SERMON SNAPSHOT: Sunday, July 25, 2021

Dear Friends in Christ –

And God took Abram outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then God said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord, and God credited it to him as righteousness.

In the King James version of this text it reads, “Abram believed in the Lord…”

Over millennia this phrase has shaped three major faiths. Some have come to group them together into the Abrahamic faiths – Jewish, Christian and Muslim, contending that they all witness to the same God, but do they? Perhaps to the novel notion of a monotheistic God. But they exhibit a different way of expressing the relationship. For Jews, Abraham is the ancestor, the progenitor of a people living in the service of God. Rabbi Kushner writes, “believing is secondary to belonging.” For Muslims, Abraham is the symbol of unquestioning obedience. But for Christians Abraham is both and more – progenitor, one whose precepts must be obeyed, but who have been shown, as Paul said, “a more excellent way” – the way of love revealed in teaching and the life of Jesus.

This Sunday we look at this text from 3000 years ago and live into our own faith in God’s promises – promises that we must believe, that we must live into if we are to be authentic followers of Jesus the Christ.

Ken Carrington is commissioned as Director of Children and Youth. We introduce elements of worship back into our service that can only be accomplished together in proximity, in trust and in joy.

Stop by. Tune in. Let’s be the church navigating these new waters for and with Jesus.

In anticipation –