Main Themes: The corrupting danger of power, David’s abuse of Bathsheba and Uriah, truth-telling and accountability, complicity and self-examination, sin and sainthood, political participation, using our voices, and seeking God’s kingdom of justice and mercy.

Discussion Questions:

1. When Power Distorts

• Pastor Mark describes how David’s long experience of power and praise changed his understanding of himself and his relationship with God. What warning does David’s story offer anyone who holds authority, influence, or privilege?
• Where have you seen power create distance between what a person knows is right and what that person permits themselves to do?

2. Hearing “You Are the Man”

• David recognizes the injustice in Nathan’s story before he recognizes himself within it. Why is wrongdoing often easier to identify in the abstract—or in someone else—than in our own conduct?
• What kinds of stories, relationships, or practices can help us see truths about ourselves that we might otherwise avoid?

3. Sinners and Saints

• Pastor Mark says, “We are all David. We are not all Bathsheba and Nathan.” What does this claim ask us to acknowledge about our own capacity for harm, silence, or complicity?
• How does the idea that each of us is both sinner and saint challenge the temptation to divide the world neatly into good people and bad people?

4. Using Our Small Voices

• Nathan risked speaking truth to a powerful king, and Bathsheba named the consequences of what David had done. What makes it difficult to speak when power is being abused?
• Pastor Mark urges us to use our voices through political engagement while remembering that no candidate is a demigod. What might faithful, thoughtful participation look like without turning politics into another form of worship?

5. Applying the Sermon

• Pastor Mark invites us to “vote every day” with our time, talent, and treasure for the kind of world we want. What is one everyday choice through which you can support justice, mercy, accountability, or human dignity this week?
• Where might your small voice be needed right now—to tell the truth in love, support someone who has been silenced, or call power back to accountability?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Your Small Voice appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Main Themes: Remembering God’s faithfulness, gratitude for those who came before us, honest truth-telling about the past, repentance and learning, choosing blessing over conquest, existence as a gift, suffering and compassion, and practicing gratitude.

Discussion Questions

1. Remembering How We Got Here

• Pastor Mark warns against imagining that we arrived where we are entirely through our own goodness, sacrifice, or hard work. Who helped make your life, faith, or opportunities possible?
• What changes when we understand our lives as gifts shaped by God’s faithfulness, other people’s sacrifices, and circumstances we did not create for ourselves?

2. Remembering with Honesty

• The sermon says anniversaries and milestones are occasions not only for celebration but also for truth-telling. Why can it be difficult for individuals, churches, or nations to hold gratitude and repentance together?
• What part of your personal or communal history needs to be remembered more honestly so that its lessons are not lost or repeated?

3. Choosing Between Conquest and Blessing

• Pastor Mark says the text demands that we choose between a God of conquest and violence and a God who intends to bring blessing to the entire world. How does that choice affect the way we read Joshua’s story?
• Where do you see faith being used to justify power, exclusion, or nationalism today? What would it look like instead to bear God’s blessing to the whole world?

4. Gratitude in the Midst of Suffering

• The sermon insists that gratitude does not require us to gloss over pain or pretend to be glad for everything that has happened. How is this understanding of gratitude different from forced positivity?
• Pastor Mark compares gratitude to a deep well that we dig through practice. What practices have helped you find something life-giving when health, money, work, grief, or other burdens feel overwhelming?

5. Applying the Sermon

• Joshua says, “Choose this day.” What is one specific way you can choose gratitude this week while remaining honest about something difficult?
• How might you honor the blessings you have received by passing them on—through compassion, truth-telling, repair, generosity, or care for someone who comes after you?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Choose This Day appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Main Themes: God’s call into an unknown future; trust in God’s providential love; blessing that flows through us; service rather than prosperity; joining what God is already doing.

Discussion Questions

1.   Leaving What Is Familiar

• God asks Abram and Sarai to leave the familiar without giving them a detailed destination. What makes that kind of trust difficult?
• When have you sensed that faith was asking you to move beyond what felt comfortable or predictable?

2.  Trusting the River of God’s Love

• Richard Rohr describes faith as trusting the ‘big river of God’s providential love.’ What does that image suggest to you about God’s presence and care?
• When you feel anxious or hurt, are you more likely to trust the flow or try to create and control your own river? What helps you return to trust?

