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Benjamin Chua continues our series, "People of the Kingdom." If we are first and foremost citizens of the Kingdom of God, then the country we find ourselves in is not our true home. As citizens of the Kingdom we live in America as exiles, not dissimilar from the Israelites who were exiles in Babylon or how the early church identified as exiles within the Roman Empire. We are foreigners and strangers on earth. And yet, as Christians we've sought to make our home in America by adopting a Christianed version of the American Dream and claiming it as God's promise to us. So, if we're exiles, what does that mean? How are we supposed to live here and now if we're active outposts of the Kingdom? If we can live out Jesus' words as Kingdom-minded exiles distinct from American culture we'll get to watch God's rule and reign spread all across our neighborhoods, cities, and country.
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This week, we start a new series titled, "People of the Kingdom." Over the next eight weeks we'll explore the idea that the church in America's first political task is to become the church Jesus intended. And that starts by recovering our true citizenship. As the people of God we are citizens of the Kingdom, first and foremost. Only secondarily are we citizens of the country we live in. Our first and primary allegiance is to Jesus and His Kingdom. Our ways of living and being are to be shaped exclusively by the Kingdom, yet many of us have been profoundly formed by the empire we live within. How do we live as citizens of the Kingdom and as an active outpost of the Kingdom in the places we find ourselves today? It all starts in Philippians when Paul reminds the women and men in Philippi that their citizenship has its roots in a heavenly commonwealth.
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This week Pastor Shaq Hager introduces us to Junia, an apostle, who helped lead and build the early church. Junia's status as an apostle, however, has been questioned. From approximately the 13th centurty until about 1980 Bible translators added an "s" to Junia's name, making it Junias, which was a male name. Yet, early Christian writers like John Chrysostom make it clear Junia is a woman, and Origen even states that Junia was one of the 70 who were also called apostles. Paul describes Junia as a person who was imprisoned and "in chains" for the Gospel. In Junia, we have an example of a courageous woman who lived into her gifts as an apostle and helped advance the Gospel and build the early church.
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This week, Carrie Bucker walks through Priscilla's story. Paul identifies Priscilla as a co-laborer in the ministry of proclaiming and living out the Gospel. He even identifies her and her husband, Aquila, as having protected his life and saving the early church, ensuring it was able to thrive and flourish. There's even a story about Priscilla taking aside a young, charismatic, and gifted teacher named Apollos, and identifying some of his theological weaknesses and teaching him. Priscilla being a woman was not a hindrance for Paul or God. She was living out the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in her leadership and teaching, and she was performing her role in the body of Christ for which God had equipped her.
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This week we start a three week series focused on women leaders in the early church, and what their lives and ministries can teach the church today about following Jesus. Phoebe was entrusted by Paul with carrying, arguably, Paul's most theologically substantive letter. Not only was she expected to deliver Paul's letter to the Romans, but she was also expected to teach and discuss it with the church in Rome to ensure they understood it. In a sense, she was a physical representation of Paul's teaching and ministry for the Roman Christians. She was a servant-leader, a protector, and a provider who used her life and resource to advance the Gospel and build the Kingdom.
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This week we take a look back across sixty-three sermons and our study of the book of Acts to identify major themes and what they mean for us today. In particular, the conversation focuses on the expansive and inclusive nature of the Gospel, the Kingdom of God breaking into and challenging the kingdom of man, the call to go to our neighbors, what it means to wait on the Spirit, and how everywhere we find ourselves is an opportunity to be a signpost to the hope and love of Jesus.
Every one who taught as part of the series was included in the conversation: Reverend Eleanor Williams, Carrie Buckner, Julia Allan, Benjamin Chua, Pastor Shaq Hager, and Pastor Dennis Allan. Katie Long facilitated.
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Luke ends the book of Acts with Paul in Rome, imprisoned, meeting with a group of Jewish people. He shares the Gospel with them, proclaiming the ways the Old Testament foretold Jesus as Israel's true Messiah and prophesied that, through Jesus' death and resurrection, the Kingdom of God had been inaugurated. While some chose to believe the Gospel, most did not. Even the people most committed to following God's laws are capable of missing out on what God's doing. Paul's vision of the Kingdom is a scandal to many. It's a Gospel that's radically inclusive, wildly expansive, and it lifts Jesus high. The invitation Luke extends to all of his readers is this: Jesus' ministry and Paul's ministry are now ours to continue. We are to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom to everyone, everywhere we go. Because God wants all His kids to come home.
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Sometimes we're so convinced we're right about a particular belief, a specific way of seeing or understanding the world, or, even, a way of interprepting a particular portion of Scripture that we tell ourselves it's more Jesus-like to remove ourselves from relationship with people who think or believe differently than we do. In essence, we can believe purity of doctrine or adherence to biblical interpreptations is more important than extending love and relationship to those we disagree with. This week, Pastor Shaq Hager focused on Acts 28:11-22, leading to a congregational conversation focused on three questions:
What beliefs do you find problematic in other Christians?Which of your own beliefs do you think other Christians might find problematic?How can we, as Jesus prays in John 17, be one as followers of Jesus while also holding space for our disagreement?*In the podcast, you'll hear Pastor Shaq set-up the discussion and then you'll hear a few seconds of quiet. Then, Pastor Shaq will lead a brief prayer. Feel free to pause the sermon after Pastor Shaq introduces the conversation questions and reflect on them on your own.
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What happens when things start feeling out of control and chaotic? When it feels like the ship of your life is caught in the midst of a storm? How do you respond? How do you find and remain in Jesus throughout the storm? What happens when everything feels like it's falling apart and you just want to get off the ship? This is the story of Paul in Acts 27:33-44 (NIV). Reverend Eleanor Williams walks us through the passage and helps us understand how to anchor our lives in Jesus no matter what is happening in the world or in our lives.
Reverend Eleanor is a member of Garden City Church. She was a special education teacher in Pittsburgh Public Schools for more than thirty years, earned an M.Div. from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and is an ordained pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Currently, she is the Executive Director of the Northside Partnership Project.
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This week, Julia Allan walks through Paul's story, just before he's shipwrecked on his way to Rome in Acts 27. Paul, who first heard Jesus' voice along the Damascus Road, heard from the Lord that everyone on the ship would survive the storm. Paul said to the crew, "Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve..." Even in the midst of an incredible storm Paul could hear and discern Jesus' voice. And that ability to know Jesus' voice is cultivated through belonging and service. Paul belonged to Jesus and served Him. Paul knew the sound of Jesus' voice, even when a literal storm enveloped him. How can we also hear and know Jesus' voice in the midst of the storms in our lives and society? And, in our own and the world's storms, what might God be saying to us?
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This week, Pastor Shaq walks through Acts 25:1-12. Paul is now on trial for the third time, now before Festus. The Jewish leaders ask a "favor" of Festus - they want Paul transferred from Caesarea to Jerusalem because they've designed a plot to kill Paul. Festus, newly appointed to his role, wants to do a "favor" for the Jewish leaders. He asks Paul if he'll go to Jerusalem to stand trial. Paul refuses and, instead, demands to have his trial heard by Caesar, himself. It's yet another instance of political corruption in the book of Acts, one group seeking "favors" from a political leader, while that political leader is willing to grant the "favor" so he can extract something in the future. Through it all, Paul is caught in the middle. Yet, despite man's corrupt and evil plans, God's will never fails. It's something Paul knows and trusts, and it's something we can trust, too.
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The legal system exists to maintain the status quo; it almost always has. It is often controlled by self-serving, powerful, rich individuals and corporate interests who like how things are and want to keep them that way. When prophets come who point out flaws in the system, it feels threatened, and the system seeks to stamp out critique and dissent with extreme force and a thin veneer of legality. Little did those systems know that the Jesus Revolution could not be killed: crucifixion only paves the way for resurrection, and a people willing to suffer and love against all odds, in the power and name of the Spirit, can endure and overcome injustice. Ever since Pentecost, every time those Spirit-filled people have formed non-violent, enemy-loving movements outside of the system, the world has changed, and the systems have been forced to bow in a prophetic nod to Jesus' second coming. Will you bow? Will you live in Him and for Him, and welcome His soon return? This week, Benjamin Chua walks our church through Acts 24.
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This week Carrie Buckner continues our series on Acts, talking through Acts 23:12-22. It's the story of a plan concoted by a group of Jewish religious zealots (or, Jewish nationalists) that reached to the highest levels of the Jewish religious system. The people to whom God entrusted His law and now openly planning to break it. How do people, especially people who claim to love, follow, and represent God, succumb to and participate in the type of zealotry that embraces political violence, bearing false witness, and murder? How do people reach a point of subordinating their religious convictions to achieve their political desires? These are questions that faced Jewish people in and around Jerusalem in the first century, as well as Christians here in America today.
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Jesus instructed His disciples to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. In Acts 22:22-29 (NIV) the apostle Paul is living these words. He was lynched in the Temple and then arrested and at no point did he fight back or physically defend himself. He was gentle. And now, he's about to be tortured by the Roman state when he asks a soldier, "Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn't even been found guilty?" It's a shrewd question. Paul knows it's illegal for a Roman to be flogged when they haven't been proven guilty in a court. He's leveraging his privileged status as a citizen to advance the Kingdom. In our current cultural moment, it's a timely lesson for all of us. This week Pastor Shaq Hager walks us through what it means to be gentle and wise, willing to sacrifice our bodies, like Paul, for the sake of the Kingdom.
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Paul knows the Gospel crosses every boundary and eradicates racial and ethnic hatred. He's given his life to proclaiming a Gospel that knits Jews and Gentiles into a new "family" rooted in Jesus. And yet, in Acts 21:37-22:22, when Paul tells a crowd of Jews who are zealous for the law that God sent him to proclaim the Gospel to the Gentiles they shout, "Rid the earth of him! He's not fit to live!" These Jews embraced a segregationist theology that told them who was superior and who was inferior based on ethnicity. It's a theology still at work in our country and churches today. Building a multi-ethnic church is an elusive dream. But it's always been God's vision to knit together a multi-ethnic, multi-racial people founded in Jesus. This week Pastor Dennis Allan talks through how the church is meant to be a signpost to the world that, in Jesus, unity and equality are possible.
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This week, Pastor Dennis walks through Acts 21:26-36. Paul is in Jerusalem, trying to prove to the Jewish Christians who are "zealous for the law" that he isn't trying to abolish the law. In fact, while Paul is actively observing and upholding the law he's captured and beaten in the temple by a crowd of "law-observing" Jews. We see in this passage what can happen when people believe their political desires align with God's will for a nation. We can embrace the false idea that "the ends justify the means," which is not a way of living or being we ever see Jesus embrace. We are oftentimes "zealous for Jesus" until He becomes an obstacle to our worldly pursuits. So, how then are we to live and act? This story begins helping us figure out what faithfulness to Jesus might look like in this fraught political and cultural moment in America?
*This sermon includes an excerpt of Rage Against the Machine's song, "Killing in the Name," which is available on Apple Music here.
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This week Benjamin Chua walked through the story of Paul's return to Jerusalem in Acts 21:17-25. Almost immediately after entering Jerusalem, Paul learns the church there is fiercely enthusiastic for the law, not Jesus. For the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem their belief wasn't rooted in the foundational story of God's covenant family culminating in Jesus and looking ahead to the fullness of His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, but in a rigid, backwards-looking interpretation of the law, in which they used Jesus to rubber-stamp their rule-following theology. The church is to be a community cradled in the love of God, with love for one another. This is what Paul fought for and it's what we should fight for, too.
*The music at the end of the sermon is "3 Hours of Soaking in His Presence" by William Augusto. The full song can be found here.
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In Acts 21:1-16 Paul is en route to Jerusalem. He's resolved in his heart after discerning through the Spirit this is where he's supposed to go, even though he knows suffering and imprisonment likely await him there. In these sixteen verses we see people who love Paul try to discourage him from continuing his journey. They encourage him to abandon this trip, to not go to Jerusalem, and even claim they've heard from the Spirit, too. These people, who love Paul, demonstrate a belief many of us fall prey to - that if something involves suffering it can't possibly be God's will for us. And yet, just because our journey might involve suffering, it doesn't mean it isn't God's will.
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Pastor Shaq Hager continued our Acts series by discussing Acts 20:28-38, the second half of Paul's speech to the Ephesian Elders. Paul believes this is the last time he'll see these leaders he loves so much. It's heartfelt and emotional. Paul knows these leaders will need to shepherd their congregation within an empire that believed the early church to be anti-imperial and a subversive threat to Rome. It's why he wants these leaders to take their role seriously - care for people and love Jesus. It's an invitation for everyone of us. We are to love our neighbors and God with all that we are.
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The apostle Paul endured great suffering. A kind of suffering that works like a crucible, forging his soul more into the shape of Jesus.* This week, Pastor Dennis walks us through the end of Acts 19 and into Acts 20 exploring the end of Paul's ministry in Ephesus and how his letter, 2 Corinthians, reveals the depths of suffering he endured there. Suffering is part of the human condition and experience. Jesus and Paul suffered, and we will, too. Our suffering doesn't disprove God's existence or His love for us. Instead, our suffering can draw us closer to Jesus' heart, shape our hearts and souls more into the image of Jesus, and help us provide comfort and hope to others.
*This is language used by John Mark Comer in his book, Practicing the Way.
- Se mer
