Podcast

We continue the conversation around love and sin this morning. Jordan shares with us a thought from George Herbert—"There are two vast, spacious things: sin and love." These two forces, while not equals, exist in a zero-sum tension. Where one grows, the other recedes. If one flourishes, the other subsides.

This morning we pick right back up in Genesis 3, continuing to talk about the fall and how the fracturing fault of sin distorts what God created as good. And yet, what we know to be true, is this is not the end of the Story. We're introduced to an old church liturgy that says, "O happy fault, that earned for us so glorious a Redeemer. Fortunate Fall, that gained for us so great a Redeemer!"

In Jordan’s sermon, adapted from a message by Rob Bell, he points to the trouble with jumping straight to the problem of sin as introduced in Genesis 3. When we pass over “God saw that it was good,” we’re left with a story chiefly about sin and a God who exists only to solve it. This morning's message is on reminding us to begin with "the beginning," God made all things good.

We step into God’s Story, beginning with the beginning and imagining the end. As we chart the Creator’s work from Genesis to Revelation, we see images of God’s intent for the renewal of our world and lives.

Jordan introduces the direction The Parish will head for the next year as we learn about and participate in A Big Enough Story.