By Jake Wilson

• Taste and See by Jake Wilson (4/20/2012)
  ... filled with disembodied souls all hugging and congratulating each other on their arrival.  This is the place where we walk down streets of gold with our long deceased Aunt Sally and where God sits in a “reaaally big” chair (this according to Colton Burpo, the child author of “Heaven is for Real”).  This week’s lectionary text from Luke challenges our common conceptions of life after death.<!--...
• Wade in the Water by Jake Wilson (2/8/2012)
  ...com/yearb/epiphb6.htm" target="_blank">Mark 1:40-45</a></strong>  Eighteen years ago, the Mississippi Annual Conference planted the next “mega church” in a small but rapidly growing community just outside of the state capital of Jackson.  The congregation started with an average worship attendance of around 90, a number that has dropped slowly but consistently over the years.  When I was appoin...
• From Where Does Our Help Come? by Jake Wilson (11/23/2011)
  ...anderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=48">1 Cor. 1:3-9</a></strong> <strong><a href="http://http/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=48">Mark 13:24-37</a></strong> On the first Sunday of Advent, we enter into a new year with joyful expectation of the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Advent is a time of waiting and longing for God’s presence, which means that Advent is a season well suited t...
• Bread from Heaven by Jake Wilson (9/14/2011)
  ...id=160" target="_blank">Matthew 20.1-16</a> I’m the oldest of four lively children. As an adult I’m very aware of the strain that my siblings and I put on my parents. Raising children does not come with a “How To” guide and the four Wilson children found every kind of way to put parents to the test. Growing up, my father could often be heard to say in both frustration and resignation, “with y...
• Jacob, Despite Jacob by Jake Wilson (7/7/2011)
  ...ep in their hearts, that the great power of preaching lies less in the individual sermon and more in the cumulative effect of preaching week in and week out to the same congregation, to the same community of believers, doubters and seekers…sermons offered Sunday after Sunday, month after month, year after year weave together to have an immeasurable cumulative influence on individuals’ and the cong...
• Preparing for Departure by Jake Wilson (5/19/2011)
  ...are us for the Ascension of the resurrected Christ.<!--more--> On the eve of their last supper together, as Jesus prepared his disciples for his death, the question looming over the young Jesus movement was how to respond to Jesus’ absence.  The disciples had followed Jesus through every small town and village from Samaria to Jerusalem.  But how do you follow a missing Lord?  How could they car...
• Internalizing what Externals Mean by Jake Wilson (3/31/2011)
  ...ye wear helps us not only to see but to be seen.  In this image obsessed culture we are tempted to continually modify the external, often in an effort to avoid the work of tending to the inner life which cannot be so easily dressed up. God, however, is not so easily distracted by the temptation of the external.  This episode in the life of God’s people is a brilliant example of the declaration ...
• A Small Part in a Great Story by Jake Wilson (12/17/2010)
  ...eral times. Indeed, Matthew’s genealogy is constructed to show that the son of Joseph and Mary is also the Messiah. Reading the birth narrative in light of the genealogy helps us remember that what we encounter in this particular birth is the continuing of the story of God’s covenantal love for his chosen people, and indeed all the world. The birth of the Messiah comes as the fulfillment of God’s ...
• All the Saints by Jake Wilson (11/4/2010)
  ...the Church understood the importance of remembering and celebrating those who had departed to be with the Lord. However, over her two thousand year history, the Church has gathered far too many saints to give each their own feast day. Thus, while we still celebrate the most exemplary of the departed, we also set aside All Saints Day to remember the faithfulness of those every day saints who have g...
• Freedom and Obedience by Jake Wilson (6/24/2010)
  ...lesiology, Ethics, and Ecumenism</em> Reinhard Hütter notes that speech about freedom often confuses different types of freedom. The freedom of autonomy differs from political freedom which differs still from Christian freedom. Hütter structures his book around three different modes of being free: free to be Church, free to live with God, and free to speak ecumenically. This week, as the congre...
• Struck Blind on the Damascus Road by Jake Wilson (4/16/2010)
  ... transformation from a persecutor of the Lord to an Apostle continues to serve as a word of hope to the sin soaked conscience of those who feel that truly their failings are too great to be forgiven.  The story of Saul’s conversion gives narrative power to the concept of being “born again” from John 3 or becoming a “new creation” from 2 Corinthians 5. The power of this experience transformed th...
• On Becoming a Seraph by Jake Wilson (2/2/2010)
  ...h is gifted with a vision of God in the Temple. The vision offers relatively few details of God’s appearance. All we are told is that the Lord was sitting on a throne, high and lofty and that the hem of his robe filed the Temple. The understated nature of this vision of God (compared to Revelation 1:12-16 for example), displays the challenge of describing God’s ineffable majesty. Where Isaiah ...