It’s interesting, I think, how almost no one in the New Testament self identifies as a Christian. In fact, the label of being a Christian is a public one. That is, it is applied to those in the church by the world because the world can’t make sense of what the church is doing.Today we take the practice of generosity as rather ubiquitous, particular…

By the power of Christ, through cross and resurrection, we are forgiven. More pertinently YOU are forgiven. That’s the heart of the gospel and it’s why people like me won’t shut up about it.But when I tell you you’re forgiven, whether from the pulpit or at the table, it’s not because you’ve somehow wiped your slate clean, or gotten all your ducks i…

Grief isn’t something to be fixed or gotten rid of. To deny our grief is to deny our humanity. The best we can ever do for others in their grief is just be there, to manifest the love that refuses to let them go. And the best we can ever do when we experience grief is exactly that - experience it. Weep and be angry and let it happen.Because that’s …

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.At tea time, everybody agrees.I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero. Who knew Taylor Swift was so Pauline? Even with all the accolades, all the money, all the power, all the influence, she sings of a life that is simul justus et peccator. I…

Preaching is foolishness, Paul says, because lofty words of wisdom and grandeur do not bring us closer to God. Instead, God comes close to us. So close, in fact, that we have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. Which means who only really know who we are in relation to, and because of, who Jesus …

God’s grace is unmerited, undeserved, and untakeawayable.The offering plate is too small for God’s gift to us. God doesn’t give us 10%. No, God gives us everything. The whole kit and caboodle. For God is the gift.This is the Gospel, the goodest part of the Good News: God gives and gives and gives. God seeks and seeks and seeks. God forgives and for…

The strange theological truth is that the world does revolve around us. I know that’s a dangerous thing to say, particularly in a time in which narcissism is on the rise and the evidence of our destructive tendencies toward Creation are all too apparent… But there’s an important distinction - the cosmos is ours not so that it might serve selfish en…

The church isn’t supposed to do or make anything. We’re not a factory or a company. We’re the church. We’re in the business of being. All the doing or making we’ve ever needed has been done and made by Jesus.Oleh Taylor Mertins

The witness of the church, straight from the lips of the Lord (and Paul), is that there is always a space for you in this place of grace because our differences make us the church. We have eyes and ears and fingers and toes. We have friends and family and strangers and foes.In other words, the church is an antidote to the loneliness of the world, a…

Remembering your baptism, whether you actually remember it or not is just the same as taking time to consider who loved you into being. In baptism you enter into the oneness of the community of faith we call the church, in which you are surrounded by people who care about you and want the best for you. In baptism, your eyes and ears are opened to t…

Ephesians 4.1-6 & Deuteronomy 6.4-9Jesus offers us an alternative epistemology: Love God and love your neighbor. Paint those words on your doors, talk about them with your kids, get them printed on stickers and adhere them to your water bottles.Unlike what the world tells us over and over again: think for yourself, make your own way, don’t worry ab…

God is not sitting idly by, far away, waiting for us to pray. Prayer isn’t putting pressure on God, or persuading God. It’s not about getting God’s attention, or changing God’s mood.God’s mood toward us never changes. God yearns for a world that looks more like the kingdom than all of this. That’s why God gives us these songs to sing and prayers to…

Psalm 51.1-12Confession is often nothing more than telling the truth about ourselves to ourselves, to one another, and to God. The community of faith that confesses is not a church without sin (for there is no such thing), instead the church that confesses is a church without secrets. And yet, it’s important to talk about what we talk about when we…

Exodus 3.1-6Prayer is what happens to us when we encounter the inconceivable surprise of living - it is a conversation born out of the realization, just as Moses discovered in the burning bush, that God is with us, always.Oleh Taylor Mertins

The Freedom To Be A Sinner by Taylor MertinsOleh Taylor Mertins

John 21.20-25John doesn’t earn his belovedness. He’s not the lovable disciple - he’s the beloved disciple. He doesn’t do anything better than the other twelve, he’s not striving after the gold medal of morality or the sanctity of spirituality. He is simply called to a life that he would not have had on his own, and he has fun along the way...…

Luke 5.1-11Jesus knows full and well what a mess Peter is and still calls him anyway. Jesus should’ve absolutely left Peter on the shore that fateful morn, but instead calls him to a life of discipleship that conveys the freedom to be wrong.And it is a freedom. Consider how many of our relationships have faltered if not floundered because we can’t …

