Of all the seasons and events over the course of the year, the Advent and Christmas season is the one most marked by tradition. We look forward to this year because, yes, we want to celebrate the birth of our Savior, but also because we get to participate in the sacred holiday traditions of our families and our communities that both ground us and give our lives meaning and purpose. Tradition often gets a bad rap these days, and yet we all cling to our traditions, because we need them. Over the course of our Advent series, we’ll look at the various pieces that make up our Christmas Tradition and how they enable us to move deeper in our understanding of Advent and Christmas.

There is enormous pressure on us to do “our best.”  Particularly during this time of year, as football season heats up, school moves relentlessly toward the end of the semester, and baseball works through its postseason, there is a lot of talk and pressure to constantly be at “our best.”  It’s unrelenting.  When it comes to trying to please God and make Him happy, it’s even worse.  But what do we do when our best isn’t good enough?  The good news is your best isn’t good enough and never will be.  The better news is that Jesus came to fix that for us.  This fall, we’ll be exploring the wonder of God’s grace through Jesus Christ as we embrace the truth that our best isn’t good enough.

In spite of the intervening centuries, I am regularly astounded at how relevant the words of Scripture are to us today.  1 Peter is certainly a great example of that. . As Peter says in 1 Peter 5:12, this letter was written to encourage the saints and testify to the “true grace of God” so that the saints might stand firm in it. Those saints were facing severe and literal persecution for claiming to follow Christ. Confessing that they were Christian quite literally put their lives at risk. While most Christians in American churches aren’t at that kind of risk, we are very much in need of hope, of assurance, of encouragement. These words, written to a people of very different time and circumstance, are profoundly relevant and true for us today. May the words of this letter and these sermons bring hope, encouragement and truth to you as well.

 

This morning we begin the season of Easter, a season of celebrating and reflecting on the wonder of our redemption through Jesus Christ. There are a lot of redemption stories in the Bible, but perhaps one of the best is the story found in the book of Ruth, a story so familiar to most of us that we often miss the depths of the redemptive work God is doing throughout this story. Over the next few weeks, we will explore a story that is as deep as it is short, as tragic as it is marvelous, one that turns the lives of its characters as upside down as Jesus Christ does with ours.

The ultimate problem we all have is that we are all broken on the inside, bent from how we are supposed to be. The Bible calls this brokenness sin. Theologians, at least in our theological tradition, call it “total depravity.” This sermon series explores the reality of our sinfulness and how our brokenness affects not just the decisions we make, but every area and facet of our being and lives as well. Through this series, we will look at how our brokenness has twisted our understanding of love, relationships and community, truth and even hope. And in each area that we have twisted, Jesus Christ has come to show us the better and right way – a way that can only be found in him. What has been twisted since Adam and Eve first sinned is Untwisted by Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.