Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

I believe this Syrophoenician woman challenges us to encounter newness and change not as a threat, but as God trying to break in among us and stretch our understanding of how big this welcome is we’re supposed to be giving, how expansive is the vision of just who God wants to offer hospitality to. So, here’s what I think: We ought to be asking ourselves what kind of gifts God is sending us in people courageous enough to seek us out to see if there’s anything to this “Jesus thing.” Because sometimes God shows up looking like the very people we’ve spent so much of our lives avoiding. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

But Jesus knows the dangers of sounding righteous and pure, while you’re secretly wallowing in cruelty and exclusion—of saying one thing in the breathy tones of piety or patriotism, while simultaneously doing what you need to in order to retain power and influence. In other words, you better get it right on the inside first … because the inside is where God is, and the inside is where God is calling you to throw open the doors and invite everyone, to embrace those who are different from you, to love those who look and talk in ways that are foreign to you, those who make you uncomfortable because you’re positive they don’t meet your exacting standards of propriety and decorum, those you’re sure God can’t possibly love the way they are. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In other words, according to Isaiah, there was a time when God alone was seeking justice for the weak and the powerless. The author of Ephesians says that the community of the faithful, because of the example of Jesus, needs to take its place alongside God, to put on the same armor God put on all those years before in Israel—not so that we can fight our individual demons, but so that justice will no longer stand at a distance and truth will no longer stumble in the public square. Paul says that we’re part of the divine Justice League—because justice is precisely what God desires, but what is too often nowhere to be found. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In the ancient Near East, the small number of the rich and the powerful, the rulers and their retainers benefitted from a political and economic system where a few lived well, while the rest of the population had to scratch out a living by the skin of their knees and fingertips. That is to say, the folks in charge had a vested interest in promoting the belief that religion is about holiness and spirituality, and should, at all costs, avoid such messy things as economics and politics—because once the peasants start wondering whether or not the system is giving them a raw deal, the whole thing starts unraveling. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In the new reign over which Jesus presides, the sick are healed, the hungry are fed, the outcast are welcomed, the forgotten are remembered, and sinners are forgiven—for the simple reason that that’s what God wants. That’s the way God is. Perhaps it doesn’t make good business sense to go to all that trouble for people who can’t offer you anything in return, but that’s God’s idea of a good time ... lavish, extravagant, unthinkable. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

"I’ve seen people kicked off food stamps by Christian politicians who announce their 'love' with words like 'personal responsibility' and 'incentivizing the poor.' "I’ve seen people who claim to follow Jesus 'love' immigrants by putting their children in cages. "I’ve seen homeless LGBTQ kids who’ve been 'loved' out into the street by families with Jesus dripping from their lips. "Love, at least the way it gets enacted in our world, appears to be a much more malleable concept than we like to believe." Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vl5Rm7Tz2xfFKYyGYAMdceDmODxqEpya/view?usp=sharing

But maybe what Mark intends for his readers to understand is that, no matter how you slice it, this following Jesus stuff is really inconvenient. If you’re true to the gospel, then not everybody’s going to like what you have to say. Perhaps the point is in trying to negotiate the troubled middle ... between making Jesus so innocuous that he starts looking like the inoffensive neighbor on a Nickelodeon sitcom and identifying with him so closely that you start being insufferable in the way that ordinarily makes you cringe when you see it in others. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fmLkq0J2j9UaLrAQ6S8shbSqpihOFAIz/view?usp=sharing

But for those people who’ve regularly found themselves oppressed and marginalized, for those whose history always seems to get erased when it challenges the systems that keep some people in power, the mega-storm of the reign of God must feel like the very breath of God. It feels like a peace that that finally establishes justice and equity for all God’s children, especially those who’ve spent their lives living on the other side—in the dark unforgiving environs that all the polite people have studiously tried to avoid. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rjf5YSSJGsKd1x6W_QboGSTuy0v93H2s/view?usp=sharing

What I find interesting about these two intertwined stories is the issue of how short-sighted they make Jesus appear on the front end. In both cases, Jesus participates in activity guaranteed to marginalize him in everyone’s eyes. In both cases, he risks the social and political costs of being unclean by touching those who are unclean. A true test of your convictions is what you’re prepared to look like a complete idiot for—what you’re willing to lose everything for. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tv8Dwg0-6oiuvW5HhQhKzj48MhwppoXL/view?usp=sharing

When we say “reign of God” in church, it sounds like good news. But to Caesar, to the powerful, to the people who always come out smelling like roses, to the people who benefit from a nice, orderly system that they alone control and benefit from—it doesn’t sound like good news at all. It sounds like the end of everything that has consistently given them advantages that most people will never enjoy. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cHTUr8z0JYlGxtin7jnBZ7RlgXAoJ2Yf/view?usp=sharing