Mark 4.35-41Music is perhaps the greatest technology of the heart, and singing in particular. To lift our voices together is to stand against the disorder of the world. Notice: singing is not a denial of reality. The Moravians on the boat with Wesley weren’t singing in order to pretend like the waves weren’t beating down upon them. No, they were si…

Mark 4.26-34In the end the parables are stories that Jesus tells about himself. He is the Good Shepherd off in search of the lost, he is the fatted calf sacrificed for the party, on and on. And the branches of his kingdom are a place of grace for everyone.Grace, as Frederick Buechner was apt to say, is something you can never get but only be given.…

Mark 3.20-35The church is where God assembles us to imagine and day dream about how beautiful the world could be.It’s wild stuff really. It always has been. That people like me can stand up in a place like this and say “Welcome home.” Or: “I declare the entire forgiveness of all your sins.” Or: “You are loved beyond measure.” I sound like I’m out o…

Mark 2.23-3.6Jesus has a word for all of us. A word of gospel rather than a word of law. A word of relief rather than expectation. Jesus says, 'Stretch out your hand.'Whatever it is you’ve done, or left undone, it is no match for the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. Stretch out your hand. Come to the altar to receive the on…

Psalm 29The church has a word of relief, and that word is the Gospel. It’s a very countercultural word, one that threatens to undo everything we think we know about what we think we know.The church can be safe and secure, unthreatening, unassuming, with our pews bolted to the ground, where we mutter and muster an 'Amen' only once in a blue moon.But…

Acts 2.1-12To be a Christian is not so much having a certain set of beliefs that give meaning to our lives. Instead, to be a Christian is to be initiated into a community with practices and habits that actually transform our lives.Which is just another way of saying, we only ever learn what it means to be Christians by watching other Christians and…

John 17.11-19Jesus' prayer in John 17 is rather unlike the compact prayer that he taught the disciples to pray, that prayer we will all pray later in worship. The theologian NT Wright says this very long prayer of Jesus is “so rich that we may choke on it unless we chew it slowly.”One of the people who has chewed slowly on this text is Brian Zahnd.…

Psalm 22.25-31 & John 15.1-8The odd proclamation of the Gospel is that there is no hope in us. We are all withering branches in need of some pruning and care. We’re all sinners. We’re all incompatible with the Messiah because we tend to make such a mess of his message.But that’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay because Jesus comes to do for us …

Psalm 23 & John 10.1-18The first task of a Christian is not to forgive, but to learn to be forgiven.Oleh Taylor Mertins

Luke 24.36b-48I don’t know the last time you took a stroll through the strange new world of the Bible, but let me tell you, it is strange! It tells of cosmic creation, rainbowed repentance, kaleidoscopic covenants, profound prophets, geriatric geniuses, sacred psalms, liturgical litanies, paradoxical poems, and one heck of a messy Messiah.What begi…

Psalm 133 & John 20.10-31The story of Thomas seemingly ends with his triumphant and faithful declaration: "My Lord and My God!" But John isn’t quite finished. For he actually concludes with a strange note about how “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.” But, John continues, “These are writ…

Unexpected by Taylor MertinsOleh Taylor Mertins

Matthew 26.17-30Music has this almost magic quality to it. It can bring forth emotions we did not know we had, or that we did not know we needed to feel. God uses the songs we sing to remind us who we are and whose we are.And the same happens here at the table. We do this in remembrance not only because we are commanded to, but also because, in so …

Matthew 21.1-10One of the craziest parts of what is already one of the craziest parts of the Bible, is the fact that, on Palm Sunday, Jesus doesn’t say anything.Have you ever noticed that before? It’s a bit odd coming from the one who has lots to say in his Sermon on the Mount, the one who parades out parables every chance he gets. Jesus doesn’t sa…

Matthew 6.25-34It is to a people obsessed with themselves, with too much and too little, that Jesus speaks this powerful word: Why are you so worried about what you eat and drink? About what you wear and how you look? Look at the birds of the air. They are not terrified of these things. Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of l…

Matthew 26.14-16A rich man comes up to Jesus and he says, “Teacher, I follow all of the commands of God. What more must I do to inherit eternal life?”And Jesus, looking on the man with compassion, says, “Because I love you, how about you try selling everything you have, give the proceeds to the poor, and then you can follow me”The man walks away fr…

