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On a Mission to Bless – John 17:13-26

No matter what is happening, in your life, in the country, don’t go to the left or the right – but go vertical. God promises that all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to his purpose.

This passage is the longest prayer of Jesus recorded. It’s a glimpse into His heart, and we can see ourselves within this. Jesus explicitly prayed for us, those who would come after. He knew what we would go through and asked that we would receive the fullness of joy.

We are called, also, to be on a mission. That joy and that mission are deeply connected. We are called to stop living for ourselves and start living for other selves. What was the last time you were made uncomfortable by what God has called you to do. God has not called us to be comfortable, but joyful. Pressing beyond our fears, when wrapped up in the passions God has given you, that brings joy.

Jesus saved us for a mission – He saved us from something for something. We’ll make plenty of mistakes, but God has grace and will even make use of them.

God called Abraham away from everyone and everything he knew, in order to bless him and make him a blessing to the world. Just like this, God blesses us in order to bless others – even when it is challenging or uncomfortable. We should be making room for others in our lives rather than expecting them to adapt or make room for us.

Jesus emptied Himself so that He could be glorified in the way that had been prepared for Him. Likewise we have a mission and a path prepared for us. Jesus has already prayed for us that the glory will rest on us. We don’t need to be afraid of the world – the world should be afraid of us. We can stand in love, loving others into the kingdom of God. Love covers everything.

God is already at work in the world around us, even in the chaos. In fact, the world itself was created out of chaos. We should guard our hearts and not let that chaos scare us off of our mission. We have been given authority as heirs with Christ, and we can walk through that chaos with confidence.

When on a mission, we everything begins with prayer. Prayer is the key that unlocks the door to the work of God. When was the last time you prayed for your coworkers, your neighbors or others beyond yourself?

When you’re on a mission to bless, you need to adapt. God sets divine appointments for us to touch the world. Be sensitive to those around you – talk less, listen more. Listen with care. Get over yourself.

We are blessed so we can bless. We are even hurt so we can bless, because our healing can bring healing to others.

As we consider the facets of mission together, individually and collectively let us discern what we have been called to do. In whatever form, we’ve been called to bring the hope of the gospel.

It starts with yourself – forgiving yourself, then forgiving others, living in love for those around us, on a mission to bless.

— Sermon Notes, Ieisha Hawley, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 4, 2025

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Questions at the Tomb – John 20:1-29

Things have been changing in ways that are hard. For many of us it is harder and harder to be optimistic about the future.

This is what Mary Magdalene was facing at the beginning of this chapter. Jesus has died, life as she knew it is over. She comes to anoint the body, having been delayed by the Sabbath already. Then she finds the empty tomb but does not immediately realize why. She tells the disciples who (after footrace) confirm that the body is gone, but they don’t understand either. And so Mary is standing outside the empty tomb, confused and sad.

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ disciples. Luke 8 puts her on an equivalent footing with the Twelve male disciples, with the caveat that she and other women supported the ministry of Jesus materially. Jesus cast seven demons out of her, healing her in a way that gained her undying loyalty, bringing her to this moment of grief and confusion.

Lingering at the tomb, Mary is asked three questions. The other disciples have gone away but she stays there with her own questions, sitting in her grief and weeping. First, the angel asks “Why are you crying?” Then Jesus asks again “Really, why are you crying?”

As ever, Jesus pushes deeper – what is the state of your heart? Mary is desperate – she asks him, thinking he is the gardener, where they took the body? She is about to go sling it over her back and carry him back to his rightful resting place.

Jesus also asks her “Who is it you’re looking for?” Where are you seeking your solace, where are you seeking your meaning? In the Old Testament, the people were looking for a king, seeking the strength and power they saw leading the peoples around them – something that feels all to familiar in this current era. But Jesus comes to tell us that this material, temporal power is unimportant. What we should be looking for is exactly what – and who – May is seeking. And like her, He stands right in front of us.

He cuts through the grief and confusion with a single word, the name he called out of oppression, the name he loves. In that instant she sees Him for Who He is and cries out in Aramaic, her heart language, “Rabboni!”

Jesus, especially in these last chapters, is deeply compassionate and vulnerable. As we look around the church today, that compassion is seen as weakness, that vulnerability is seen as a flaw.

But Jesus came to turn our understanding of these things upside down. Wealth impoverishes, the last are first, the poor in spirit will inherit the kingdom of heaven, we must die in order to live.

This is the world Mary thought was lost, but that Jesus resurrected with a word, with the love and compassion bound up in just the simple statement of her name.

