Blue Ocean Church Ann Arbor Sunday Sermons

Ken gives an update on newcomers and becoming a members during our virtual mode and we hear a faith journey story from Amy MacNeil, connecting to Blue Ocean from Indiana. Also includes a visualization meditation with Cassie on Psalm 16.

We enjoy a lighter sermon today, talking about how to help our bodies process emotions that lead to exhaustion and burnout.

Trees figure prominently in indigenous and Hebrew spirituality. Those who “don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked” are regarded as trees by streams of water whose roots run deep, outlasting the wicked (i.e powerful bad rulers). Includes a guided meditation by Susan King.

We all have election distress. Much election talk is analysis, and doesn’t help us metabolize the anger, fear, hope, and other emotions that we carry. For that an ancient prayer, like Psalm 1, can help.

Environmental scientist Carl Safina, author of Becoming Wild, on The Greatest Story is that All Life is One. At the end of Dr. Safina’s talk, join Cassie in a short nature meditation.

With such a strong anti-Empire streak, it’s not surprising that our most common ritual speaks to that. We talk about various ways it does so.

The idea of apocalypse (which means, “unveiling”) is used most often in the Bible in relation to the fall of Empires or to significant historical shifts. We talk about how this literary genre can help us frame this moment we’re in while steering clear of the “Left Behind” literal interpretations that plague the American Christian landscape.

When religion seeks power and tries to use Empire to further its gains, it becomes counter-Jesus.

The voice from the burning bush was a God of Becoming: I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE. Just what Moses and the people of Israel needed—a dynamic, not a static God.

National religious-cultural politics created a hostile environment for Jesus in his village and in his family. He had to cut off family ties for a time and experience kinship with others instead. And all this must have shaped his experience of spirituality—his need for an understanding of divine presence.