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…

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 refus…

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 en…

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…

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 …

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 t…

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, tho…

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 mu…

In a world in which every detail has to be nailed down before we move forward, where every nickel has to be accounted for before we strike out, where every eventuality has to be covered, the notion that God is in charge, that God will provide is seen as naïve—if not ultimately unwise. But maybe there’s a wisdom that Christians are called to practic…

And as painful as it is, Jesus says that for the fire of transformation to be kindled—the fire of God’s change in the world—we have to speak the truth about our current mess and the new world God desires. We live in a world where division feels inevitable, but Jesus announces a world where divisions are healed—not by passively ignoring injustice bu…

Elijah goes to God seeking relief, a remedy for the great weariness he feels in his bones. He wants God to change the world, but all God offers to do is change him. Presumably, being in God’s presence is of greater value to us in our pain and despair than any stop-gap measures or dime-store remedies we could conjure up on our own. We often want God…

Translation: “Bad Wall” In the face of God, I see one who prefers to tear down walls rather than maintain them, the one who calls to us from near at hand rather than keeping us far off. In the face of God, I can see one who is not satisfied with the distance that separates us, the distance that keeps us suspicious of and hostile toward one another—…

As long as we think that what we have, who we are, and what we’ve endured depend solely upon our initiative and the strength of our own determination and courage, we wind up flailing about, convinced we can do God’s work better than God. Whenever we start thinking it’s about us, we lose the ability to offer ourselves to the world as a fragrant offe…

But in the face of failure, Jesus isn’t waiting around. He’s already headed out to the villages to continue doing what God sent him to do. And he’s not content to do it alone. He sends his followers back out into what must have felt like a hostile world to continue the work they’d already been rejected for. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: w…

In the face of a scoffing world, Jesus demonstrates his faith in God’s willingness to snatch life from the jaws of death by ... acting faithfully. Jesus sees the woman and the young girl through the eyes of God and God’s idea of who’s valuable and who’s worth taking a chance on. In the woman who’s been dead in so many crucial ways for twelve years …

In the economy of God, the new creation holds a special place for the powerless, the stepped-on, and the least likely candidates to be social media influencers. In a strange and seemingly indefensible administrative move, God throws out the HR manual and starts employing the ones who show up to the interview in flip-flops and shorts. And it’s almos…

Christianity, for too many people today, means “saving souls for Jesus” while often despising those same souls until they have the decency and good sense to become more like you. But start living like Jesus—challenging the systems that keep only a handful fat and happy, hanging out with people who’ve been forced to live in the shadows to avoid bein…

The body of Christ is principally concerned with embodying the kind of just community that announces the reign of God to a world that needs a great cosmic cleanup of the mess humans have made of things. Now, if I get blessed in the process—then that’s wonderful. And as difficult as that is for me personally to swallow, the church isn’t just here to…

Because if we take seriously the public testimony of the marginalized and the vulnerable, we have to come to terms with the fact that we’ve participated in systems that, by their very nature, protect the interests of the powerful at the expense of the powerless. In other words, we’re not just innocent bystanders to all this agitation; in some way, …

True knowledge of God is always proportional to our willingness to live faithfully as witnesses of God’s faithfulness to us. True belief is never an end in itself. We concern ourselves with believing the right things not so we can have the satisfaction of being right but so that our actions will be rightly directed. Actually living what we know and…

God comes to us and says, 'There are some folks who need my love and compassion. I want you to go to them. I want you to love them for me.' 'Which folks?' 'All my children. You know who I’m talking about, the ones no respectable church wants. The ones who’ve been systematically told they’re not welcome. The ones who don’t have anybody to speak up f…

So, when Jesus arrived on the scene, Palestine was desperate for another messiah, a hero, someone to rally the oppressed locals to finally kick the Roman interlopers out of Palestine. They needed, in short, a messiah acquainted with the business end of a sword. I suspect you can imagine that when Jesus starts talking about humiliation and death as …

Jesus says, “Here’s what my glory looks like: Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever wants to catch on with my band of…

Have you noticed how many people think the table is too big—that we’ve got no business telling everybody they’re welcome? They say, “Well, of course, everyone’s welcome ... just as soon as they get their beliefs straightened out”—which, translated, generally means: “just as soon as they promise to believe all the things we believe, to hate all the …

Many people believe that God is to be found at the “temple.” So, they spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how to help people find their way through the doors that they’ve been told for so long is the place where they can meet God. But since so many people don’t believe religion has much impact on their lives, it’s hard to justify taking…

Wayward children. Problem spouses. Overbearing parents. Demanding bosses. Arthritis. The heartbreak of Psoriasis. Male-pattern baldness. All of these and more serious things that bring suffering are commonly referred to as “crosses to bear.” But that’s not right, is it? Jesus isn’t talking about the cross-as-symbol-of-just-any-garden-variety suffer…

With the uncertainty Jesus has just laid out for them about picking up their crosses and dying as enemies of the state, Peter sees the ancient Near Eastern version of the Justice League all wearing their technicolor dream coats, and he says, “You know, all things considered, this seems like a swell place to be. Why don’t we pitch a few tents and st…

