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Love Meets Us in the Wilderness – John 3:1-17

This story comes in the early part of Jesus’ ministry as chronicled by John. He has turned water into wine, called disciples, cleared the temple courts and just started building a name for himself. That name was enough to connect him with Nicodemus, a leader among the Pharisees, who primarily interacted as Jesus’ antagonists.

Unlike most, though, Nicodemus came at night – this may be partly because he didn’t want his interest getting around, but it also creates a strong contrast with the other Pharisees who came during the day with the goal to draw a crowd and debunk or humiliate Jesus.

So you have this very learned, powerful person submitting himself to learn from this itinerant, newly arrived, lower class rabbi. But Nicodemus didn’t just take what he was told, and pushes back on the notion of rebirth. Possibly drawing from Jewish arguments against Grecian cults of rebirth, he tries to dismantle this metaphor of being “born again” – but Jesus pushes forward, because it’s not just a metaphor but a spiritual reality centered on his very person.

Nicodemus is a spiritual leader of Israel, but he is not equipped to grapple with spiritual realities – he’s trained on rules and sub-rules and interpretations of rules, but this is heaven breaking in on the earth, this man in front of him a rent in the fabric of reality, ushering in a new way of relating to the creator, one that extends to the entire world, not just the people of Israel.

And this is not just a far off moment, “somewhere in outer space” but rather a reality we have access to right now. The salvation that Jesus brings is a real, immediate thing, and he offers it to us freely. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

This salvation is there for us to ask for, and Jesus longs to hear you ask for it. The Father sent him to save us and open us to the work of the Holy Spirit. The fullness of the Trinity welcomes us into that eternal relationship. We are ourselves invited to serve as that rent in reality, points in space and time where heaven bleeds through in the form of love and truth and grace.

We never get a clear answer on what happens to Nicodemus in the wake of this conversation, but later in John we see Nicodemus defending Jesus from his fellow Pharisees, and then after the Crucifixion bringing spices to honor and embalm this man who one night opened the mysteries of heaven to him, who spoke to him of the undefeatable love of God.

Let us live out that love ourselves, accepting the love and grace Christ offers, and then living out that love and grace we have received.

— Sermon Notes, Nancy de Jong, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, March 1, 2026

Image: Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, 1899, Henry Ossawa Tanner

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The Transfiguration – Matthew 17:1-9

What comes up must come down. The Transfiguration is the ultimate mountaintop moment – whatever it is that brings us to the height of emotion, whether spiritual highs or Super Bowl championships, eventually fades away. The Transfiguration was a moment like that, but also calls forward to a mountaintop moment that will never fade.

Jesus brought Peter, James and John with him, fulfilling the instructions in Deuteronomy around bringing witnesses. That explains the disciples, but why Moses and Elijah?

Both had their own literal mountaintop experiences – Moses receiving the Law, Elijah defeating the priests of Baal. Both of those lofty experiences were followed immediately by times of trial and despair. Moses descended to find his people worshipping an idol, while Elijah ended up on the run from Jezabel and falls into a deep depression. This happens in all our lives, as the memories of the high points fade, and sometimes we turn to harmful things in an attempt to recapture those feelings.

Similarly, the disciples were heading for their own disappointment and despair in Jerusalem when Jesus is crucified. Peter, who is gung how on the mountaintop, ready to build shelters for each glowing person there, seeking to capture and control the experience – soon he will deny even knowing Jesus.

But the temporary nature of these experiences here on Earth is not a reason to avoid them. Jesus brought Peter, James and John for a reason, and their experience of awe and worship was valid and valuable.

So, too, were the words of God, spoken from the cloud – “Listen to Him.” The words and instructions of Jesus are pearls of great price. God wants us to listen to them – and to do so in the context of the Law and the Prophets, as represented by Moses and Elijah. It’s a reminder not to become fixated on individual verses or statements in the Bible, but to understand the call of God in the broader context of the live story told all throughout scripture.

Then Jesus demonstrates that love directly – he places his hand on the terrified disciples and consoles them – “Get up – do not be afraid.”

And that’s what he’s telling each of us in our own lives. If we will just follow the three instructions given on the mountain here, we will be in good shape. Listen to Jesus – Don’t be afraid – Get up.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, February 15, 2026

Image: “Iesu transfigurato (Mark 9:4f)” by Salvador Dali

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Psalms of Lament – Psalm 31

Psalm 31 answers the question “what do we do when we are filled with shame and despair?”

Lament is not a popular topic. The scriptures are full of it, but our culture, our Christian culture in particular, is not. We seek to “skip ahead” to the glory of the cross, over the pain, grief & humility of the cross.

