Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

Photo by Felix Mittermeier: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photography-of-chessboard-game-957312/ Remember: the cross is what happens when you tell the truth about power. But resurrection is God's answer to the cross. And we live between the two, in this time when the old age is dying and the new age is being born, and we have to decide which age we belong to. We have to decide whether we're going to use people as props for our comfort or see them as children of God. Whether we're going to accept a world where people are fuel for machines or build communities of resurrection. Whether we're going to stay silent while fascism ri

Photo by Min An: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-vintage-typewriter-1425146/ Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Turn the other cheek. Give to everyone who begs. Do to others as you would have them do to you. These aren't impossible riddles for religious overachievers. They're the habits of a people who know they've been welcomed while they were still a long way off. They're what belonging looks like in work boots. If I know my life has been called blessed before I could prove anything, then I can stop guarding my worth like a secret. I can risk forgi

But abiding teaches us a few stubborn questions: Does this freedom hold when the empire gets mad at us? Does it make more room at the table? Can it make it through Good Friday and still show up on Sunday? Jesus' freedom can. It walked through death and came out holding the keys to the jail. It taught Galilean fishermen to lay down nets and pick up neighbors. It taught a tax collector to give the money back and still feel welcome at the supper table. It teaches frightened congregations to stop asking "Who's my patron?" and start praying "Our Father, who art right here in the middle of this mess with the rest of us." Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

This table today, set by God, is its own bridge that crosses every chasm. We come to the bread and the cup as people who need help, as well as the people who can help. We come to remember Jesus, who crossed a greater chasm than any we've built, and who returns to find whether we've learned what he's been trying to teach us. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Following Jesus costs a great deal more than we’re able to afford on our own. Let’s not kid ourselves, there are crosses with our names on them, just waiting for us. And to be clear: in Luke, “take up your cross” isn’t code for generic misery, like “my bunions are acting up.” The cross is the predictable blowback you get for aligning publicly with Jesus and his upside-down reign in a world organized to keep the powerful comfortable. It’s the social shame and concrete political and economic risk that come when you side with the people Jesus sides with. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

So what would it look like if we lived this out? It’d look like neighborhoods where homeowners invite renters. Schools where kids who get free lunch sit at the head table. Churches where people on the margins don't just get charity, they get justice. I think it'd look like budgets that stop hunting for quarters in the couch cushions when it comes to feeding the hungry, while writing blank checks for weapons and tax breaks for the folks who need them least. It'd look like communities where the poor aren't a problem to solve but guests of honor at the feast. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

And we’re the key. We need to make sure this room isn’t welcoming to indifference. We need to advocate that meetings halt until anonymous faces have names. We need to fight for budgets that carry a compass and know when they’ve strayed from their true direction. We need our prayers to have hands and feet. We need to straighten what’s gotten crooked—not because we can solve everything, but because we refuse to keep the ox watered while a daughter stays bent. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

We live in a world where so many go to bed terrified—parents for their children’s safety, and children for their parents, that they won’t be targeted and rounded up just because of the color of their skin; but Jesus announces a world where everyone has a place to go to feel safe from harm, a sanctuary from the hatred and violence. We live in a world that feels like it needs the fire of God’s transformation, a new way of living together. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In the world God desires, apparently, the more we have, the less we get to choose whether or not to give. Viewing giving as an act of justice that the giver is obliged to perform helps correct power imbalances by affirming that those who are first will be last, so that those who are last may be first. It is God’s good pleasure, according to Jesus, to give us a world where the coin of the realm isn’t about grasping for everything we can get, but about selling what we have and sharing it. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

To be rich toward God is to divest from the myth of self-sufficiency. To stop pretending we'll live forever if we just insulate ourselves well enough. It means investing in what death can't repossess. And it means doing it now—because by the time the tow truck shows up, it's already too late to check your balance. Jesus isn't just warning us. He's calling us out of the illusion of permanence and into the grace-filled community of participation—the kind of investment where the gold doesn’t rust or the moth destroy. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

