April 7, 11 am
Come for a simple worship service. (There will be no meal or fellowship to follow.)
Tag: Jesus
Maundy Thursday service
April 6, 5:00 PM
We will be hosting the Maundy Thursday service in our sanctuary. Joining us will be the three UCC churches that we joined with for Ash Wednesday: Church of the Palms UCC, United Church of Sun City, and Desert Garden UCC.
Sermon 2/19/2023
This Sunday we celebrate the transfiguration of Jesus as found in Matthew 16:21-17:8.
Transfiguration Sunday marks the end of Epiphany, the season in which we discern how to make Jesus real for the world. It is our task to make the love of Jesus manifest around us.
In the first part of our story for Sunday, Jesus has been showing his disciples the inevitable, that he must go to Jerusalem and endure much suffering before he will rise again. Six days after this teaching he takes Peter, James, and John and goes up a mountain. While there his disciples notice that Jesus face shone like the sun and his clothes were a dazzling white. Elijah and Moses are standing there with him and his followers are overwhelmed.
What an amazing place to be in and a moment to be a part of. A natural response is to desire to stay there and Peter tells Jesus of their willingness to stay in the holy moment forever. God interrupts with a similar message to that of the day of Jesus’ baptism, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” So, we will celebrate this transformation as this moment compels us to keeping moving forward on our journey of revelation as his followers.
Sermon 2/12/2023
Sunday’s conclusion to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:1-14, 24-29) is jam-packed with verses that are so familiar to many of us, that we can finish many of these phrases on our own.
- Do not judge…
- Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye…
- Do not give what is holy to dogs…
- Ask, and it will be given you…
- In everything do to others…
- Enter through the narrow gate…
We will conclude our sermon time with a story that Matthew slips in on us that can be considered one of Jesus’ first parables in the gospel: the wise man who built his house on a rock. Jesus gives us abundant nuggets of wisdom to chew upon here, the question Matthew wants us to really ponder is, will we come to table and eat? Will we follow Jesus’ advice? Will we rise above our own human limitations and serve God in such a way that builds the Kingdom on earth? Will we listen and act accordingly, as God calls us?
Pastor’s Notes: 2/3/2023
The Gospel of Matthew will be our guide for the next several weeks in our sermons. Last Sunday we began the first of three lessons to come out of Jesus’ sermon on the mount which spans the chapters of 5-7. Last Sunday we covered the beatitudes and what it means to be salt and light. We skip ahead this week and pick up Jesus’ instructions on how to pray, Matthew 6:5-21.
I would encourage you to sit down and read what Matthew includes between what we are addressing in worship. Matthew 5:17-6:4 which includes Matthew’s various perceptions on the theme of righteousness as well as his understanding of Jesus’ view concerning a multitude of topics on what it means to love and be in covenant with our God.
In preparation for Sunday’s message, we notice that Matthew is being very intentional in pulling together the teachings of Jesus, by placing at the heart of this sermon a section concerning prayer. Prayer is the greatest connection humanity has with God on an ongoing basis. How to pray and where we direct our focus matters so this will be the focus for our time together Sunday. I look forward to worshipping with you!
Brett
Sermon 1/22/2023
What a beautiful Baptism experience Jesus had. A dove descended from heaven and landed upon him and God spoke words of favor and blessing… and then…
Jesus is barely dry before Matthew’s gospel places him in the wilderness, where for 40 days of fasting only to be tempted by the devil in his most vulnerable moment. The Spirit lead him them there, and almost as if on purpose. Matthew 4:1-11 is intense, as Jesus is hungry from fasting and the devil is relentless in pursuit of getting Jesus to cave to the temptation.
Jesus endures and all the while proclaims commitment to God with words of instruction for the reader to take to heart. He is tempted by bread for his hunger, safety from danger, and offered all the power he could ever want.
In her essay in Feasting of the Word, Maryetta Anschutz said of Jesus temptation, “Each time Jesus rejects temptation, he sets up for the reader a way to understand the cross to come. Certainly God can save God’s self from death on the cross, and certainly God in Jesus can refuse temptation to sin, but in our humanity we need to see God offer sacrifice and refuse temptation in order to learn the lesson ourselves.”
In this we wrestled deeper with the Church’s ability to learn this lesson of trusting God and ourselves to endure the temptations of the world we face.
Sermon 1/15/2023
Listen to Rev. Trish Winters’ sermon, “John the Baptist, Jesus Baptized.”
We walk into the waters of baptism with Jesus and John the Baptist from Matthew 3:1-17. We stand in dismay like John pondering our worthiness to proclaim the amazing presence of our God. We pick up that mantle once more and go forth into the great darkness bringing the light of love.
We are called to bear the light because this story of Jesus’ baptism ordains it. The dove marks him as holy. Everything John preached and proclaimed of the one who is to come that baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire has come into fruition in this story.
And so, for us, those who believe and who have walked through our own waters of baptism, we find our voice. This Sunday we will renewed once more our baptismal vow and claimed our role of sharing the good news of God among us.