Discipling Life

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. This Sunday invites us to stand at the threshold of mystery and wonder. The scriptures for this day do not try to explain God as though God could be reduced to a formula; instead, they draw us into worship of the living God who creates, blesses, saves, and sends. There is a beautiful mystery at the heart of our faith: the God who commands the stars is the very same God who chooses to dwell in our midst. God is not a distant, detached observer, but a relational and life-giving community of love, constantly reaching out to connect with us. The opening words of Genesis reveal a God who is active and life-giving from the very beginning. "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth" and "a wind from God swept over the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:1-2). Before order emerged from chaos, God's Spirit was already present, hovering over creation with purpose and care. The world did not come into being by accident. It was b...

Matthew 28:16-20 brings the Gospel of Matthew to its powerful conclusion as the risen Christ meets his disciples on a mountain in Galilee and commissions them for the work ahead. Often called the Great Commission, this passage is both a sending and a promise. Jesus calls his followers to make disciples, baptize , and teach in his name, extending the good news of God’s kingdom to all nations. At the same time, he reassures them with the enduring promise of his presence: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (v. 20). In these final verses, we see the heart of Christian discipleship, a life shaped by worship, obedience, mission, and the sustaining grace of Christ. Today’s text begins with the disciples gathered with the risen Christ on the mountain in Galilee. Matthew tells us, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted” (v. 17). That small detail is comforting. Even in the presence of the risen Christ, some struggled with uncertainty. Yet Jesus did not turn them a...

This was one of those Sundays that I ended up skipping my prepared sermon outline and going in a different direction . I ran the audio recording through a transcriber to produce this manuscript of the sermon as I preached it: May 17, 2026, Seventh Sunday after Easter (Year A), at Ebenezer UMC and Black Creek UMC. This is the text of the sermon as preached at Black Creek.   Next Sunday is Pentecost. We sometimes refer to that day as the birthday of the church because that is when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the people gathered in Jerusalem at the temple for the Jewish festival of Pentecost. Part of the celebration of that festival was to commemorate the giving of the law through Moses. And so, here people were gathered to hear the preaching of the apostles, and they received the word of God through that preaching as the Holy Spirit was poured upon them. Today, this Sunday before Pentecost, we look at what took plac e just before that, when Jesus met with his disciples for for...

In Epistle to the Colossians 1:24, Paul writes one of his most challenging and easily misunderstood statements: “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” At first glance, it can sound as though Paul is saying Christ’s suffering on the cross was somehow incomplete. But throughout his letters, Paul consistently teaches that Christ’s saving work is fully sufficient. Just a few verses earlier, Paul says that through Christ, God was pleased “to reconcile to himself all things” through the blood of the cross (v. 20). So Paul cannot mean that Jesus’ atoning sacrifice was lacking in saving power. Instead, Paul is speaking about the ongoing suffering connected to the mission of Christ in the world. Christ’s redemptive work is complete, but the church continues to carry the message of the gospel into a broken world, and that mission often involves hardship, sacrifi...

There are moments in life when everything feels unsettled. You might be sitting at your kitchen table, or standing in the hallway at church, or lying awake at night, and even though the room is quiet, your heart is anything but. Fear, uncertainty, and unanswered questions have a way of lingering. The disciples knew that feeling well. After the resurrection, they gathered behind closed doors, trying to make sense of rumors and reports, unsure what to believe or what the future would hold. It’s easy to understand the disciples’ fear that evening . They had seen their Lord crucified, buried, and now, some claimed, alive again. The room must have been thick with confusion and wonder when suddenly, “Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’” (Luke 24:36). Peace was the last thing they probably felt at that moment. Yet peace was the first thing Jesus offered. Sometimes life feels like that upper room. We lock the doors of our hearts, trying to make sense of dis...