Tag: New Testament

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Peace Building – Ephesians 2:14-22

We live in an age when tearing down the walls of hostility seems impossible. Whether vast societal chasms or arguments with family members, the distances feel too wide to span. Likewise, the distance between us and God also often feels too wide as well. But Paul offers us hope in this passage.

God does not want barriers between Him and us – we see this when Jesus took a whip to the money changers and merchants the temple creating barriers between the Gentiles and the worship of God. In that instance, Jesus warned everyone that He would destroy the temple and raise it again in three days. He Himself would be that temple, and He Himself would be the new way in which all people access our Heavenly Father. He Himself becomes the intersection of eternity and our finite, fleshly realm.

The Church, then, as the Body of Christ, serves that same purpose – we are the intersection of Earth and eternity, we are the pathway between the people around us and the Creator God of the universe.

Here in Ephesians, Paul emphasizes how Christ’s work at the Cross creates this pathway and removes the barrier between God and Man. The breaking of the relationship described in Genesis is healed by the work of Jesus Christ.

But Paul then moves from the vertical relationship between God and His People, to the horizontal relationships between all His peoples, both groups and individuals. The focus here is on groups, specifically between the Jews and Gentiles, those set apart in the Old Testament and those grafted on by the Cross, fulfilling the promise of God to Abraham that all peoples would be blessed by his family.

Paul here writes that the two groups are coming together as one oikeios or household. In Rome, this was the fundamental social/political unit of the empire, the base layer of the hierarchy that went from the lowest infant and slave to the Emperor himself. But as in other places, Paul takes this term and subverts it. The household is not Cesar’s, but God’s, and we all live together within that single great oikeios.

But even though we know and believe this to be true, there persist chasms, deep chasms of culture, of politics, of ethnicity. All of them are ash and dust in comparison to the love of God and community of His people, and yet we grasp them so tightly.

This means the work of the church, as Christ’s Body, has the same mission as Christ Himself did when presented with worldly structures preventing people from coming to God. Peace cannot exist without that connection to God, and so the Peace Jesus brings often must come after the smashing of the structures that prevent the unity and peace that God calls us to. Sometimes in the work of peace, something has to die in order for something new to emerge.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 24, 2023

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The Magnification – Matthew 1:46-55

Let’s take a look at Mary’s situation here. We don’t have the full context here but we can try to get a better understanding. Mary would have likely been very young by our standards, 13 or 14. She was betrothed to Joseph, probably as an arranged marriage. Then suddenly she finds herself in this new situation, completely upending her life socially, physically and more.

We aren’t told what happened between the annunciation and visiting her cousin Elizabeth. It is possible that she ran away to Elizabeth or was cast out from her family. But when they came together the baby in Elizabeth’s womb – also a prophesied child, John the Baptist – leaps with joy. That is the context of this song.

This song is the first of four songs in the first two chapters of Luke – the others are Zechariah’s song in Luke 1:67-78, the angels’ song in chapter 2:14 and then Simeon’s in 2:29-32. There are notable parallels with Zechariah’s song in particular.

This is actually a key aspect of Luke, who regularly and purposefully pairs stories about men with stories about women. This is true both in terms of miracles and in person interactions but also parables – notable because women in that age were deeply oppressed and never treated as equal in the way that Luke does here. It’s a radical affirmation of the equality of men and women in their access to the love of Christ and the work of God m

The song opens with essentially a statement on the nature of praise. Mary’s soul and spirit are what are erupting into praise and rejoicing.

It follows as a song of reversals. The rich and powerful are brought down but the poor and lowly are raised up. This is particularly relevant for Mary herself who is arguably in the lowest state possible, a member of an oppressed people group, a young woman pregnant out of wedlock. It also closely parallels the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel, the story of a barren woman given a son devoted to God. Both are stories of reversals and the glory of God. Both point to the nature of God as Someone who loves the lowly and casts down the mighty.

This is who God is. God sees you when you are are at your lowest and when, like Mary, your life is spinning out of control. In Genesis another woman at her lowest, Hagar, calls Him “the God Who Sees” – and He sees Hannah, He sees Mary and He sees you.

On that note, the song is in past tense despite the promise of Gabriel being future-tense. She places herself and her story in the broader context and history of God’s relationship with humanity, calling back to Hannah and Hagar and all the work of God that came before.

It’s also and a song that calls us to participate in this work of feeding the hungry and empowering the powerless.

In this Advent season, it is easy to see these concepts of Hope, Peace, Joy & Love as the worldly, two dimensional versions all around us. But we have access to deep and full realities. Hope is more than wishful thinking, but a sure security in the person Ave return of Christ. Love is more than the conditional emotional state or the transactional engagement of the world. Rather it is a participation in the unconditional, sacrificial and eternal love of the Creator for His creation. Joy is more than feigned happiness and peace is more than the absence of conflict.

Let us rejoice along with Mary in the works of God past, present and future. Let us seek the hope, peace, joy and love God offers us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 17, 2023

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The Patient Love of God – 2 Peter 3:8-15

“The call is coming from inside the house.” That is, to some degree, the situation Peter describes in his servings Epistle. It is very parallel to the message in Jude, as well. Both books warn that people within the church are believing and spreading lies about Jesus. Jude calls them” blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead.”

Peter, in chapter 2, writes that “In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.” Specifically, in chapter 3 here he is addressing the assertion that, because Jesus hasn’t returned yet, He never will. But Peter asserts that, first, we misunderstand how God’s timelines work, and second, any delay in God’s judgement is, in fact, a demonstration of His mercy and His patience.

And, as Peter writes in chapter 1, we are invited to “participate in the divine nature,” including in exercising the same patience and mercy that God shows. This is not “waiting for Christmas morning” patience, but waiting for people to come to repentance. Waiting for “everyone to come to repentance,” in fact – God’s patience is indiscriminate. Ours should be as well

God’s patience is also persistent and does not expire. Ours should be as well – this does not mean we should not have boundaries, or that many times this merciful, persistent patience must be exercised from a healthy distance. But it does mean that we never give up hope for restoration.

Ultimately, we have two paths in front of us and we can only choose one. We can choose the path of the false teachers who prioritize their own prosperity, stature, safety and comfort. Or we can choose the path that participates in the divine nature. And in this time of Christmas, as we celebrate the Incarnation, we should remember that core to that divine nature is the giving up of an infinite amount of prosperity, stature, safety and comfort in order to better love humanity.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 10, 2023

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Legion – Mark 5:1-20

In this passage, Mark spends a lot of time describing the state of the demon-possessed man. He is not only oppressed by demons but living among the tombs, howling in the darkness, soaked in death and pain.

The man is experiencing severe isolation. He is an outcast from society, a problem for those around him and so rejected. He is exhibiting anti-social behavior, keeping himself isolated. He is homeless, only able to find shelter in the most cursed place in the region. He is self-destructive as well, cutting himself. While the specifics may be different, these are things we see on the streets of our cities regularly.

The demons controlling the man recognize Jesus and know His name, though He does not know theirs and asks. But they beg him not to send them out of the region. But why does that matter?

It implies that there is a greater strategic purpose and goals of the demons – it’s not ultimately only about one man, but about the region as a whole. It’s the people, the environment, the systems. Everything is interconnected. The demon goes from singular to plural and our understanding of evil should likewise expand.

So the demons know their time is over but they beg to keep some control. Jesus sends them into herd of pigs, which promptly commit suicide. These thousands of pigs (which indicate a gentile area) represent a huge investment, a large amount of money and serves in some ways as a corporate payment for the evil centered on this man.

And just as the demons begged to stay in the region, the people begged Jesus to leave it. Despite the miracle He has done and the freedom He had given, the people of the region prized their peace and prosperity over the health of that man – they prized the status quo despite the evil that it meant lived among them.

We see in the Greek names of the region and the fact of a herd of pigs that this was a Greco-Roman region rather than a Jewish one. Jesus’ actions here demonstrate His power over not only supernatural oppression, but also the Empire that oppresses His people.

And the final step here is the actions of the man himself having been freed. The natural next step is to jump in the boat and follow Jesus, just like the disciples – but Jesus sends him out to his own people to spread the word of what has happened to him.

Two big takeaways for us. First, we all bear responsibility for each other. We are all called to care for the howling people among us. Second, evil is real and must not be ignored. We must face the evil in both our past and our present, both corporate and individual.

In response to that evil, though, we must not despair but turn to Jesus in His person and His body, the Church. Like any predator, evil goes after the isolated and alone. Come together and draw others into the saving relationship with Christ.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 26, 2023

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Listen! – Mark 4:1-9

This is the first set of parables in Mark, and the theme that comes through most clearly is “Listen!” This is something we are not, as a whole particularly good at. Between personal media, social media and all the other distractions of modern life, we have many barriers to listening and building connections with other people.

There is benefit and fruit to living a life that is open. It is a scary thought for many, bringing up fears of rejection, fear of intimacy and often a weariness and lack of time. But if we do open ourselves up, it makes us more rooted, in our relationships with God and others.

The same was true of the crowd gathered around Jesus. He tells them to listen because many of them are not there for that. Some of them are just there to be part of the crowd, others want healing, others just want to see what all the guys is about, but few really want to listen. And so Jesus gives them a story that requires them to listen and engage – “whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.” Active listening requires more than an “uh huh” at the right time.

This is one of the reasons Jesus uses parables and stories. It also gives the message a chance to get past our defenses as we identify with the characters in the story before we put up barriers against the truths we don’t want to hear.

Another reason to use parables is to veil the truth to some degree. Jesus describes it as a “secret” that is revealed to the disciples, who asked Jesus directly, opening up their hearts to the truths Jesus is sharing. Jesus offers us the truths of eternity, the power that created the universe, but asks us to make the effort. “Take up your mat and walk.”

In the parable itself, the seed is the word of God and the sower can be seen as either God Himself or us, His followers, spreading that word. And the soil is those listening – that may be us ourselves, or it may be those we interact with.

So we have to ask ourselves, what is the state of my soil? At different times, we may be the sower of the seeds or any of the various soils, and it is worth considering where we stand.

One notable aspect of this story is that the sower is indiscriminate in his sowing. He does not hoard the seed based on what he thinks the soil is like, and we should not do that either. At don’t control how people receive our messages and we don’t know how God has been preparing the soil.

Let us seek to have the word deeply rooted within us, and let us be open to that word and those around us to bear fruit that nourishes the world we have been sent to.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 5, 2023

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A New Family – Mark 3:7-35

Throughout Mark, Jesus has been blowing up the religious and social structures and expectations. People continue to flock to him and His message about the nature of the Kingdom of God. In the previous chapter, Jesus points out that the Pharisees and other religious leaders have their understanding of the Sabbath upside down. “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” Rather than a restrictive, claustrophobic thing, the truth of God bursts out into a more abundant life.

What do we have upside-down? Where does God want us to burst out rather than be restricted.

This passage has a chiastic structure, where topics come up in order, a crux is reached, and then the same topics are addressed in reverse order. Here, it proceeds: Crowd / Family / Scribes / Satan / Scribes / Family / Crowd.

The point of the broader passage is that Jesus does not fit within the structures of this world. The story opens with a literal problem of people fitting, as the crowds press on around Him and His disciples, so much so that they don’t even have room to eat. Then His family comes, clearly seeing Him as the black sheep of the family, off doing something completely insane, who needs to be taken charge of.

Then the religious-political structure of the day rears its head, responding to the disruption Jesus had brought both when His words and miraculous actions. If they accept His actions at face value they also have to accept His words, and that’s not something they are willing to do. So, naturally, they blame it on Satan.

This is what Jesus addresses at the crux of the passage. He has been out there forgiving sins by the power of the Holy Spirit, and if someone denies the power and efficacy of that grace and forgiveness, how can they accept it? It’s not Jesus who is evil, but the leaders who are seeking to keep the people from the truth of God.

The metaphor of the “strong man’s house” sits at the center of the passage, an understanding of the world as being in the midst of a cosmic struggle. Jesus offers victory in that struggle, and a world more vast and varied than that imagined by the scribes or His family or the crowds.

When was the last time we recognized that vastness? When was the last time we embraced the unknown that Jesus sets in front of us? The “I don’t know” moments are opportunities for God to show us things beyond what we could have imagined.

Jesus reveals some of this by showing a new mode of kinship. The nuclear family structure becomes subsumed into the broader family of God, those around us who seek to know and do God’s will. The world around us seeks to divide and label us, but Jesus seeks a unity and reconciliation that swells beyond our fragile human structures.

