Author: Chris Kelly
Chris Kelly
– June 30, 2013
Text: John 21:13-19
Feast of Peter and Paul
Christianity is a faith that sits in the moment, acknowledges the past, but has a preference for the future. Its vocabulary is full of words about restoring what is broken, renewing what has decayed, resurrecting what is dead. It is not an accident that all these words begin with “re-”, along with many other ones like reconciliation, restoration, rebirth. The prefix means “again” or “back.” They are all about finding something that has been lost—rediscovering it—or getting back to the right path after having wandered, or being cleansed after being corrupted.
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Chris Kelly
– June 23, 2013
Text: Galatians 3:23-29
Other texts: Luke 8:26-39
We are each one of us a person of a thousand voices. In each of us: Clamoring and soft. Disagreeing, disagreeable, seductive. Each voice making requests, making demands: each seeing the world in a different way, each telling a different truth, each trying to prevail. A thousand thinkers inside of us. Some always present, some lying low in wait for a more opportune time.
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Chris Kelly
– June 16, 2013
Text: Luke 7:35—8:3
You might call it balanced: our need for stability and our longing for adventure. You might see timidity, caution, and prudence as virtues that promote our survival—and they do. But we cannot stand in one place for very long. We cannot walk without propelling our bodies forward precariously.
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Chris Kelly
– June 2, 2013
Text: Luke 7:11-17
Preacher: Paul Stansifer.
A while ago, I watched an episode of a goofy defunct television show that struck me as weird, even weird in comparison to the kind of goofy defunct television shows that I tend to like.
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Chris Kelly
– May 26, 2013
Text: Psalm 8
Other texts: Proverbs 8:22-31
It is partly a question of scale.
In the scheme of the universe, from the very largest, oldest thing we know, to the very smallest, most ephemeral thing we know, we are somewhat closer to the smallest than the largest. Yet the range and quantities above and below us are incomprehensible. There are sextillion stars in the universe. And there are a thousand times as many atoms in a human body—that’s one octillion—than that.
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Chris Kelly
– May 13, 2013
Text: John 17:20-26
Other texts: 1 Corinthians 12
Regarding unity, Paul wrote to the churches in Corinth: “The body is not one part but many. … If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? If they were all [the same] part, where would the body be?”
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Chris Kelly
– May 6, 2013
Text: John 5:1-9
We might ask: what is wrong with this man? Why is he such a whiner? Why has he been so patient, waiting—it seems—for thirty-eight years? Why has he let more aggressive others cut in front of him? Why has he not asked for help? Our compassion is sadly mixed with disdain. Would we, we think, have acted as this man has? We think not, or perhaps we hope not. We have more gumption.
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Chris Kelly
– April 28, 2013
Text: Acts 11:1-18
Other texts: John 13:31-35
What God has made clean, you must not call profane. Three times God says it. Three times God warns Peter in a vision. Three times Peter shows his reluctance to trust in God’s judgment. Three times God overrules him. What God has made clean, you must not call profane. What I, God, have said is clean, you, Peter, must not deny. If God has made it clean, then who are we, as Peter asks, to hinder God? You must not—you are prohibited from—calling profane what God has announced to be good.
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Chris Kelly
– April 7, 2013
Text: John 20:19-31
We live in a world governed by conditions that we create. Things have consequences that we wish to promote or avoid. If you do this, then that will happen. Do that so that this will happen. Do that so it will not. If you do this, we caution others, you will be sorry. If you do that, you will earn rewards.
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Chris Kelly
– March 31, 2013
Text: Luke 24:1-12
Other texts: Isaiah 65:17-25
We know a lot. We know how the sun works, about how materials are different from one another, about the chemistry of cooking, about how proteins are encoded in a cell. We know how old the universe is and how many stars are in it.
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