“Where Treasure, There Heart”
We might wish Jesus would stay out of our pocketbooks and stick to heaven, but Jesus often mentions pocketbook and heaven in the same breath as if there’s a relationship between the two. This morning's scripture is a case in point. Says Jesus, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
“The Easter Posture”
There’s such a thing as an Easter posture. It’s exhibited this morning by the women running from the tomb exuberant, falling all over themselves to tell others what they’ve seen and heard. By contrast, there were two other postures exhibited that first Easter morning that are un-Easterlike…but not unusual. The postures I speak of represent two unhealthy orientations toward life. Let me describe them for you and tell you how Easter delivers us from them so we can rise up and live our lives out of an Easter posture.
“Home By Another Way”
Warned in a dream not to go back the way they came, they went home “by another way” (Matthew 2:12). To put it a different way, they were led on a detour … for their own good. I made a note to self this week: Self, the Bible teaches that sometimes God sends us on a detour for our own good.
“What’s He Going to Say?"
By what criteria will we be judged? “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the nations are gathered before him... he shall separate people one from another … by what criteria? When I was in school, I mostly paid attention to what the teacher was saying. But when the teacher said, “This is going to be on the test,” I was all ears. Well, the Bible says one day our lives are going to be graded – judged. So, when the Teacher, the Rabbi from Galilee, tells us what’s going to be on the Test, the criteria by which God will judge us, we’re all ears.
“Grumbling at Grace”
The first-hired laborers grumbled at that grace. No fair! Which suggests to me that if we think God pays by the hour, we’ll consign ourselves to living life with a perpetual peripheral stinkeye always looking for people who seem to be getting more than we think they deserve.
“The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant”
A guy is forgiven 7.84 billion by a king but then turns around and refuses to forgive – and punishes – someone who owed him a measly 14k. We and the fellow slaves in the parable are rightly “distressed.” That’s outrageous! How can someone forgiven so much, be so unforgiving? Jesus’ holy hyperbole has made its point.
The Parable of the Talents
Six years ago, I was reading this passage and as I was traipsing through, saying, “I know this one,” I got tripped up, slowed down and brought to a standstill. I got hung up on the way the man handing out the talents is characterized. This nasty Master is not the God we know in Jesus Christ!
Always with a Broad Heart
The first in a three-part sermon series on the core values of Broadway Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Columbia, MO.
Broad Hearts. Broad Minds. Broad Reach.