We live in an era of division, suspicion, assumptions and disunity. What can we do with all the opinions, all the expectations, all the news and anxiety and claustrophobic restrictions of this world? All we can do is lay then at the feet of the One who calls us brother and sister.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, October 29, 2023

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Jesus Does Things Differently – Mark 2:13-22

Food is an important part of any culture, with customs and expectations. Food interacts with our social lives, our cultural lives and thus our spiritual lives as well. Jesus was very active with His mealtimes and used who He ate with and how He ate to subvert the prevailing ethnonationalist religion of His day. Paul would later call this out even more directly, but Jesus moved more subtly and subversively.

In this story, we read about Jesus sitting down to eat with Levi and many other tax collectors. Tax collectors were outcasts because of what they did (collected taxes), how they did it (skimming money off the top), and especially who they did it for (the hated Romans).

Many of us have experiences of eating alone and feeling left out. This feeling is a microcosm of the pain and loneliness of humanity that Jesus came to save. Jesus addressed this directly when criticized for eating with these sinners and outcasts – He came for the sick, not the healthy. The catch there is that we are all sick. What separates us on one hand is whether we know we are sick or not. On the other, if we are privileged in our lives, society may not consider us sick, in the way that the poor and oppressed clearly are.

Jesus’ break in protocol cut against the expectations of those around him. Who are the people around us where social interaction would have the same level of impact?

Then Jesus gets criticized from another direction. This time it is not the religious establishment, but his fellow subversives. John’s disciples leaned towards putting on a show of suffering and fasting, while Jesus was constantly eating and drinking with all manner of unsavory sorts. Jesus prods them to be human. Often times, in various circumstances, we feel the need to set ourselves apart and stay aloof from those around us, from the enjoyment and fun that others are having. But Jesus poured Himself into those around him and called His disciples His friends.

As a church we try to emulate this and to be a “centered set” rather than a “bounded set.” The latter means there’s a clear boundary between those who are in and those who are out. A centered set, though, is more about the direction we are oriented. Bounded sets can work but often begin pulling in more than they were originally designed to – culture ethnicity, social group can all designate someone in or out. A centered set is risky because it gives access even to those in the fringes but may be uncomfortable for those near the center but heading in a different direction.

So the message here is to be human, living our lives intertwined with and among the people that surround us, and living in such a way that it points all those around us to the source of our identity.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 22, 2023

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Healing and Forgiveness – Mark 2:1-12

In the words of the immortal Marshawn Lynch, the story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is “all about that action, boss.” He went on a “healing tour” of the region, and despite urging everyone to keep things quiet, he drew so much attention that he was forced into the outskirts and lonely places – yet the people still kept coming.

And so in chapter 2 we see Jesus back in Capernaum, so mobbed by people that he was unaccessible to the a paralytic man who wanted healing. But this man had such close friends that they hoisted him up to the roof of the house and dug through that roof to lower him down to be healed.

And what Jesus did was not quite what anyone expected. He forgives them man of His sins. This causes grumbling, though, from legal experts who note that only God can forgive sins. So to underscore his authority, Jesus heals him at all.

This story is in part about the relationship between sin and suffering. Jesus came to do away with both, and while sin is clearly his priority, the man came to him without being forgiven, without having dealt with the sin he is forgiven of. He had to come to Jesus first.

We also see here some of why Jesus was trying to limit the crowds. When the crowd becomes a mob, there for what they can get, the person of Jesus can be lost, and those in true need are kept to the outskirts.

Jesus is addressing a couple of systemic issues here. First, by treating sin and suffering as separate issues, he is addressing the “purity culture” of the time, the concept that suffering itself was caused by sin and that misfortune is in fact punishment for having done something wrong. Second, surrounded by the crowds of the common people, many of them trapped in cycles of debt and taxes, and also being watched by the priests with the authority to forgive debts, he pointedly heals and forgives freely, drawing a contrast between his heavenly kingdom and their earthly one.

Jesus came to give forgiveness freely, to knock down the obstacles people put in between people and God. He came to undermine the authority of religious leaders who put themselves in the place as gatekeeper, doing out forgiveness in tiny drips. Jesus wants it to flow like waterfalls.

We can take comfort in this also, whatever we are struggling with. If we come to Him, no obstacles of roof or religion or authority can keep us from His love and goodness and forgiveness.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, October 8, 2023

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Demons and Healing – Mark 1:21-28

Mark has been a whirlwind so far – John the Baptist is leading a revival in the desert. Then Jesus comes to be baptized and in that process the Son is received and rejoiced in by the Father and the Spirit both visually and audibly. From there, Jesus heads into the wilderness for 40 days of “basic training” and temptation by Satan. From there he comes out ready to enter the fray, but not before he enlists his first disciples, straight from the fishing boats.

