Eastertide
Lane Cowin
Moving from Self-Reliance to Dependence

Acts 9:1-19; John 14:1-7

Moving from Self-Reliance to Dependence
Eastertide
The Rev. Dan Marotta
Moving From Busy to Unhurried

Ephesians 5:15-16; Mark 5:21-43

Moving From Busy to Unhurried
Eastertide
Oldson Duclos
Moving From Shame to Security

Genesis 2:25-3:7; John 21:1-19

Moving From Shame to Security
Eastertide
The Rev. Dan Marotta
Moving from Disappointment to Hope

Isaiah 25:6-9; Mark 16:1-8

Moving from Disappointment to Hope
Lent, Holy Week
Oldson Duclos
Good Friday Meditation

Psalm 78:15-26, John 13:1-15

Good Friday Meditation

The Simple Wisdom of Welcoming Jesus

Scripture Text: Matthew 25:31-46

We are beginning with The End in mind. We believe that Jesus will indeed return but we do not know when He shall arrive. As a form of waiting, we are planting a church - in order that, when He does return, we might see ourselves, our neighbors and our city redeemed. Matthew 25 contains some of Jesus’ most sober and yet practical teaching on His second coming. Our role is to get ready, to faithfully steward all that He has given us in order that we might welcome Him with gladness at the moment of His return.

The Simple Wisdom of Faithful Stewardship

Scripture Text: Matthew 25:14-30

We are beginning with The End in mind. We believe that Jesus will indeed return but we do not know when He shall arrive. As a form of waiting, we are planting a church - in order that, when He does return, we might see ourselves, our neighbors and our city redeemed. Matthew 25 contains some of Jesus’ most sober and yet practical teaching on His second coming. Our role is to get ready, to faithfully steward all that He has given us in order that we might welcome Him with gladness at the moment of His return.

The Simple Wisdom of Being Ready

Scripture Text: Matthew 25:1-13

We are beginning with The End in mind. We believe that Jesus will indeed return but we do not know when He shall arrive. As a form of waiting, we are planting a church - in order that, when He does return, we might see ourselves, our neighbors and our city redeemed. Matthew 25 contains some of Jesus’ most sober and yet practical teaching on His second coming. Our role is to get ready, to faithfully steward all that He has given us in order that we might welcome Him with gladness at the moment of His return.

Membership, Part III: A Local Anglican Church

If God is our father, the church is our mother. -- John Calvin

It is as impossible, unnecessary and undesirable to be a Christian all by yourself as it is to be a newborn baby all by yourself. The church is first and foremost a community, a collection of people who belong to one another because they belong to God, the God we know in and through Jesus.

The following are the bare minimum requirements for belief and practice as an Anglican Church.

The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral

  1. The Holy Scriptures of Old & New Testament as the revealed Word of God.
  2. The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
  3. Two Sacraments: Baptism & the Lord’s Supper.
  4. The Historic Episcopate form of church government -- locally adapted.

Word & Sacrament
The two primary marks of a local congregation are:

  1. The preached Word.
  2. The partaking of the Sacraments.

Membership, Part II: Walking the Anglican Way

Our culture has an affinity for words like organic, authentic, natural and intuitive. When applied to faith, these words become near synonyms for spontaneous, “true-to-myself”, effortless and “the-way-I-already-think.” In other words, the cultural assumption is that spiritual growth will happen when I am in the right place that nurtures my “true-self.” This approach to formation is from the inside out - first we change on the inside, then our lives look differently on the outside. This rings true for most people. “First, I’ll learn to love the right things, then I’ll do them.” This way I’ll avoid being a hypocrite and living inauthentically. Right?

