Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Jesus was an advocate for the poor, the hungry, the sick and despairing, the forgotten and the powerless, right? If you want to see the Advocate Jesus sent, then look around you for those who look like that; look for the fruit they produce. Standing up for people this culture doesn’t think are worth it is hard, painful work. But that’s what the Advocate looks like, that’s how the Spirit of Truth sounds. Every time you see someone standing up for the vulnerable, you’ve seen the Holy Spirit. Every time you hear a voice raised in opposition to oppression and violence, you’ve heard the Spirit of Truth. We are the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. We put flesh on the abstraction. We incarnate the breath of God right here. The fruit we’re called to produce is the Holy Spirit’s advanced billing for most of the rest of the world. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Yetkin Ağaç: https://www.pexels.com/photo/industrial-factory-interior-with-conveyor-belt-34718926/ So, maybe the promise isn’t that we’ll always get the sign we asked for. Maybe the promise is that when we’re driving through the dark toward the thing we dread, when we’re standing in the room where the future’s come apart, when we’re begging God to be obvious for once, we’re not praying into the void. We’re praying to the One who’s already come close. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > https://www.pexels.com/photo/shepherd-leading-a-donkey-through-a-flock-of-sheep-26800637/ We've built walls in Jesus's name. You know, around who can receive communion, and who has to sit with their hands in their laps and watch. Walls around who can be ordained and who can feel the call, and still be told the door is closed to them. Around who can be married in the church and who has to find another venue, another officiant, another community willing to say yes ... because “we don't allow that sort of thing around here.” Around who belongs and who's welcome to worship, but not really welcomed to be part of the club. We've set up traffic cones and enforced those barriers with great ruthlessness and considerable theological sophistication, and we've called it “faithfulness.” Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Luke's making a specific claim about where resurrection actually shows up. Not in the place of triumph or the halls of power. It doesn't show up among the people who've already got everything figured out. Resurrection shows up on a dusty road outside a dangerous city, seething with violence. At an ordinary table. In the company of the stranger that their world told them to be super careful about. If we're waiting for the risen Jesus to appear in a form that doesn't unsettle us, we may already have walked right past him somewhere between here and Jerusalem. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > The Emperor Domitian wanted to be addressed as “lord and god.” So, we’re not talking about John employing poetic language. Having Thomas address Jesus as “my Lord and my God” was treasonous language backed by the full weight of Roman imperial power. So when the community John’s writing to hears Thomas say "my Lord and my God," they catch it immediately. John’s doing what writers under empire have always done when they can't say the dangerous thing directly: he projects it back onto an earlier moment so his readers understand what's actually at stake. Thomas speaks the words in the first part of the century. But John's readers and Domitian's subjects hear the challenge to empire at the end of that century. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Cdoncel on Unsplash The women tell the truth first, while the systems take their time catching up. The people with the least protection and the least institutional credibility see something real, but the people with money and power move faster than the speed of sound to explain it away. But that pattern isn't just first-century Jerusalem, is it? Any community that's ever watched an official story steamroll the thing that all the witnesses knew to be true knows what’s going on. Think about Renee Good and Alex Pretti. I mean, it's possible to capture everything in high definition video and still have it not be enough to slip past the “official account” without being contorted into something unrecognizable. Resurrection, it turns out, isn't just a theological claim about what happened to Jesus. It's a claim about whose testimony counts as true. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across this country. The signs they carried said: “No Kings.” I think Matthew's crowd would have known exactly what they meant. Because the people shouting "Hosanna" on that road into Jerusalem weren't cheering for a king in the conventional sense. They were crying out against everything the kings of their world had done to them. Caesar's empire. Herod's collaboration. A whole system built to keep the desperate people desperate. “Hosanna!” ”Save us. Now. Please." That's what you shout when you've had enough of kings. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Pisit Heng on Unsplash Before Jesus does anything about the grave, he stands beside the grieving and lets his tears mingle with theirs. We don't worship a God who observes our pain from a safe, hygienic distance. We don't lay our sorrow at the feet of a celestial efficiency expert who says, “You know, technically, this will all work out." No. We bring our pain to the One who weeps. And that means that when our hearts break, the tears aren't falling alone. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > The temptation isn't to want bad things. The temptation is to want good things so badly that we'll accept any path that gets us there. Safety. Order. Security. Provision. These are real goods. The question is whether the path to them builds the kind of community we actually want to live in, or whether it produces the desired outcome but poisons the groundwater. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Dominique Hicks on Unsplash What comes next? They don’t know. But they show up anyway. The people organizing for immigrant rights in this city know the raids haven’t stopped. They know the laws haven’t changed and that families are being torn apart while politicians argue about masks and body cams. Those people stand in the gap between the devastating reality and whatever restoration looks like, and they show up. Not because they got a sneak preview of the end of the story. But because something holds them steady when they feel like they can’t stand up any longer. Something they can’t even explain. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash So, what does this overflow righteousness look like when it's communal rather than private? Private righteousness claims: I don't murder, I don't steal, I'm polite to others, I volunteer sometimes, I wash my hands after using the bathroom, I'm a good person. Overflow righteousness says: Our community redistributes resources so nobody goes hungry. We shelter people the state wants to cage, and absorb legal liability to protect the vulnerable. The budget reflects that we value other people’s survival over institutional preservation. We organize collectively to confront systems that grind people down. Private righteousness is manageable, respectable, safe. Overflow righteousness can get you in trouble. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Hugo Fergusson on Unsplash That's what the Beatitudes are meant to do to us. Not to make us feel noble about suffering, or teach us how to spiritualize oppression. But to form solidarity as a reflex. To make us the kind of people who stand up when cruelty shows up and starts pushing everybody around. The kind of people who refuse the empire's categories of real and not-real, worthy and not-worthy, counted and disposable. It’s formation for resistance. Not resistance as a moment of drama, but resistance as a way of life. The Beatitudes aren't entrance requirements for heaven. They're a description of what it looks like when people start living as if God's reign is real ... right here, right now ... even when the empire keeps insisting it’s not. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-catching-fishes-2150362/ Because the measure of our faithfulness isn't whether we see the domination system collapse in our lifetime. The measure is whether we tell the truth about the Lamb who's already ended it. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." He said it once. And two thousand years later, we're still saying it. Still pointing. Still witnessing. Still waiting for the fullness of what God’s already begun. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Jordan River—Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Jesus didn't start his ministry by going to the halls of power to make deals with the folks in charge. He went to a river where ordinary people were gathering, hungry for change but with no political clout to make it happen. Jesus stood with them in the water. He got muddy with them. He submitted to the same baptism of repentance they were submitting to, even though tradition says he didn't need to repent of anything. Why? Because God's way into the world isn't from the top down. It's from the bottom up. It's from the margins in. It's Emmanuel, God with us, and the "us" isn't the people in the skyboxes, drinking complimentary champagne. It's the people in the cheap seats, drinking over-priced beer. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Ahmed akacha: https://www.pexels.com/photo/elderly-woman-holding-shovel-10629469/ John ends the prologue with this: "From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." Grace replacing grace. Wave after wave of divine generosity. Not scarcity and competition for limited resources. Not "there's not enough to go around, so we have to hoard and protect." Grace upon grace. Abundance. Enough for everybody, especially those the people in charge say aren't worth feeding. That's the economy of the tent. That's what happens when the throne room is among people who've lost everything, and God starts building community based on sharing, not accumulating. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > I don't know what the coming year is going to hold. None of us do. But I do know this: there'll be moments when the costs are rising, the pressure’s building, and somebody near us gets exposed, and we'll have a choice to make. We can be righteous in a way that doesn't cost us anything. Or we can be righteous the way Joseph was righteous, which means stepping into the line of fire and attaching our names to the people the world would rather shame. And then trusting that Emmanuel is with us in exactly that place. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by JESUS PERGES: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photography-of-man-doing-backflip-1739321/ The church's job is painfully simple and painfully hard. We have to learn to read the signs differently. We have to stop treating the category “criminal” as if it tells us everything we need to know about a person. We have to stop assuming the people with microphones are the ones whose authority matters most. We have to get suspicious of our own instinct to label people for our convenience. Because Jesus is a terrible respecter of society's signage. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Felix Mittermeier: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photography-of-chessboard-game-957312/ Remember: the cross is what happens when you tell the truth about power. But resurrection is God's answer to the cross. And we live between the two, in this time when the old age is dying and the new age is being born, and we have to decide which age we belong to. We have to decide whether we're going to use people as props for our comfort or see them as children of God. Whether we're going to accept a world where people are fuel for machines or build communities of resurrection. Whether we're going to stay silent while fascism rises, or speak truth, practice resistance, and embody the reign of God right here, right now. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo by Min An: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-vintage-typewriter-1425146/ Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Turn the other cheek. Give to everyone who begs. Do to others as you would have them do to you. These aren't impossible riddles for religious overachievers. They're the habits of a people who know they've been welcomed while they were still a long way off. They're what belonging looks like in work boots. If I know my life has been called blessed before I could prove anything, then I can stop guarding my worth like a secret. I can risk forgiveness because I'm not paying for my seat at the table. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > But abiding teaches us a few stubborn questions: Does this freedom hold when the empire gets mad at us? Does it make more room at the table? Can it make it through Good Friday and still show up on Sunday? Jesus' freedom can. It walked through death and came out holding the keys to the jail. It taught Galilean fishermen to lay down nets and pick up neighbors. It taught a tax collector to give the money back and still feel welcome at the supper table. It teaches frightened congregations to stop asking "Who's my patron?" and start praying "Our Father, who art right here in the middle of this mess with the rest of us." Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > This table today, set by God, is its own bridge that crosses every chasm. We come to the bread and the cup as people who need help, as well as the people who can help. We come to remember Jesus, who crossed a greater chasm than any we've built, and who returns to find whether we've learned what he's been trying to teach us. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Following Jesus costs a great deal more than we’re able to afford on our own. Let’s not kid ourselves, there are crosses with our names on them, just waiting for us. And to be clear: in Luke, “take up your cross” isn’t code for generic misery, like “my bunions are acting up.” The cross is the predictable blowback you get for aligning publicly with Jesus and his upside-down reign in a world organized to keep the powerful comfortable. It’s the social shame and concrete political and economic risk that come when you side with the people Jesus sides with. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > So what would it look like if we lived this out? It’d look like neighborhoods where homeowners invite renters. Schools where kids who get free lunch sit at the head table. Churches where people on the margins don't just get charity, they get justice. I think it'd look like budgets that stop hunting for quarters in the couch cushions when it comes to feeding the hungry, while writing blank checks for weapons and tax breaks for the folks who need them least. It'd look like communities where the poor aren't a problem to solve but guests of honor at the feast. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > And we’re the key. We need to make sure this room isn’t welcoming to indifference. We need to advocate that meetings halt until anonymous faces have names. We need to fight for budgets that carry a compass and know when they’ve strayed from their true direction. We need our prayers to have hands and feet. We need to straighten what’s gotten crooked—not because we can solve everything, but because we refuse to keep the ox watered while a daughter stays bent. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > We live in a world where so many go to bed terrified—parents for their children’s safety, and children for their parents, that they won’t be targeted and rounded up just because of the color of their skin; but Jesus announces a world where everyone has a place to go to feel safe from harm, a sanctuary from the hatred and violence. We live in a world that feels like it needs the fire of God’s transformation, a new way of living together. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > In the world God desires, apparently, the more we have, the less we get to choose whether or not to give. Viewing giving as an act of justice that the giver is obliged to perform helps correct power imbalances by affirming that those who are first will be last, so that those who are last may be first. It is God’s good pleasure, according to Jesus, to give us a world where the coin of the realm isn’t about grasping for everything we can get, but about selling what we have and sharing it. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

To be rich toward God is to divest from the myth of self-sufficiency. To stop pretending we'll live forever if we just insulate ourselves well enough. It means investing in what death can't repossess. And it means doing it now—because by the time the tow truck shows up, it's already too late to check your balance. Jesus isn't just warning us. He's calling us out of the illusion of permanence and into the grace-filled community of participation—the kind of investment where the gold doesn’t rust or the moth destroy. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > But here’s the thing, real prayer to the God who doesn't do shame produces people who stop using shame as a sorting tool. If God rushes in to help with zero calculations, then maybe the question isn't "How do I sound more spiritual?" but "Am I reflecting God's shameless generosity or humanity's shame-soaked gatekeeping?" Refugees, broke neighbors, starving babies in Gaza, overwhelmed friends showing up at your door like it's midnight and they're out of options? They’re not a spiritual test. They're an invitation to look like the God we claim to follow. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > But Amos is raining down fire on the whole nation. Everybody. Why? Because the crimes against the powerless Amos lays out aren’t just a few rotten apples. The crimes Amos names are institutionalized; they’re accepted as part of the fabric of society—you know, just the way things are. In other words, there are good moral folks who know what’s going on—those who see the injustice being perpetrated on the helpless, aware of the labor being stolen from the voiceless—and yet remain silent. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > God didn't show up to make everybody speak the same language. God showed up so we could understand one another across our differences. That's not a return to uniformity. That's a celebration of diversity. That's a vision of the reign of God where every clan and nation and tongue can come to the table as themselves, not as carbon copies of whoever got there first. And, let's be honest, we know how badly a little diversity triggers some folks in our country. We've seen what happens when people start talking about making room at the table for voices that have historically been excluded, for perspectives that challenge the comfortable assumptions of those who've always held power. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > When we refuse to worship at the altar of consumerism, when we choose justice over profit, when we stand with the oppressed against their oppressors, and speak truth in the face of lies, we’re going to face resistance. We’ll be called naive, idealistic, unrealistic. We’ll be told that this is just the way the world works, that we can't change anything, that our efforts don't matter. But remember: we are not of this world. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Of course, it's not always easy. Some days, the world drags you into the courtroom and puts your soul on trial. You get accused—by others, by your own failures, by that nagging voice in your head. But you don't have to argue your case. You've got someone who already knows the truth and stands by you anyway. The Spirit shows up like a defense attorney who's not afraid of a messy past, someone who doesn't need to prove you innocent to love you. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Living this way isn’t easy. It means turning away from all the ways we’ve weaponized faith and marginalized people in God’s name. It means learning to see people as Jesus sees them, not as projects or enemies or obstacles, but as beloved children of God. In a world full of hate, fear, and division, love isn’t just our calling … it’s our superpower, our secret weapon. It’s our most authentic sermon, the sign that points the way home. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > I find it fascinating, and not a little bit instructive, to think that God can make something out of us that nobody ever thought we could be. Knowing ourselves as we do—that God chooses us to embody the love and justice envisioned in this new reign is confounding. But if, when God tells us to get up, we get up and go, the story of the gospel is that God can change the world through us. And that’s the thing: The world, as chaotic and torn as it is right now, needs a little resurrection—needs people like you and me to get up and bring new life to folks who feel like everybody else has given up on them. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Dramatic conversion stories are never merely stories about dramatic conversions. They’re preludes to the real story. In fact, the real reason we care about this story at all is because of what happened after the euphoria wore off. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Jesus didn't say, "I've overthrown Rome! Now we'll have peace!" He simply said, "Peace be with you," while showing them his wounds. His peace bears the marks of suffering. It doesn’t deny pain; it transforms it. It doesn’t require the elimination of enemies; it embraces them. This is why passing the peace is indeed a political act. Every time we say to one another, "Peace be with you," we’re rejecting the peace of empires. We’re declaring our allegiance to a different realm with a different sovereign who rules in a different way. After Easter, we acknowledge that true peace, God’s peace, can’t come through domination or be secured through violence. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > We’re the kind of Easter people who don't just decorate the sanctuary once a year, but who live with rolled-away stones and open doors and trembling joy. We practice resurrection in how we vote, how we spend, how we welcome the stranger, how we care for creation, how we speak to and about one another. We’re people who know that the most powerful force in the universe isn't military might or market value or majority rule. It's love that gives itself away. The kind that doesn't cling to power but empties itself for others. The kind that turns the other cheek, not out of weakness but from a strength so secure it doesn't need to dominate to prove itself. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Words can heal and bring life: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” There’s nothing quite so wonderful in the world as when you’re told that you’re loved and appreciated, or that despite your belief that you’re alone and despised, someone sees you, that someone cares even when you remain convinced that nobody even knows you’re alive. “I love you. I see you,” can raise people from the dead. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Jesus wants his disciples to understand that poor and low-wealth people aren’t some distinct underclass that we can shuffle off to the shadows because they make us uncomfortable. They’re not a problem to be dealt with, not just a reminder of a broken system that renders some people disposable; they’re our neighbors, part of our community. We need to feed them, not fix them. They’re subjects to be embraced as friends and family, not objects to be embarrassed about Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > This parable is a story about bad parenting, about a father who’s willing to give it all away … even to kids who’ve proven they don’t deserve it. It’s a story about the love of a parent who persists in pursuing us, even though we continue to run away from home or continue to turn our faces from the music, even after we’ve been ceaselessly invited into the party. It’s a story about lousy parenting. I mean, just think what would happen if we started following that example and loving everybody—even though they don’t deserve it. Try to get that one through the Supreme Court right now. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > We peer into the distance for the one who will execute justice and righteousness in the land, who will redeem God’s children from ordinary days, filled with the soul-crushing fear that this world of pain and fear, of injustice and bigotry is all there is. We steel ourselves for the call to live as just and righteous right now … in anticipation of that day. The days in which we live may be grim. But the days are surely coming, says the Lord. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > We trivialize the gospel when we convince ourselves that it’s possible to be a disciple of Jesus without it ever costing us anything. Following Jesus is hard. He asks so much. And he fails to provide us with turn-by-turn directions. He’s a moving target. Can’t pin him down. Can’t control him. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > First, like so many people since Tuesday, the church constantly needs to be asking, “Is this the best we can do?” Then, we need to advocate for a just economic system that protects the vulnerable and refuses to devour widows’ houses. We need to demand a system that refuses to make the poor feel like they’re not full participants until they cough up their last five bucks until payday. Second, in the meantime, we followers of Jesus need to work like crazy to be worthy of the hope people place in us. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Love, you see, requires activity. Love isn’t an abstraction; it’s a way of living with other people that takes their needs as seriously as we take our own. The way we treat those who are hungry, the way we treat the laborer, the way we treat the disabled, the way we pursue justice—these all have to do with love. What we care about and what we refuse to remain silent about, who we see and whose voice we hear, how we offer compassion and how we stand up for those who’ve been knocked down—those are all about love. Back bent, hands dirty, feet sore…love. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Popular Christianity promises a Jesus who only wants to be your pal, a Jesus who doesn’t want you to be inconvenienced, a Jesus whose real concern is that all your biases are continually reconfirmed for you. A Jesus who knows what true glory looks like. And, let me tell you, that would be a whole lot easier on me. But unfortunately, I’m not good enough figure out how to give you that Jesus. Instead, I’m so incompetent at my job that all I can manage to figure out how to give you is a Jesus who seeks out the small, the irrelevant, and the marginal. I’m only skilled enough to show up on Sunday mornings with a Jesus who thinks glory looks like losing, sacrificing, and dying. I hope you’ll forgive me my vocational inadequacies. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > How do we stand with Jesus against a world that too often tramples the best interests of women and the needs of children, that regularly ignores the plight of the hungry, the houseless, the addicted, the stranger, and the outcast?” After all, the world we inhabit wasn’t created just to bless people like us; it was created to carve out space so that all whom God loves can live and flourish with dignity. And if we want to be like God, our vocation is to learn to participate in such a world—not to try to remake it in our own image. https://www.notion.so/derekpenwell/A-Radically-Different-World-Mark-10-2-16-1178fca125b9809c8b9eceef6f2b60fb?pvs=4Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Therefore, as Jesus embraced the child as a symbol of powerlessness and death, we’re called to embrace our own lack of power, relying on the love and grace of the most merciful parent of all. Moreover, embracing powerlessness in ourselves opens us up to the welcome we must now extend to the little ones, those who’ve been left behind by the rest of the world. Only in that realization can we become great. Because, after we realize that—sterling stock portfolios and winning personalities aside—any greatness that emerges isn’t something we ginned up on our own; it's God's. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > Photo credit: Wikimedia.org We no longer have to wonder whether we have any responsibility for our brothers and sisters, those who can’t stand up any longer by themselves. We no longer need to ask whether those who’ve been forgotten, abused, or kicked to the curb are our people. Through the grace of the cross, we’re able to see not competitors in the food chain, not threats to our individual projects, not nuisances for which we have neither the time nor the energy, but family ... family everywhere we look. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > So, requiring us to live lives that look like Jesus is a pretty tough thing to ask of us. But if I, who claim to follow Jesus, won’t live a life struggling to be faithful, how can I continue to call myself a follower of Jesus? If I, who claim to live a life shaped by the cross, don’t speak up for the weak, the poor, the forgotten, the bankrupt, those to whom medical services have been denied, to whom injustice is woven into the fibers of existence—if I don’t lift my voice—even knowing that I don’t have all the answers—then how can I ask anyone else to follow Jesus? Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " > And even after all this time, the church is often just as quick to erect barriers to keep people out, turning customs into dogma, human precepts into doctrine. Unfortunately, many people’s experience of the church is having the ladder pulled up just as they reach for it. “Thanks for inquiring. But we’re just fine. We’ve already got things pretty much the way we want them … I mean, the way God wants them.” Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc