Awaken Bowness Podcast

Daniel Chapter 10 opens where we left off, with Daniel in a place of great lamentation and confession. But in this chapter, Daniel is not alone in his lament, but the Holy One comes to meet him and his grief on the banks of the Tigris.   'There's this God speaking: “You’re not wrong. Your tears are not wrong, your sorrow is not illegitimate, your anger is justified. Since the first day you set you...

Daniel chapter 9 moves us out of the realm of the apocalyptic, and into the realm of confession. In the tradition of Jeremiah and the weeping prophets, Daniel recognizes with a deep grief that all is not okay. And this allows us to learn that we must first move through that grief at the way the world is, to hope and dream of how the world ought to be.   "We can grieve only when something like scal...

Daniel Chapter 7 takes a turn for the supernatural and apocalyptic. In this sermon we unpack what we can make of these dreams of beast and monsters, and what deep wisdom is held in apocalyptic story for our lives. "The apocalyptic way of telling story allows us space to consider that perhaps the monster isn't the person or even the event. Perhaps the monster, the real monster that terrorizes us al...

In this sermon we arrive at the very famous story in the book of Daniel, where Daniel meets the Lion's Den. Once again we are met with the dynamic of humans, animals, de-humanization, and the question of who acts with true humanity. "The way of the Living God is one where Lions can lay down with Lambs. Where I don't have to be afraid of you and you don't have to be afraid of me. It’s a reversal of...

In the next chapter of Daniel, we open with a story of a new King on the Throne of Babylon, who is hosting a feast with the stolen treasures of the lands his empire has conquered. His feast is disrupted by the hand of God writing mysteries on the wall. "So Jesus is standing here saying… I am not like Belshezzar, or Nebuchadnezzar, or Pharoah. I was born among the animals. I am a human one, no gold...

In Daniel Chapter 4, King Nebuchadnezzar has another dream he needs Daniel to interpret. Once again this dream raises questions for us, what is it to be a God, a human, and a beast. “And so now we have this king, that was famous for his glory, and for his almost divinity. But he is going to be brought down. He’s going to be brought down so far that he will not become a human like the rest of us –...

We continue our series through Daniel the story in which the corrupt King dreams a dream about himself as statue made of precious metals, and so erects a real statue for the whole empire to worship. In this sermon we are led to imagine the differences between the kings of this world, and the kingship of the Son of Man.   “Daniel’s God is not like other kings, Daniel’s God is a Human One. Jesus’ fa...

In chapter one of Daniel, we meet Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. These four boys are are captured from their homeland and brought to the capital city of the Babylonian Empire, where they are to be given new, imperial names and moulded into boys with appropriate minds and bodies in the eyes of the empire. But they do not go alone into exile, their God travels ahead of them and with them in...

The book of Daniel is a dramatic story of courts, contests, conflicts, and apocalyptic visions of violent kings, wild beasts, and the One True Human. The play between poetry and politics in Daniel forms an incredible tale about four friends resisting forced assimilation in Babylon. Although the Dehumanizing Empire tries to teach them how to be human, how to plan for the future, and how to find hom...

Our Holy Spirit series has come to it's close. In this sermon, Nikayla brings home all the things we have learn and meditated on about the coming of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and of the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives, as we imagine together the bright new vision of humanity that the Spirit is birthing in our midst.

This week Sunday Dallas Loewen preaches on the next part of our passage from Joel and Acts, "And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." We will be exploring the conception of the Holy Spirit, salvation, and deliverance from spiritual evil; exploring how these ideas can create harm in our communities, and what a Spirit breathed, life giving conception of the the Spirit's Deliver...

"The Sun will be turned to darkness and the Moon to blood before the great and glorious Day of the Lord, and all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved."    The Day of the Lord as an event is a towering figure that occurs over and over in the biblical narrative. What exactly is meant by the Day of the Lord? What does in mean to the people of God as an event that has already come to pass, a...

