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A Kingdom Legacy-1 // The Right Question // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scripture: Luke 12:13-21

Dear Church,

At the end of each of his crusades Billy Graham famously asked the same question, ‘If you died tonight, do you know if you are going to heaven or hell?”   He asked that question to encourage everyone in the audience to make a decision to follow Christ.

Respectfully, I believe Rev. Graham ended with the wrong question.

In the gospel of Luke, two brothers approach Jesus asking him to settle a dispute between them about their inheritance.  He refused. Instead he tells a story about a very rich man whose wealth increases exponentially after a banner harvest.  In response, he scrambles to build bigger barns to accommodate his windfall and prepares to live happily ever after enjoying himself.  Then he dies.  And God says to him, ‘You Fool! This very night your life is demanded of you.  Now who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

I think Jesus wants our community to be based on his question, not Billy Graham’s.  Our life together isn’t about where we are going to go after we die–that’s settled.  We are eternally saved by the triumphant love of Christ.  This leaves us free to pour all of our energy into Jesus’ question.  What kind of legacy are we going to leave, in this world God so loved?  How do we stop storing up for ourselves what we can never keep and start joyfully devoting all we have to the new creation God is unleashing in our midst, right here, right now?

I’m excited to worship with you this Sunday.  And I’m very excited about the gathering that will follow immediately after.  We have an opportunity to make a significant decision about the kind of legacy we will leave in our community.  I am so grateful we get the chance to be loved by God, to love one another and to build part of the Kingdom of God, right here in our neighborhood.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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HOSEA-Outrageous Love // We Are All Gomer // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scripture: Hosea 1:1 – 2:2

Dear Church,

Today we begin a new worship series on the book of Hosea, which has one of the most unforgettable beginnings in all of scripture:

The Lord said to Hosea, ‘Go, and marry a wife of whoredom’

Who talks like that? Apparently, God does.

God commands the prophet to marry a promiscuous woman named Gomer.  Everyone agrees she is the last person a prophet should marry; she is unsuitable, uninterested, and incapable of being faithful.  Predictably, it does not go well.  It isn’t long before she’s left her family behind and returned to her old life.

And let’s get one thing clear from the start, because people have done a lot of damage with this book: the message of Hosea is for all of us.

We are all Gomer; willing to be loved by God, happy to receive all the benefits and blessings of the relationship, thrilled to be chosen–but unwilling to choose, unwilling to return God’s love, serially unfaithful.  Like Gomer, we were given a new intimate life with God; but we continually run back to our old life of sin.  Like all good prophets, Hosea shines the light, not on our enemies or the people we look down on, but on us.  We are the problem.  Which makes what happens next all the more breathtaking and astonishing.

I know, I know–nobody wants to come to worship on Sunday morning and hear about how they are unfaithful to God.  But, whether we admit it or not, we are sometimes.  Knowing that about ourselves is what keeps us humble and welcoming as a church.  It’s what keeps our focus on God’s goodness and not ourselves.  But most of all, we need to know how God treats unfaithful people, people who take grace for granted, people who screw up BIG TIME–because someday that truth is going to save our lives.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Spirit School-Week 7 // Spiritual Gifts // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scriptures: Exodus 31:1-11, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Dear Church,

We are coming up on our last session of Spirit School and we’ve saved the best part: gifts.  Spiritual gifts.

I know some of us just felt a thrill and are thinking, ‘finally!’  Others of us are taking deep breaths and trying to manage our anxiety.  Churches have been exploiting and fighting over spiritual gifts since the day after Pentecost.  That’s because we misunderstand two crucial things:

1. Spiritual gifts are not about us.
2. All gifts are spiritual.

I hope you’ll join me as we learn how to expand our understanding of spiritual gifts and how to use them to glorify God and bless our communities.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Spirit School-Week 6 // We’ll Get Over It // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scripture: Colossians 1:1-15

We are called to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.  Some days, some seasons it seems as though there is nothing but morning–as though the whole world is nothing but woe and even the church of Jesus Christ has nothing to offer.   Who am I kidding?  Even the church of Jesus Christ, sometimes it seems like the church is a major source of pain and trauma.  It certainly doesn’t feel like we are lifting very many burdens.

The temptation to give up in despair is almost irresistible.

