Sermon--To Believe or to Enact?

Here's a sermon for the Sermon on the Mount. Below you'll find links to text and audio, but first you might want to pray the Prayer of Invocation.

Speak to us, Lord, in whom we live and move and have our being. Speak to us, that we may speak by your authority, in your truth, and of your love, which sustains and redeems. 

Speak to us, Lord, that we may live amidst the kingdom even now—

this that the prophets proclaimed and Christ preached and the Church has confessed as its hope, purpose, and joy. 

Speak to us of the Living Word, that this might guide our living in ever new times; that though circumstances change, your truth remains; that though new challenges ever arise, your Way Eternal is open to us as of old.

Speak to us of what abides as true, yet not so we can posses the truth but so we be possessed by it, living by its claim on us, conducting ourselves in its light, and testing what history foists on us so to know how rightly to respond.

Speak to us, Lord, of justice and mercy, of kindness and love, of sin that divides and reconciliation that prevails: impress upon our hearts your word, that we might be humble and hopeful in our walk with you.

Speak to us in the words that we speak to one another, in the words of our worship this evening, and in the sighs within us that are too deep for words. 

We pray all this and more in your Living Word, Christ and him crucified, which is foolishness to some and a stumbling block to others, but to us is the way by which we are to live so to be made whole. Only a suffering God can help; only a self-giving Spirit can save. We rejoice that in Christ you open for us that way to help, wholeness, and salvation. Amen.

Text.

Audio.