But if Jesus’ mission is about healing, about re-establishing the dignity and purpose of others, of helping them to find a place that’s safe and affirming—then, perhaps, we who are his followers ought to follow suit. Perhaps we should be less concerned with doing what everyone else thinks churches ought to do and worry more about doing what Jesus c…

Why? Because Jesus speaks as one with authority—a new kind of authority; he speaks the truth … always. Jesus is, according to this definition, a faithful jihadist who squares off against the powers that preserve injustice by privileging certain classes of "worthy" people, giving them access—while excluding the powerless and the disadvantaged. And w…

Maybe God’s trying to tell you something at this very moment. Maybe there’s not some big PowerPoint pitch to lay out all the pros and cons, not some incentivized benefits package, not some assurance that everything’s going to turn out right, and you’ll become famous, have wonderful, well-adjusted kids, and escape the ravages of arthritis. Maybe it’…

Herod resides in regal luxury in the thriving metropolis of Jerusalem; Jesus begins his life relying on the generosity of visitors in a modest dwelling in Bethlehem. Herod has access to the most influential leader of the time; Jesus, a mere infant, doesn’t even have access to the local Red Roof Inn. Yet, what’s truly captivating in this narrative i…

In a world that feels increasingly out of control every day, we’ve been given glad tidings that sound unrealistic at best and downright deranged at worst. We live in a world that has a way of grinding people down, making them beg for their bread, and judging them by the color of their skin, the country of their origin, the fullness of their bank ac…

God created and loves individuals. No doubt. But God didn’t create us to remain focused on our individuality. In God’s new realm, freedom doesn’t just release individuals from their own private bondage; it also sets individuals and communities free for others so that all God’s children can flourish. "=Why does 'freedom' in so many people's mouths a…

Why does God identify so strongly with these, the powerless? Well, for one thing, God created us … all of us. And afterward, God paused to consider the fine craftsmanship of God’s hands. Apparently, God was heard to say, 'That’s pretty dang good! No … Yeah, that’s excellent!' So, it stands to reason that God might take more than a little exception …

When we read about vulnerable people being evicted and left to survive in the streets, we find a way not only to help feed and shelter but to agitate for justice in housing. When we witness White nationalists openly advocate bigotry and threaten violence, we don't sit idly by and hope everything turns out all right; we take sides. We followers of J…

But God says, “If everything else you do isn’t motivated by your love of the imperiled and unremembered, then it’s worse than if you’d done nothing at all. If you’d done nothing, at least that would be an honest admission that you don’t understand. As it is, you take for granted you already know what I want. But that’s the thing: there’s no way to …

By David Conway

Caesar’s always going to want what Caesar wants. Wall Street. Madison Avenue. They vie for our attention like it’s their birthright. There are so many claims placed upon our loyalties ... from every direction. And, sometimes, that which pursues us most relentlessly is our own desire to be in control, to be ourselves, gatekeepers of God’s mercy. We …

Unlike Matthew's original readers, when Jesus started talking about a King giving a wedding banquet, his audience wouldn't have immediately made the connection between the King in the parable and God. They would be much more likely to see their own cultural struggles in this King—who, let's be honest, seems pretty vindictive and pouty. No, “vindict…

Jesus heads into the vineyard to cheers of “Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” But he can read the political tea leaves. He’s got a pretty good idea where this story is headed. So, it should be no great surprise to learn that Jesus is a little testy—even in the face of the palm branches. He knows which way the political wind…

If you’re starting a revolution, you don’t have to follow the same rules designed to keep power in the hands and for the benefit of those convinced the world was made for them. You don’t have to live in fear—the kind of fear necessary to make a world where some have and some do not, where some get justice, and some silently cry themselves to sleep …

Real-life virtues—the ones that help us live real lives and not just "impressive” lives among those closest to us—are the kinds of virtues necessary for us to live together in community. These soft virtues like the ability to live and speak truthfully, to be a person others consider trustworthy (and not just being reliable about taking out the garb…

In embracing the cross, Jesus’ followers can say of empire at its most blood-thirsty, “Is this the best you’ve got? God’s got an even more astonishing trick up God’s sleeve. It’s a little something we call ‘Easter.’” Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | docBy Derek Penwell

By Paul-Anthony Turner

By Dawn Wilson

By Dick Burks

My first reaction is to want Jesus to pray for it to be easy. I want him to protect me from the world by installing some kind of force field, some heat shield around me that won’t allow the slings and arrows to touch me. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he prays not that there be a protective wall around me to guard against the damage life can caus…

In other words, if you love one another, you’re already doing the works that I’ve done—and you won’t have to question the “way to the Father,” about whether you’re following the step-by-step directions since everyone will already know who you belong to. If you condemn a system that allows police officers to kill a Black man in cold blood … on video…

In other words, the people tasked with watching over the most vulnerable of the flock have proven themselves sightless. They care more that the sheep don’t jaywalk than about the fact that the way they run things has created even more vulnerable sheep. The trouble with the folks in charge is that being in charge isn’t the point; it’s about what kin…