Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

As those who follow Jesus, our job is also to read the world in which we live, and to hold it up against the world God intends in God’s new creation. In other words, it’s our job to help paint a picture of the way we’re truly meant to live together—where everyone is taken care of, not just the high-rollers who have the power and the money live it up while making everyone else’s life miserable—those able to avoid paying their taxes and skate past the consequences of their actions, those able to get the best healthcare (the kind denied to the masses), those able to use or ignore those they consider beneath themselves. Telling the truth about the world isn’t “divisive,” since true unity can’t be realized without truth-telling.

The reign of God does not exist where black people have to cry out against state-sanctioned violence against them … sometimes, even in their own homes … where they have to live with a justice system that is designed to punish them disproportionately, where black families have to walk out into a world every day that has shown time and time again that they’re not valued, not welcome, and therefore, not safe. We keep working on behalf of those who’ve been turned away by the very people who are supposed to be tending the vineyard—but who’ve proven themselves inadequate to the task by their continued failure to actually pull the weeds and dress the vines. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N_cu6lxc-DCK1kcELwQ1dblTOaIOV2h3/view?usp=sharing

To the peasants Jesus was addressing, this is how the story would have been heard: the rich vineyard owner goes out to exploit the expendable people who otherwise can't feed themselves. (They are literally some of the most vulnerable people in the world.) Then the vineyard owner humiliates them by forcing them all to take the same pittance—regardless of how much they’d worked. In essence, the owner said to these desperate workers: “Your labor has only the value I give it.” Rich landowners, in other words, would have been difficult to imagine as the hero in any story about peasants in Jesus' day. It would be like Jesus speaking to an immigrant community in New York City, and starting it by saying, "For the kingdom of heaven is like a sweatshop owner … or a payday lender.” Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fMnLhctK5OSa-KWsMTslwI94P7m-dtPW/view?usp=sharing

So, what does that forgiveness look like? When, and under what circumstances should I offer it? I wish there were an algorithm into which I could plug my experience, the depth of the hurt, the nature of the offender’s remorse and recovery, and have it spit out answers to those questions. But I don’t have such an algorithm. All I have is a community—a community that, paradoxically, teaches me both that I’m always in need of forgiveness for my own boneheadedness and my complicity in systems that abuse and neglect those who are more vulnerable than me, as well as my own need to learn how to forgive others. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nia4YX01WdqxmcKwblQgTvCIEXm7SMQv/view?usp=sharing

This thickheaded shepherd is missing one sheep. He’s got 99 other sheep. What does he do? Does he write off the one lost sheep on his tax returns? Does he casually post on other people’s Facebook page, “All sheep matter?” I mean, he’s got 99 well-behaved sheep, ones that haven’t given him heartache. Why risk losing anymore by going out hunting the one wayward sheep? Who knows why he does it? But he leaves the 99, looking with knowing, loving eyes for that one inveterate, wandering little sheep—as a way of saying that this one is worth risking all the rest. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LjCHM8gGgHBPUowpYnJqUeH25vA7G6Zb/view?usp=sharing

Jesus announces a new reign that will stand in stark contrast to the empire of Rome. In the old empire, the first shall be first, and the last shall mind their p's and q's and stay in their place. In the new realm, conventional wisdom—and the social arrangements that ensure it—will be turned on its head. The first will be last, and the last will finally get the red carpet treatment to the front of the line. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qwTaCiByEUnxmqJ1tK1acqpTOPP7Rl8d/view?usp=sharing

There are people who’ve been red-lined clean out of the conversation about what a just society might look like, people who’ve effectively been barred from the voting booth where they might be heard about what equity might entail, people who’ve seen the dreams of their children squashed under the boot of those who’ve been told some people don’t matter. But Jesus shows us by example that that’s not only not right—it’s the exact opposite of the new creation God is busy preparing. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OqkSZHP0B9EdS0AByxRU4YVMO2Ev-LgA/view?usp=sharing

According to the text, Jesus says to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" Generally, we’re tempted to interpret this as a scolding, as Jesus' annoyance with Peter for not keeping his eyes on the one who walks on water. And yet, it may not be a scolding at all. It sounds so much more like pleading: "How could you not know it was me? How could you not believe that as you walked into the terrifying darkness that there was a hand to hold you up? The hand that formed creation from chaos, the hand that brought forth water from the rock, is the hand that reaches out to you as you walk into the teeth of the storm." Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UwdM8uWHQ9OTTG56txkxF_YhFxrVXpx2/view?usp=sharing

Matthew shows us something about the way the rulers and the powerful of this world usually operate: there’s often more than enough for everybody to enjoy, but somebody always ends up dead. But when God gets the world God wants, though scarcity seems to rule, there’s more than enough to give life to everyone. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AFfQEHsYIN7lV6ueFTijB6t4tlVdXqW-/view?usp=sharing

In God's story, we don't sit passively waiting for an apocalypse in which God comes to smite God's enemies and reward the faithful. In the story God tells about what's real and what's not, we work in the midst of suffering to help the world begin to see what God's reign of peace and justice will look like when it's finally accomplished. We're not a people who sit waiting for the chaos to be tamed, for a little stability, the relief that comes when the pain stops. We are more than conquerors who work with God in Christ to proclaim a new story of welcome and abundance, of truth over lies, of equity for all over access for a few, of just laws over the self-interested edicts of the powerful. We work with God to tame the chaos for everyone, not just for the few at the top of the heap. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: [ web][1] | [ doc][2] [1]: [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gr0fVY3ysakSix_9w3NHmJbSnj6SWq-b/view?usp=sharing