Soma Spokane Sermons

We throw the word glory around but really, what does it mean? A glow, a radiance, or the Holiness of God? We may typically think of being in awe while looking at His image. The Bible seems to give a much fuller picture of the glory of God. One of his character, His benevolent rule, and of the goodness and blessing He spreads. And on top of a fuller picture, the Bible again and again gives examples of Him sharing His glory with man as He commissions us to go and spread his reweaving, shalomic glory across mankind. As we spend our days aching alongside all of creation and working towards the blessing of the earth, we eagerly look towards the day that Jesus, the author of Glory returns and makes all things right and new.

In ch. 20, Luke gives us 6 stories illustrating the rising tension between Jesus and his religious enemies. At the center of the debate is the authority of Jesus -- who he is and how he can claim to speak and act in the name of God. This is the central question of the gospels and the whole reason Luke has written: What will we do with Jesus? Resistance to Jesus' authority isn't a 1st Century problem but a universal problem, rooted in hearts that resist submission to anyone. In this season of Lent, we're invited to consider ways we still resist Jesus and his reign in our lives, believing that greater joy can be found outside of his lordship over our lives.

As Jesus finally arrives in Jerusalem, he deliberately fulfills Zechariah's prophecy regarding God's anointed King arriving on a colt. His disciples rejoice and the religious leaders grumble (again). But Jesus? He weeps. The tears of the King. What makes the Lord weep is human hard-heartedness, the refusal to welcome Jesus and his reign of grace into our broken hearts, broken lives, and broken world. Thankfully, our rejection of Jesus doesn't lead to his rejection of us - he continues his mission by entering the Temple to make a way for sinners to come in! As we begin our journey in Lent, we're asking the Spirit of Jesus to search us, reveal our blind hard-heartedness, and lead us to fullness of joy in his determination to give himself in love for the world.

When Jesus said in Luke 18 that "no one is good except God alone", he meant it! But for all of human history, people like the Pharisees and the Rich Ruler (and you and me!) have tried to find peace with God through their own good deeds and self-righteous acts. While the world applauds those who "try harder and do better", the truth is that self-righteousness is just another way of rejecting Jesus and denying his finished work on our behalf. How can we be freed from this insidious self-sabotage? Like Jesus said, "What is impossible with man is possible with God."

Jesus calls us and saves us personally as individuals, but his aim is to form a new kind of community built on faith in His mercy. In Luke 17.1-10, he describes a handful of key aspects of his community, offering a vision for life together as disciples. The community of Jesus is not immune from sin, so it requires a sober self-awareness and an eagerness to confess sin and find forgiveness. It also requires an abundance of mercy, as we live together under Jesus' mercy. We also need a ton of humility, learning to do what Jesus has asked - love one another! - with a healthy level of self-forgetfulness. Living this way requires a great deal of faith, which means returning to Jesus again and again, laying ourselves at his feet, and receiving again his mercy to us.

In our parable of the gracious and giving land owner and the manager who finds grace, there are two primary characters. One is the gracious and generous landowner who holds the kingdom. The other is the manager who is found out to be wasting and stealing the resources of the master. The manager is about to be kicked out but instead makes a move that trusts all in the character and honor of the generous gracious master. It puts the good master’s character on display and the scoundrel manager is welcomed back because of the lavish graciousness and generosity of the good master. 

Do you ever feel like you’re on the outside? Like you just don’t fit the religious mold? Or perhaps you’re quite comfortable in the church. What you’re concerned about is the culture, the economy, politics. Wherever you are Jesus wants to show you how to approach him. Whether you feel like you’re on the outside or the inside, like the younger or older brother, God has something profound he wants to give you today - Himself!

As Jesus continues his journey toward Jerusalem, he is shaping in his disciples a true vision of the Kingdom of God and how to live in it now. One of the biblical images for the Kingdom of God was the Feast, and Jesus tells a parable about who will be wanted and welcomed at the feast. Shockingly, those who are invited to the feast reject it, and the master of the Feast sends his Servant to collect the busted and broken, compelling even those outside the city to come to the Feast. This is the ministry of Jesus, a wide-open invitation to the least and the lowest to draw near. At the same time, Jesus tells those who are coming after him to be sure they know what they’re getting into, because while becoming a disciple of Jesus is totally free, it will cost you everything! Only those who are able to count the cost are ready to become his disciples. Christianity is both a wide-open invitation of grace and a line-in-the-sand call to death — and both are good news!

