Let us begin with a man who truly meant what he said. Peter the Apostle was not speaking lightly when he told Jesus that he would follow Him even to death. There was nothing hollow in those words. They did not come from pride alone, nor from a desire to impress, but from a deep and settled conviction. Peter had walked with Jesus, seen what others had not seen, and come to a certainty that shaped his whole being. When he said he would follow, he spoke from that certainty.
And yet, in the same night, that same man would say, “I do not know Him.”
We have built an entire theology on a false premise — the premise that God is somewhere else.
We imagine Him distant. Watching. Waiting. Deciding whether to intervene. We assume that if we cry louder, sacrifice harder, intensify enough — perhaps He will step in.
But what if that assumption is the very root of our misery?
What if God was never absent?
The Lie of Escalation
Human beings believe that suffering can be solved by multiplying it.
Let me tell you a story you already know—but maybe not in this way.
The people of Israel had been freed from slavery. They had crossed the sea. They had seen miracles. And then Moses went up the mountain—and did not come back.
Days passed. Then weeks.
And the people became afraid.
Not just afraid of dying in the desert, but afraid that God Himself had gone silent.
And when God feels absent, people don’t usually stop believing. They start doing.
They say, “We must act. We must fix this. We must help God along.”
Jesus once warned us very clearly: “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the pagans do, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” And yet, in another place, he tells us to pray persistently — to knock, to ask, to seek, and not to give up.
When Jesus says, “Where the carcass is, there the vultures gather,” it sounds strange to modern ears. It sounds dark, even cruel. Many people hear it as a gloomy proverb about death being inevitable, or as a poetic way of saying that bad things attract bad things. But Jesus is not being poetic here, and he is not offering a riddle to be admired. He is warning people in the clearest language he can use.
Jesus is not talking about birds. He is talking about responsibility.
Brothers and sisters, when we hear the word hospitality, most of us think immediately of food, of preparation, of effort, of making people comfortable. We imagine a busy kitchen, a clean table, and the anxiety of wanting everything to be just right. Hospitality, in our minds, is something we do with our hands. But in the world of Jesus, hospitality had a deeper order, a kind of hidden hierarchy—and if we miss it, we miss what Jesus is really praising and correcting in some of the most famous Gospel scenes.
Some Gospel stories are so familiar that they stop speaking to us—not because they are shallow, but because we rush past them with answers already prepared.
The story of Jesus walking on the water is one of those.
So today, I invite you to do something difficult but freeing: forget what you think this story must be about, and let it tell you what it is actually saying.
When we hear the story of the wise men, we often imagine a peaceful scene: a star, gifts, and a baby. But Matthew’s story is not mainly about beauty—it is about wisdom. And wisdom, in the Bible, is not about knowing many things. It is about knowing when to move.
whenever Jesus speaks, two streams of grace flow from His words. First, there is His deep compassion for the sinner—not a soft indulgence, but a fierce concern that we not harm ourselves. And second, there is His firm challenge to the self-righteous—those parts of our hearts that imagine we can sit in the judge’s seat, as though purity were our possession and mercy our optional gift.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Jesus’ teaching on adultery and divorce.
Matthew 5:17 – “I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.”
Brothers and sisters,
today we hear Jesus say something that is easy to read quickly but hard to fully appreciate. He says: “Do not think I came to abolish the Law. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.” We often hear sermons about what “fulfill” means. People debate whether Jesus made the Law stricter, or softer, or deeper. But today, I want us to ask a more basic question. A question almost no one asks, but which the passage itself demands.
Beloved, today we look at a familiar scene in the Gospels—Jesus sitting at a table surrounded by tax collectors and sinners, while the Pharisees stand outside asking, “Why does your Teacher eat with such people?” And then, almost immediately after, another question arises: “Why don’t Your disciples fast like we and the Pharisees do?”
when Jesus looked at that small band of disciples on the hillside and said, “You are the salt of the earth,” He was not paying them a compliment. He was revealing a mystery: that the endurance of the world depends upon the suffering love of the righteous.
today we come to one of the most misunderstood passages in the entire Sermon on the Mount—Jesus’ words about lust, adultery, and cutting off our right hand or tearing out our right eye (Matthew 5:27–30). For generations people have come to these verses with fear or guilt, believing Jesus was describing a battle against sexual temptation so difficult that only self-mutilation would solve it.
Today we listen to one of the most challenging moments in the Gospel. A moment when Jesus speaks words that sound hard, but only because they reveal the truth about the path of discipleship.
We have been taught—almost instinctively—that the Christian life is a journey of spiritual growth. We imagine ourselves climbing: from weakness to strength, from ignorance to insight, from dependence to competence. We speak of becoming “stronger believers,” “mature Christians,” “spiritually rich.” We assume that God works more freely in those who have advanced further along this path.