Many of us may feel similar grief and confusion. We may have lost hope, lingering outside an empty tomb that seems like it still stinks of death. But standing before us is Jesus, asking “Why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 20, 2025

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Spam and the Finest Wine – John 12:1-8

The gospel of John is in part built around seven signs of Jesus’ divine identity, starting with water into wine and culminating with the resurrection of Lazarus. Each of these signs is followed by a reaction from the religious leaders.

  • Turning water into wine (John 2:1-11)
  • Healing a royal official’s son (John 4:46-54)7
  • Healing at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15)
  • Feeding the 5,000 (John 6:1-15)
  • Walking on water (John 6:16-21)
  • Healing a man born blind (John 9:1-12)
  • Raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-45)

The final sign is the story of Lazarus – Jesus goes to Bethany despite the threats to his life by the Pharisees, doubts from his followers and the stench of death, raises Lazarus from the dead.

In this story we have a counterpoint to that stench of death, with the fragrant nard that Mary anoints his feet with.

A variation of this story is told in each gospel, but the details of each are very different – different places, different people’s houses, different parts of Jesus anointed and different objections and objectors.

Zeroing in on this story, though, we have Mary, anointing Jesus’ feet in gratitude for raising her brother from the dead, while also, unknowingly, preparing Jesus for his own burial. It also calls ahead to Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, a story only in John. It may even be that Jesus was inspired by Mary in this action.

All of this demonstrates the humility Jesus modeled and calls us to – “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Mary’s act, in some ways a contrast, is extraordinarily lavish – the perfume she uses, we are told, is worth a year’s wages. It gives us an insight into the economics of the region and era, and also confirms that Judas’ objection is reasonable, as far as it goes.

Judas is tapping into a biblical truth about care for the poor. Think of all the meals and shelter that could be provided by a year’s wages. But of course, we know from the passage that Judas was really just a grifter – in reality, he just wanted access to the money for himself.

It is easy for us to use scripture to seek things that benefit ourselves – ironically, this very passage is used in exactly this way, with people pretending to biblical values but only for their own ends. “The poor you will always have with you” is not a license to ignore the hundreds of scriptures calling us to care for the poor. It is specifically in contrast to the unique opportunity Mary has to lavishly serve her messiah in the flesh. We know from Matthew 25 how we are to do the same thing today – “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

The lavishness of Mary’s action also echoes the lavishness of Jesus’ own sacrifice. Mary gave something priceless for Jesus’ dirty feet – Jesus gave his own priceless life for our dirty souls. We are called to do the same for the weak and poor and oppressed all around us. And not the bare minimum, but the best – spam cooked in the finest wine.

This is the core of Jesus’ command – “love each other as I have loved you.” We can be soft hearted and compassionate, we can serve and give regardless of what is happening in the world – because Jesus went before us and built us a firm foundation with his example and his sacrifice.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 6, 2025

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Feminized Jesus vs. the Fox – Luke 13:31-35

Jesus has been out teaching and healing when he gets a warning from an unexpected source – some Pharisees warn him that Herod wants to kill him.

But Jesus’ response is to slam Herod as a fox – crafty, sly and evocative of another animal, the serpent, both at the ear of Jesus in the wilderness and Adam and Eve in the Garden. It takes the word of God and twists it, incapable of creating anything on its own. Just like the devil in the wilderness, the Pharisees here are in fact seeking to take Jesus off his mission.

Jesus responds here with the same level of vehemence that he did to Satan himself, slamming both Herod and his center of earthly part harshly as murderers.

And yet he immediately follows this glimpse of his wrath with a deep and evocative picture of his mercy and empathy, painted in a way that is overtly feminized and maternal.

This is a harsh rebuke to the spirit of the age, which seeks a masculine Jesus and calls empathy a sin. Today both Christian and secular leaders speak of empathy as weakness and idolize the strength of the Herods of our current day. The church is called to reject the foxes of today with the same vehemence that Jesus did, but to love others with the same love.

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

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A People of Yes and No – Matthew 5:33-37

In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is walking through a set of case studies on the thesis that he is the fulfillment of the Law. This section addresses oaths. In this case, he does not directly quote a specific passage though there are many that say relevant, similar things:

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. (Exod. 20:7)

Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. (Lev. 19:12)

When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said. (Num. 30:2)

If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it. (Deut. 23:21)

What had happened in the previous years is that the inclination to avoid dishonoring God’s name had led to a game of finding loopholes, swearing by different things – heaven, earth, heads, gold – in order to give people an “out” if they end up breaking the oath. But Jesus says, no, that’s not how this works – it’s all connected to God, it’s all a statement of either truth or falsehood.

Jesus is calling us to be a people worthy of trust. It’s a sad fact that the people who protest the most about their honesty and integrity tend to be the ones who are least trustworthy.