Before Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he took time to grieve that death – “Jesus wept.” Lament is medicine for the soul and a check against injustice.

One of the key themes of the psalm is shame and disgrace. Benjamin Rush wrote, “Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death,” and this is what David is facing in and through this psalm. His response is “Into your hands I commit my spirit,” the same words Jesus quoted as He faced the ultimate shame and despair on the cross.

In verse 15, God’s hands come into play again – David’s “times” are in His hands, the ordained moments of his very life.

The cornerstone of this relationship is the love of God, in Hebrew “hesed” – a covenantal, relational love that God lavishes on us and that He seeks from us in return.

And this is the answer to the question posed by the Psalm – when faced by shame and despair, our answer is to love God and to accept His love in return.

— Sermon Notes, Diana Cleveland, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, February 1, 2026

Image by Gemini.

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Ascent Through Time – Psalm 126

The Psalms of Ascent provide a deliberate pilgrimage framework, designed to accompany believers on their spiritual and physical journeys, originally the Israelites as they ascended to the temple. This group of Psalms is compact, intentional and deeply communal, emphasizing the shared experience of a people rooted in their history and sacred places. By focusing on the collective memory of the faithful, these psalms transform individual travel into a shared act of devotion, reinforcing the idea that the path toward God is one best traveled together.

At their core, these psalms are woven together by the overarching themes of trust, unity, and hope. This is expressed through various “micro-themes” that address the practicalities of faith, such as seeking God’s protection in Psalm 121 and finding communal joy in worship in Psalm 122. Ultimately, the collection moves the heart toward a state of humility and dependence, culminating in a celebration of unity and the assurance of God’s divine presence and blessing.

Psalm 126 provides an ascent through time, across the varied journey of life with its ups and downs. It starts with the past, when “we were like those who dreamed.” What are the “great things” the Lord has done for you in the past? As you remember God’s faithfulness in the past, what dreams are still stirring in you? In what ways can you share the story of God’s goodness with others, just as the nations recognized it in Israel?

Then it moves to the present, a time of struggle and “sowing in tears”. This is true for many of us. In what areas are you experiencing sorrow while trying to remain faithful? Where are you asking for streams in a dry place. Are you currently in a season of “weeping” while trying to plant seeds for the future? How can you find joy in the present, even while waiting for full restoration?

It is important to grapple with these honest human emotions, to not just slap a happy face over or sadness. All facets of human emotion are real and legitimate and a part of who we are created to be.

But we do look forward to Songs of Joy. What harvest (“sheaves of grain”) are you trusting God to bring, even if they aren’t visible yet? How does the image of “songs of joy” inspire you to persevere in your faith and service? How can you show hope and joy in the present, confident that God will renew all things?

All of this human experience, both the joyful and the painful, is a part of who we were made to be. God is there in all phases of our ascent through time – and we as a body should be there for each other through all phases well, as we journey together towards the throne of God.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 18, 2026

Image by Gemini

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Sing a New Song – Psalm 98

What is your bouy? When you are in times of panic and disorientation and despair, what do you look to?

Psalm 98 is one of six “enthronement Psalms” that declares the kingship of Yahweh, His sovereignty and His eternal reign.

There are key characteristics across all of the Enthronement Psalms. The Lord’s Divine Kingship is obviously one of them, but so is the Universal Scope of the messages. Many Psalms are specific to Israel, but these songs call all people – indeed, all of creation – to the worship of God.

On that note, Creation’s Joy is another key theme here that runs across all six Psalms. And that joy springs in part from God’s Righteous Judgment – “He will judge the world with righteousness and equity.”

Finally, the Psalms all reference singing a “new song” to the creator – a call to creativity, a warning against getting stuck in stale tradition, and perhaps also a call forward to the New Thing that God was working towards, the culmination of the universal scope and righteous judgement promised here.

For ourselves, what are the new songs we should sing in the new year? What is God putting on our lips? What are the old songs we should leave behind?

Sometimes, when we look in front of us it looks like other people are in charge, controlling things. But when we root ourselves in creation we see that our earthly divisions and challenges are as nothing when we put them in front of the King and creator who calls us to sing the new song he puts in our hearts.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 4, 2026

Images from the Burnet Psalter and Gemini.

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Mary’s Song

Mary’s song is a song of reversals – the high brought low, the rich made humble and the lowly raised on high. It’s an echo of Hannah’s song in the Old Testament.

Key to understanding the song is the biblical theme of waiting on the Lord – patience through times of silence and wilderness, finally rewarded in ways that are beyond our understanding. Hannah had been waiting and longing for a child, while Israel had been waiting and longing for a savior.

