Roseville Covenant Sermons

Confirmation Sunday Homily // Rev. Matt Kennedy // May 17 2026

Confirmation is a long tradition in many Christian churches in which our youth commit to study, reflect, and practice their faith in the hope and preparation that they will continue to be life-long followers of Jesus. It culminates on Confirmation Sunday, which includes our students sharing their faith stories. The traditions, rites, and celebrations of Confirmation Sunday spotlight our youth as individuals and rightfully honor the steps of faith they are taking. Yet at the same time, there is something almost ironic about some of our Confirmation traditions: while we publically celebrate and honor our students' faith, the New Testament also commends a faith that is quiet and modest, that are lives are to be, "hidden in Christ our God” (Collosians 3:2). This Sunday as we worship, I will urge us not to overly fixate on what our students have done but more importantly reflect on what they might teach us, that, "Christ is all and is in all.” (Collosians 3:11). May their lives and witness point us to the real life of the world.

Good to All // Rev. Matt Kennedy // May 10 2026

Over the last 5 weeks we've surveyed ancient cultural customs, re-examined the stories of Hebrew patriarchs, considered the context of Israelite law, looked at historic heresies, and had plenty of time to reflect on historic doctrine. The book of Galatians is indeed "a crash course" of the gospel and would be an excellent textbook for "Christianity 101." Yet all these challenging thoughts and ideas and beliefs are not just for pondering in the mind, but putting into action. On the final page of Paul's letter to the Galatians he offers some practical application for how the good news of grace finds practice in our lives: be gentle with people who struggle in their sin, bear each other's burdens, don't boast, examine yourself first before complaining about others, and do good to all (Galatians 6:1-14). The Good News isn't a manual for how to live a flawless life, it's the knowledge that helps us bear the conflicts, contradictions, and paradoxes of a world in which we are simultaneously sinners and saints.

Freedom & Fruit // Rev. Matt Kennedy // May 3 2026

Many political scientists and statesmen have observed that while freedom is the bedrock of democracy, freedom requires exercises of responsibility to keep from collapsing on itself. It's sometimes described as the difference between "liberty" and "license". License thinks freedom is for your own self-satisfaction. Liberty is freedom that we extend to others for the sake of common good. In the first 2/3rds of Paul's letter to the Galatians, he makes an impassioned case against legalism and moralism. Grace through faith is what saves the Christian, while overconfidence in "works of the law" is a kind of slavery. Yet in the fifth chapter of his letter Paul now reminds the Galatians that gospel liberty is not license to indulge our selfishness, but the freedom of grace empowers us to, "serve one another humbly in love." (Galatians 5:13). Jesus frees us from the impossible pressures of legalism, but he does not free us from the Spirit of Love who first wrote the law. Grace for sinners is the merciful invitation to "walk by the Spirit", "bear good fruit", and so fulfill the heart of the law, "love your neighbor as yourself" (5:14).

Slaves or Heirs? // Rev. Matt Kennedy // Apr 26 2026

Some decades ago, a sociologist suggested that one of the major sources of increasing depression in our world comes from the pressures we put on ourselves to create and manage an image or an "identity." He called it, "the weariness of self." The effort to fit in, stand out, or rise above can be exhausting. We have phrases in our parlance that capture this (eg "we're slaves to fashion"). Biblical wisdom points us a different direction. Paul's letter to the Galatians includes warnings of a "slavery" not enforced by a master's whip, but by our own obsession with performance standards and identity markers. He tells us the gospel is not a kind of slavery, but it is an adoption (Galatians 4:4-7). Your identity is not something you must create, it is something given to you by Christ. To truly live a life of goodness and to truly know the joy of salvation, our job isn't to distinguish ourselves with behavior, signals, or performative work. Rather, all who are baptised in Christ are something more than our race, sex, or class... we are children of God (3:26-27).

Gospel Fragments // Pastor Karina Johnson // April 19 2026

We may think the days of succumbing to peer pressure are long gone; that saying what we think others want us to say or doing what they want us to do or wearing what they want us to wear was for the high school lunch table. But, when we’re honest with ourselves, we know that people pleasing doesn’t just go away with adolescence. We are much too fickle for that. As we move into the second chapter of Galatians this Sunday we will see that these very human temptations existed centuries before us as well. In his letter to the church in Galatia, Paul calls out Peter as an example of what not to do as we live as followers of Jesus and reminds us that the ramifications of the gospel are not just for ourselves but also for how we love and live with others.