As Jesus travels to Jerusalem, with a clear vision of what the next part of his mission is, his confrontation with the religious elites increases. He frequently comes toe-to-toe with them, maneuvering through their traps with wisdom, calling out their hypocrisy with boldness, and avoiding their distractions with clarity. The Gospel of Luke uses the word “repent” nine times, and all of those times are in this travel narrative, while Jesus’ focus is on Jerusalem. The pride, arrogance, exclusivity, and entitlement of the religious warrants God’s judgment. Although Jesus would rather accept and welcome Jerusalem and her leaders - as a hen cares for her chicks - he can not. He can not turn a blind eye toward their relentless sin while they cling to their assumption that they are good with God. They are not! And in this section, Jesus calls them to repentance and weeps because he knows they will ultimately reject his offer. Repentance shows up as a warning (to those that may reject it), but to those that receive it

In Part 3 of our study in the Gospel according to Luke, we're going to explore a handful of key practices that help us live into the Way of Jesus. Jesus is intent on forming his way of thinking, believing, and living into those who follow him, expecting that everyone who wants to be his disciple must "take up their cross daily" and learn from him how to live the upside down nature of life in his kingdom. In chapters 12-18, Jesus is training his disciples in his Way, confronting, challenging, and comforting them as he does. This week we look at Jesus' teaching on greed and how to live free of anxious striving or boastful amassing. Our relationship to money and possessions has everything to do with who we are and whose we are: Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom!

We wrap up our three-part Advent series this week with the arrival of Jesus in the little town of Bethlehem. In chapter 1 of Luke, we saw God come near to Elizabeth & Zechariah with generosity. In their barrenness, God came to the unable. Last week, we looked at Mary’s story and saw that God came to the unexpectant and invited partnership. This week, in Luke 2, we’ll see how God came to the undeserving. A group of lowly shepherds gets in on the marvelous news of Jesus’ birth. These unseen vagabonds, these outcasts of society, are seen by God and experience undeserved equality! These rejects are the ones who get to experience previously unseen wonders as the heavens are opened up and a choir of heavenly hosts proclaims God’s glory. The people that were always on the outside are some of the first to meet Jesus, as he lay in a manger. The community of the manger is the fellowship of rejects, and it is not just his birth that is set in the margins. Jesus spends his life among the least of all people, among the si

JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and their friends coined the phrase, “Jesus is the true myth”. He is the better, truer story. He is the author of all other stories. Whether we recognize his penmanship or not, he is carefully crafting a far better narrative than we could ever come up with on our own. That is why he chooses to disrupt the story of humanity. In our text this week, we see God surprisingly visit Mary and completely change her plans. Any hope she had for life to move in a certain direction would be completely altered because of Gabriel’s announcement. Although she was a virgin, she would become pregnant with the Son of God. He would be great, would bring peace to the world, would assume the throne of David, and rule forever. Oh, the possibilities! The life-changing declaration and miracle! This interruption brought with it the unexpected, but deeply longed-for, salvation of the world. And on top of all that, God would choose to partner with humanity to unfold this new story. God put on flesh as a desperatel

The Old Testament ends in a dramatic sunset, followed by a dark 400-year night, kept alive with a theological pulse of expectation - will the sun rise again on God’s people? Where we pick up the story, in the first chapter of Luke, is during that dark moment before the sun comes. That hour often feels like the coldest, darkest, point of the night. During that darkness, there is simply no indication that God is worried about their plight. God’s people are in despair and hopelessness. Most of them are attempting to birth something new in their own power and through their own means. So it is fitting that Luke starts with the longing of Zechariah and Elizabeth and their painful contractions of hope. Like Abraham and Sarah in the Torah, these two were living in barrenness, hoping for new life but getting nothing. Barrenness was the inability to create life and goodness on our own. They lived in despair knowing that nothing truly new can happen in their life. They knew that if something was going to happen it would

