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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
As we go looking for the eternal meaning that rises to the surface of today’s gospel lesson – a gospel full of strong language that includes violence with swords and turning against one’s family; as we go looking for the eternal meaning that rises to the surface of this gospel lesson, we discover Jesus’ call to be clear in our priorities.
Specifically, to be clear in our priority that following and serving Jesus comes first.
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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
Then Jesus, who saw how the crowds of this world were harassed like sheep without a shepherd – how people were going hungry not just in body but in heart and soul. How people had forgotten to treat people like people; Jesus summoned the disciples – Lisa, Ada, Lucy, Julius, Calvin, and Elijah; Jesus summoned these six and through them all the rest of us – and Jesus gave them authority to go and share the good news of the kingdom of God by organizing themselves – and all the rest of us - to donate needed items for the SPCA animal shelter of Ulster County and supplies for the sandwiches and lunch bags that would be taken by them to the unhoused on the streets of NYC. And they would share the good news of the kingdom of God – that is the good news that God’s love is not distant and unforgiving but present and active in this world, that God desires healing and mercy; they would share this good news by making soups for the Free Fresh Food Giveaway and by organizing face painting and activities for an intergenerational and ecumenical gathering here at Redeemer and down at the New Paltz town park on the day of the Pride Parade, and they would share this good news by volunteering at the KidsPeace Foster Care Christmas Party.
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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
We are being invited to participate in a new world order of mercy made possible by faith. This is the message to us on this second Sunday in the season after Pentecost, the season in which we especially look for how and where the Holy Spirit is seeking to guide us forward for our lives and the world.
And right out of the gates, as we enter this Holy Spirit season, we see Jesus is re-ordering the ways of the world, inviting mercy and faith. Sometimes I wonder if our focus on Jesus’ birth – Messiah born in the backwaters of Judea to an unwed teenage mother, and on Jesus’ death – murdered in the most degrading way possible by Roman officials through crucifixion; sometimes I wonder if our Christian focus on the beginning and end of Jesus’ life sometimes causes us to miss the radical work of God right in the middle of Jesus’ life, when Jesus was present as a force for radical compassion and mercy on this earth that was quite upsetting (at least to some of those around him).
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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
“I will not leave you orphaned,” declares Jesus in our gospel lesson today from John. “I will ask,” says Jesus, “and the Father will send you “another Advocate” to be with you forever. This Advocate, Jesus goes on to say, is “the spirit of truth” that will be revealed to those who love Jesus, who is and has been the first Advocate on our behalf.
Yes! On this sixth Sunday of Easter, we are invited to remember that God’s resurrection work through Christ has adopted us into new life, resurrected life that pulls us again and again from the chains of brokenness and of sin as individuals and as communities and world so that we can love Jesus and in so doing better learn to love our God-beloved-selves, as well as others and this world around us. And that this resurrection story is not the end of the journey for us, but the beginning of a new chapter. Yes! For on the sixth Sunday of Easter, we are invited into action and reflection and then more action, supported by the Holy Spirit, the Advocate.
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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
Jesus makes a bold, but for those of us who have been following Jesus’ story, unsurprising claim: that Jesus is the gate and those who come to know this will find their way in and also their way out to green pasture. To verdant new life. Jesus makes this assertion on the heels of the crowd gathered around him once he had been taken by the authorities; the crowd around him choosing to use the annual Passover get-out-of-jail-free-card to set free Barabbas the bandit instead of him. And crying out for his crucifixion. So, not surprisingly, Jesus uses the illustration of the bandit and the shepherd, and shares how the bandit is the one who leads us astray from our Shepherd. But our Shepherd is the one who makes possible our coming in and our going out, that is to say that the Shepherd is the one who makes possible a fluid transition between discovering and cultivating a verdant inner life and the expression of this inner life in how we live in the outer world.