Matthew 26.36-46“Thy will be done” is the enemy of sloth. It’s the recognition that though we might not have eyes to see any new possibilities, we worship the God of impossible possibility, who makes all things new.“Thy will be done” sets us on an adventure in which we never quite know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future. Per…

Matthew 21.12-17Contrary to the witness of John Mayer, we don’t have to wait on the world to change. We can pray for it. But we shouldn’t be surprised if, while praying for the world to change, God starts the work by changing us.Oleh Taylor Mertins

Matthew 20.1-16Grace, when it is so freely offered to any and all comers, without any regard to merit, seems downright irresponsible. Even when the truth of the matter is that grace being offered to me is no more or less miraculous that it is to someone who walks through the door at the last second.Grace is only grace because it is given to those w…

Mark 6.1-6The rest of the world, uninformed of the story that gives meaning to our stories, considers Pride to be an essential characteristic for living. We, on the other hand, are taught to be suspicious of pride.For pride often leads to us to believe that we are better than everyone else.Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to b…

Revelation 21.1-6Notice: it is not just a new heaven that John sees, but a whole new earth. Revelation, then, is the final declaration that matter matters.Remember, whenever Jesus waxes lyrical about the kingdom of heaven, he does so with earthy and earthly terms. The kingdom is like a mustard seed, it is like yeast mixed with flour, it is like a p…

Acts 2.1-4 & Romans 16.25-27The Bible is, as Barth loved to say, the strange new world of God. With every page we discover more and more about the wild and wondrous God we worship. And in no place is this more evident than the Acts of the Apostles, and the various epistles. For, the eruption of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost sends reverberations thro…

Mark 1.1 & Mark 16.1-8“When the church stops talking about Jesus, it has nothing left to say.” - Sam WellsOleh Taylor Mertins

Genesis 12.1-3 & Malachi 3.1-2The Good News of the Gospel for each and every single one of us, is that God meets us in the midst of our sins, not our successes. God meets us where we are, not where we ought to be.Israel’s story, both the person and the people, reminds us that God comes to us in our weariness and our woundedness. God delights in kee…

Genesis 1.1-5Imagine, one day, you receive a strange delivery. A trunk. It’s heavy and you can feel and hear all manner of objects inside tossing about as you drag it inside. You open it and discover a great cacophony of items. Inventories. Diaries. Poems. Creative writing assignments. Blueprints. Photographs. Letters. Various genealogical records.…

Luke 2.1-14Christmas is not just about remembering an event in the distant past.Christmas is the celebration of a miracle in our midst. Christmas isn’t just where we come from, Christmas is who we are, here and now.Yes, it is finished, as Jesus says from the cross. Easter is the exclamation point on a sentence that begins long before the Incarnatio…

Titus 2.11For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.Oleh Taylor Mertins

Luke 1.67-80The scriptures, the sermons, the songs, they are all about getting us to catch a hint of God’s more, a glimpse of the light that shines in the darkness. Dr. Seuss got it right - Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.…

Luke 1.46-55The incarnation is not God’s last minute hail Mary (pun intended) to fix the world. It is, was, and always will be God’s decision to dwell with us. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. God was always going to dwell with us because God always dwells with us and God will always dwell with us.And yet, Mary's song threat…

Luke 1.26-38The One born to Mary comes to embody a peaceful way of being that transcends all of what we think or know because Jesus takes us from where we are to where we can be.Mary, in receiving the visit of Gabriel and the promise he holds, goes from nobody to somebody, blessed, fortunate, given a job to do in the story of salvation. Even in her…

Luke 1.5-20The season of Advent gives us permission to rest in the silliness of salvation, in the wild and wondrous ways God chooses the strangest people and the strangest means to bring about the Good News for a world filled with bad news. God will arrive in the manger, and God will come again, whether we deserve it or not. In fact, God did and wi…

Ephesians 1.15-23With the world moving on from the turkey to the trimming and the trappings of Christmas, today the church pauses the frenetic pace of the season and asks the question, “Who’s in charge here?”Oleh Taylor Mertins

Revelation 21.1-5We do what we do now in anticipation of what will come; we live according to God’s future - the new heaven and the new earth. Which means that whatever heaven is, whatever the resurrection of the body is, it will be like this life, only different...Oleh Taylor Mertins