Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

If you’re starting a revolution, you don’t have to follow the same rules designed to keep power in the hands and for the benefit of those convinced the world was made for them. You don’t have to live in fear—the kind of fear necessary to make a world where some have and some do not, where some get justice, and some silently cry themselves to sleep at night, certain that justice is just a word used to protect the powerful and punish the weak. You don’t have to choose between violence and passivity. If you’re starting a revolution, if you’re committed to following the Jesus whom the powerful killed to make a point, you’ve got choices. Subscribe to us on iTunes

Real-life virtues—the ones that help us live real lives and not just "impressive” lives among those closest to us—are the kinds of virtues necessary for us to live together in community. These soft virtues like the ability to live and speak truthfully, to be a person others consider trustworthy (and not just being reliable about taking out the garbage, but about being worth the trust necessary to hold the vulnerability of others with gentleness and care), to be able to forgive (especially those who deserve it least), to have good boundaries that communicate where “you” end and “I” begin. These are the kinds of virtues that allow us to live not just in the mem

In embracing the cross, Jesus’ followers can say of empire at its most blood-thirsty, “Is this the best you’ve got? God’s got an even more astonishing trick up God’s sleeve. It’s a little something we call ‘Easter.’” Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

My first reaction is to want Jesus to pray for it to be easy. I want him to protect me from the world by installing some kind of force field, some heat shield around me that won’t allow the slings and arrows to touch me. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he prays not that there be a protective wall around me to guard against the damage life can cause but that I can endure the damage, that I can embrace the truth that life is full of fear and horror. Because Jesus knows that if we who follow him can’t speak the truth, everything we have to say will be easily dismissed. If we find ourselves hedging our bets over speaking what’s true, why should anyone take us seriously when we talk about a better world? Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In other words, if you love one another, you’re already doing the works that I’ve done—and you won’t have to question the “way to the Father,” about whether you’re following the step-by-step directions since everyone will already know who you belong to. If you condemn a system that allows police officers to kill a Black man in cold blood … on video … you and everyone else will know you’re following “the way.” If you raise your voice on behalf of the unemployed and the undocumented in a culture satisfied to let them suffer unaided by the powers and principalities, you won’t have to question where I’m going—you’ll already be there with me. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In other words, the people tasked with watching over the most vulnerable of the flock have proven themselves sightless. They care more that the sheep don’t jaywalk than about the fact that the way they run things has created even more vulnerable sheep. The trouble with the folks in charge is that being in charge isn’t the point; it’s about what kind of world we want to live in. Does it create space for the invisible people? Does everyone have enough to eat, a place to sleep, a means to care for people’s bodies and minds? Does it stand vigil against predators who feast on the weak and defenseless? Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

We heal the sick; we bind up the broken-hearted; we comfort the grieving; we pick up the downtrodden; we fight for justice … not because it makes for good strategy, but because we follow Jesus, which means we’re prepared to walk with him down any dark alley he enters—in search of those the rest of the world would just as soon leave behind. We do it because it’s right. And because God loves us enough not to let us stay where we are, because we’re the blessed who come in the name of the Lord, and because we don’t know how to do anything else. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

“Love your neighbor as yourself," as an ethical system, does have the drawback of relying entirely on me as the reference point—which, frankly, feels like something of a flaw in the system. I mean, what if I don’t love myself very much at all? What if I happen to be self-destructive? Does the golden rule relieve me of any duty I have toward another person beyond what I might expect from myself? The golden rule doesn’t work for nihilists. That’s a problem, isn’t it? Jesus, seeing that more is needed for the ordering of a new world, comes up with a different standard. No longer do I get to treat people the same way they treat me or even treat people the way I would like to be treated. He raises the ethical bar on us. According to Jesus, I'm duty-bound now, not to love my n

But the real question to us is, “Now that you’ve got this shiny new resurrection, what’re you going to do with it? Are you going to hang out with it, set up a shrine to it and serve lattes, thinking all the work’s been done two thousand years ago? Or are you going to realize that the freedom the resurrection brings is the freedom to back out of the tomb, walk down the road, and get back to work?” You see, it’s not that the resurrection isn’t cause for celebration; it’s that we’ve misunderstood celebration. It’s too easy to think that it means release from duty, a time to set down our work and head to the party. But the story of the gospel is that resurrection doesn’t free us from labor; it offers us labor worth giving our lives for. We find our greatest joy, our greatest

Death too often calls the tune to which, sad to say, so many of us feel compelled to take the dance floor. But I’ve got news for you—regardless of how it looks to you at present or who you think is in charge, Jesus is almost finished with his Lenten journey. And while the path he takes will ultimately lead him to a garbage dump on the edge of town called the “place of the skull,” the truth of the faith we profess is that that dump—which too casually deals in the art of death—is not the final destination. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

Being born blind is the definition of a pre-existing condition. But according to Jesus, it should never be a pretext for finding an excuse for why helping that person to find healing is wrong. According to today’s Gospel lesson, if you’re more concerned about who doesn’t deserve help than actually helping, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but Jesus has a fundamental problem with how you view the world. You can talk about having compassion for the most vulnerable. But if you spend more time worrying about who should be blamed for their vulnerability than finding ways to protect them, Jesus is going to be something of a disappointment to you. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

He could play it safe—you know, suck up to the religious bigwigs, make friends with the influential political high-rollers. But instead, he seeks out the last, the least, and the lost—because he’s not interested in establishing some kind of stable empire where everybody has to come and kiss his ring because he's so important. But instead, he drops any ambitions he might have had about being a big shot, walks down the first dark alley he sees, and starts having theological discussions with the invisible folks everybody else would just as soon forget. But when Jesus ventures down dark alleys looking for those who creep around the edges, he redefines the edges so that the margins are set in the center; and it’s the folks who usually occupy the center who risk finding themse

But because God loves the world—even with all its fear and distrust, God sent Jesus not to condemn the old world, to throw it on the scrap heap. Instead, according to the translation in your pew Bible, God sent Jesus to “save” the world. The word for salvation is probably better translated “healing” here. In other words, Jesus comes to transform the lower world from above and usher in a new reign, a new realm, a new world that looks like heaven right here on earth. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc

In Matthew’s hands, the devil is supposed to be a clever stand-in for Caesar and his empire, who argues that all the kingdoms of the world are his to dispose of as he sees fit. So, the question posed by this story to the congregation at Antioch struggling with where to put its trust, given the annoying fact of all of Caesar’s persistent and humiliating reminders of who’s in charge, is: Where does the church place its trust? Does the church trust the old regimes and their systems of domination to solve people’s problems, or does it trust the means of producing equity and abundance available in God’s new realm where power remains in God’s hands and never in the hands of the giant babies who holler like scalded cats to let everyone know they get to be boss? Subscribe to

Peering into the dark valley ahead—the one Jesus has just announced—the thought of camping out on the mountaintop with the Palestinian Justice League sounds like a pretty safe place to be, doesn’t it? Ever feel like that? You’re getting ready to graduate; the kids are getting ready to leave home, or the nurses are prepping you for surgery. As tough as it was in the past, the future seems way scarier. Even if the past was hard, at least you lived through it. You’re not sure you’ll survive what feels like the Zombie Apocalypse coming at you from around the next corner. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc