Blue Ocean Church Ann Arbor Sunday Sermons

Having a close relationship with Jesus means we come to understand him as a person who cared deeply about justice. Too often empire dresses Jesus up as a harmless, detached […]

We draw inspiration and encouragement from the brave midwives of Exodus 1, Shiphrah and Puah, who stood up to the Pharaoh when he ordered them to kill all the baby […]

The President’s photo op was a revelation of the un-exorcised White Supremacy in so much White-Washed Christianity. Embracing Sinai’s vision of equal justice is an essential part of engaging this […]

Pentecost is about receiving the powerful gift of empathy, the absence of which, in so much of White America, enables White Supremacy and the assault on black and brown bodies […]

From our worship pastor, Cassie—”The Evangelical Purity Culture caused me to deny my intuition, my agency and my autonomy. How I have used breath and embodiment meditation to reconnect with […]

We remember Ahmaud Arbery, and are encouraged to have a prophetic imagination as we process the griefs—both large and small—from the pandemic. Learn more about Blue Ocean Church at a2blue.org, […]

We’ve been through bad times before and will be again. In the middle of a crisis, lean into the wisdom gained from a previous deliverance. Personal reflections, from Ken, on […]

Using a story from 1 Kings 19 about Elijah the prophet, we’re invited to keep our eyes open for encouragement from God as we pace ourselves for the coming months. […]

Ever feel guilty about feeling anxious, as if there’s something wrong with your God connection? Psalm 131 is a portal through that funky religious ideation. Our weekly message, from Ken, […]

The Easter story tells us that Jesus is near, he knows our name, he knows our pain, and his living presence is all around. We are a resurrection people. Even […]

When we’re going through a global crisis, it helps to tune into a different drama from a different time—the ups and downs, celebration and sadness of Palm Sunday, for example—with […]

Via our virtual service, from Ken: “Late at night, an awareness of my maternal grandmother’s life-verse, in the context of all she went through, has been a help to coping […]

In the second sermon of our Lenten series, we talk about seeing the book of Job as the spiritual transformation of a man in the face of suffering and how […]

In this introduction to our Lenten Sermon Series, Job & the Religious Mob: A Courageous Dissent, we talk about where the book of Job fits into the larger revelation of […]

Taking Bonhoeffer’s lead, we look at what it means to be led by the Spirit discerned through the Jesus of the Disinherited. This is the final sermon in our Nurturing […]

In the Pentecostal tradition, praising God is a community event. People gather together to sing praises because it helps focus on a communal expectation that God can, and will, act […]

The first to be filled with the Spirit in the gospel of Luke were women used to being shushed, who then spoke up to challenge the powers of the day—this […]

The Pentecostal-Charismatic movement has shaped much of our understanding of the Holy Spirit. But it’s a mixed bag. In particular, this movement has obscured the Jewish understanding of the Spirit […]

Jesus’s empathetic love has the power to help us heal. Through the story of Lazarus’s death, we see a God who meets people in their grief in the personal way […]

Jesus drew his emphasis on “love your neighbor as yourself” from the book of Leviticus. It’s helpful to consider self-love (self-kindness) from an much older tradition than the self-esteem movement […]

In this timely sermon we visit various ways Christians have thought about the ethics of war and violence. Learn more about Blue Ocean Faith, including service time and location, at […]

Part 1 of 2. The practice of self-kindness is rooted in the primary commandment of the Jesus movement: Love your neighbor as yourself. First, we recover the prominence of this […]

Many of our Christmas traditions are drawn from stories and folklore surrounding St. Nicholas, a saint from what is now modern-day Turkey, known for his concern for the poor. Worship […]

Ezekiel, the traumatized prophet who became a mystic and saw very weird things, brought great comfort to others in similar straits. We close out our Advent sermon series on the […]

Giants in the Bible occupy a position between the historical and the mythical. The most famous giant is Goliath. He reveals the dynamics of our fearful responses to bullying powers, […]