3.  Blessing That Flows Through Us

• Pastor Mark says, ‘The call of God is not so much to be blessed as it is to be a blessing.’ How does that challenge common ideas about success, favor, or prosperity?
• What gifts, experiences, relationships, or resources have been entrusted to you that could become a blessing to someone else?

4.  Joining What God Is Already Doing

• What is the difference between asking God to bless our plans and looking for what God is already doing?
• Where do you see love, justice, healing, or hospitality already taking shape in your community, and how might you join that work?

5.   Applying the Sermon

• Who might need ‘just what you can do’ this week, and what is one concrete way you could reach out?
• What comfortable boundary could you cross – individually or with RPPC – in order to serve and become a blessing?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: What Is Already Blessed? appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Main Themes: Second chances as grace, forgiveness and repair, faith as personal but never private, love of God and neighbor, Noah’s flood as re-creation, transformation, gratitude and beginning again.

Discussion Questions:

1. Second Chances as Grace

• Pastor Mark calls second chances “one of the purest forms of grace.” What makes a true second chance a gift rather than something we can earn or expect?
• When has receiving an unexpected second chance changed the way you understood yourself, another person or God?

2. Forgiveness, Repair and the Victim

• How does the sermon distinguish among apology, making amends, participating in repair and receiving forgiveness? Why do those distinctions matter?
• What can happen when someone seeks God’s forgiveness while ignoring the person or community harmed by their actions?

3. Faith Is Personal, but Never Private

• What does Pastor Mark mean when he says, “Faith is always personal, but never private”? How does Jesus’ command to love both God and neighbor support that claim?
• Brian McLaren imagines organized religion directing its people and resources toward needs that political and economic systems avoid. Where might the church be called to act for the world’s flourishing today?

4. Flood, Re-Creation and Transformation

• How does reading Noah’s flood as a story of re-creation and second chances change—or complicate—your understanding of this difficult passage?
• The sermon describes transformation as something that happens while disciples are in motion—questioning, misunderstanding and encountering different views. How have you been changed along the way rather than all at once?

5. Applying the Sermon

• Where do you need the grace to learn from your past without being bound by it? What might beginning again look like in that part of your life?
• What concrete act of love, repair, service or gratitude can you undertake this week as a recipient of God’s grace?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Begin Again: Flood and Promise, Part I appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions:

1. Wrestling with a Difficult Story

• What troubles or surprises you about Jesus’ initial response to the Canaanite woman? Why is it important not to avoid the difficult parts of this story?
• How might wrestling honestly with a troubling passage deepen our faith rather than weaken it?

2. The Persistence of the Canaanite Woman

• What do you notice about the woman’s courage and persistence as she continues advocating for her daughter?
• Pastor Mark suggests that this woman challenges Jesus and helps reveal the expansive reach of God’s love. What does that possibility invite you to consider about how God works through human encounters?

3. The Lines and Barriers We Create

• Pastor Mark says, “Every time we draw a line, every time we put up a wall or a barrier, every time we exclude somebody, Jesus isn’t with us. He’s with them.” How does this challenge the ways individuals, churches, and communities decide who belongs?
• What lines, walls, prejudices, or assumptions might keep us from recognizing Jesus among people we have placed on the “other side”?

4. The God We Believe In

• What does the pastor’s question, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in,” help us uncover about the images of God we may have inherited or created?
• How can we distinguish between the God revealed through persistent love and a god shaped primarily by our own fears, preferences, or prejudices?

5. Applying the Sermon

• Where might God be challenging you “in love, through love, and for love” right now?
• What is one line you can cross, barrier you can question, or person you can see differently this week as you trust the God who never stops persistently pursuing us in love?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Disputing with God: Persistence appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions:

