WESLEY ARNING

Baptism doesn’t separate us from others, in fact, it pushes us back into the mess of humanity, back towards the need and brokenness

Nothing can stop God and his work of bringing light out of the darkness. Pharaoh tried and yet the Hebrew slaves were led to freedom. Herod

It’s no wonder that those outside the church look at this story with skepticism—it is odd for God to act this way, to choose infancy over

Gabriel’s message to Mary is a clear indicator that God is about to do a new thing for the people of Israel, that he has not forgotten them,

We may be comfortable in our lives, but comfortability may be a form of captivity, and it sure isn’t a good indicator of our spiritual healt

John is an eschatological figure—meaning an End Time figure—(a key Advent theme as we said last week) and he is standing at the edge of a ne

The true themes of Advent are sobering and complex, but they are at the heart of Christianity. As we said a few weeks ago in the parable of

Our reading from Ezekiel tells us what the one true king is like. Even though the people are scattered and lost, physically and spiritually,

We must take the grieving process seriously. It is a dark and lonely place; we are not called to stay in it forever, but we must know that

When you get home, you should flip to Matthew 25 and just write in the margins “2020 Election Week.”

Because of the power of the Holy Spirit, believers were now grafted and assimilated into the spiritual Body of Christ. Remember Paul likens

He is the supposed expert asking a question to the Author and Giver of the Law and Commandments he’s studied all these years.

But Jesus takes it even a step further; if the invited guests won’t come then the party is open to the street people, the common folks, the

But notice here that the produce of the field is fine—there is no mention of wild grapes. In this case, it’s the delivery system that is mal

Everything that had gone wrong and would go wrong in the human project was ultimately rectified on Good Friday and vindicated on Easter

There is a rule of life that Jesus is giving us through this story: If you have been forgiven, you are then to forgive. Another way of sayin

Human relationships are fraught with conflict, and sadly the church is not immune. Sheep will bite, it’s in their nature. In the same way,

Jesus sees Peter in this moment as ignorantly opposed to the will of God. By resisting Jesus’ words and even trying to control or correct

Today like a good baseball coach Jesus has some challenging words for people who approach him and we see two very different reactions.

Jesus shows us that he is Lord even of our physical needs. We see that Jesus doesn’t just care about our prayer life or simply “spiritual