Casey Doss

As we come to the end of the liturgical calendar and prepare to begin anew, we confess… Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Amen.

The more aware I am of what God has yet to do in me, the less aware I am—and the less consumed I am—by what he has yet to do in the people around me.

Fear, anger and sadness are not *negative* emotions to avoid, but *difficult* emotions to aim towards God in prayer, and to one another in confession. Spiritual wholeness is found in our willingness to integrate all of these realities in our life with God. #todayssermon

The Church is not to be found at the center of a left/right political world. The Church is to be a species of its own kind, confounding left, right, and so-called middle, and finding its identity from the “center” of God’s life.

"How many disasters do we have to go through in order to realize that all of humanity has a stake in the liberty of one person; whenever one person is offended, we are all hurt. What begins as inequality of some inevitably ends as inequality of all." Abraham Joshua Heschel

Before the water turned into wine, someone had to do the ordinary, tiresome task of filling the water pots. We want the new wine to just appear, but Jesus calls us to fill the jars first. In short, God often wants us to participate in our own transformation.

What we’ve said of heaven is as bad as what we’ve said of hell, because nothing is more at odds with God, more at odds with true happiness, than imagining we can and should be at peace while others are suffering.

“The virtue of humility—a treasure infinitely more precious that any scholarly progress—may especially be acquired this way. In this regard, contemplation of one’s own stupidity is perhaps even more useful than contemplating one’s sin.” Simone Weil

2-In the current flurry of so-called ecstatic "revelations" this would be a healthy reminder to return to the wisdom of the Cross and the Passion of Christ and not encounters with angels. Interesting that Paul's vision led him to say nothing in contrast current popular practices.

1 -Paul's encounter in the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12) is a way in which he reproves those who foolishly appeal to their private visionary experiences supposedly as authoritative as opposed to Paul appealing only to the Gospel of Christ. Paul only boasts in his weakness.

Christian nationalism will use the Bible to push for war when it wants to fight ... and then use the Bible to push for “peace” when it’s losing the war. It’s a tool for manipulation. And its only god is power.

I have been deeply disturbed when those who claim allegiance to Jesus minimize the ravages of the pandemic by reducing the loss of lives to statistics. Every life is precious. Not one is unknown by God. To speak as if they are reduced to stats is dehumanizing and so not Jesus.

There is no such thing as a threat to the gospel. The gospel is an announcement of a victory already won. There are threats to people understanding or believing the gospel. But the gospel itself is never under threat. Can’t be.

Christ descended to take time with us; he ascended to make time for us.