What does my contribution to the cycle of sin have to do with Jesus?

Here’s a hint: We have more in common with the woman caught in adultery than we do with the teachers of the law and the Pharisees.

I hope you can join me, this Sunday, as we wrestle with the text (John 8 : 1-11) — all while sitting in the truth that: just like the woman caught in adultery, we (the world) need a savior. 

See you soon,

Shardae’

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Scripture:  Romans 5:12-21

Dear Church,

This week at Sin School we turn to the passage in Paul’s letter to the Roman church that we call chapter 5. For millennia, scholars and theologians have been studying these words and then arguing about a concept called Original Sin. I bet you’ve heard of it.

I bet you have questions like what the heck is it? Where did it come from? Is it in me? Can I get rid of it? Why am I responsible for it if it’s something I was born with?

As we said earlier in this worship series, if we turn to the Bible with bad questions, we’ll get bad answers.  Paul wasn’t trying to explain the concept of original sin to the believers in Rome, mainly because such a concept didn’t exist!

He was writing this small, struggling community mired in conflict to help them live in peace and unity with one another. And he definitely thought they needed a better understanding of the power and nature of sin in order to flourish.

But he was even more interested in opening their eyes to the power of grace.

This Sunday, I’ll tell you why I don’t think we need to worry about original sin and what Paul’s words help us to see about the power of sin–and the power of grace–instead.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture:  Luke 11:1-13

Dear Church,

Last week, when Octavia led our time of corporate confession and pardon, she shared how a weekly practice of confessing sins was unfamiliar to her when she first came to the Grove. At first, she wondered what kinds of things people were doing that they needed to confess their sins every week.

She went on to beautifully share how regularly wrestling with her own sinfulness has borne fruit in her life.  A practice of confessing sins has deepened her awareness of God’s love for her and the power of grace and also broadened her compassion for and connection with other people in their struggles.

Mature Christians regularly face the reality that we are sinners.

But what happens when we grow too comfortable?

What happens when we decide that our sins–the things that separate us from God–are reasonable and tolerable? What happens when we keep confessing our sins, but stop repenting of them? How can we walk in the peace Christ has given us, confident of his grace and our belovedness and still, at the very same time, long for greater redemption and transformation? In other words, how do we live as sinners being saved by grace?

I hope you’ll join me as we consider the prayer Jesus gave his disciples in Luke and see that Jesus anticipated our weakness and provided a way for us not just to know, but experience the power of resurrection in our on-going struggle with sin.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture:  Genesis 11:1-9

Dear Church,

Does God just not like tall buildings?

That was my question the first time I heard about the Tower of Babel and no Sunday School teacher ever answered it to my satisfaction.

Why was God so bent out of shape about the people coming together to work cooperatively to build a big tower? Just a few verses previously God was pretty pleased with Noah for building a big boat–what gives?

The Bible is a holy book.  It’s best read, not front to back, beginning to end, but in cycles. On a first read, this story is pure mystery.  But we can begin to understand the danger God saw on the plain of Shinar once we know about Pharoah’s pyramids, Nebuchadnezzar’s statue and Solomon’s temple.

The size of a vision doesn’t make it righteous. Every common cause isn’t in service of the common good. Everything that seems glorious, isn’t. This ancient story reveals that sin isn’t limited to the actions of individuals, we can also be collectively swept up into sin-filled destructive systems of oppression and harm.

Sin is corporate, too.  That’s a terrible, almost incomprehensible truth for those of us raised to take personal responsibility for our own righteousness. How can we be faithful in a world that sometimes gives us no good choices?

The good news is, we have a God who intervenes.  A God who makes a way when there is no way.  A God who loves us enough to thwart our plans and scatter us, even when that is our greatest fear. We have a God who loves us enough to be good to us, even when that goodness seems like a curse. Come and see how the very worst things that happen to us can sometimes, but not always, be our deliverance.

Things are not always what they seem. Sometimes, impressively great things have the capacity to destroy us.  And sometimes, the end of everything and death of our dreams is the door to the wild, free and abundant life we’ve been praying for.

Come and see.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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