City Of Light Anglican Churchaurora, Illinois

"No matter how dark the darkness in our life we celebrate the reality that the light of Christ will always scatter the darkness." — Grace Kircher

"The resurrection of Jesus reconciles us to God and to one another. Through the resurrection, the dividing wall of hostility is brought down and we are freed to live into our identity as the household of God." —Father Jonathan Kindberg

This summer we will be reading and studying the book of Acts. Father Trevor and Pastor Bonnie talk about why they chose it, what the book of Acts is about, who wrote it and why, and give some further resources for studying it. They also share some of their favorite moments and memories from the book. Join us on Sundays at 10am this summer, June 2 - August 25, as we devote ourselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, the prayers, and the breaking of bread. http://cityoflightanglican.org/events/acts

Baptism is not magical, but it's not mundane. It's a miracle and a mystery where we are united with Jesus in his death and resurrection.

Because Jesus is alive, we see him on Sundays, in Scripture, and in his Supper. Sunday is not an ordinary day, the Bible is not an ordinary book, and communion is not an ordinary meal. Jesus' table is not magical, but it's also not mundane. A miracle happens—the Resurrected Jesus is with us! And a sacramental mystery happens—his spiritual life fills us through the physical bread and wine.

2 Timothy 1:3-12 Timothy has the faith legacy of his mother Eunace and grandmother Lois. We leave a Lois legacy when we serve sons and daughters and when we suffer for the gospel for the next generations.

1 Corinthians 15 If the resurrection is not real, then following after Jesus is wasting your life. If the resurrection is real, then following after anything else is wasting your life. And if you’re halfway following Jesus, and halfway not, you don’t win either way, you lose your life either way. But christ has indeed raised from the dead! He is risen and so shall we!

Jesus' endures his suffering so that you're never alone in your suffering, so that you can give your suffering to him, so that you can receive his restoration, so that your suffering has meaning. We share in his suffering and we share in his glory.

When our natural response is rejection, Jesus’ natural response is restoration—full and beautiful and glorious. God brings restoration by letting himself be rejected—by the crowds, by his followers, by you and by me. God experiences all of that rejection so that no matter how much rejection we experience in this world, we will never have to experience rejection from him. We may reject God. He will never reject us.

Philippians 3:4-11 We enter into the suffering but we don't simply enter into it, we pass through, because our real destination is resurrection, is easter, is life with Jesus!

"How does the father respond to the insult and rejection from his two lost sons? Is he furious? Does he punish them? Does he force them to obey? No. He loves his sons enough to allow himself to be rejected by them. He allows them to be lost. But he also loves them enough to keep looking, running, and searching after them until they allow themselves to be found again so he can rejoice."

Exodus 2:23 - 3:15 Have you ever felt forgotten by God? When the people of Israel cry out to God in their slavery and suffering, God hears them and comes to save them. And when we cry out to the Lord, he has already heard us and come in the person of Jesus to rescue us. Cry out to the Lord. He has not forgotten you in the wilderness. He is already working to bring about your rescue.

Waiting can be frustrating, inconvenient, it can feel like it has no purpose, but waiting for the Lord is not like that. Waiting is no longer an inconvenience, it’s an encounter. It’s not frustration, it’s salvation. When we wait for the Lord, we wait with the Lord. In Psalm 27, David waits on the Lord because he knows the reality of God as bigger than the reality of his circumstances. In the presence of his enemies, he remembers being in the presence of God. When it’s easy to imagine his own defeat, he imagines the Lord’s victory.

Jesus went into the wilderness to transform it into a place where poverty can become provision, where that which is barren can become beautiful, where desperation becomes dependency on a loving God, and where isolation can become intimacy.

Tonight with ashes on our heads we remember that we are marked by sin and death, but even more we remember that we are marked by the cross of Jesus where our sin is met with forgiveness and freedom, where our death is met with resurrection. For those who die in Christ, death is a door to eternal life, the healing of our bodies, everlasting freedom from death and sin. And that resurrection life begins now as we repent and believe the gospel.

Luke 9:28-36 Jesus shows us his gory on the mountain so that we can follow him into and out of the wilderness.

Ephesians 3:14-21 If it's true that you can have a relationship with God, what kind of relationship would you want?

Following the tragic shooting in Aurora, Father Trevor asks the question, "When Psalm 46 says that the Lord is our refuge and our strength, that he is ever present in our times of trouble, is that just a comforting idea or is that really true? Can we build our lives and face our deaths trusting that God is with us?" In the Bible, we read a story we can live in, we meet a God we can know, and we experience a healing that changes our lives.

I'm sorry that we who claim the name of Christ don't always live in Christ and that we sometimes build our own walls sin brick by sin brick to separate us from one another and make it more difficult to enter into the household of God. But Jesus did not come to keep people out. He came to invite all people into the household of God through him.

He did not create a world with suffering. When suffering entered the world he made a plan to enter into our suffering. On the cross, God ends suffering so that at the end there will be no suffering and the world will be healed. Where is God when we're suffering? He’s not sleeping, he’s weeping. God carries the weight of our suffering so that he can give us the weight of his glory.