And yet, Jesus says something that stops this entire picture in its tracks:
Brothers and sisters, today we look at one of Jesus’ most challenging and most misunderstood teachings. It comes from Matthew 5:22, where Jesus says that anger, insults, and certain harsh words can bring a person under judgment—even leading to what He calls “the fire of Gehenna.” Many people hear this and panic: “Does this mean if I got angry once, I’m doomed?” Or, “If I ever said something foolish in frustration, am I condemned?”
Brothers and sisters, today I want to take you into the wilderness with Jesus.
Not the wilderness of sand and stones only, but the wilderness every one of us walks through— the places in life where we are tired, hungry, exhausted, lonely, and unsure.
And I want to show you something surprising: the temptations of Jesus are directly connected with the prayer Jesus taught us— the Lord’s Prayer.
When He teaches us to pray, He is really teaching us how He Himself won the battle in the wilderness.
today I want to invite you to look again at something many of us think we already understand: baptism. We often imagine it as a ritual washing, a cleansing from dirt, or perhaps a symbolic bath meant to remove past mistakes. But if we look closely at the story of John the Baptist, and the words of Jesus, we see something deeper, something far more personal, and something that speaks directly to the condition of the human heart.
today we come to a verse in the Gospel that, at first hearing, can sound frightening. It is Matthew 18:6, where Jesus speaks of a millstone tied around a person’s neck and being thrown into the sea.
For many people this verse has caused fear or confusion. Some have heard it as a threat. Some imagine Jesus shouting, or cursing, or pointing a finger with righteous rage.
today I want to speak to you about something that lies at the very heart of the Scriptures—God’s voice.
We hear the words:
“Worship Me! Obey Me! I am the only God!”
And many people read these words and imagine a God who is hungry for tribute, a God who sits on a throne and demands recognition, a God who watches carefully to see who bends the knee.
But, my friends, that is not the heart of the Father.
Brothers and sisters, today we look at a moment in the Gospel that many of us think we understand—the moment Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, while the crowds wave palm branches and shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is the King!”
We call it the Triumphal Entry. But if you look closely at the story, you discover something surprising:
It wasn’t triumphal for Jesus at all. It was heartbreaking.
let us turn our hearts today to the scene at Golgotha. Three crosses stand on a hill—three condemned men, three dying breaths, three stories that touch eternity.
We know one of them: our Lord Jesus Christ. But on His right and on His left hang two men the Gospels call lēstai—a Greek word often translated “thieves.”
But in those days, Rome did not crucify pickpockets. Rome crucified rebels. Rome crucified those who dared resist its empire. Rome crucified men caught up in the desperate struggle for the soul of Israel.
today I want to speak about something very simple, yet very deep. It is about Jesus Christ — and the surprising way He shows us the heart of God.
When most people think of Jesus, they imagine a strong leader, a great teacher, a wise adult who had everything under control. But if we read the Gospels carefully, we discover something beautiful and unexpected:
Jesus lived with the heart of a child.
Not childish… not immature… but child-like: pure, honest, trusting, open, and completely joined to His Father in heaven.
today I want to talk about something simple, something beautiful, and something deeply true about God. Something many of us have never thought about, but which sits quietly behind every promise Jesus ever made.
Here it is:
God has more ways to give life than the world has ways to take it.
And because of that, death is not the end, sickness is not the end, mistakes are not the end, and tragedy is not the end.
today I want to speak to you about something both simple and astonishing: the freedom Jesus gives us when we stop demanding that this earthly life carry a meaning it was never designed to hold.
We human beings are obsessed with the question:
“What is the meaning of life?”
But perhaps the very asking of it reveals that we already feel the answer slipping: there is none—not here, not in this world of dust and cycles.
“Truly I tell you, unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” — Matthew 18:3
Brothers and sisters,
We speak often of Heaven as though it were a distant land, a hidden city of gold, or a realm of the perfected wise. Yet Jesus tells us plainly that it belongs not to the wise but to the little ones. The gates are low, and only the childlike may pass through without stooping.
Beloved, when the disciples watched their Lord being taken from their sight, they stood still — eyes fixed on the heavens. They thought Heaven must be somewhere above, beyond the clouds. But two messengers appeared and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into Heaven?”
Beloved, let us look around our world — weary, striving, endlessly spinning its web of labor — and recognize the ancient pattern that traps the soul. Scarcity and toil are twins. Where one appears, the other follows. Together they forge the bars of Hell.
In Greek, skótos means darkness — the absence of light, the scarcity of illumination. In the same tongue, ponērós, “evil,” is born from pónos, “toil” and “burden.” The message could not be clearer: to live apart from the divine light is to enter a life of endless labor.