I’ve found a strange comfort this week in one of the ancient letters preserved in our scripture.  It was written by the Apostle Paul to a small church in a town called Colossae.  Like us, they were struggling to be church in a season of great turmoil and stress.  The community around them misunderstood what they believed and why and perceived them as a threat.  Experts were coming through all the time to tell them what they were doing wrong and how they needed to urgently and dramatically change.  They were under enormous pressure and beginning to slowly and sadly drift away.  In desperation, their pastor Epaphras wrote to his mentor for help.  Paul sent back a beautiful letter of encouragement and hope telling them, in the nicest possible way, to calm down.  Because–Jesus.  Because the pain and suffering and brokenness in the world is real and urgent and it would be a sin to harden our hearts and become indifferent to it.  And still–Jesus is risen, the first fruits of all creation.

Freedom School is filling our campus with love and joy and chaos and art work.  Every day, as I scurry around this place trying to hold it all together, I pass a sign one of our scholars designed and hung on the wall.  It says, ‘you’ll get over it.’  It makes me laugh, and then it makes my shoulders drop.  I don’t know what this young artist was trying to say, but I think he’s captured the essence of Paul’s message to the Colossians.

Yes, what is against us is tremendous, but we do not need to lose heart.  Because–Jesus.  By grace, we are part of the body of Christ.  Jesus is Lord and he has defeated the powers of sin and death, destruction and violence, enmity and lies.   We can’t face all of the evil around us, but what is in us is not of us.  In Christ, we’ll get over it.  In Christ, we’ll get through it.  In Christ, we’ll get by.

I think we all need to hear Paul tell us why–in the midst of everything–we are going to be okay.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Spirit School-Week 5 // The Righteous Power of God // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scripture: Acts 1:1-9

Dear Church,

This Sunday when we gather for worship many in our community will already be celebrating Independence Day.  If you have been hanging around the Grove for very many years you might have noticed that

Every year on the Sunday closest to July 4th, I preach the crucifixion of our Lord.  Because I want us to make the connection that, as Christians our freedom and hope lie, not in any flag, but in the cross.

But this year, I feel the Spirit pushing me to engage more directly with the holiday.

What does it look like to live faithfully as disciples of Jesus Christ in the United States of America?  How should we engage with the history of this nation?  What does it look like to have a holy love for the nation, for the place and the people?  How do we live here, but as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven?  And how should we respond to the many fellow Christians–some of them pastors with huge platforms–who claim that America is a Christian nation…or should be? What does the gift of the Holy Spirit have to do with any of this? Would you believe me if I said: everything?

Together, we will seek–not to be right–but the power of God to be righteous, here and now for the sake of the whole world God so loved.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Spirit School-Week 4 // Live It! // Pastor Kate Murphy

Dear Church,

I really like the lectures of a Bible professor named N.T. Wright.  He ends many of them with the same challenge to his students: inhabit what you’ve heard.  In other words, don’t just think about this, don’t just know it or agree with it–live it.  Ultimately, what we believe only matters if it leads us into a relationship with Jesus that leads us to a life shaped by the cross.

Inhabit what you’ve heard.  But what does that mean when we gather around a passage like the one we’re looking at this Sunday?  We are filled with the same Holy Spirit that filled John and Peter; but (and forgive me for assuming here) we’ve never reached out our hands and instantly supernaturally healed a random stranger.  So, how do we inhabit that?

I think Professor Wright’s invitation is a good one–especially on a Sunday like this one.  We can’t be tricked into thinking these are pretty stories or ‘only’ metaphors.  We need to seek God in this, we need to spend time wondering where the kind of healing power the Holy Spirit manifested in Acts is in our own lives.  One thing I know for sure.  The Spirit’s power in our lives may not look the same as it did in the lives of Jesus’ first disciples, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t available to us.  And we aren’t absolved of our responsibility to wonder in every encounter, as Peter surely did, how can I share what I have in Christ here and now?

We’re in Spirit School this summer because we want to grow in our understanding of a Spirit filled life.  We don’t just want to believe in the Holy Spirit.  We want to inhabit that belief–we want to live it out.  We were made to do this together–with God and one another.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

P.S.  If you haven’t had a chance to hear Nicole’s sermon last week on the Holy Spirit, Justice and Juneteenth, we really should.  It was a powerful gift to us all.  You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9vPvO_b4yY

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Spirit School-Week 3 // Justice // Elder Nicole Thompson

Scripture: Romans 16:17-20

Dear Church,

This Sunday I am so excited to welcome Elder Nicole Thompson to the pulpit to preach the next lesson in our Spirit School worship series: The Holy Spirit and Justice.  It also happens to be Juneteenth, a holiday many Black Americans have been celebrating for generations. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865–the  day that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned from the officials in the Union Army that the nation had abolished slavery.

Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation almost two and a half years earlier on January 1, 1963.

This isn’t a story of news traveling slowly.  It is a Pharaoh 10th plague kind of story.  It is the story of enslavers holding on to institutional evil for as long as humanly possible.  Humans do hold on to evil–but, by the power of God, the hold can only last so long.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is the culmination of salvation history.  In that moment–along with reconciling love, grace, wisdom and power–God unleashes God’s restorative justice.  The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of justice.  The work of justice is not optional or supplemental for Spirit filled people.  It is essential.  As the song goes–where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.  Our God of peace is a God of justice–because without justice there is no peace, only control and oppression.  

On Sunday, we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises, we celebrate liberation, we celebrate receiving the Holy Spirit–which not only calls but equips us to follow the Lord Jesus.  Jesus tears down every system that divides, denies and destroys life.  Jesus is the way that restores all people created in God’s image to the mutually flourishing shalom life we were made for.  We can not do the work on our own, but we dare not try to delay or deny it.  I hope to worship with you Sunday at 10am on livestream or in the sanctuary!

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Spirit School-Week 2 // More Than Avoiding Evil // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scripture: Psalm 1

Dear Church,

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked 
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord 
and who mediates on his law day and night

These are the very first words of the Book of Psalms–the prayer book you’ll find in the very center of scripture.  For generations, these prayers–spoken and sung–have been a sort of holy umbilical cord growing God-life in God’s people.  We’re using these words as our jumping off point for our second session of Spirit School ‘How to Cultivate Intimacy with the Holy Spirit’.  Many of us met the Lord in the context of a religion mostly concerned with protecting us from bad things.  But God’s gift of the Spirit is an invitation to so much more–a life centered on and overflowing with the goodness of God.  When we learn to delight in God’s ways we become, in the next words of the psalm– like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.   We were made for so much more than not doing wrong.  Life with God, filled with the Holy Spirit, is the relationship that leads into that more that Jesus called abundant life.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Spirit School-Pentecost // What God Desires of Us // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

Dear Church–

At the last meal he shared with his disciples before his death, Jesus told them, ‘it is good that I am leaving you.’  Even though no one was brave or foolish enough to say it, I’m sure they were all thinking that was crazy.  How could it be good that Jesus was leaving?  The disciples had incredible intimacy with the Lord, how could it be good for them to lose that?  What could be better than walking around,  sharing meals, talking one-on-one with Jesus?  

Jesus tells them it’s good that he’s leaving them because when he returns to the Father, he will send them the Holy Spirit.  He leaves them physically, so that he can be even more intimate with them spiritually.  And that gift is not just with the people who were in the room that night, but for all who call upon the name of the Lord.  Even us.

So often, we long to have a deeper connection with Jesus–we pray for a word, for a sign, for a feeling.  Friends, we can have all that and more: we can have continual access to the Spirit of God through Christ.  This Sunday, we’ll share the story of the day Jesus kept his promise and poured out his Spirit upon his people.  It’s the day of Pentecost, it’s the birthday of the church, and it’s wildly wonderful good news for all of us.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Make Love the Measure-Week 6 // Instead of Despair // Pastor Kate Murphy

Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20, 2 Timothy:6-7

Dear Church,

When Sandy Hook happened 9 years ago, I cried for days.  This week, I haven’t shed a single tear.  I am stunned and horrified and afraid but mostly I am numb.

This is the last Sunday of our season celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.  That means next we celebrate Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, which means this Sunday, traditionally, churches celebrate Ascension–the day Jesus returned to the Father to reign in the Kingdom of Heaven.  That sounds triumphant and holy, but it feels like Jesus is leaving us behind.

Especially this week.

This week, reading the story of the ascension actually makes things make sense.  It seems like it’s saying that Jesus has left us to go be with God in God’s kingdom up there somewhere in heaven, and we are on our own down here with a great commission to take charge and build a satellite campus.  And the reason everything is so brutal and terrible is that we are cosmically bad at our assignment.

But things are not what they seem: in scripture, in the ascension, in the great commission–and in this present moment. Tragedy and loss are brutal and cannot be glossed over, AND violence and injustice are not running the show.  Jesus has not left us; the great commission is not a colonial curse and we are not relegated to despair. The good news is always better than it seems.

I hope you will worship with me, as we seek God, and stand on God’s promises in resistant response to this week’s fresh brutality.  We walk by faith, not by sight and we are called to be salt and light for just such a time as this.

Peace, 

Pastor Kate

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