Messages

Inspired by John 20: 11-18 “Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.” And in her grief, she runs not away but leans in, straining her eyes to understand the purpose of this present darkness.  Her courage is rewarded, and, in the darkness, the light is exposed. Two angels now glowing where once it would have been only […]

Inspired by Luke 19: 28-40 I need to start by confessing that I have missed so much about Palm Sunday; what relevance it had then and what possibilities it poses for us now. I’ve missed so much from my blindness that comes from reading this story through the eyes of the privileged. In my version of […]

Eric McEuen’s sermon for The Land, March 26, 2022  (inspired by Hebrews 12:1-2) I don’t know about you, or the people in your life, but it seems like everyone I know is carrying too much these days. I’m not saying we choose to do this; I’m not even saying we have a choice. If we’re aware […]

Inspired by Romans 8: 18-25 This story begins near the end of what once was a great new beginning. See, we were born on this planet during an extraordinary age known as the Cenozoic Era. Unlike the experience of any other humans before us, this Era of “New Life” welcomed us to a planet thriving […]

Inspired by Matthew 6:25-34 Scripture grows stale disconnected from the suffering of creation. But release scripture into the jagged edges of a broken world and it will echo back to us a message relevant to the challenges of our day.  Without this spiritual practice of release and return, today’s passage can easily be manipulated to promote comfortability in […]

Inspired by Numbers 15: 22-29 Maybe don’t pout about it, I tell myself. But here I sit anyway, doing nothing, watching the snowfall.  I don’t know what it is about me that I can know something is going to happen and I can still be upset when it does. There is something inside of me that […]

Inspired by Isaiah 11:1-9 More than a fairytale, Isaiah 11: 1-9 is the criteria by which we can measure our effectiveness in the continuation of Jesus’ ministry. Out of a broken world, new relations are birthed. “In this passage,” Professor Michael J. Chan writes, “we witness a fundamental reordering of creations priorities. Predators dwell in […]

Inspired by Isaiah 42: 1-9 Something unthinkable happened.  A people favored by God and blessed with victory, land, and offspring are exiled and enslaved by a foreign power. The Babylonians had defeated Israel. The temple, their treasures, their homes, their way of life, all destroyed. A level of devastation that can be communicated no clearer than […]

Halfway en route to our vacation destination and we were headed in the wrong direction. “At the roundabout, turn left,” she said. Except there was no left. The GPS was mistaken which forced us to veer right which pushed us onto the interstate which meant we were driving 70 mph in the wrong direction. This is […]

*A message inspired by 1 Samuel 3: 1-10 (CEB) Okay, let’s try this again. When I was in seminary, I learned the “old school” preachers wrote and memorized a script to preach on Sunday. And I may be imagining this part, but I feel like I remember someone asking what these preplanned preachers did when […]