Author: Chris Kelly
Chris Kelly
– July 8, 2007
Text: Luke 10:1-11
Holy guests. That’s what the seventy apostles were, the ones whom Jesus sent out into the world. At their best, that is what missionaries are. Holy guests.
When we gather at Faith, we are hosts. When people come to worship here for the first time, they are guests. We have cards labeled “Guest” in the pews as one way for guests to introduce themselves. After you have been here once or twice, you become one of the hosts. The job of the host is to welcome guests, to help put them at ease, to introduce them to others, to answer questions they might have, to let them tell you about themselves if they wish, to feel at home. When it is at your home, you are the host. In some sense you are in control, the initiative is yours. So people sometimes say about a church that it is hospitable, or we say we practice hospitality, meaning it is something we do actively. If you don’t do anything to welcome a guest, people say the church is cold, or inhospitable. When some members of Faith moved to the West, the first church they visited said not one word to them the whole time. The folks in the church just stared at the wife of the couple and made her feel, she said, like an alien creature. One would not call that church hospitable.
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Chris Kelly
– July 1, 2007
Text: Galatians 5:1, 13-25
July 1, 2007
How will we get what we most desire?
The letter of Paul to the Galatians is famous as a treatise on the freedom of a Christian. But for Paul, at least here, freedom does not mean autonomy, does not mean independence. Autonomy means self-law. Free to do what I want, go where I want, say what I want, have what I want. Within the constraint that I don’t hurt anyone else. A philosopher, a contemporary of Paul’s, wrote about this kind of freedom, saying: “One is free who lives as one wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid.” And though we might be sympathetic to this definition, Paul would not be.
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Chris Kelly
– June 10, 2007
Text: Luke 7:11-17
Other texts: 1 Kings 17:17-24
June 10, 2006
Bishop Dr. Munib Younan is the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Lands. He spoke this past Friday to the assembly of the New England Synod, a once-a-year gathering of lay people and clergy. He was the keynote speaker. The churches that he shepherds are some of the very few Christian churches left in Palestine and Jerusalem.
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Chris Kelly
– June 3, 2007
June 3, 2007
Is it possible to love the Trinity? Is it possible to be loved by the Trinity? Not if the Trinity is an organization, an institution, even a team. Not if the Trinity is an association of three persons, like a small board of directors or a special task force. Who can love an organization, who can love a task force? How in the world would an association, a board of directors, love us?
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Chris Kelly
– May 27, 2007
Text: Acts 2:1-21
May 27, 2007
Where are we going? What are we going to do?
Just because our lives are full of uncertainty does not mean we like to be adrift, like dust particles in the sun. We do not want to be aimless. Without something to point at, without a direction. We do not want to wake up years from now and wonder how we ever got here, this spot in life that we never imagined.
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Chris Kelly
– May 20, 2007
Text: Acts 1:1-11
May 20, 2007
Welcome to Part 2 of “Jesus and His Ministry,” brought to you by Luke the Evangelist. In the last episode, we saw Jesus returning to the disciples after his tragic execution. He spent forty days with them, showing that he had been raised from the dead, talking to them, eating with them, reminding them that it was he who had gathered them, and giving them each a new commission and a new title: Apostle.
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Chris Kelly
– May 13, 2007
Text: John 14:23-29
May 13, 2006
If we so much want peace, why don’t we have peace?
No one wants war, we say. If no one wants war, why do we constantly go to war? Why have humans warred for at least 4000 years straight?
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Chris Kelly
– May 6, 2007
Text: Acts 11:1-18
Other texts: John 13:31-35, Revelation 21:1-6
It seems to be a big deal.
This vision of Peter’s seems to be a big deal, because it appears twice in the book of Acts, once in chapter 10 and once, as we just heard it, in chapter 11. Peter had been hanging around with gentiles, people who were not Jews. He had been hanging around with them and eating with them. The Christian Jews in Jerusalem, sort of the headquarters for the new Jesus movement, were very unhappy. They were unhappy because Peter was doing something that no Jew should do, this eating food with gentiles.
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Chris Kelly
– April 15, 2007
Text: John 20:19-31
Easter: April 15, 2007
Preacher: Vicar Anna Rudberg
It seems to me that Thomas has gotten pretty rough treatment through history. This passage in John has forever gotten him labeled as a man crazy about empirical proof, a man of shallow faith. His name has even come down through history as almost a caricature—Doubting Thomas—a name to describe the unimaginative one, the naysayer, the one who stubbornly sticks to only those things he can hold or touch, unable to make that “leap of faith.” But I’m not so sure that’s who Thomas really is. I think he’s actually a much richer character. And in fact, he has as much to teach us about believing as fearing, loving as mistrusting.
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Chris Kelly
– April 8, 2007
Text: Luke 24:1-11
Easter, April 8, 2007
What do you supposed the other ten did that night? The ten out of eleven who dismissed the news of excited Mary Magdalene and Joanna and the Mary the mother of James, and some other women, too. The ten who were not Peter. Because Peter being Peter ran to the tomb to see for himself.
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