Unlike Hannah, Mary did not sing this song upon discovering that she was pregnant – instead of wasn’t until meeting with her cousin Elizabeth and receiving confirmation of what had been promised her.

Many of us have gone through this ourselves many times in smaller ways, and God is always bigger and always has these problems in his hand.

Mary’s song also pulls us away from our tendency towards individualism. She began her story as an individual, burdened with a great and terrible blessing. But when she meets Elizabeth, and feels the connection between their unborn children, it’s a reminder that we are all connected. Her song calls back to ancestors and calls forward to descendants, it rejoices with her nation and with all generations.

We can all do the same, rejoicing together, waiting together, looking ahead to the fulfillment of God’s promises together. This Christmas, let that be our goal.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 21, 2025

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No Peace Without Repentance – Matthew 3:1-12

John the Baptist was playing the role of the Grinch to the celebrations of the rich and powerful of his time. He was the ultimate party-pooper, bringing down the vibe and warning the Pharisees that their time was coming. You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, John’s telling you why – the Messiah is coming to town.

He warned them not to rest on their ethnicity and generic heritage. He warned them that an axe was at their roots, and “unquenchable fire” is in the offing. It’s not what we generally think of as a Christmas message.

But John is calling us to do exactly what Advent is there for – preparation, clearing the way, and removing those things that get in the way of our straight path to the savior.

How can there be peace when we have oppression and violence and sin? Ultimately, there can’t be peace without repentance, and there can’t be repentance without confrontation. There is real sin that impacts others and must be addressed before we can have peace – in our lives, in our neighborhoods, in our nation.

What are the obstacles in the roads of your heart that need to be flattened? Where are we going in the wrong direction and need to turn around? How do we as a church be prophetic and speak the truths that need to be told?

Where are the places we need to repent? Where are the wells we go back to that are not life-giving? What does repentance look like for us in our lives individually? What does it look like as a nation collectively? Where do we have privilege and position that we can use for the good of others?

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 7, 2025

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Psalms of Lament – Psalm 42

Sometimes as Christians we shy away from lament and other strong emotions, especially more negative ones. But opening ourselves up to lament is a way to open ourselves up to the pain and tragedy around us, even when things are fine on our end. It’s a way to empathize with those around us who are suffering.

As we look at the Psalms, we can break them into five categories generally – Lament, Praise & Thanksgiving, Wisdom, Royal/Messianic and the Psalms of Ascent.

Psalm 42 is the first psalm of book two of the Psalms, out of five – correlated with Exodus from the Pentateuch. It is one of the first psalms of lament, as well.

It’s a psalm we can relate to, as the psalmist wrestles with the fact that he sees evil winning and his enemies triumphing – “where is your god?” It’s a question we have all wrestled with as we see horrible things happen. But we tend to wrestle with it individually, rather than corporately. In public we often paper over our challenges with an outward face of joy that does not match our heart. We take the calls to rejoice from scripture and turn them into a mask, rather than honestly responding to the calls elsewhere to lament.

Theologian Walter Bruggeman, in his writings on the Psalms, describes our lives as moving in one of two directions – into the pit or out of the pit. This means we are in one of three places – either Orientation, when we feel like things make sense and we understand the world and our place in our; Disorientation, the crisis point when everything that made sense previously no longer does; or Reorientation, where we are given a new way of understanding the world and our place within it.

Within that paradigm, Psalms of lament are there to serve as reflections of those times of Disorientation, to point us back to times of Orientation, and forward to times of Reorientation. In Psalm 42, the speaker is so downcast that his tears are his only food – but calls on himself to remember the better times when he did feel connection with God, but also allows himself to cry out in desperation, itself an act of worship. But ends with a call forward to what he knows of God and how he will respond – “yet I will praise him, my savior and my God.”

So when we look at the world and see pain and chaos and hypocrisy, we can, with the psalmist, “yet praise him.”

We are people of rhythms – day and night, the turning of the seasons, reminding us of times of death and sadness, of times of joy and rebirth. We can use the Psalms as we go through these seasons ourselves – we can pray the Psalms of lament both as we ourselves find ourselves lamenting, but also as a spiritual exercise to open ourselves up to the sorrow of others.

What are you lamenting in your personal life. What do you lament for your family? What about your workplace, school or neighborhood? In our nation? In our world?

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 16, 2025

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Hostility to Hospitality to Family – Hebrews 13:2

This exhortation comes at the end of the book of Hebrews, a part of a list of closing instructions – love each other, minister to those in prison, be sexually moral, and this one. “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

The term is philoxenia, a combination of the terms philos or affection, and xenos or stranger. We see this same instruction in Romans 12:13 – “Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Both the people of God and the stranger, the xenos, are covered here.