As inviting as that may sound, it is almost entirely contrary to the prescribed pathway for spiritual growth given to us in the Bible. God’s invitation to us is, rather, to come and die that we might live. Receiving the redemption of Jesus means the end of the “old self” and the birth of a “new self.” And while this is, spiritually speaking, a one time event that occurs when a person puts their faith in Jesus and is baptized, it is also the paradigm for spiritual growth going forward. So Christians (and especially Anglican Christians) may use words like: intentional, discipline, struggle, tension, work, effort and change. By using these words we are not denying the grace of God, nor are we saying that we can somehow direct our own spiritual future. Rather, we are simply embracing Jesus’ “life-through-death” approach towards faith. We are saying, that discipline is to spiritual growth as eating and exercise are to physical health. We are not in control of our own health, our health lies in the hands of the Lord, but we have a role to play in stewarding our own bodies. We ought to eat healthy foods and exercise our bodies in order to play our part in promoting our own health. In the same way, we ought to employ spiritual disciplines in order to promote our own spiritual health. This is not legalism, this is formation from the outside in. We acknowledge that we do not desire or love the right things, and so we discipline ourselves and wait for our affections to catch up. The idea here is, “First I’ll do the right things, trusting that eventually I will learn to love them too.”

And so, with the goal of loving and trusting Jesus, and the philosophy of formation from the outside in and not the inside out, let’s ask a question, “What does it look like to walk the Anglican way throughout your day, your week and your year?”

Membership, Part I: The Compass Rose

Our goal as a church is not to “do religion the right way.” Members of Redeemer share the common hope to see God redeem us, our neighbors and our city with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We live out this hope within a particular tradition - the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion encompasses over 80 million people globally. It is a very diverse family with very diverse understandings of what exactly it means to be a Christian in the Anglican tradition. This class can not and does not speak for all Anglicans. Rather - the goal of this class is to communicate the best of Anglicanism as it has been practiced down through the centuries. Redeemer desires to bring the best practices of the historic church into the present in a new and fresh way.

Foundations, Part IV: Reflecting the Image

In Part 4, we descend from the great heights of a theological conversation about the person of God and into the details of our everyday lives. We will ask the question, “what does it mean to reflect God’s image both individually and corporately?” We will answer this in five ways: by worshipping, by praying, by reading the Bible, by belonging to and participating with the Church, and by working for renewal. As we move through these five ways of reflecting the image of God, our hope is that a vision for a counter-cultural life of faith will take shape - a life that is defined and ordered by God’s story, our deep longings and His character and not by the temptations and pressures of our contemporary society.

Foundations, Part III: Staring at the Sun

In Part 3 we descend from the grand meta-narrative of the world and the over-arching themes of human existence to the particular story of the God of the Bible and His historic people - the nation of Israel. We hope to answer a few questions:

   ●  Who is God?
   ●  What is the role of the nation of Israel in God’s story?
   ●  Who is Jesus?
   ●  What is the role of Jesus in God’s story?
   ●  Who is the Holy Spirit?
   ●  What is the role of the Spirit in God’s story?

Assigned Reading for Part IV:
Read "Part III: Reflecting the Image" in Simply Christian by N. T. Wright.

Foundations, Part II: Echoes of a Voice

In Part 2, we will take a step back and look at four areas of our contemporary life that point towards something. What that something is is not immediately clear to everyone - but we can perceive that there are clues ingrained into the fabric of the universe and our lives that act as “strange signposts - pointing beyond the landscape of our contemporary culture and out into the unknown.”

These four signposts are things that we all have in common, they are echoes that every human being can hear. They are: the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships and the delight in beauty.

Assigned Reading for Part III:
Read "Part II: Staring at the Sun" in Simply Christian by N. T. Wright.

Foundations, Part I: The Drama of Scripture

The story of the Bible can be summarized by four major movements that all point towards the one, grand, over-arching theme of the entire Bible. The four major movements are: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration → The creation of the world by God, the total fall into the corruption of sin by human rebellion, the redemption brought about by Jesus' death and resurrection, and the restoration of all things by God in the last days. To what theme do these movements point? → That God, as the main character of the Bible's story has been and is on a mission. He created the world and humanity for a purpose. When the world and humanity fell into corruption by human rebellion, He pursued humanity like a Father looking for a lost child. When humanity rejected Him, He became one of us so that He might absorb the punishment our rebellion deserves. He still pursues rebellious human beings today and for the purpose of welcoming them into His family. He has promised to, one day, restore the whole universe to peace, goodness, justice, and beauty. This is the story of the Bible and the mission of God.

Assigned Reading for Part II:
Read "Part I: Echoes of a Voice" in Simply Christian by N. T. Wright.

 
 

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