Sermons, Podcasts, and Whatever Else We Want to Record for Root and Branch Church. For Full Archive, go to rootandbranchchurch.podbean.com www.rootandbranchchurch.org
Christmas 2023. A sermon by Tim on our responsibilities as parents to the baby Jesus.
A farewell sermon from Virginia. She will be missed, and we are thankful for this final blessing she offered!
Preacher: Danny Sanchez All summer long, we've been exploring this strange and compelling (and strangely compelling) idea of God's Kin(g)dom. We've asked questions, like: where is it? When is it? How do we know? What are our hopes for it, as individuals and as a community? This Sunday is our final Summer service, and we'll be wrapping up our conversation on God's Kin(g)dom (for now) with a call to action: what will you do to take part in building it? We'll explore the simultaneity of beginnings and endings, working and resting, power and resistance. In that same spirit, we'll send off our intern, Danny, as he ends his internship with us and prepares to begin his final year of Divinity School.
Preacher: Virginia White It's no secret that things are awry in the capital C church. Division, discrimination, deception, death-dealing doctrines, and dire boredom seem to rule the day. Perhaps that's why many of us ended up here at R+B: a little church trying to figure out how to remake belief. We wanted to find (or build) something a bit more wild and alive, and a lot more loving. Collectively, we've been at it for a while now. We've learned a lot and yet we know our work is not nearly done. We have our own unlearning, listening, and growing to do. Remaking belief is a lifelong journey - beckoning us beyond what we know. This Sunday we are going to recommit to this (re)making believe stuff in a fresh way. We're launching our 95 (New) Theses campaign! A way for us to share our deepest dreams and biggest imaginings for a better church (and world) with one another and to hear from people beyond this community about what they yearn for as well. Scripture: Luke 13:10-17 Worksheet: https://www.rootandbranchchurch.org/rmb-worksheet Remake Believe Board: Community Vision Board
Preacher: Tim Kim If you haven't heard, I (Tim) will be going on sabbatical starting in July. Which means this week will be my last service until the fall. Which means I would love to see everyone before I go! Join us as we wrap up the last couple months of conversation around the ideas of Invitation, Contemplation, and Co-creation. If you were at our All Together Meeting, we talked about them being the values that have risen to the surface over years of conversation and practice. And now that we've laid them on the table, what's next? Link to poem, Dreaming Accountability, by Mia Mingus
Preacher: Tim Kim Easter 2022. On the death penalty, the quietism of Easter morning, and the intersection of life and death.
Preacher: Danny Sanchez Pastoral Intern, Danny Sanchez, on what the events of Palm Sunday teach us about getting ready for big things.
Preacher: Virginia White Reading: Mark 8: 27-35 It might be a surprise that “Lent” has an etymological connection to the word “lengthening.” For many of us, if Lent means anything at all, it evokes ideas about mortality, self-denial, and “giving something up.” But these 40-days don't end with the cross on Good Friday, they lead to the resurrection on Easter. Just as the world around us welcomes longer brighter spring days, luring back the tree buds, and coaxing the flowers to open in bloom once again, this spiritual season is meant to draw us into new life. Perhaps reframing the practices of Lent from the harsh self-disciplinary image “giving things up,” to the looser invitation to “let things go,” to enter into the messiness, maybe even lostness, of that space beyond our self-management, might be just the posture we need to discover new life on Easter morning.
Preacher: Tim Kim. Reading: Luke 13:1-9. Lent is a journey towards Easter, one that involves reflecting on things that many of us might find unpleasant and difficult at the moment. No doubt, death and sin feel very salient at the moment. But, such things need not be dour for dour's sake. After all, as we'll talk about this week, any reflection on death is really a reflection on life.
Preacher: Tim Kim - If Advent is a season of expectant waiting, what does it mean to wait well? How do we prepare with intention and purpose? We often turn in these moments to individual introspection, reflection, meditation. But as the story of Jesus' pre-arrival demonstrates, there is usually a messenger, a message, and a need to listen. Sometimes the messenger takes the form of Mary, as we talked about a couple weeks ago, and sometimes it looks like scary/weird John the Baptist (though in the painting above he looks more sad/sleepy). Sometimes the message is a beautiful song that calls into being a new world, and sometimes it is a voice in the wilderness screaming about things that are hard to take. There's a lot of both out there in the world right now. Are we listening?
