Manhattan Church of Christ Podcast

In this message, Associate Minister Carl Garrison unpacks the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15) not as a comfortable story about a wayward child coming home, but as a scandalous portrait of a father who runs, bears public shame to reach his son, and leaves his own celebration to plead with his resentful older brother as well—challenging us to ask whether our commitment to fairness has quietly...

In a sermon on Acts 16:12-34, Dr. Tom Robinson speaks about different people across social hierarchies and subjected to different lords all still are united under a single Lord. Tom compares the independence of God-fearing Lydia with the enslaved oracle woman with a Roman jailor; all of the powers that previously guided them were superseded by the power of Jesus. By putting Jesus at the center of his l...

Paul writes to churches he planted in anger because sincere, devout people convinced the Galatians that faith in Jesus wasn't enough. They also needed to keep the torah law to really belong. In defending the true gospel, Paul insists that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but one new family, and that what died with him on the cross was every old marker of identit...

Preaching on Luke 5:1-26, John 8:1-11, and Mark 5:25-34; Emily Cahnmann speaks about heart memories: memories of love and kindness. Emily goes through the scriptures, pointing out the heart memories that Jesus gives, from Zaccheus to the woman sentenced to be stoned to the leper to Peter and the other fishermen. Jesus's kindness and love stands out from a mindless crowd or those pursuing only justice, ...

The final sermon in the Beloved Community series turns to John 4, the Samaritan woman at the well, as the story that holds nearly everything this series has been circling: a boundary Jesus crosses first, an exile met where she is, and a hostility answered not with argument but with a request for a simple drink of water. What follows is Jesus meeting her skepticism with abundance, an abundance rooted in...

In a sermon on 1 Peter 2:9-17, Dr. Tom Robinson speaks on the origin of the U.S. and how living as a Christian means balancing devotion to God and the rules of God with human laws and social systems. Tom looks at the Roman empire and its attitude towards Christians and pulls connections vitally relevant to the world today. Often, he pull of human society and human laws can clash with the teachings of t...

Sermon by Jason Isbell This week's sermon is on Luke 10:25–37, the parable of the Good Samaritan, paired with 2 Chronicles 28:1–15. Jesus answers the question "who is my neighbor" with a story that crosses deep lines of hatred and prejudice, and we pair it with a lesser-known Old Testament story where an entire nation, not just one person, chooses mercy toward people they had every right to...

Sermon led by Dr. Tom Robinson on Father's Day focusing on how when the Church was growing the cultural differences in the churches popping up around the world there was initially some friction, but through Jesus it was overcome. Building off of his sermon on Pentecost, while people did all hear in different languages, there was always still the same meaning. Instead of those cultural differences betwe...