But here’s the thing, real prayer to the God who doesn't do shame produces people who stop using shame as a sorting tool. If God rushes in to help with zero calculations, then maybe the question isn't "How do I sound more spiritual?" but "Am I reflecting God's shameless generosity or humanity's shame-soaked gatekeeping?" Refugees, broke neighbors, starving babies in Gaza, overwhelmed friends showing up at your door like it's midnight and they're out of options? They’re not a spiritual test. They're an invitation to look like the God we claim to follow. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

But Amos is raining down fire on the whole nation. Everybody. Why? Because the crimes against the powerless Amos lays out aren’t just a few rotten apples. The crimes Amos names are institutionalized; they’re accepted as part of the fabric of society—you know, just the way things are. In other words, there are good moral folks who know what’s going on—those who see the injustice being perpetrated on the helpless, aware of the labor being stolen from the voiceless—and yet remain silent. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

God didn't show up to make everybody speak the same language. God showed up so we could understand one another across our differences. That's not a return to uniformity. That's a celebration of diversity. That's a vision of the reign of God where every clan and nation and tongue can come to the table as themselves, not as carbon copies of whoever got there first. And, let's be honest, we know how badly a little diversity triggers some folks in our country. We've seen what happens when people start talking about making room at the table for voices that have historically been excluded, for perspectives that challenge the comfortable assumptions of those who've always held power. Subscribe

When we refuse to worship at the altar of consumerism, when we choose justice over profit, when we stand with the oppressed against their oppressors, and speak truth in the face of lies, we’re going to face resistance. We’ll be called naive, idealistic, unrealistic. We’ll be told that this is just the way the world works, that we can't change anything, that our efforts don't matter. But remember: we are not of this world. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Of course, it's not always easy. Some days, the world drags you into the courtroom and puts your soul on trial. You get accused—by others, by your own failures, by that nagging voice in your head. But you don't have to argue your case. You've got someone who already knows the truth and stands by you anyway. The Spirit shows up like a defense attorney who's not afraid of a messy past, someone who doesn't need to prove you innocent to love you. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Living this way isn’t easy. It means turning away from all the ways we’ve weaponized faith and marginalized people in God’s name. It means learning to see people as Jesus sees them, not as projects or enemies or obstacles, but as beloved children of God. In a world full of hate, fear, and division, love isn’t just our calling … it’s our superpower, our secret weapon. It’s our most authentic sermon, the sign that points the way home. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

I find it fascinating, and not a little bit instructive, to think that God can make something out of us that nobody ever thought we could be. Knowing ourselves as we do—that God chooses us to embody the love and justice envisioned in this new reign is confounding. But if, when God tells us to get up, we get up and go, the story of the gospel is that God can change the world through us. And that’s the thing: The world, as chaotic and torn as it is right now, needs a little resurrection—needs people like you and me to get up and bring new life to folks who feel like everybody else has given up on them. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Dramatic conversion stories are never merely stories about dramatic conversions. They’re preludes to the real story. In fact, the real reason we care about this story at all is because of what happened after the euphoria wore off. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Jesus didn't say, "I've overthrown Rome! Now we'll have peace!" He simply said, "Peace be with you," while showing them his wounds. His peace bears the marks of suffering. It doesn’t deny pain; it transforms it. It doesn’t require the elimination of enemies; it embraces them. This is why passing the peace is indeed a political act. Every time we say to one another, "Peace be with you," we’re rejecting the peace of empires. We’re declaring our allegiance to a different realm with a different sovereign who rules in a different way. After Easter, we acknowledge that true peace, God’s peace, can’t come through domination or be secured through violence. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text:

We’re the kind of Easter people who don't just decorate the sanctuary once a year, but who live with rolled-away stones and open doors and trembling joy. We practice resurrection in how we vote, how we spend, how we welcome the stranger, how we care for creation, how we speak to and about one another. We’re people who know that the most powerful force in the universe isn't military might or market value or majority rule. It's love that gives itself away. The kind that doesn't cling to power but empties itself for others. The kind that turns the other cheek, not out of weakness but from a strength so secure it doesn't need to dominate to prove itself. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon tex