Sermons by Bob Rhodes
Upside Down
This is the final week of our Wesleyan Vile-tality series. Across the series we’ve looked at what changes when we stop managing how our faith looks to other people, the same freedom John Wesley found when he left the pulpit to preach in open fields among the people the respectable church had ignored. This week explores the challenges of a focus on appearance, and what might be possible when we let that focus go. Scripture: 2 Samuel 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42…
How Is It with Your Soul?
We continue our “Wesleyan Vile-tality” series, and have followed the history of the people called Methodist. As the movement they built grew into an institution, more than once, the people lost their nerve. This week we turn to the ones who worked prophetically from within, refusing to leave and refusing to behave. They formed communities of accountability and care, and kept asking one plain and profound question: How is it with your soul? Scripture: Jeremiah 20:7-13 (NRSVue), Matthew 10:24-39 (CEB)
The Respectable Church
Our Wesleyan Vile-tality series has traced the people called Methodist from their polished, respectable later years back toward the bold, boundary-crossing faith of their beginnings. This week we read from the ancient prophets who challenged the people who loved their worship more than action. When our singing and our justice drift apart, how does God respond? What does God call us to do? This week we consider what happens when churches prize reputation over neighbors, and what it takes for…
Open Fields
This week our Wesleyan Vile-tality series follows the early Methodist movement out of the church and into the open, where Wesley and the first Methodists went to the imprisoned, the laborers, and the outcasts. We see the same pattern in two scriptural examples: Abram, told to leave his country and his father’s house for a land God will show him only as he goes, and Matthew, called up from his tax booth to follow and to make room at his…
The Prisoner’s Friends
As we continue “Wesleyan Vile-tality,” we go back to the years before Bristol, when John Wesley and a small group of Oxford students spent their time among prisoners the rest of the city preferred to forget. This week explores what it means to show up for someone the world has written off, why trust between unequal people requires more than credentials, and how the very word “Methodist” was born from solidarity with the forgotten. Luke 4 and Hebrews 13 frame…
More Vile
This week launches a new six-week series inspired by Dr. Ashley Boggan’s book “Wesleyan Vile-tality.” In 1739, John Wesley decided to “submit to be more vile” and preach in Bristol’s open fields to people the established church had ignored. We begin this series on Pentecost with two passages about the Holy Spirit showing up among people no one authorized and in places no one expected. What happens when God’s Spirit refuses to stay where we put it? Scripture: Acts 2:1-21…
Emulate Christ
This week we close our post-Easter series Reckless Love with a look at what it means to follow Jesus’ example with our whole lives. In John 13, Jesus kneels before his disciples and washes their feet. In Matthew 25, he identifies himself with the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned. This week, we consider these core questions that undergird the entire series: whose examples are we following, and what does it look like to follow them with our…
Value the Vulnerable
As we near the end of our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we arrive at a question that has been building for weeks: what do we do with the people we’d rather avoid? This week, we are called to go further, toward the people our communities have written off. What happens when Jesus goes to the person everyone else has given up on raises questions about who we consider worth our time, our attention, and our love. Discover what it means…
Openhearted Love
As we continue our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we turn to John 4, where Jesus walks his disciples straight through Samaria and sits down at a well with a woman no one expected him to speak to. This week explores what it means to go where your assumptions tell you not to go, and to stay long enough to be changed. Discover what openhearted love looks like when reconciliation moves from theology to practice. Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:18-21; John 4:4-30,…
Lavish Love
As we continue our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we turn to what Psalm 103 and Jesus have to say about generosity. The psalmist remembers a God who forgives, heals, redeems, and crowns with steadfast love. Jesus tells his disciples to love their enemies, give without expecting anything back, and be merciful as God is merciful. This goes well past the point where most of us would stop. Bishop Tom Berlin calls it “lavish love,” and this week we ask what…
Expand the Circle
As we continue our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we turn to a question Jesus keeps raising: who exactly is our neighbor? We follow Jesus from the shores of Gennesaret to the home of a tax collector, and the pattern of who he chooses to spend time with raises an uncomfortable question. What does it look like to follow Jesus into relationship with people we would not have chosen? What does it require, and what does it make possible? Scripture: Luke…
Begin With Love
As we begin our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we open with a question at the heart of the Judeo-Christian faith: of all the commandments, which one comes first? This week explores what it means to take Jesus’ answer seriously — loving God and loving your neighbor as inseparable practices. Reading from Mark 12 and Galatians 5, we consider what changes when we choose to begin every day, every conversation, and every decision with love. Scripture: Mark 12:28-34, Galatians 5:16-26 (NRSVUE)