November 5, 2023 Matthew 5:1-12 Jesus is the personification of the Beatitudes. The rich who became poor. He mourned over our Sin and rejection. He is the one who truly thirsts and hungers for righteousness so that we would be reconciled with God. He is the only person who is merciful to his enemies, the peacemaker willing to lay down his life for the sake of all Creation. Jesus is not offering his disciples moralistic if/then propositions. Jesus does the Beatitudes to the point of his death....

October 22, 2023 Matthew 22:15-22 Jesus knew their hypocrisy. Jesus knows our hypocrisy. The Pharisees and Herodians reached into their pockets, but Jesus did not. The idolatrous coin that condemns was not in Jesus’s pocket. Christ’s pocket was empty because, alone, he is fully faithful to the prayer he taught us, the prayer we will pray in just a few minutes. In taking our sin into His hand, you have been gifted his righteousness, no matter what you render to Caesar or how many times you...

October 15, 2023 Matthew 22:1-14 The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king giving his son a wedding banquet. The Kingdom of Heaven is like God, who throws a party for the Son. We, the baptized, Christ’s body, Christ’s bride, the church are not mentioned by name in this parable. We are so convinced that we need to work out our salvation that we turn grace into law and place ourselves in the parable when we are not yet there. The Priests and the Elders wanted to know who Jesus was. They wanted to...

October 8, 2023 Matthew 21:33-46 None of us can keep this church going. I cannot do it, nor can you. Walker Chapel, like every other church, is God’s. This is God’s church and God’s service. We are God’s people. This is where financial stewardship becomes important, as we are not only a part of the mission of Walker Chapel. What we do here in worship, discipleship, and mission is part of God’s larger work in making all of creation new, which places us in ministry alongside the saints that...

October 1, 2023 Matthew 21:23-32 Jesus, it turns out, is a third kind of son, the one who both agrees to and does the will of the Father. In John’s gospel that last-yet-first son tells us exactly what the will of the Father is, that we believe in him. The King and the Kingdom are one and the same; but also, we are the Body of that King and so we are deputized to make promises with the authority of God, “All your sins are forgiven.” Faith in this Jesus tends to open things including our...

September 17, 2023 Matthew 18:21-35 This is a parable about the Kingdom of God, and it is a parable about us. We are the unmerciful servant, wanting pity and mercy for ourselves while we will not, we cannot extend the same to others. So what’s to be done with us?  Forgiveness – for us and others – is not easy. At times we do not want to forgive and at others, we want more than anything to be forgiven. Saint Paul is right. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Yet, Saint Paul...

August 27, 2023 Romans 12:1-8 If we miss or do not understand what Paul’s “therefore” is there for, we can turn the task of transformation from gospel good news into another burdensome task. Without Paul’s “therefore,” without the previous 11 chapters of Paul detailing what the grace of God is and that we are the recipients of this grand gift, to live a transformed life as described by Paul is burdensome, if not down-right impossible. Without the “therefore” we do not hear the gospel; we do...

A few years ago, my friend Tony came to the church I was working to be our “Scholar in Residence.” While Tony was in town, he taught a few seminars and preached on Sunday morning. He traveled with his wife and children. When Tony did not have responsibilities at the church, he took his family sightseeing. They visited all the sites we who live close to the DC avoid during the summer months. The Washington Monument. The Lincoln Memorial. A few of the Smithsonian museums. Mount Vernon. After...

August 6, 2023 Romans 9:1-5 There are people we want to “save.” We wish they would heed the Good News, the same old song we proclaim week after week. “If only we could convince them of the truth we cling to,” we think, “then they will be OK.” But (and it is a big but so you know it does not lie), we remember that the story of blessing, redemption, and salvation is not ours to fulfill. God is at work. In Moses. In Christ. In Paul. In Israel. In you. In me. We cannot save anyone any more than...

July 30, 2023 Romans 8:26-29 While we may have a thing or two to teach Saint Paul about separation, Paul reminds the Church that when we feel alone or abandoned, the grace of God is ours. Whether we know it or not, God's grace is preveniently ours, meaning God's grace goes before us. Our best selves do not prevent a separation. There is no number of good deeds that can be done to make the grace of God more yours. Likewise, our worst selves do not "separate us from the love of God in Christ...

July 23, 2023 Romans 8:12-25 Grace is not about finishing. It is about beginning. Grace is not about excuses. It is about newness. Grace is not about what we do. It is about what God is doing and has done. Grace produces hope because God is at work. Our hope is in the faithful work of God. The hope of God is bringing about a new thing by restoring all of creation. By God’s grace, our hope does not rest in what we do or leave undone. Instead, our hope is found in what God has done and is...

July 16, 2023 Romans 8:1-11 If it were up to me, I would cast pastors like Driscoll as the Nazi in the next Indiana Jones flick. It is preachers of false gospels like  Driscoll whose face I would like God to melt. But as soon as I have done that, as soon as I have painted him the guilty one, I have fallen under that same condemning judgment. The scandal of Grace is that there is, therefore, now NO condemnation. Not for Mark, or me, or you. In Christ, we have not only been permitted to touch...