We have also all seen how trust has eroded across our culture. Media, political leaders, religious leaders have all made assertions and promises that have ultimately been lies.

Jesus wants us to be something greater, a community held together by covenant loyalty. We are called to be a renewing agent among each other and in the world. We are not here to carefully navigate a set of arbitrary rules in order to make life easier for ourselves. It’s ultimately about our heart, not about checking the right boxes that let us behave like we wanted to in the first place.

Instead, Jesus just wants us to say yes or no and then follow through. There are no words so meaningless that we can be dishonest without care. There is not a special category of statements that really have to be true, and so all the rest can be lies or ignored.

Jesus wants us to be a people of integrity and truth, a people of Yes and No. Our words reflect on ourselves, our fellow believers, and ultimately Christ Himself. Let us live and speak in a way that reflects the truth and Faithfulness that He embodies.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, March 2, 2025

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Little Tiny Murder Pins – Matthew 5:21-26

One of the key concepts we need to understand is that God, above all, wants a relationship with us. We follow God and His precepts not so we will have all the answers to having a good life, not to rack up heaven points, not so we can earn anything, but so that we can have an intimate, real time relationship with the God of the universe.

That is much of the point in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Previously, we discussed how Jesus explained how He sought to fulfill the Law, not abolish it. In fact, we must be holier than the holy people: “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus is emphasizing a deeper kind of righteousness than what the Scribes and Pharisees focused on – a righteousness at the heart level, not merely checking boxes or avoiding specific, circumscribed actions. As the prophet Ezekiel wrote: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”

Elsewhere, Jesus addresses this concept again with the rich young ruler. He was insecure and was seeking the next material task he could complete in order to seal the deal with God. That man followed all the earthly rules as well as anyone could but Jesus pushes him towards dependence and towards relationship with him.

Back to the Sermon, this is the beginning of a pattern of antitheses – “you have heard it said… but I tell you…” He addresses Anger, Adultery, Divorce, Oaths, Retaliation and Loving Enemies. We’ll start with anger this week.

He starts with the basics. Murder, Jesus notes, is wrong. So far, so good. But anger, expressed as evil words and actions, is of a kind with murder. Our frustration and fury may not lead us to kill, but it’s the same reaction, just spread out across many in our lives. Not a single event, but little tiny murder pins spread all across our lives.

Our anger, if not addressed, festers inside and acts as a barrier to relationships with others and with God. Unattended anger can effectively “kill” relationships.

Jesus is not only concerned with external acts but with our hearts – but He also gives us practical ways to head off these heart issues in our daily life. When we have conflict, we should prioritize addressing that conflict over any other form of worship. Our vertical relationship with God is intimately connected to our horizontal relationships with others, and if we have hardened ourselves to the one we cannot but be hardened to the other.

Second, Jesus instructs us to keep short accounts – to remove the barriers between us and others, to seek reconciliation when we are in conflict, rather than pressing our rights. He does this in the context of courts, debts and lawsuits but the principles are applicable across contexts and relationships.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law, and the ultimate goal of the Law is to facilitate relationships with God and others. But that standard remains unattainable – which means we need to refer back to the Beatitudes, and Jesus’ words: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

But what about righteous anger? Does Jesus mean we shouldn’t come to church and worship when we are angry at injustice? Isn’t Jesus just talking about individual relationships? What about Jesus’ cleansing of the temple?

But ultimately, Jesus is talking broadly about matters of the heart. We can experience inappropriate anger in interpersonal relationships, but we can also experience that same anger even on behalf of good things, even when angry on behalf of the vulnerable. We cannot let ourselves behave sinfully even under the color of good things. We must again refer back to the Beatitudes to understand how to be compassionate even as we struggle for commission and righteousness in our society. How do we channel our righteous anger into righteous compassion rather than unrighteous resentment?

There are not simple answers for this, but if we seek that real time relationship with God and continue to refer back to the Beatitudes, we’ll at least be on the right track.

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

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Salt & Light – Matthew 5:13-16

The Sermon on the Mount starts in an odd way for a Sermon. The hill Jesus is speaking from is crammed with people trying to hear. No opening joke or anecdote, no catchy hook, but a list of counterintuitive statements. Blessed are the poor? It’s the rich who are blessed, that’s why they are rich. Blessed are those who mourn? Those who celebrate do so because they are the ones who are blessed. But the crowd eats it up because they are an oppressed people – they are poor, they are mourning, they are hungry.

