RoboPreacher

make something else yer mission The farewell from Paul's letter to the church in Rome It’s a strange thing to gather here on a perfectly good Saturday evening or Sunday morning, you know…   Because we live in a world obsessed with getting things done . Don’t we? And, if you haven’t already noticed, nothing much ever really happens here . This is not the most exciting place to be.   We’re continuing our way though heroes of the Bible. And you may have noticed our last two heroes, Ruth and Esther, never seemed to spend an awful lot of time in the church. They were too busy , out there, getting things done . And we feel that same pressure, too. Don’t we? We all have to-do lists miles long. And the temptation to use the 90 minutes or so church occupies on any given week, is no joke. Isn’t it?   Today our hero is Phoebe .   While, there are plenty of other women listed in Paul’s conclusion to his letter to First Lutheran in Rom...

i hold out Romans Six sermon on Luther Luther’s story gets going when the one he’d been trying to live ended …   And it’s a story we all try and live out, the story of perfection . Luther tried to live this story out in the church . These days, though, we’re more likely to try and live it out as parents or spouses , in our careers or at the gym , on social-media or anywhere else we can measure progress…   It doesn’t matter where you try and live this story out, though, it always end in the same way; at a dead -end.   Which is how it went for Luther…   The thing, though , is God LOVES dead -end people! God took Luther’s dead-end, and made it into a new beginning . The beginning, not of Luther’s perfect life, but of Luther’s life lived in light of God’s perfect love! God’s love that get’s going , when we can’t ! And this was just as true for Luther, as it is for you , by the way!   If you’re at the end of your rope, ...

all i did was waste your time Continuing Luther's story by way of the fifth chapter of Romans Last week we talked about how Luther had grown up on the myth that we have it in us to earn God’s good graces. Experience , though, had taught him something else ; namely how impossible that is…   Luther tried to pull it off, only to find out how untrustworthy our efforts are; they run out when we most need them and go astray when you least expect them to. This experience agonized Martin. And in that agony, he began to grow angry with God … Thankfully, Luther’s superior knew a thing or two about spiritual distress like this, and ordered Luther to go teach Bible at Wittenberg University.   This promotion was a healing balm for Luther. Remember? Because it FORCED him out of himself and into the Bible . And there , out of himself and in the Bible , he finally heard what the Bible had been saying all along! That it’s not about us and our effort...