Preacher: Virginia White - At the same time as the physical world around us descends into longer nights, colder days, and the stillness of winter, the advent season invites us into a spirit of warm and eager anticipation of the birth of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Messiah into the world. But what does it mean for us to anticipate an event that has already happened in the past? How can we hold onto certain hope that something good is promised to us and will be given to us when the world around us seems so broken, so (literally) cold, so cruel? Advent asks us to hold the pains and disappointments of reality as we know it in tension with unshakeable expectation that no matter how difficult things may seem now, there is an ever present promise of a new and world-altering good yet to come. And even that this world re-making good thing that lies ahead of us in the future, has already been done before and so can be done again. Advent, then, is like this topsy-turvy time warp land where by remembering the amazement of Jesus' birth all those years ago, again, we become more able to expect that God will once again do great and wondrous things to care for this world in the future. This week we will look to the woman who knew this time-warping experience well. Not long after Jesus' mother-to-be gets word that she is going to give birth to the Messiah, while still pregnant with him, she breaks out into a prophetic song that explicitly describes the redistribution of wealth, the downfall of the mighty, and the uplifting of the hungry, poor, and outcast. Yet she speaks not in the future tense, but in the past. As if she has already seen God's promise come to full completion. Might advent be calling us to become like Mary? Can we, too, become visionaries of a just and redeemed world, of which we are so certain and so moved, that we are ready to speak of it, and live into it, as if it were already here? Perhaps that is how Christ will come into the world again now.
Easter music, sermon, and prayer specially made for a podcast. Our recommendation is that you take a walk while you listen with some people you love.
Sermon by Tim Kim on March 7, 2021 On repentance and the journey home.
Sermon by Tim Kim on February 21, 2021 First sermon of the season of lent. On getting in touch with our deepest desires and the things that tempt us.
Sermon by Tim Kim on February 7, 2021. What do we think we about when we hear that God Loves Us? Part of our series on meditations on various on God and topics related to Lent.
On Jesus saying love your enemies, do not retaliate against violence, do not judge others, and do unto others as you would have them to do unto you. Crazy things like that. Speaker: Tim Kim
All of us (most of us?...some of us?) want to help turn the tide amid the panoply of awful things going on. But there is such an overwhelming volume of (often contradictory) instruction on what we should do or not do, say or not say. Then there’s the constant debating, gaslighting, and public judgement on the interwebs to deal with. You have the anxiety of all the things mixed with the anxiety to try and fix all the things, and it's sometimes hard to imagine any of this getting better, or our efforts being of any use. But, there is another way to live and experience this whole thing. This is where we turn to that age old question: WHAT THE F*** WOULD JESUS DO? Join us for our next series as we try to ask W(TF)WJD in earnest, exploring teachings and truths that just might restore our hope and make us more effective agents of change and transformation. Speaker: Tim Kim
In order to address the question “W.T.F.W.J.D.”, we need to get clear on who this Jesus guy actually was. That’s not so easy though when some people make Jesus seem like a gun-toting beer-drinking bro, and others describe him as a radical anti-capitalist, anti-war hippie. More often than not, we may be tempted to co-opt Jesus to our cause. But, that’s not the way of Jesus' followers. Instead, we are asked to let him and his teachings — in all of their complexity, intensity, beauty, and even internal contradiction — challenge and change us. This week we are going to try to get a more complex picture of who Jesus was so that we can get a bit more serious about following his unusual and life-world-mind transforming path. Speaker: Virginia White
Intro sermon for our WTFWJD sermon series. Speaker: Tim Kim
As we try to navigate a time of real upheaval, it is worth wondering what the spiritual dimensions of all this might be. We ask such a question not just because we are a church community, but because the diagnosis and cure for all that a pandemic and racism bring to the surface must also speak to the deeper truths of our humanity. In a strange way, we are often comfortable talking about our own spiritual lives, yet find it uncomfortable to speak of the spiritual life of a community, or city, or country. Why is that?
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music. Prayer can be hard! We hope this makes it a little more accessible and immersive. As our country reckons with its deeply embedded history of racism and violence, this episode reflects on lament and confession. Put on some headphones (this episode in particular will sound weird without them) and give it a listen. Episode 2Poem: Untitled by James Baldwin, A Memory by Saeed JonesMusic: Original
Guest Preacher, the Reverend Elijah Zeyhoue (Calvary Baptist, DC) reflects on the history of racism against black people in America through the lens of the Cain and Abel story in Genesis 4. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain asks. For far too long White America’s answer has remain unchanged.
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music. Prayer can be hard! We hope this makes it a little more accessible and immersive. Put on some headphones (you should really use headphones!) and give it a try. Episode 1Poem: Elegy by Aracelis GirmayMusic: By Tim Kim
Easter 2020. On a resurrected Christ who comforts those who mourn.
Lent begins with what else but a reflection on temptation and sin.
Pastoral Intern, Aneesah Ettress, on how spiritual practices help us do work in the world.
What is Christian revelation? How does it work? How do we know it’s real? What should it do?
----more----From our series exploring the truth that not everything sucks.
Form our series on fear and courage, Apocalypse When?
We conclude our series on relationships with a talk on empathy. What does the Good Samaritan parable have to teach us about empathy? A lot less than you might think.
“Blood is thicker than water,” that old devilish saying goes. The meaning of this phrase is pretty straightforward: family (blood) relations are inherently stronger than any other kind of non-familial (water) relationship or bond. Right? Nah. This rendition of the phrase actually carries the complete opposite meaning from the original phrase: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Funny how words get twisted.Familial relationships can be great, aaaaand they can be the worst. Join us this week as we continue our examination of the relationships that make and break us. We will examine one of Jesus’s most famous parables - the prodigal son - and see what sense we can make of family, loosely defined.
This week we focus our attention on friendship. On one hand, maybe it's weird for a community of adults to talk about this thing which seems to hold diminishing importance for us as we move through the world. It is also not exactly the most famous of topics when it comes to Christianity and religion and spirituality in general. At the same time, adult friendships are important! Particularly so for a generation that is super transient, getting married later (if at all), having less kids, and has the internet (insert anti-tech screed here). Furthermore, there is actually a rich and robust history of thought around friendship as a theological and philosophical topic. One could even argue that when Jesus talked about love and relationships, he was informed more by his friendships than familial or romantic bonds. In any case, join us as we start to unpack the relationshipthat St. Augustine said was “sweeter than all the sweetness of [his] life."
There is this thing called the Great Commission, the last five sentences that close out the Gospel of Matthew. It says things like “Go out and make disciples of all nations,” for which it has become a rallying cry for all sorts of efforts to evangelize and convert people. That makes a certain sort of sense, but divine command mixed with human fallibility is formula for disaster, perhaps THE formula for disaster. The kinds of so-called Christian efforts taking place in Alabama and elsewhere underscore just how deep fallibility runs, as well as how fraught the idea of evangelizing can be when mixed with bad theologies, politics, and a prejudiced view about what it means to actually show love. Before we consider if there is a better way to do this, it might be necessary to ask what “this” actually is. In other words, what does it mean for us, our community in particular, to share something with the world?
Easter 2019 - We talk about conspiracy theories and what it means to trust in the promise of resurrection.
Kicking off a series of talks and conversations around sex, sexuality, gender, and such things, Tim shares a personal story, rails against dualism, and affirms the incarnation in all of us.
While the Christmas story has all sorts of wild and magicals parts, we take a cue from Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she pauses for a second to take it all in.
If everything you’ve ever known was turned on its head how would you feel? Probably not calm, confident, and comforted. But, distraught, uncertain, and uncomfortable. Yet, Isaiah’sprophecy (Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God) tells us that everything must change to prepare for Christ to come into the world. Valleys need raising and mountains and hills flattening. We’ve got to boldly shake it all up. So why don’t we? Why is change, even change that we know will be good for us—like saying “no” to that toxic relationship or giving up our facebook profiles—so hard?This week we are going to talk about change. The changes that we yearn for, the changes that scare us, the changes that we might even be too afraid to admit that we need. We’ll grapple with the heart of the Advent message: that things don’t have to stay the same as they are—in fact, that they can’t stay the same if we do our work in preparing the way for Christ to come. Maybe we’ll discover a little of that comfort that Isaiah seemed to think change has to offer us, and some of the courage and hope that we need to change our lives for the better.
Grace is kind of a big deal in Christianity. Yet, it often takes a massive back seat to things like faith and love (so boring). Why is that? Maybe part of the reason is that grace is like the beginning stages of a romantic relationship. All that “hi, I like you” stuff is really fascinating until you get married and have kids and blah blah and then it's like it was just a point on a linear line towards death. But grace isn’t just a thing that gets us from A to Z. It is the thing that actually creates and shapes our destinations. And not just one time but continuously, again and again. It isn’t just the opening up of a possibility. It is possibility itself opened up to us as possibility. Which is why it’s so strange that we often think of grace as something like avoiding disaster or damnation. After all, why would a life that is all about the absence or avoidance of terrible things worth being thankful for?
Did God create the world because God was lonely? By definition, God (omnipotent, omnipresent, yada yada yada) couldn't be lonely right? That would mean that God lacked something. But heresy aside, the image of God as little child with no one to play with, using a child-like imagination to make platypus' and big ass whales (as the story goes) is a compelling one. Because a kid's imagination, weird and stubborn as it tends to be, is powerful and boundless. Without seeing life and relationships as this irresistible thing that contains a multitude of possibilities that sparks such a weird and stubborn desire that we are willing to reach out and give life to stuff, then loneliness wouldn't be a thing at all.
We're spending sometime with this Jesus as bread, eat and drink, weird cannibalistic language thing: "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” Before we jump too quickly into the realm of metaphor, the word used here for “eat” is a Greek word that means something like to gnaw, crunch, and chew. This isn’t some sort of “Jesus please feed my soul” kind of thing. It depicts something quite literal. Eating together is a ritual of the Root and Branch community. We’ve always done it. We’ve done it many many many times. We’ll keep doing. Which begs the question: Why? What do such ritual things have to do with our idea of what is true, our beliefs, our sense of God? When we eat bread does it mean we believe? Or do we believe because we eat bread?
A man in a position of immense power seriously screws up. He lies and connives to cover his ass. His misdeeds cast a pall over his entire administration. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT KING DAVID ;). The same one credited with writing the Psalms. The one typically remembered as the godly man who led Israel through its glory days. But he's just violated a married woman, ordered her husband’s murder, and he’s still king. What are we to do when the people who are supposed to be on our side, to have our interests at heart, let us down? When they might even be outright evil?
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