Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

How do we ensure a world that refuses to allow the powerful to take advantage of the powerless? We need to help make a culture in which people in power are no longer more afraid of being ashamed of being racist, misogynist, homophobic, ableist, or transphobic than being called racist, misogynist, homophobic, ableist, or transphobic. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Turns out, people in power aren’t casually waiting for someone to show up and tell them that not only are they doing it wrong, they’re the source of injustice in the world. Nobody wants to hear that—especially those folks who’ve been told their whole lives what precious flowers they are, that the world is lucky to have them. The thing is, it’s not just modern people who have a hard time with God as judge, being told the world they’ve made for themselves has failed to please God. But Lord knows, we still have court priests, false prophets whose job, whose whole reason for existing is to reassure the folks in power that God’s just fine with the selfishness and casual cruelty against the most vulnerable. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

You get a small group of people willing to live as if everyone is a neighbor, as if there’s plenty enough to go around, as if the maladies that make us ill unto despair are capable of being healed—and all of a sudden, demons bow down and Satan falls from the sky like a flash of lightning. And the thing of it is, we’re not talking about the Avengers here. It’s just a bunch of ordinary people willing to head out into the world, carrying only their trust in Jesus and a different kind of kingdom. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

We who follow Jesus follow him to Jerusalem. We follow him not just so that we can sleep better at night but so that those who go to sleep at night terrified of what this world holds for them will finally find some peace, a chance to rest from the relentless notion in our culture that their lives have no value. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In a world willing to pray to any god who promises to keep us safe from people who don’t look like us, in a world where the music of our worship sounds like the ticking of a time clock, or the growl of an SUV, in a world in which we tithe our time and money to gods defined by national boundaries or party affiliations or racial designations, we have good news about a new world God is busy creating that we can’t keep to ourselves—even knowing that in proclaiming it we risk looking like the very people we privately roll our eyes at. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

The power of holy disruption is present when followers of Jesus stand together to offer witness to the truth. The power of the Spirit is less to be found in the heroic individual than in the community knit together by the power of a common witness on behalf of those whom Jesus loves. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

The unlikeliest faces, out minding their own business, when the Holy Spirit shows up and things get interesting: God chases after the untouchables, women become central players in the gospel game, demons flee, prisoners are set free, and the powerful find humility. And that’s the thing about the reign of God: it’s always in the midst of such implausible circumstances, in the presence of the unlikeliest faces that God is busy establishing a whole new world. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Where is God moving in the community of faith today, threatening old patterns of belief? What sorts of people is God busy inviting into our fellowship who make us uncomfortable? The implications are troubling. But we can take comfort in the fact that it’s not our question. It’s God’s question, and like the good book says, “Who am I that I should hinder God?” I’m afraid of this text. But I’m also just as afraid of getting in the way of what God wants to do. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

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. LGBTQ kids are dying, waiting for someone to care about them. Traumatized refugees are languishing in camps, waiting for someone to notice them. Our Black neighbors are literally dying in jail, waiting for someone to realize that we seem to live in a system designed not to deliver but to thwart justice. Single parents are trapped in low-paying jobs, waiting for a few people to stand up with them and say that you can’t live on $7.25 an hour. Muslims, who live right next to us in fear, waiting for people like you and me to wrap our arms around them and treat them like siblings.

Whether or not Jesus was a political radical in the way we think of political radicals is irrelevant; the Romans believed he was a political revolutionary. And they executed him like one. And that’s the danger of not keeping your mouth shut about Jesus. Start talking about protecting the poor and the powerless, and people get twitchy. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

True freedom, as we find it in Jesus, can never be about ever more elaborate ways to justify selfishness—to say that we have responsibility only for ourselves and those we love. True freedom for those who follow Jesus is being given the opportunity, no matter how much it costs, to love those whom Jesus loves. But the thing is, we have to leave the empty tomb to do it. We remember it; we love it, but we see it as a place from which we’re sent out into the world—because that’s where the sick, and the hungry, and the imprisoned are. That’s where the work is. And that’s where Jesus is. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Salving our consciences by looking away betrays Jesus and the world God is busy creating. Shuffling the houseless off to someplace where the people can’t see them may be good for tourism, but it fails our community and vocation as Jesus-followers by making some of our neighbors expendable. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In other words, unlike the kinds of rulers people are used to, who always seem to be using their power for themselves, Jesus’ use of power is always focused on the most exposed and exploited among us. Jesus’ use of power builds up instead of dividing and tearing down. Heals people rather than afflict them. Sets them free instead of subjugating them. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons In fact, the story’s not about us at all. We find out that if the father in this story is a stand-in for God, God’s not keeping score the way everybody else keeps score. In a culture where shame lessened everyone’s respect for you, God demonstrated God’s willingness to dive face-first into the slop to show us how much we’re loved.But God’s also willing to risk humiliation to find the entitled older brother and listen to his whining about how—after all he’s done—he’s never got so much as a case of beer and a cheese ball for a party with his friends. Think about it. God embraces humiliation to preserve a relationship with both the irresponsible brat and the entitled fussbudget.Subscribe to us on iTunes!Sermon text: web | d

In the old windswept world, people like Vladimir Putin invade the homes of others for their own gain. In the new world, refugees are the very people best situated to understand how much returning home is worth. In the old desolate world, our worth is determined by the size of our bank accounts and the colleges we can get our children into. In the new world to which we long to return, our value is determined by God’s desire to bring us home. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Consequently, The Great Man Theory of History should have been recast as The Great White Man Theory of History. But since everybody already took for granted that the only history worth telling would have white men as the central characters, being explicit about it was not only unnecessary, it was redundant. So, when white people complain during February every year that there’s no “White History Month,” and I say, “Oh yes there is; it’s called ‘the rest of the calendar,’” I’m not just being a smart-aleck, I’m being painfully literal. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

The wonderful thing about the popular version of Christianity is that it can be done with minimal inconvenience to one’s otherwise comfortable lifestyle. Much of it can be accomplished without ever making your back sore or getting your hands dirty. The trouble is ... that doesn’t sound like the Jesus of the Gospels at all. Jesus, it turns out, is interested in establishing the reign of God; but that reign is first about the lives we live as we try to love others before it’s ever about suspending the living of our lives until after we’ve died. It’s about what’s going on around us as much as it is about what’s going on inside us. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Unfortunately, what too many people mean by “freedom” is freedom from responsibility for anybody but myself and those I love. Freedom on this reading means something like, “You can’t tell me what to do. I can do whatever I want. Why? Because this is a free country.” But, I mean, come on. That’s how children think, isn’t it? Freedom read this way amounts to an ever more elaborate rationalization of selfishness. Think about the issues you can pass through this lens. Healthcare, unemployment insurance, immigrants, state-sanctioned violence against Black people, houselessness, student loan debt, food insecurity. Think about the refugees from Ukraine who’re living their worst nightmares right now because of the selfishness of another fox, a Russian Herod whose desires always seem to center on himself. Subscribe

You get to choose how you’ll view the world, to whom and what kind of attention you’ll give. Nobody is the boss of how you choose to act but you. No one can tell you what to do about the kind of love you offer to others. The whole “you’re-not-the-boss-of-me” thing is always about power. But here’s the thing, you don’t have to give yours away. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc