Vessel Houston

The Apostle Paul pens a second letter to a freshly planted church within a diverse and prosperous city. Amid the countless idols of the empire, and a wave of troubling misinformation, how is this new and fragile people to discern and stand firm in truth? (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

2 Thessalonians 2:1-17

Between doubt and faith, exile and home, sorrow and renewal, what is and what is yet to come; God is here. The words of the prophet Jeremiah help us to maintain a vision of hope glimmering through the wrath of our age. (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

Jeremiah 14:7-10,19-21

Jeremiah 31:31-34

…It would be more significant to say that, like us, Jeremiah lived in an age of wrath. - Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel\

…(a prophet) is someone who knows what time it is. - Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Even in Babylonian exile, even behind prison walls, God the “Director” has cast each of us in this ever-unfolding human drama. Looking to the prophetic word of Jeremiah, and in Luke 17, a grievously afflicted group encountering Jesus on the road, we see how transformation happens when we draw near to God by fully inhabiting the space and moment in which we live, especially those we did not choose. (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

Jeremiah 29: 4-7

Luke 17: 11-19

A “religious” leader emerges through the dark, seeking to understand this mysterious, troublemaking rabbi. The two share a nighttime encounter illuminated by a universe shifting claim, one which our world of outrage and malice needs more than ever. (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

John 3:1-17

John 19:39-40

God’s freely given grace is a humiliation to the ego because free gifts say nothing about being strong, superior, or moral. Thus only the soul can understand grace, never the mind or the ego

- Richard Rohr, “Economy of Grace”

A healing encounter on the Sabbath ignites a fury of backwards religiosity, reminding us that following Jesus often means embracing a holy disobedience in the face of injustice and neglect for those suffering under the many afflictions of our world. (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

Luke 13:10-17

... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

- Mary Ann Evans (“George Eliot”), Middlemarch

Our world will never be transformed from a place of endless conflict and worry through greater control, but by communities who move toward the rupture, joining God in co-crating the just, equitable, and loving alternative. (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

Isaiah 1:10-20

Luke 12:22-34

- God is not impressed by our rituals

- When life is only about what you have, everything becomes something to lose

- The antidote to worry moving toward the other, where we generally find that our worry is small, or shared

We resist prayer to the same degree that we resist relationship. As a herald of hope to a world in turmoil, Jesus calls us the Church to a deeper embrace of both; each strengthening the other. Prayer is not a static set of words to parrot, but an invitation into loving and honest dialogue wherein we gain new sight for God’s activity in the world and within our own hearts. (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

Luke 11:1-13

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

Søren Kierkegaard

Revisiting the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we are drawn once more into the simplicity and endless mystery of this story which Jesus chose to tell (and to whom). May the blessed actions of the outsider lead us to lament and rethink more than simply our conditional definitions of belonging on earth, but the ways that we allow fear, self-interest, and need for retribution to extend that distorted view even into the afterlife.

Scripture & Quotations

Luke 10:25-37

“There are… those Christians, who are earnestly attached to the idea of an eternal hell not just because they feel they must be, but also because it is what they want to believe. For some of them, in fact, it is practically the best part of the story. It gives them a sense of belonging to a very small and select company, a very special club, and they positively relish the prospect of a whole eternity in which to enjoy the impotent envy of all those writhing, resentful souls that have been permanently consigned to an inferior neighborhood outside the gates.”

“…the bizarre idea that this fee was a price paid to the Father — the coin of some sublimely circular transaction wherein God buys off God in order to spare us God’s displeasure (rather like a bank issuing itself credit to pay off a debt it owes itself, using a currency it has minted for the occasion and certified in its value wholly on the basis of the very credit it is issuing to itself.”"

“Love my neighbor all I may, if I believe hell is real and also eternal I cannot love him as myself. My conviction that one of us might go to such a hell while the other enters into the Kingdom of God means that I must be willing to abandon him — abandon everyone, in fact — to a fate of total misery while yet continuing to assume that, having done so, I shall be able to enjoy perfect eternal bliss… without the least hesitation or regret, to have surrendered him to endless pain.”

- David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, & Universal Salvation

It was a thrill to have our friend Ericka Graham join as our guest preacher this weekend, inviting us into a dense and evocative story.

Across the sea, Jesus approaches a man with a grave affliction; an encounter revealed to be more than merely an exorcism. Jesus guides us ever to the margins, rejecting the hollow power of empire, liberating the oppressed, and empowering us all to bear witness to God’s restorative goodness. (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

Luke 8:26-39

“Sometimes the terror we know is more tolerable than the peace we can’t imagine."

- Evan Garner

“Evil can hide in systems much more readily than individuals.”

- Richard Rohr

“Jesus liberates the captive by restoring him to his community.”

- Isaac Villegas

On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came rushing down as wind and fire, reversing the “curse” of Babel, and calling all of humanity to the truth that we are made to exist in diverse and inter-reliant community. As lines of demarcation and othering, “US” and “THEM” continue to be drawn, and immigrant communities terrorized across the country, followers of Christ must be a part of proclaiming justice and choosing the vital messiness of embrace. (sermon begins at 01:00)

Scripture & Quotations

Genesis 11:1-9

Acts 2:1-18

“That wind, that Spirit, created a new nation that was no longer subject to the constraints of the past and the boundaries that keep us apart. God’s salvation is the creation of a new society that invites each person to become part of a new age that the nations of this world cannot provide.” 

“At Pentecost God created a new language, but it is an embodied language of care. It is a baptism of fire through which we enter a community whose memory of its Savior creates the miracle of being a people whose very differences contribute to their unity and love for one another. We call this new creation church

- Stanley Hauerwas, Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possible