After a rain-out last week, we returned to outdoor worship in our courtyard on a beautiful spring day.  Jeffrey’s subject for the day was the story of Philip and the Ethiopian from Acts. At a time when the survival of the early church was very much in doubt, Philip was extending a message of radical…

Scripture: Luke 24: 36–48   In this sermon, Pastor Jeffrey continues the exploration started last week of the idea that the Disciples’ belief in the resurrection took time – – at least four different episodes in the Gospels.  For the Disciples, and for us today, faith comes through repeated exposure to challenging ideas and the sharing…

On the first Sunday after Easter, Pastor Jeffrey looks at the Apostle most like we modern humans: Doubting Thomas.  In accepting Thomas’s doubts and and offering the tangible proof the others didn’t demand, Jesus established the critical idea that faith may come slowly, in steps, and that second chances are always available. Permission to stream…

We met in our courtyard on a cool but beautiful April morning to worship together for the first time in over a year! Paster Jeffrey’s sermon captured the unique nature of this particular Easter: “I know one thing. We won’t take things for granted again. At least I hope not any time soon. We won’t…

Jesus knew all the awful events that would follow on his entrance into Jerusalem, but he chose to focus on the promise of a better life for those who placed their trust in him. Likewise, Pastor Jeffery focuses on the abundant examples of goodness and hope emerging amid the tragedies of Covid and senseless shootings.…

As we approach Palm Sunday and Holy Week, Pastor Jeffrey focuses on what may be the central theme of Lent: Letting go of the old to reach for something new. Jesus’s metaphor of a grain of wheat (John 12:24) was a foretelling of his death and the birth of His Church, but it also applies…

With three weeks till Easter, Pastor Jeffrey explores the late-night visit of Nicodemus to Jesus. As so often happens late at night,  profound questions were addressed: What to make of a prophet unlike all the others and of a vision of a forgiving God that is wildly different from the stern and vengeful Deity of…

Pastor Jeffrey explores the familiar story of Jesus attacking the money-changers in the Temple. However, he cites the version from John, which places it much earlier in Jesus’ ministry than the other three . . . a moment of “Righteous Anger” that defined much of his ministry. Jeffrey suggests that this same righteous anger .…

This week Pastor Jeffrey unpacks the great turning point in Jesus’s ministry, when the disciples first dare to voice the idea that he is the prophesied Messiah, and Jesus reveals the cost this will entail. In our own lives we sometimes face such a choice: the chance to do something important that requires a seeming…

For the first Sunday of Lent, Pastor Jeffrey unpacks the story of Satan’s tempting of Jesus in the wilderness. He notes that we all have contemporary “wilderness” experiences, especially in this time of Covid. Jeffrey discusses practical ways to fend off those temptations and stick to the path we know, in our hearts, is the…