1. Reading Genesis 18 in Context:
   ● The sermon describes Genesis 18 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as one of the most misunderstood passages in the Bible. What interpretations of this story have you heard before?
   ● How does reading the story through the lens of hospitality, violence, and the treatment of strangers change the way you understand it?
2. Practicing Hospitality:
   ● The sermon emphasizes that hospitality to strangers is a biblical mandate. Why do you think Scripture returns to this theme so often?
   ● Where do you see opportunities for RPPC to practice deeper hospitality in our church, neighborhood, and wider community?
3. Scripture, Love, and Harm:
   ● Pastor Mark challenges interpretations of this passage that have been used to shame or exclude LGBTQIA+ people. How can communities of faith repair harm caused by harmful readings of Scripture?
   ● Augustine wrote that if our interpretation of Scripture does not lead us to love God and neighbor more, we have not understood it correctly. How might this guide the way we read difficult biblical passages?
4. God’s Covenant and Mercy:
   ● The sermon suggests that Genesis 18 shows God being held accountable to the covenant God has made with humanity. What does that image of God stir up for you?
   ● Abraham speaks honestly with God, asking whether the righteous should be swept away with the wicked. What does this conversation teach us about prayer, courage, and trust?
5. Justice, Mercy, and Our Intertwined Lives:
   ● The sermon raises a hard question: How do justice and mercy relate to one another? Where do you feel that tension in your own life or in the world around us?
   ● Pastor Mark asks how we think about the ways our fates are “inextricably tied.” What does that mean for how we live as neighbors, citizens, and people of faith?
6. Faith That Wrestles:
   ● The sermon says faith is not a static statement of beliefs, but a living, evolving relationship with God and one another. How has your understanding of God changed over time?
   ● Have you ever felt like you needed permission to question or wrestle with your image of God? What helps make a faith community safe for honest questions?
7. Applying the Sermon:
   ● What is one way you can practice hospitality to someone who feels like an outsider this week?
   ● How can RPPC continue to be a place where all are welcome, where questions are honored, and where love of God and neighbor shapes how we read Scripture?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Disputing with God: Advocating for others appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions: 

1. Paying Attention to the Overlooked
   o In Acts 16, the enslaved girl speaks the truth about Paul and Silas, yet her story quickly disappears from the narrative. What do you notice about her role in the passage?
   o Who are the people in our communities, churches, workplaces, or families whose stories are too easily overlooked?

2. Paul, Silas, and Imperfect Faithfulness
   o The sermon names both Paul’s faithfulness in prison and his failure to fully attend to the enslaved girl. How does this more complicated picture of Paul help you think about your own faith?
   o Why is it important to tell the truth about both the good and the harmful parts of our actions, even when our intentions are faithful?

3. Liberation and Responsibility
   o Paul and Silas are freed from prison, but they do not run away. Instead, they stay and care for the jailer. What does this teach us about liberation, compassion, and responsibility?
   o Where might God be calling you to stay present with someone who is afraid, ashamed, or trapped in a harmful system?

4. Seeing Others as God Sees Them
   o Pastor Mark reminds us that “no one is unimportant in God’s eyes. No one is overlooked. No one is unloved.” How does this challenge the way we see others?
   o Isaiah’s words, “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you,” are spoken over all people. What changes when we begin from that truth?

5. Applying the Sermon
   o This week, how can you make room for someone else’s story, especially someone whose voice is often dismissed or minimized?
   o As a church pursuing justice, practicing hospitality, and engaging curious faith, how can RPPC better notice, honor, and protect those who are too often pushed to the margins?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: What Is Her Story? appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions:

1. Jesus’ Disruption at the Temple:

• What surprised or challenged you about Jesus’ actions in the temple?
• How do you interpret Jesus’ anger—not as a loss of control, but as an act of holy disruption for justice?
• Have you ever felt compelled to “flip a table” for the sake of righteousness?

2. Rethinking Holiness and Worship:

• Pastor Mark emphasized that holiness is not confined to church buildings. How do you experience God’s presence in everyday places and relationships?
• What systems or attitudes might need to be disrupted in our own faith communities for true worship to occur?

3. Sacred Value and Community:

• How does the Day of Jubilee—where debts are forgiven and relationships restored—challenge our cultural norms about worth and success?
• What would it look like for our church to embody Jubilee today?

4. Resurrection and Resistance:

• Jesus says, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days.” How does resurrection change the way we respond to injustice and suffering in the world?
• What small acts of love and courage have you witnessed that reflect resurrection hope?

5. Applying the Sermon:

• How can we, like Renee Good, use our lives as witnesses for compassion and justice—even when it is risky or costly?
• What is one tangible way you can “love more fiercely” this week?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Come and See: Holy Trouble appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.