And from there he heads to Capernaum where the fun begins. This was a village of about 1500 people founded in the second century, where Peter had a home that eventually became a church. It served as a home base for Jesus.

Specifically, Jesus headed to the synagogue. This was a combination religious center and community center, a place for teaching but also eating and hospitality and discussion and much more.

This is what Jesus steps into with an authority that took everyone off guard. He was That Guy, speaking of every moment of history as if He was actually there, speaking of God as someone He knows intimately. The Greek for how he spoke was exousia – out of His being.

Then all the sudden someone screams out and interrupts. Given the level of activity in the synagogue this may have been less disruptive than it would be in a church with a more formal structure, but it still would have been an interruption and disruptive.

The shouting man knows who Jesus is, identifying Him by name and hometown and His role as messiah.

While we may not see much of this sort of thing in our educated western church, in the global church and especially in other more pentecostal traditions see it a lot. But we do see evil in our communities, from drugs to oppression to hatred to abandonment. We see those around us captive to evil just as much as this demon possessed man in the synagogue.

We may not be Jesus, with His level of authority, but we have His love within us – we can speak His words, we can offer up our prayers, we can be His hands and feet.

Back to the story, Jesus commands the unclean spirit to least, and that creates even more of a stir than the man himself. The news spreads from there and prepares the way for the rest of His ministry. The Greek word often translated “amazed” can also be read “in fear of” – a fear that blends astonishment and respect, a recognition of something that cannot be controlled by the spiritual powers of the world, let alone the religious or secular authorities.

As we go from this place, may we also come to Jesus with our maladies and our unclean spirits with a recognition that He has the authority to address them in ways fat beyond what we can understand.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 1, 2023

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Letz Go!!! – Mark 1:16-20

Previously on “Mark”: After hundreds of years of silence God spoke to the people of Israel through John the Baptist, proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. Many people come to the desert to repent. In the midst of this surge of changing hearts, Jesus comes to be baptized and begins His ministry, with a stopover in the wilderness. He opens His ministry with a call to trust Him and believe His words.

Where we pick up the story, Jesus is calling His first disciples. But what does that word, which we throw around a lot, really mean? The concept is more like an apprentice than like a student in a classroom. This is someone learning alongside a master craftsman or a rabbi as they lived and worked together.

Where Jesus diverged from your typical rabbi is that typically disciples were recruited by “inbound” methods, attracting followers on the strength of their skill with their craft or words or theology. Jesus, though, is all about “outbound marketing.” He came directly to those he wanted to call and gave the invitation – “Follow me.”

And the disciples did – they left behind their old lives, their families, their homes, their businesses. They let go of livelihood & security and & a normal daily life to follow Jesus. Now, it’s important to note that this is a unique context – very few of us are specifically called into itinerant preaching ministries. But we are all called to something. And we don’t need to wait for us to hit rock bottom. God is always working, even when we are doing well enough to, say, have hired workers in our fishing business.

But we should consider what we are clinging to and what we are putting ahead of our identity in Christ. Often we put our secular roles first. But first of all, we are followers of Jesus, and we take that identity into our workplaces, our families, our relationships, our hobbies. Mark calls out the specific things that the disciples left, and we have specific things in our lives that we must also subordinate to our own call to be disciples.

Even though we are not called to be wandering preachers, we are called to find our identity in Jesus. Like the disciples, we are called to be followers of Jesus first, and everything else comes second. We should resist the temptation to make our work and our activities the main element of who we are.

Jesus is asking us not to hold anything back. We tend to hold things back and negotiate with God. “Right now, I want to do this thing, and later on I’ll do what I want.” But we should know that God is seeking our good in addition to His glory. We are not on opposing sides here. Jesus did not tell his disciples to drop their nets – He said “follow” and they did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that what He was offering was better than what they had.

Discipleship is a relationship and a journey. Discipleship means turning to Jesus to find our direction and our identity. When we let go of whatever we are clinging to – cynicism, resentment, idols of all kinds – Jesus offers abundance and changed lives.

This is the Kingdom of God, this is what Jesus was proclaiming – and still does, through His body. This is why we are here, this is why we worship and this is why we do what we do.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood WA, September 24, 2023