Genesis
This week we begin at the beginning in both the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis) and the New Covenant (The Gospel of John). Diana Butler Bass contends that our understanding of God and Jesus in the role of Creator (i.e., Genesis as the original act of creation and as a dynamic creative process that extends throughout history) is drifting away from the dominant theology of top-down, vertical institutions that describe God as the “majestic, transcendent, all-powerful, heavenly Father, Lord, and King” to…
Radical Grace
This week we take our ninth and final step along the path of the prophetic tradition. Richard Rohr in his book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, reminds us that the prophet Ezekiel (perhaps one of the most quirky and eccentric prophets we have read) begins in usual prophetic fashion with anger but then turns to one of the clearest expressions of grace in the Hebrew Scriptures: namely, the people receiving a “new heart and…
The Alchemy of Tears
This week we take our eighth step along the path of the prophetic tradition. Richard Rohr in his book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, reminds us that there is only one book in the Bible named after an emotion: the book of Lamentations, an expression of the “tragic sense of life.” Author and storyteller Megan McKenna poignantly describes the grief bemoaned by the writer of Lamentations, … the universal nature of shared sadness, and…
Growing Toward Love
Richard Rohr in his book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, describes the path of the prophetic tradition by bringing into conversation the inspired, and sometime eccentric, prophets of the Hebrew Bible with the contemporary voices of people who have embodied this path in the world today. Rohr plots this path as one that moves from “righteous anger against injustice, grief for the world’s suffering, and finally, grace-filled love for everyone and everything.” Over the…
The Role of Anger
This week, our youth apprentices and interns from Table Farm ask us to consider the role of anger on the prophetic path as evidenced in the lives of the biblical prophet, Jeremiah, and modern-day prophet, Greta Thunberg. During their recent farm shifts, our youth explored the connection between anger and grief as an antecedent to hope. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg embodies these two seemingly opposite and challenging emotions, anger and grief, as she chastises world leaders for not taking…
Necessary Disorder
This week we take our fifth step along the path of the prophetic tradition. Richard Rohr suggests that the work of the prophet often includes creating a holy disorder to disrupt a dominant unjust order. So, as we travel along the path of the prophetic tradition, the goal is to dis-order and disrupt things just enough that a new just and merciful order can emerge. As Rohr suggests: Reforms rarely move directly from the existing order to a new order…
Bias Towards the Margins
The ancient Hebrew prophet Amos and the contemporary Roman Catholic activist Dorothy Day both emphasized a bias toward the margins – “a preferential option for the poor.” Because the economic, political, and social systems of the world too often fail to reflect God’s love and care for all people, Amos and Day believe that God steps into the gap between the dominant culture and historical marginalized communities, calling us into the margins. Worship online with thetable.live. CCLI #805699 / CCLI…
Collective Evil
This week we take our third step along the path of the prophetic tradition. Richard Rohr in his book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, suggests that the vocation of the prophet is focused on unmasking collective evil or “social sin.” So, more than critiquing individuals, the prophets critique their culture and society, exposing what has been hidden. The prophets, far ahead of their time, learned that it is social sin that destroys civilization and…
Critical Mass
Pastor Jorge’s message, Critical Mass, will hold the scripture in conversation with the lives and legacies of the Hebrew prophet Hosea and the contemporary prophet Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Romero. Rohr affirms that “God’s message and messengers—and often the hearers—all tend to be outliers to ‘the way everybody thinks’… The whole group never gets the message, but a smaller group (the ‘remnant’) carries the love and hope of restoration after… the trials and tribulations the people endure”. The prophets taught us…
The Path of the Prophet
Richard Rohr in his book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, describes the path of the prophetic tradition by bringing into conversation the inspired, and sometime eccentric, prophets of the Hebrew Bible with the contemporary voices of people who have embodied this path in the world today. Rohr plots this path as one that moves from “righteous anger against injustice, grief for the world’s suffering, and finally, grace-filled love for everyone and everything.” Over the…
Spanning Generations
IMAGO DEI—the centrality of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in our Christ Tradition. While traditional depictions of God center on cisgender white male images, we will explore the multiple images of God that we see when we look into the mirror. We are all created in God’s image, so God’s image includes all of our reflections. We will focus on who we are as followers of Jesus and how we carry on his mission. We will revisit the story of the…
Clothed in Christ, Not Uniformity
This week’s title is “Clothed in Christ, Not Uniformity” – based on Galatians 3:23-29. In a current socio-political climate that spreads the false narrative that diversity is divisive, the gift of this passage from Paul is (surprisingly) that oneness in Christ breaks down binaries to offer a mosaic rather than a melting pot – retaining diversity and difference while also finding a new oneness.”This is the third in a four-week worship series on the centrality of DEI in our Christ…
