Vox Veniae Podcast

Vox Veniae Podcast

By Vox VeniaeReligion & SpiritualityChristianity
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Vox Veniae Podcast episodes

  • Tethered to Belonging Part 3

    Lilly Ettinger reflects on Genesis 1:1–2, 26–27 and Rublev’s icon of the Trinity, exploring how God’s shared life of love offers a model for relating to ourselves and our neighbors. As people made in God’s image, we are invited to receive the belonging already extended to us and make room for others within it.

     

    Reflection Questions

    1. What spiritual practices or intentions inform your image-assumptions about God?
    2. What fruit does the image of God produce in your life
    3. What might it look like for our community to reflect the mutuality and belonging we see within the Trinity?
      4. 24 min
    4. Tethered to Belonging Part 2

      Brandon Kinder continues our fall vision series, Tethered to Belonging: A Theology for Wanderers, Skeptics, and Believers, by exploring our relationship with Scripture through Psalm 1. Drawing on poetry, ancient Christian wisdom, and a personal story about music and memory, Brandon asks what happens when we approach the Bible not simply as a book of answers, but as an invitation to encounter God. What if Scripture is less about getting every word right and more about remembering how to sing?

       

      Reflection Questions

      1. What “fruits” do you want to grow this next year?
      2. Would you rather memorize the menu, or eat the meal?
      3. Where/when have you felt that Divine Union?
        4. 22 min
      4. Tethered to Belonging Part 1

        Vanessa Maleare launches our fall vision series, Tethered to Belonging: A Theology for Wanderers, Skeptics and Believers, with a reflection on unity in diversity. Drawing from Philippians 2:1–8, she invites us to consider how humility, shared love, and care for one another can hold us together amid our differences.

         

        Reflection Questions

        1. How are you peculiar?
        2. Do you have resistance to deep conversations about faith?
        3. What beliefs about faith and belonging are baked into your DNA?
          4. 22 min
        4. Oh, Skybala!
          Lynn Osgood continues her series, God in Ordinary Places, and walks us through Jesus' parable of the tenants, a story set in an ordinary workplace, where everything the tenants fight to keep was built with care before they ever arrived. In this text, we can ask ourselves: What happens when something entrusted to us begins to feel like something we own? What happens when something we've earned begins to keep us from receiving what we cannot earn? [Matthew 21:33-39]
           
          Reflection Questions:
          1. What has been entrusted to my care?
          2. Where am I holding on too tightly?
          3. What from my past can I receive with gratitude, and what am I still learning to release?
            4. 29 min
          4. Strike the Rock!

            Vanessa Maleare leads us through a study of magical objects, Moses’s staff, and the movement from destruction to provision. In Exodus, the same staff once used to turn the Nile to blood becomes a tool for bringing life-giving water from the rock. What might this transformation teach us about redemption—and how might we discern our own place in bringing real, good change to the situations around us? [Exodus 17:1-7]

             

            Reflection Questions

            1. Has your freedom come at the cost of something else?

            2. What is something in your life that perhaps once was used to bring destruction and has been redeemed for a more life-giving use? 

            3. Do you feel comfortable "putting God to the test?

            22 min
          5. The Sunday of Complaining

            Lilly Ettinger explores Jonah alongside the prophetic tradition of bringing anger, disappointment, and protest directly to God. What if complaint isn’t a failure of faith, but part of a faithful relationship with God? Lilly considers how making room for honest complaint might expand our understanding of justice, restoration, and God’s surprising mercy. [Jonah 3:10-4:11]

             

            Reflection Questions

            1. Where am I waiting for judgment instead of hoping for restoration? 

            2. Where has God been gracious to me in my discomfort? 
            3. Where might my idea of justice be smaller than God’s mercy?

            21 min
          6. Heartbreak & Deconstruction

            Eric Robinson notices that many of us have suffered heartbreak in our journey with God and the church, and asks how might this be an invitation to open us to living in a new reality?

             

            Reflection Questions:

            1. When are the times your heart has been broken in your faith journey?

            2. Where do you see your life resonating with the story of Joseph?
            3. How might God be inviting you to allow your heart to be broken open? 

            25 min
          7. God of Ordinary Space

            Lynn Osgood walks us through Luke’s story of the road to Emmaus where the risen Christ is present long before the disciples recognize him. This sermon opens a new series, God in Ordinary Places, by asking what might change if we looked at the world around us in the same way: not as places where we bring God, but as places where God is already at work. 

             

            Reflections Questions:

             

            1. Where in your ordinary routines are you most likely to overlook the presence of God?

            2. We often imagine spiritual life as directing our attention away from everyday things toward something “higher.” What might change if we instead encountered God through the world around us?
            3. In what places do you feel closer to God? What makes those places the particular places they are?

            15 min
          8. Jesus and Blackwater Pond

            Catherine Johnson reframes Jesus’ invitation to “lose your life” not as self-erasure, but as a release from the survival strategies we cling to for safety. Jesus models another way: to live from our deepest values even in the presence of fear and loss—to love what is mortal, hold it fully, and, when the time comes, let it go.

             

            Reflection Questions

             

            1. What survival strategy has helped protect you in the past but may no longer be serving you in the present?
            2. Where in your life are fear or self-preservation tempting you to act against what you most deeply value?
            3. What might it mean for you right now to practice the movement of loving, holding, and letting go?
              4. 26 min
            4. Transformed Into Community

              With a new school year and new expectations approaching this fall, Lilly Ettinger notices that it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and on our own. God reminds us that we are not isolated human beings, but part of a community that helps us not to conform to hyperindividualism, but to lean into  being a part of the story of God and the world. 

               

              Reflection Questions

              1. Where in your life are you acting as though you have to do it alone?
              2. What becomes possible when we understand ourselves as members of one another?
              3. Where might God be inviting you to create the community you also need?



                4. Tags: Spiritual Growth, Progressive Church, Community, Transformation

                32 min

              About Vox Veniae Podcast

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              The work of the people. Our weekly rhythm of being together as a larger community to worship and confess, to engage scripture and prayer, to celebrate eucharist, and to be sent back into the city with…