That's What She Said

From the high to the low to the end of the show: this week’s podcast takes us on a journey through Luke 22 and 23, from the so-called Triumphal Entry to the death and burial of Jesus.

Editors note: We had a bit of a technological snafu this week, which meant our voice recorder used its on-board microphone instead of recording the clean signal from our soundboard. So the audio is a bit rough this week, but we hope you’ll forgive us and listen anyway :)

“Because I love you, I forgive you…kinda.” Forgiveness is the corollary to the confession we talked about on Ash Wednesday. We are not only sinners; we are also sinned against, guaranteed for anybody who stays in a relationship long enough. The people you love will hurt you. How expensive is your forgiveness? How tightly do you hold a grudge, clutch the offense? Like the older brother in the story Jesus tells: do those brothers ever love each other again? Or are they bickering about what happened that year for decades to come? Does the older brother hold on to the ulteriority of power gained in the younger brother’s serious transgressions? What would it look like if we practiced prodigal (reckless, lavish, bounteous, ridiculous) forgiveness?

“Love is Sentimental, Love is Romantic, Love is Sweet.” There is a kind of love that loves the idea of love: romantic, idyllic, sappy, needy – when the beloved object is attractive in a variety of ways. It’s the shallowest kind – and while it can lead to the deeper kind, sometimes we get stuck in the lightness of this sweetness. Think of Louis in Angels in America, leaving Prior to suffer through AIDS, wondering if he is capable of love. (He is not.) Agapé is hard-core. It’s decisional. It calls on all your deepest resources. Love is patient, love is kind, love is hard.

“I Love an Idea of You That I Need to Remain Constant for Me to Keep Loving You.” Jesus’s own best friends wanted him to play a certain role, fulfill a certain expectation, for them to remain loyal. They tried repeatedly to talk him out of his life’s calling, imagining that they did it for his own good. We do the same: loving someone who is healthy but forsaking them in sickness (more about this next week), loving someone who is weak and forsaking them when they grow strong (countless women who outgrew their husband’s expectation).

To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: [email protected]. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

“I Love You, But…” Conditional love sucks. The kind of love that requires changes of you before it manifests; the kind of love that evaporates if you don’t fulfill expectations. But what about love that is a priori (independent of experience, maybe even against experience), God’s own decision to have love as God’s primary disposition toward the world? We say it like testimony: “the world God still loves.” Because God has decided to, and God’s love is steadfast. Jesus loves the rich man, Mark says, though the rich man will disappointingly fall short of Jesus’s recommendation for a full life of discipleship.

To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: [email protected]. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Galileo Church: Epiphany 2

March 6 through April 7, 2019

Lent Series. “Scatology: relational bullshit under the microscope”

For Lent, we’re examining our fourth missional priority closely: “We do real relationship, no bullshit, ever.” What exactly do we mean by “bullshit”? How do we recognize it, avoid it, and avoid doing unto others what we don’t want done to ourselves?  

March 10, First Sunday in Lent. John 4:1-42. 

Origin story: how we got the fourth missional priority, or millennials and queerness, and the miraculous integration of selves. What does it mean that the church of our past asked us to fragment ourselves, keeping part(s) of ourselves hidden from sight or dressed up? Now that we have new eyes on the tradition and the text – Millennials who are shockingly transparent on social media, queer people who refuse to stay in the closet – we are able to see what was always there: that God desires (and so should we) the wholeness of every human being, the sameness of self from one setting to another. The church is a learning lab for integration or, colloquially, “no bullshit, ever.” Postscript: the no bullshit ethic is best practiced in real relationship– both pieces are required for either to have integrity. 

To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: [email protected]. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40

The theme ‘How We Exegete Our Own Lives: Questions of Theodicy.’

What do we make of it when bad things happen to us, who are good people, in spite of our trying so hard?

To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: [email protected]. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

February 24, the Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany (Katie preaching)

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Psalm 1

The faithful are “like trees planted by the water,” say both these poets. What is our water? Where are we planted? Do we get to choose that? What difference does it make?

To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: [email protected]. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

1 Corinthians 15:1-20

Psalm 138

“We who must die demand a miracle,” said W.H. Auden. The extension of God’s universal sovereignty to the matter of my own individual life is a hard stretch for many, but bedrock for our faith. Else, is this all there is?

To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: [email protected]. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Because Epiphany was extra-long this year, and because Katie will be gone for a couple of Sundays near the end of the season, and because we read a whole bunch of Luke’s early chapters early in the year, we’re doing a short series where the preacher gets to choose from the Revised Common Lectionary readings for the day – just not from Luke.

February 10, the Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany (Leah Jordan preaching)

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Psalm 71:1-6

To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: [email protected]. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.