The world is broken, frayed at the edges — but the King has come, Anointed by Spirit, with healing in his hands! In his life and ministry, Jesus gathers up all this old, sin-tarnished, shame-tattered, sick and dying world in arms, eventually bearing it all in his body on the cross. He takes it all into the grave with him, walking out 3 days later, alive and new, and pulling the world through with him! And he’s gathering a Family — those who’ve heard the news of restoration and are experiencing its in-breaking, who sit and listen and receive his mission and ministry, who cease their anxious striving and put trust in him and his work. And it is that very Family who then respond as he calls them to follow him and his way, participating in the ministry of Restoration. Jesus calls us to join him in the world as Missionaries, proclaiming and demonstrating the kingdom in the power of the Spirit, and as Neighbors, moving with compassionate care toward the frayed edges of the social fabric.

Every character in Luke 9 seems to have the same basic question: who exactly is Jesus? Is he a revolutionary? Is he the Messiah? A circus act? A reincarnation of Moses or Elijah? But when heaven breaks open and the answer is given, his disciples must reckon with Jesus being much more than they imagined... and much more demanding of them. But they will discover that there is more for them as they go deeper in Christ, and he's inviting his disciples into more NOT so they can do more but so they can receive more.  

The further we go in Luke, the more we see Jesus inviting people in: He is preaching and demonstrating the Kingdom of God, but ultimately he’s looking for people who will really hear him and join him. He isn’t interested in large crowds. He doesn’t want to just upend religion and question the status quo. He wants to build a family — a spiritual family of brothers and sisters — who will be with him and do the work of preaching and demonstrating the Kingdom with him. Jesus has come to reweave the fabric of Shalom, and as individuals experience him, his ministry, and his message, they become participants with him in the work. To be a part of Jesus’ family means we not only listen and receive from him, but that we also get involved and do the work alongside him.

Luke continues his message of crystallizing the kingdom and here he gives some great pictures of those who get the blessing and those who miss out. The key to God’s kingdom has always been faith. I believe who God says He is and that He is going to accomplish the redemptive restoration that He said He would. The opposite of faith is to be offended and make ourselves autonomous from the need for God and a savior. Luke paints this picture well in chapter 7.

Jesus came to fulfill the law and reconstitute Israel. He did this by perfectly obeying the law, pushing up against the extra legalistic weight of their rules, and restoring the spirit behind the letter of the law. Jesus also came to bring peace and life to humanity. He did this by perfectly entering into humanity's suffering, pushing against the rules that keep us bound, and restoring life. In this chapter, we see Jesus restore a man with a withered hand and recognize that this compassionate act was much more than physical healing, it was an act of cosmic restoration. Jesus came to restore and claims that everyone who comes to him, hears his words, and does them will flourish.

Jesus is a conundrum: He simply doesn’t fit our preconceived ideas. In Luke 5, we see 4 vignettes of Jesus’ engagement with people, and through them we see the multifaceted ministry of Jesus. In Jesus, salvation is personal, disrupting our sense of self and rearranging our priorities in life. Salvation is also communal, as it restores us to community, connection, and relationship. Salvation is also vertical, dealing with our sin problem and restoring us to God. And finally, Salvation is outward, always moving through us to the networks and neighborhoods within which we have favor. Jesus does extraordinary things, and when we encounter him absolutely nothing can stay the same!

After 40 days in the wilderness doing battle with the devil, Jesus launches his public ministry. He takes Isaiah 61 as his personal mission statement — “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor” — a remarkable passage to claim as his own! But when Jesus begins to explain what he means by it — that he’s come to bring God’s kingdom to outsiders, religious failures, and spiritual lepers — the whole synagogue of church folks are filled with wrath and attempt to toss him off a cliff. But Jesus has come to bring the kingdom of God to the least, last, and lowest, and he will not be deterred. He passes through the angry mob and gets right to work healing the sick, freeing the captives, and proclaiming the good news of God’s grace. It's an explosive start!