Highway Sermons

How to we think about the way God acts in the stories before Jesus? And how do we think about the nature of God, and who Jesus is, when the picture is so complex?Today's sermon provides important handles to hold on to in understanding who God is and how Jesus is a key part of that understanding.

Maybe you've wrestled with this. You look at Jesus — gentle, radically hospitable, revolutionary — and something in you is drawn to him. But then you look at the people who claim to follow him, and you think... what happened?The politicians invoking his name while spewing contempt at their enemies. The church that made you feel like your questions weren't welcome. The protestors with the signs. The televangelist selling miracle cures. And somehow, all of it — in the name of Jesus.What if I told you: you're not wrong.Jesus himself saw this coming. Two thousand years ago, on a hillside in Galilee, he looked out at a crowd and said — watch out. Some people are going to use my name. Loudly. Constantly. And they won't actually know me.He even gave us a test. Not a theology quiz. Not a doctrine checklist. A gardening metaphor. You'll know them by their fruit.So what does the real fruit look like? And what does it mean that some of the most breathtaking, world-changing, history-bending acts of love in human history came from people who actually knew Jesus — not just wore the jersey?That's what we're digging into today. And there's a twist at the end that I think might surprise you.Whether you love Jesus and can't stand his people, or you've been going to church your whole life and somewhere along the way lost the thread — this one's for you.

When and where life cracks open, that is where the person of Jesus, and his resurrection life, is powerfully at work.

What does the Bible have to say about shame and its antidote? Join us as we examine the plot twist at the center of the parable of the wicked tenants, and what this story, told in the midst of Passion Week, tells us about the meaning of the cross and the healing of shame.

What happens when you've prayed for something for years — and nothing has changed?Jesus tells a parable about a widow who keeps showing up at the door of a corrupt judge, asking for justice, getting turned away, and coming back anyway. Day after day. The Complete Jewish Bible translates the judge's frustration with one word: nudnik. A Yiddish term for someone who is pestering, relentless, impossible to ignore.Jesus holds her up as a model of prayer.What does persistent prayer actually look like for modern people?. A stubbornness of the soul. A refusal to let silence be the final word. We talk about why persistence in prayer builds intimacy, transforms us from the inside out, and what to do when we've prayed hard for things that never came.Luke 18:1-8