July 9, 2023 Romans 7:15-25 The key to our salvation, the thing that makes us right before God is not ignoring our Sin – out of sight, out of mind – or ignoring our need for a divine intervention. The key to our salvation is that in spite of our inability to follow God’s top-ten, which Jesus distilled into two things – love God and love one another – God's grace is ours. God’s grace frees us from the necessity of finding our identity in our good deeds. God’s grace frees us from our sins...

July 2, 2023 Hebrews 12:12-15 As recipients of God’s amazing Grace and as bearers of that Grace, we can expect that God will not leave us as we are or have been. God loves you just as you are, but God’s love is such that God will not leave you just as you are. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, she was sent back to her village with worth and value she did not have before encountering Jesus. Jesus called Zaccheaus down from a sycamore tree, and Zaccheaus was loved enough to...

June 11, 2023 Galatians 2:15-21 In adding to the Gospel, Peter was annulling the Good News of what God had gone ahead and done for us in Jesus Christ. Each of us is attracted to false gospels; Paul even says that the law is written on our hearts— we WANT to be told what to do, if only so we can judge our neighbor’s shortcomings. All of us have fallen short of righteousness, scripture says, but that doesn’t stop us from measuring distances. Each of us, like Peter, adds lists of shoulds to...

May 21, 2023 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 To say “No,” to the demands and needs of the empires of the world is no easy task because the empires of our world desperately depend on your “yes” and allegiance. And they, like the Devil tempting Jesus in the Wilderness, will offer us power and influence in exchange for our allegiance. If Jesus is Lord of all Creation, then Dr. Stanley Hauerwas is correct in his assertion that everything else is... Everything is the empires of the world. Everything is...

May 14, 2023 1 Peter 3:13-22 The busyness of life that we are so attracted to is one of the ways that we bury our heads in the sand or attempt to at the very least so that we don’t have to come face-to-face with the suffering of the world, or the fact that there are those whose identity is not honored by the church. But because Christ has died, because Christ has risen, and because Christ promises to come again, we are free from our sins, and from the busyness that we use as a...

April 23, 2023 1 Peter 1:17-23 Love in the way famed fictional-recording artist Billy Mac instructs us to in the hit movie Love Actually – from your fingers to your toes. Love the person in the pew next to you. Love the person who has not responded to the text message you sent days ago. Love your spouse, partner, children, best friend, mail person, Uber driver, stranger on the street, and the pastor who grinds your gears. Love the person you tell yourself you will never be able to love....

The stone was rolled away, the body gone, and we are unsure of what we are to do now. The unexpected happened. Mary Magdalen and the other Mary went to the tomb expecting to anoint Jesus’ lifeless body, but when they arrived, an angel told them, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.”[1] The dead man you are looking for is gone. Don’t believe me? Come see where his body...

Lent 4 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 The difficulties we carry from our past – the things we wish we had not said even if it was OK to say those things back then, the doors we locked while at traffic lights, the streets we crossed to avoid walking past someone, or the people we misidentified because of the nothing more than the color of their skin – were taken to the cross with Christ and buried. The result of this is God reconciling creation to God so that we can become instruments of God's...

The help we expect, the help we so desperately need, does not come from ourselves. The track record of human history tells this to be true, and yet time and time again, we turn to ourselves to make right that which we continue to taint with our sin. Cries of lament are our turning toward God, acknowledging our humanness, and opening ourselves to being transformed. It is in being transformed that we can act first by setting aside empty platitudes like “racism is too much, we have to give it to...

February 26, 2023 Psalm 13 The help we expect, the help we so desperately need, does not come from ourselves. The track record of human history tells this to be true, and yet time and time again, we turn to ourselves to make right that which we continue to taint with our sin. Cries of lament are our turning toward God, acknowledging our humanness, and opening ourselves to being transformed. It is in being transformed that we can act first by setting aside empty platitudes like “racism is...

February 19, 2023 Matthew 17:1-9 The transfiguration of Jesus Christ, God's shining glory and splendidness, was not a one-off event. Every time the Word of God is proclaimed, every time water is blessed and falls over a person’s head, every time we gather around Christ’s table of grace, and every time we act wither mercy and compassion, we experience what John Wesley called means of grace, and we are transfigured. Many voices, too many to list off, tell us we need to transform...

Thanks for reading Brewing Theology! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Six days after a dramatic journey through Caesarea Philippi – where Peter declared Jesus to be the Son of God, and Jesus foretold of his pending suffering, death, and resurrection – Jesus took three disciples with him up a high mountain. Mountaintop experiences within Israel were known to be where a person would encounter God. Remember, after leading Israel to freedom through the Red Sea, Moses...

One of the things I love most about the church’s liturgical cycle is the crescendo that builds during the season after Epiphany. If you did not know, today is the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, the fifth Sunday after the glory of the incarnation was revealed to the magi. Lost between Christmas Eve and the New Year, we miss the wise men traversing afar, bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newborn Messiah. In the magi the revelation of the incarnation of God in human...