Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 practice that trusts God's love enough to give thanks—even when giving thanks looks like the last thing any wise person ought to do. Maybe living as wise in the unfolding reign of God involves a set of practices the rest of the world deems gullible and unrealistic but which signal our hope. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 but by shining a light on them. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 to fix the world or take us out of it, but what God offers to do is to sit beside us in it. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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—but who seeks to reconcile us, to stand among us, to bring us near enough to see one another's faces. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 offering of love and sacrifice. It's not until we let go of the idea that something native to our own virtue is what allows us to become the people God wants us to be that we'll ever be able to taste the life God has in store for us. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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: web | doc

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 and in the twelve-year-old girl who's also now dead, God sees the possibilities no one else can see. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 almost never flashy, but it can leave ripples in the pond that seem to go on forever. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 being trampled by the religious folks who otherwise have contempt for them—and the wrath of the self-righteous will fall on you like Bull Connor's billy club. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 bless me; I'm here to bless the world by participating in the beloved community and adding my gifts to the mix … for the common good. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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, we're part of the reason these protests are necessary. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 what we say we believe is the real point. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 for them. Don't talk right. Don't dress right. Don't have the right kind of money. Don't live in the right part of town. Don't love the right person. Don't have the right skin color. I want you to go to them.' Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 his vision of messiahship, how it is that so many people completely fail to hear him. They didn't quite get it. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 merry souls can look forward to the same kind of ‘glory' with which I'm about to be ‘glorified.'” And you can hear the wheels spinning in the Greeks' minds: “What kind of glory is he talking about? Seeds falling to earth and dying? What does that mean? We know what glory looks like, and frankly, it doesn't look like dead seeds. So, what's he talking about?” Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 things we hate, and to exclude all the people we exclude.” I'm not quite sure how to put this, but no matter how systematic your theology is, that's not Jesus. And this is what I think Jesus is getting at when he starts talking about those who hate the light, who love darkness because their deeds are evil. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 prime time out of a weekend to go to church. For people struggling to live faithfully, perhaps the focus should be on where God is moving outside the church's walls, away from the giant stable system that seems so comfortable and inevitable. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 suffering. He's talking about the death-dealing power of the state to impose its will on anyone with enough courage or enough gullibility to question it. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 stay right here? I totally get why the disciples would rather just watch Jeopardy than head down that mountain into an untenable political environment that would soon cost Jesus everything. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 calls us to do—to make a place in the world for those who have no place. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 we who are trying to follow him don't get to excuse ourselves from the messiness. We don't get to stand by silently while some folks get kicked to the back of the bus, or dragged kicking and screaming back across the border, or singled out for the bathrooms they use. We have our own tyrants before whom we need to speak.

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's just a tug, a gnawing at the edge of your mind that you can't quite shake, saying, “Follow me. Drop what you're doing, and follow. Immediately.”

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 is the fact that Herod, embodying power and affluence, is deeply terrified of Jesus—a seemingly insignificant child from an obscure backwater. Despite all his wealth and security, Herod wakes up the day after the Magi's departure, tasting only the bitter tang of fear and feeling a weight of dread in his gut. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 account, and the people they love. In short, we live in a world content to force people to justify their very humanity before we'll even see them as neighbors. Into such a world comes Mark's Gospel, carrying John the Baptist, Elijah, Jesus, Caesar, and the whole Roman Empire on its back—announcing that the world we know, the one that's taken so much from so many … is coming to an end, and a new one is coming to take its place. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 appear to mean little more than 'freedom to feel superior to everybody who doesn't look/talk/love like I do?' Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 to watching those whom God has so lovingly called forth into existence have their dignity trampled. Their lives are threatened, either by those who actively seek to exploit the defenseless or those who commit their violence through neglect. God has always seen those who remain invisible, unseen to so many. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 Jesus not only sound the alarm, we figure out a way to be in the middle of it—organizing, protesting, lobbying, healing, dispensing the mercy denied by the merciless Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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 know what I want without looking into the eyes of those who've been cast aside.”“Do you know what I really want?” God says. “I want justice to roll down like water and righteousness like an everflowing stream. And I want you to be all mixed up in the middle of it.”Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

David Conwayfalse

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 in the church have been guilty of spurning the gifts people bring to God. But Jesus isn't having it. Jesus says, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; give to God what belongs to God. But here's the thing: It all belongs to God." Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc