This week explores when our very minds unravel. We are living in a time of pandemic when over a third of Americans are experiencing depression and anxiety; a time when isolation and decision fatigue and wrestling with painful unjust history has upended our sense of anything being normal. What can we learn from Jesus’ approach to people whose minds have been unraveled? How does Jesus’ care for us compare to the judgment of a world full of stigma and shame?
8/16/2020: Unraveled Week 9: When Our Plans for Our Children Unravel
This week we take a look at the earliest stories of Moses (liberator for his whole people) and consider how he came into this world; how unlikely people looked out for him despite the danger he was in. His childhood was nothing his parents could ever have planned for him or dreamed for him. In these ever-changing times, how do we deal with the fact that all our plans for our young people are being unraveled before our eyes? Could something better be in store? When we lose control, does God still have a plan for them and for our collective future?
8/9/2020: UNRAVELED Week 8: Unraveled by Shame
This sermon explores how each of us wrestles with shame in our lives, and what faith has to do with that struggle. Shame is different from guilt, and connects more to our core identity. How can stories like Jesus with the Samaritan woman help us to recover our own true sense of self? All that we were meant to be?
8/2/2020: UNRAVELED Week 7: When Dreams Unravel
This sermon asks what God’s hope looks like when it seems that life has turned upside down. We take a look at the story of Israel in exile, and how God instructed them to cope during such a hard time. How do we make sense of chaos and tragedy in our lives?
7/26/2020: Unraveled Week 6: A New Path
This sermon examines the story of Saul’s conversion into Paul (from a murderous, hateful anti-Christian Pharisee into one of the chief apostles of an inclusive Christian Church). How do such transformations happen? And how does unraveling make way for such transformation?