RoboPreacher

Before First Reading : Today we begin our journey through the important moments in God's story as a part of our discipleship series. Now until October, each Saturday/Sunday we will hear an important story in the history of God's disciples throughout the ages. It is important for us to be familiar with these moments so that we can find ourselves within these stories of God, so that God's larger story can help us make sense of our part of the story we live out today, so that we can be shaped into God's disciples...   The first story, the story to begin our discipleship journey is not creation, but Exodus, liberation... Through Abraham, God had begun to form a people set apart. This tribe of Abraham's descendent's, the Israelites, had come to Egypt. For a while things were fine in Egypt. Eventually, though, the Egyptians, led by the Pharaoh, decided the Israelites were becoming too numerous. The Egyptians decided to make the Israelites slave...

The odd pairing of God and human history Exodus 3:7-12 Prayer: Please pray with me. God, you bid us “so come.” Invite us into your realm of compassion, and when we weary, grow afraid, or experience confusion, remind us of your promise, “I will be with you.” ~Amen. Intro: Good morning, my name is Ryan Cosgrove, and I am an intern at the Lutheran Public Policy Office, as well as St. John United in North Seattle. I grew up in Iowa, and am attending seminary at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. My goal is to become an ordained pastor, like Rev. Kindem. Part of this process of ordination is a year-long internship. So, I am the fellow who got to leave the mid-Atlantic area, come to the mild winters, mountains and waters of the Northwest for a year of internship. Pretty lucky, right? Also, I would like to send greetings on behalf of everyone at the LPPO, and personally, I thank you for the opportunity to be with you today. Not only am I thankful today, I am ...

Right now I am physically in an in-between place. My summer with the Metro Lutheran has come to an end, and now I am in respite at my folk’s place for a few days until I start my journey west to begin my year-long internship. The back drop for this post is three different news articles. The first is one I wrote for the Metro Lutheran concerning women’s ordination, the second is an article about inclusive language in contemporary, North American, mainline churches (how’s that for a string of adjectives!), and the last is a fantastic article about the men and women in North America today. Briefly, a few words (well, adjectives) about myself: male, white, and lower-middle-class. Also, in-between places. You will have to forgive my lack of citations, I do not have access to my books, they are in transit. The question of gender is one that is of particular interest to me. One, I was not raised by my biological father, yet I did, and do, have many wonderful, loving male ...

Lately we've been touching on how the Trinity is involved in liberation, but we haven't spoken to it exactly. Here are some specific words from Gustavo Guti é rrez: "The Gospel is, therefore, 'that divine secret kept in silence for long ages but now disclosed... made known to all nations, to bring them to faith and obedience.' (Rom. 16:25-26). This mystery is the love of the father ( sic ), who 'loved the world so much that he gave his only son' (John 3:16) in order to call all humans, in the Spirit, to communion with God. Human beings are called together, as a community and not as seperate individuals, to participate in the life of the Trinitarian community, to enter into the circuit of love that unites the persons of the Trinity. This is a love which builds up human society in our history." (Obviously I would like to expand Guti érrez's vision to include human environment.) I think there is a lot to take in here. What is helpful? Wha...