Sermon

Lead pastor on Hebrews 10:33-35. To face the giants of our lives — public reproach, the seizure of our property, persecution — the believer holds fast to confidence in the One whose reward awaits. The secret is not strength, but endurance rooted in trust.

Lau Kim-ling on Genesis 9:8-17 — the Noahide covenant marked by the rainbow. ‘Restorative #MeToo’: in the wound of sexual harassment and power-abuse, restorative justice is not cheap forgiveness but the perpetrator, the survivor, and the community entering together the long process of truth and reconciliation.

Lead pastor on Matthew 26:1-5: ‘Jesus’s New Year.’ While religious leaders plotted his death, Jesus’s ‘new year’ was the road toward the cross. How do we view our own life-thresholds and turning points? Real new life often begins from letting go and taking up the burden.

Jason Ho on Mark 1:12-15 and 3:1-6 — Jesus’s wilderness of temptation interwoven with the synagogue where he heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath. How may we still blossom nakedly, authentically before the Lord in the wildernesses of our own lives?

Dr. Chen Wen-shan, Assistant Professor at the Department of Religion at Yu Shan Theological Seminary (Taiwan), visits BMCC to speak on Matthew 15:21-38 — Jesus and the Canaanite woman. Dr. Chen has been a leading scholar of feminist theology, disability theology, restorative justice, and the religious right in Taiwan. She was a founding signatory of Taiwan’s interfaith marriage-equality petition and wrote the preface to Rev. Ngeo Boon Lin’s books.

Lead pastor on Luke 17:21 — ‘the Kingdom of God is within you.’ The Kingdom does not arrive with observable spectacle; it is already breaking out among us, in the lives that bear love and justice. To live in the Kingdom is to live as if it is true now.

Lead pastor on Matthew 21:21. Faith that moves mountains is not intellectual assent — it is the trust of the heart. The thinking that questions and doubts is good for us, but it is the trusting heart that gives faith its life.

Rev. Ngeo Boon Lin on Luke 17:11-19 — the ten lepers, one of whom returned to give thanks. To begin the year with gratitude is to begin life with gratitude. Of those who receive grace, only one in ten returns to thank — but that one is the one who lives transformed.

Jason Ho on Mark 1:1 — ‘the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.’ To imitate Jesus is to begin as he did — in the wilderness, baptised by John, called Beloved by the Father, sent into the world.

New Year’s Eve 2017. Lead pastor on 1 Peter 2:2-7 — Christ the living stone, rejected by men but chosen and precious to God. Built up on him, we too are living stones, a spiritual house, offering spiritual sacrifices.