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What sense of purpose motivates you in life? Who or what is your life truly about? AI is already challenging the answers to these questions and will likely make answering them harder in the future. This Sunday, we turn to an ancient text narrating the death of a great leader for hope, inspiration, and courage for the future. The final sermon in the series–Blurred Lines

Every day, the line between what is AI and what is human grows blurrier. Machines can now write, create, reason, imitate, and perform tasks once thought to be uniquely ours. If AI is better than we are at tasks like solving complex math problems and decoding DNA, what makes us human? Scripture tells us from the beginning that we are created in the image of God. What if that image is not primarily about what we can do but about who we are called to become? What if our humanity is found less in what we think we are and more in what God is calling us to be? In Matthew 22, Jesus points to a coin and asks, “Whose image is this?” That question may say more about our lives in the age of AI than we first imagine. Part four of the series Blurred Lines.

What do you do with the sense of longing for connection with a God you cannot see? Humans have wrestled with these questions throughout time and Scripture, relying on rituals, philosophy, and even creating golden statues of man and beast to stand in for an absent God. AI, an "all-knowing," "ever-present," "creator," could be another "god" to fill the absence and relieve our anxiety. That’s a tempting offer. But what if the felt absence of God is a defining mark of the relationship between humanity and God that cannot be solved, but only experienced? What if we live at the cross-section of the spiritual and the physical and must find the paths where they meet within us, making peace with the contradictions along the way? Part three in the series Blurred Lines.

How do you determine right from wrong? Sometimes the line between the two gets blurry. Enter human ethics. Some of the most foundational ethics for our country come from the Ten Commandments (our scripture for this sermon) and the rest of Christian scripture. How can this spiritual tradition of striving for moral clarity help us sort through right and wrong in a world of deep fakes, AI hallucinations and those who would have us believe anything if it means they get away with everything? Join us as we tackle ethics in the age of AI in part two of the series, Blurred Lines.

Has anyone told you they understand something you are sharing before you’ve given them enough information? What about comparing your experience to one of theirs that seems unrelated? To have information is not the same thing as understanding. In Matthew 21, Jesus connects true understanding with embodied action. As we begin our new sermon series, we will explore how AI “knows” many things but cannot actually understand us or the human experience, and why it is so important for each of us and for the whole of human flourishing to live out that difference with clarity.

Happy Birthday, Christ City! Celebrating birthdays is so fun because everyone has one, so everyone gets celebrated. It’s kind of like grace. Grace is available to everyone, so we all get to celebrate it. Still, sometimes we think we are more deserving of grace than others. Isn’t that ironic? Let’s celebrate together that grace, just like a birthday, is for everyone as we enter our 16th year as a church.

How often do you think about the patterns and paths of your life that are shaping you? Many factors shape us that we don’t choose—the family we were born into, the time period we live in, and the influences of our community and culture. Yet, there are many things we participate in that are either forming us into people of spiritual abundance or spiritual bankruptcy. Join us as we reflect on the choices we are already making that, over time, can help form us into the likeness of Christ. Here we can find encouragement and faith to participate fully, knowing that what we continue to give ourselves to shapes us in powerful ways.

Many people have plans and purposes for our lives. They want us to fit into the cogs of their machines of productivity and profit in the name of progress and efficiency. Yet we are all responsible for the lives we are creating through the choices we make every day. Within a supportive community, we can begin to discover that we too have ideas, intentions, and purposes for our lives—and that learning to see through the eyes of Jesus can shape and clarify them while empowering us to pursue them. Without this, we may spend our lives fulfilling others’ desires and never discover the satisfaction of creating with a divinely sustained purpose.

Sometimes we need a reminder of why life is worth living; why we get up in the morning, why we raise our kids and do our work, why the fight for mercy and justice is worth it. Could it be because this world is full of wonder, and the God who created it wants us to experience it? The way of Jesus can be a path to wonder. Let's travel it together. This is the fifth sermon in the series, The High Ground.

Do you serve others? If so, what sustains you? When we serve from only a sense of duty and obligation, we will not find the joy, sustenance, and nurturing we were created to experience. Jesus offers us a clue to another way in the “greatest commandment” (he can’t help but share two): Love God with all of yourself and love your neighbor as yourself. What if our service is meant to be sustained by a full heart? Join us for the fourth sermon in The High Ground as we take a higher view of what it means to serve and why we need our hearts to do it well.

Is sacrifice an important part of your life? When Jesus describes what it means to follow him in Matthew 16, he speaks plainly about the necessity of sacrifice: giving up something you would like to keep in order to gain something greater. He says we can gain the whole world and still lose our soul if we are unwilling to deny ourselves.For some of us, these words carry painful baggage. We have experienced Christian teaching that twisted “deny yourself” into a justification for neglecting yourself, ignoring your needs, or enduring manipulation and abuse.Yet, the challenge remains: sacrifice is central to an abundant, soulful life and a necessary part of following Jesus.Join us for the third sermon in The High Ground, as we explore what it means to follow Jesus by giving up what we cannot keep to gain what we will never lose.

How do we come to know an infinite God? Are facts and ideas enough to satisfy our souls, or is knowing God more like knowing a friend? John's Gospel tells us the divine became flesh in Jesus. Maybe God is still revealed in tangible ways today through Scripture, around a table of fellowship, in ordinary moments, and even in times of great difficulty. Join us for Part Two of The High Ground sermon series as we step back to discover what it means to become A Place to Know God.

In the fast-moving unpredictability of the world, how do you make room to dream? To plan? To create goals for the future? It starts with finding higher ground. When everything feels uncertain, finding higher ground isn't about escaping the world. It's about gaining perspective so we can see clearly enough to know where to go next.

We look around us today and see a world that is in pain. What is God’s response to this pain, and more important, what is God’s plan? When we’re uncertain of these answers it’s easy to want to give up. This Sunday morning we will spend some time in the eighth chapter of Romans, and we will seek to find some encouragement to have hope and to press on in the work that God has called us to.

It can be tempting to leave, move, or abruptly change direction when we find ourselves sharing a community, city, workplace or family with people who don't behave the way we think they should. After all, they are "toxic" right? Jesus tells a parable that challenges this way of thinking and implies that, like the wheat in the story, putting down roots and growing amid adversity is often part of how we mature. Join us this Sunday for an exploration of staying present amid temporary pain to cultivate resilience, wisdom, and fruitfulness "...and maybe even discover that we are not nearly as good at telling wheat from weeds as we think we are."