"I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord."   The coming of the Holy Spirit into our world does more than just give us dreams and visions, filling us with the internal sense of connection to God. It does more than co...

"I will show wonders in the sky above, and signs in the earth below."   The bible has told us again and again that God speaks to us through the Land, the Sky, and all things contained in it. In this sermon we imagine what it would look like to be a people who listen to the land in which we are planted, and marvel at the skies above it. The Spirit of God is speaking to those who get close enough to...

"Even your slaves will prophesy."   This week we explore how the Spirit of God speaks to us through those in our society who are the most marginalized, and that that place on the margins, rather than the center is where we meet God. The movement of God and the good news of our gospel Is that God does not lift us up or bring us to the center, but that first the incarnate God, and now the spirit of...

"Your young men will dream dreams and your old men will see visions."    We continue our journey through Acts 2 and our exploration of who the person of the Holy Spirit really is with a sermon on the visions and dreams that the Spirit pours out on all people young and old. This week Sue Hewitt will walk us through how we experience the Spirit of God through visions and dreams.

"In those last days I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your children shall prophesy."   This week as we continue our mediation on Acts 2 and the Holy Spirit Kathy Brown talks us through this assertion from Joel that our children will prophesy. We contemplate in this sermon what is means to be a prophet, what prophesy really means, and how this gift of the spirit connects us to one another thr...

"I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh." Is the opening to the key text we are meditating on over the course of this Summer. The Holy Spirit is characterized by this image of a radical generosity that pours out onto all people. This is a self-giving generosity that is given indiscriminately and unconditionally, a pouring out of self onto all flesh.   This Sunday Mike Poettcker brings us into the...

We aren't really known for a fiery zeal for the Holy Spirit here at Awaken and with all the bad press our fellow Christians have given the Holy Spirit we can't blame each other for being guarded. Christians tend to cause more harm than good when we think of the Spirit as either a personal magic within us, validating our ego-driven desire to transcend, or as a liturgical lapdog who comes when calle...

Throughout this series we've explored how Sabbath is for all of creation - human creatures, non-human creatures, and the land itself. We either all rest and flourish, or none of us do. As we close the series on Pentecost Sunday, Dallas discusses how the pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh is an invitation, as Willie Jennings calls it, into the "risk of new relationships." This Spirit is not exc...

The Sabbath laws in scripture are insistent that a true Sabbath rest is not just for the head of the household, not just for the wealthy who can afford it, but for everyone, and everything. If the rest isn't for everyone, it isn't Sabbath. The Scriptures also constantly remind us that God is deeply concerned with they way we treat animals. No small part of the law is dedicated to what animals can...

We've considered so far in this series that man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath made for man. This week, Michelle Edworthy impresses upon us that the Sabbath wasn't made only for human beings, but for the land itself. The Sabbath is a sacred symbol of rest, and that rest is commanded not just for the people who live on the land, but for the land itself.    This week we are reminded t...

Jubilee is the antithesis to Capitalism. Jubilee is only possible in a gift economy. Jubilee is only possible among a people who have repented of their idolatry, who have denounced their allegiance to Mammon, and turned towards one another, viewing image bearers as being worth more than our possessions. Jubilee is only possible in a community that sees a God who made the world, loved the world, an...

As we continue our journey of exploration through God's dream of rest for the community of God, we are joined this Sunday by Wayne and Lydia Nelson, who will speak on Sabbath as Addiction Recovery. What does it mean to find rest and freedom from the bondage and burden of living with addiction. What is God's dream for us when we struggle with addiction, and what does Sabbath mean in this context?

God's sacred dream for rest and wholeness in our world does not mean rest from labour only, but rest from trauma, from indignity, and from the cycles of fear and ostracization that keep people from flourishing in the community of God. Christ offers a Sabbath rest that wraps us up in safety, empowerment, and connection.    The week pastor James Wheeler joins us to preach on the Trauma-Informed Sabb...