Then Jesus pivots to a statement directly to the crowd. “You are the salt of the earth.” The Greek here is second person plural (you all), emphatic and present tense. And what does it mean to be salt? Salt is a transformative agent, enhancing flavor and preserving food. In ancient times it was far more important than we think of it today, far more valuable and essential for what was then modern life.

So Jesus is telling the crowd, “You all, right here, right now, your identity, purpose, value is to be a transformative agent on this earth.” How do we do that? By living out those odd statements Jesus just gave – by living out the beatitudes.

But what good is salt of it loses its flavor? The word “good” here means “what use is it?” The term for “lose its flavor,” mōrainō, literally means “to become foolish” and is our source for the word “moron.” What does it mean to become foolish? By failing to live out the beatitudes.

Next Jesus tells the people that they are “the light of the world.” They are the thing that drives out darkness. Again, this is a small, oppressed group and Jesus is using the same term that Cicero used to describe Rome itself! This small group of seekers is somehow the city on a hill.

But it comes with the same kind of warning – don’t hide that light. Don’t cover it over with worldliness, don’t hide it in a church building – let it shine out

Instead, Jesus gives the first command of his Sermon: “Let your good and beautiful deeds shine! So that all people will experience and recognize God, the true Father’s redemptive love and power.” This is the first time we get the word “Father” in the gospel of Matthew, very possibly as a purposeful contrast with Caesar, who was seen as the father to all. But Caesar is the evil, authoritarian, oppressive Father – Jesus is speaking of the loving Father who brings out the beatitudes.

What good and beautiful deeds can you do to encourage others to see our father in them?

Now, there were other groups out there who also had to find a way to live under the empire. The Essenes headed out to the desert, didn’t want to be complicit in empire – they hid their Lamp, and many think that Jesus’ words here were an implicit rebuke. The Saducees bowed the knee to empire, being nationalistic, securing power and economic gain for themselves. The Pharisees kept to a strict holiness and piety code, believing that their personal holiness would bring change. Then the zealots – they sought active overthrow of the empire. They were prophetic voices calling for change, but were willing to useviolent means, which Jesus clearly rejects.

We can be tempted in all these directions – we can seek to hide or avoid society. We can throw in with the world and seek power and wealth. We can retreat to our own holiness with no regard for the hurt around us. We can adopt the violent means of the world and lose our very purpose.

What should we do instead? Again, looking back to the beatitudes, living out those counterintuitive words, seeking to be salt and light in the world.

— Sermon Notes, Tim Hsieh, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, February 2, 2025

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The Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 5:1-2

The Sermon on the Mount is arguably the most important sermon ever given. In it, Jesus lays out his radical ethical and moral vision.

To understand what Jesus is doing in this sermon, it may help to look at how children are raised. When a baby first receives instruction, it tends to be about “no!” Don’t touch that, don’t put that in your mouth, don’t go there.” As time passes and children grow, the boundaries change and get more complicated – “Do your homework, no more screen time, be home by 10.” But at some point we want these things to change – we want our children to move out and have their own lives, their own identities, making their own decisions and setting their own boundaries.

Similarly, when the United States became a nation, the Constitution was put in place to create a framework for running the national, Federal government, enabling the creation of laws, the interpretation of laws and even the amending of the constitution itself. But it does not give instruction for every situation and is not meant to be.

When Jesus climbs up to the top of a hill to teach, it evokes Moses bringing the law down from Mount Sinai and the prophets of the Old Testament. Jesus is bringing a new word, a new manifesto for the Kingdom of God. The emphasis becomes humanity internalizing the desires of God rather than acting from external instruction from the Law. The movement is from the law written in stone to the law written in our hearts. Jesus instructs us to take the principles set forth in the law and to understand those well enough to apply them in our lives to live as God’s people.

The Sermon on the Mount is a radical reinterpretation of the Mosaic law, and a radical restatement of it. Jesus’ focus is on the heart of the matter, where the law has focused on the external behavior. In many ways, it is even more extreme, but it is also designed to enable us to adapt to new questions and new situations.

As we grow from a baby to a teenager to an adult, our questions grow from what we’re going to touch or not touch, into hard questions of how we respond to sin in ourselves, to corruption in the world, to complex relationships.

Following the Sermon on the Mount means moving from scripted moral answers to moral improv. It means internalizing the will and desires of God to the extent that we respond to those difficult questions in a godly way. It’s a message from Jesus “you’re not babies anymore.”

Maturity is a challenge, and many of us long for the simpler, easier answers from when we were young. But Jesus calls us to something greater and over the next few weeks we will dig into how He does that in the Sermon on the Mount.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 5, 2025

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Overflow – Luke 1:39-45

The Incarnation at celebrate at Christmas is an overflowing of the love of God into a real tangible, concrete way. God knows we are not merely intellectual creatures, but need touch, need facts, need reality.

God could have done things differently but the fact that He descended, “became flesh and dwelt with us,” tells us something about His nature, and also ours. The Good News came in embodied form, so that we could encounter it in a personal way.

Scripture also tells us that “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Humanity was made to long for things – want and desire are core to our nature. They are on one hand healthy and good, but on the other hand when left too long will make the heart sick. Hope, when combined with fulfillment, bring healing. The birth of Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment, both as the “consolation of Israel” and as the answer to the “groaning of creation”.

The nature of God is relational – the Godhead exists in trinity, an eternal relationship that we replicate in our own relationships. The coming of Jesus was followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Person by which we enter into relationship with God, and by which we are bound into the Body of Christ, the Incarnation of Jesus now into His church.

Today’s passage is called the “Visitation,” the meeting of Mary and her cousin Elizabeth immediately after the Annunciation when Mary learns of her blessing and challenge. In this passage we get a picture of the physicality of the Incarnation. Jesus could have come like the Terminator, showing up as a fully formed adult but instead He began His humanity as all humans do, as a handful of cells replicating within His mother.

But even in that form, Jesus’ presence has power to bring joy, as the baby in Elizabeth’s womb reacts with rejoicing. This connection – between Mary, Elizabeth, the unborn John and the three unborn Christ is the first stirring of the church. The rejoicing comes in relationship and in community – and in diversity. The two women are in completely different stages of life, but are brought together by the work of God and ultimately the coming of Christ.

This relational aspect extends to our lives today, as we are told that Jesus is also in a way incarnate in the “least of these” around us. When we serve others we ultimately serve Jesus.

This Christmas, let us live out the rejoicing at the fulfillment that the coming of Christ brings – and let us also seek to bring that fulfillment to those around us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 22, 2024

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Joy and Lament – Philippians 4:4-9

There is a tension between joy and lament in the Christian life. How do you celebrate and have joy when those around you are struggling? How do you “rejoice always” as Paul instructs when there is so much suffering, both in the world and even in our own lives?

If you grew up in the church, Philippians 4 is a very familiar passage. You see it on notecards, memorize it, hear it in words of encouragement – but often it is misapplied by what can be called “the Theology of the False Smile.” If we take the instruction from Paul to rejoice always as being focused on the outward appearance then we just end up papering over what is happening inside us.

Christmas is a season where this is felt most keenly. On the one hand, the whole world seems like it is focused on joy and cheer, but on the other hand it can be a very difficult time for many people – if we don’t have families we can celebrate with, don’t have resources to celebrate as is expected, if we suffer from the dark and cold of the season, Christmas can be a time of deep depression. If we have fallen into the Theology of the Fake Smile, we just ignore the pain and paper over with a false joy.

Verse 6 instructs us to “not be anxious about anything.” This, too, is misapplied through the “Hakuna Matata Theology”. No worries! A problem free philosophy that drives us to ignore all problems and avoid anxiety by avoiding responsibility and reality.

Paul also tells us to “let your gentleness be evident to all,” which also gets misapplied – this is the “Bless Your Heart” theology, where words and even deeds are only kind on the surface level, but underneath cut like a knife.

To properly follow Paul’s instructions, though, we need to be spiritually and emotionally healthy. Pretending to be joyful is not actually being joyful. We need to address the world, both inside of us she outside of it, the way that it actually is rather than how it is “supposed to be.”

We see this in a broader sense as well. When the American church falls into the trap of avoiding lament and only showing, discussing or allowing the positive, we perpetuate this Theology of the False Smile on a ecclesiastical level, and even on a social and political level as this bleeds into Christian Nationalism or other ways we paper over suffering and lament both in the present and the past.

To understand more about how to properly apply Paul’s words here, let’s look back at the opening of his letter. In chapter 1, he clearly acknowledges his suffering, but also the goodness that comes from his suffering. Through his suffering, many have come to see and know Jesus. We can’t show Jesus in our suffering if we ignore and downplay our suffering.

This is one of the reasons that we as a church value authenticity. We don’t want to be a place where people have to pretend to be doing well just to walk in the door. We don’t want to be a place where we ignore what is happening in the world outside. We do not need to protect God. It is not our job to make Christianity look good by pretending everything is going well when it isn’t. In fact, if we see how Paul does it, in fact we make Christianity look good by being authentic, by embracing our suffering just as Christ did, and embracing the suffering of others – just as Christ did.

An authentic community mourns with those who mourn, laments with those who lament, and allows all its members to mourn and lament authenticallyso that the community can come around them.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 15, 2024

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