The concept of welcoming the stranger is a continuance of the same instructions in the Old Testament where it is often connected to the people of Israel living as strangers, whether in Egypt or in Babylon.

But there is an additional angle here, this idea that there is more to these encounters than just the practical. At one level, it’s a reference to the story in Genesis where Abram and Sarai welcome and show hospitality to angels and are blessed in turn – or the reverse of that story that results in the destruction of Sodom. This negative example gives us a strong sense of how important hospitality is to God.

Beyond that is the promise that when we serve others in this way, we are touching something more than human, beyond the material world. It’s echo of the promise that when we serve others we are really serving Jesus in a very personal way. There is a magic to hospitality that transcends the practical effects, as valuable as those are.

And if we look at the “sin of Sodom” we also see that there is a negative magic as well, associated with hostility towards the stranger. This should give us pause, and give pause to the portions of the American church in particular that have set themselves up in opposition to the strangers and immigrants in our midst, painting them as criminals and as taking resources from deserving Americans.

In reality, immigrant churches are driving forward the kingdom of God across the country, especially in urban areas where white churches have declined or closed. A majority of the baptisms performed by the Evangelical church today are by immigrant churches. Immigration of non-Christians is bringing the mission field to the USA, while the work of immigrant pastors and churches are evangelizing Americans, reversing the typical ministry flow.

We must seek to go from hostility to hospitality to family as we engage with the strangers and immigrants around us. We should seek to learn from the ways of worship and teaching that seem foreign to us instead of putting up walls. We know that the ultimate destiny of the church is exactly this congregation from all peoples and all tribes.

But this unification of all voices can look a lot like a loss of control if we are used to being the only voice being heard. We must put that fear aside and instead step into the supernatural opportunity we are given to show hospitality to strangers–and possibly even to angels.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 2, 2025

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Save a Seat for Others – 1 Corinthians 11:17-26

A core practice of the Early Church was the Love Feast, a gathering for prayer, teaching, singing of hymns, eating together and the collection of offerings, much like we do today.

We get a good picture of this in Acts 2: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.” Again, it sounds very familiar.

But Acts 2 goes beyond that: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

This bridging of economic disparity was a key difference between the church and the people around them – along with breaking the barriers and expectations around ethnicity and gender. The community was intended to demonstrate the unity and reconciliation brought by Jesus in a way that set it apart from the surrounding culture. The way the church brought together rich and poor to eat together showed the love of God in a way that was impossible to mistake.

Tertullian (160-225 AD) wrote in his Apology, “Our feast explains itself by its name. The Greeks call it agape, l.e., affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy.”

But in Corinth, things were not going smoothly. Corinth was a wealthy city, and there were many wealthy believers – but also many poor ones. The poor ones had to work more than the wealthy, which meant they arrived late. The wealthy among them were beginning their meals early, finishing the food and drink before the poorer even arrived.

Imagine a preschool classroom where there’s one single toy that everyone wants – we fight and we squabble over the Big Wheel. When we have a scarcity mentality rather than an abundance mentality, we create barriers – in families, in churches, in nations.

Over time, the Love Feast and the Lord’s Supper, which had been essentially the same thing, became divided, especially as the church became more institutional and theological, and concept of the Sacrament, the Eucharist, took center stage over the communal & social aspects of the church.

But today there are ways to recapture the spirit of the Agape Feast – James Menendez on Substack makes a few recommendations:

1. Encouraging Fellowship Over Meals.

Hosting meals that go beyond potlucks to intentionally foster spiritual conversations, testimonies, and prayer.

2. Promoting Testimonies as a Key Part of Worship.

Giving voice to those across the spectrum of age, gender, class, social status and more.

3. Practicing Generosity and Shared Resources.

Being intentional about giving to those in need, both inside and outside the church.

4. Building Smaller, Intimate Groups.

This has been a challenge for Renew but we are at work on it

5. Practicing Communal Meal and Prayer to Sunday Worship.

We work to accomplish this by combining our celebration of the Lord’s Supper with our Third Sunday potluck every Sunday.

Overall, the message is to save a seat at the table. Jean Vanier, writes in Becoming Human, “A society that honors only the powerful, the clever, and the winners necessarily belittles the weak. It is as if to say to be human is to be powerful.”

John Swinton, similarly, writes in It was Good, Not Perfect, “If God’s creation is good, then every life within it, regardless of capacity, cognition, or conformity, is already gifted with divine affirmation.”

What does it mean to save a seat at the table for the disabled? For the elderly? Wait for those who are slower, who need more time for any number of reasons. We as a church need to see those the world ignores and lift up those knocked down by society, by biology, by even their own choices. We need to save a seat at the table.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 19, 2025