Sermons from Oak Church

Pastor Chris introduces one of the 2020-21 Brehm Center Resident Artists. Bethie Figgie is from Bellingham, WA, the home of endless grey drizzle, no cockroaches, excellent teriyaki, and clean sea air. She moved to Durham in 2017 for goodness knows why and has been here ever since. She lives with two roommates plus one cat, and her favorite place to […]

09/27/2020 Psalm 126 D.L. Mayfield   Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic Christian without in any way abandoning her social and anarchist activism.   D.L. Mayfield lives and writes on the outskirts of Portland, OR with her husband and two small children. Her first book of essays, Assimilate or […]

Congregational liaison Alexandra Burchette introduces one of the 2020-21 Brehm Center Resident Artists. Sayde Anderson is from Denver, Colorado – home to the invention of the cheeseburger.  I moved to Durham in 2020 for the community and have been loving it so far.  I live with my best friend from college, and my favorite place to hang out in Durham […]

09/20/2020 Matthew 20:1-16 (Proper 20) Chris Breslin   “All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless, and brutal.” -Flannery O’Connor “…God is only crazy, not stupid. Like God, he (the householder) has arranged for their recompense to be […]

09/13/2020 Matthew 18:21-35 (Proper 19) Chris Breslin Testimony and introduction of Yudai Chiba (2020-21 Pastoral Intern) “Through my memory of the Passion, God can “purify” my memory of wrongs suffered because my identity stems neither from the wrongdoing done to me, which would require the perpetual accusation of my wrongdoer, nor from my own (false) innocence, which would lead me [&...

09/06/2020 Matthew 18:15-20 (Proper 18) Justin Farmer   Godly Play at Home Practical Tips and Resources for Hand Copying Scripture (Kairos Partnerships)   Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering: Brother by D. Gungor/Cron/Arndt Your Peace Will Make Us One by Assad He Is Among Us by Piercy/Wardell/Swinton/Palmer/Zach

08/30/2020 Matthew 16:21-28 (Proper 17) Chris Breslin   “Jesus gives his disciples a new barometer.” Whereas the God’s people’s faithfulness was measured by prosperity and flourishing in the Promised Land…”now Jesus is telling his disciples that persecution, suffering, and even death will not only be his fate but will also be the fate of anyone who seeks to follow him. […]

08/23/2020 Matthew 13:31-33 Meg Hoffman & Chris Breslin   Godly Play at Home Practical Tips and Resources for Hand Copying Scripture (Kairos Partnerships)   Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing by Robinson Establish the Work of Our Hands by Porters Gate Worship Project Feast or Fallow by McCracken Let It Be So by Way

08/16/2020 Matthew 15:21-28 (Proper 15) Chris Breslin   We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table; but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have […]

08/09/2020 Matthew 14:22-33 (Proper 14) Chris Breslin   “Faith is not a characteristic. Faith is not a personality trait. Faith is not a sanctified degree that you put on your wall. Faith is not even a possession that you have…Faith, even though it is a noun, best operates as a verb. Because if faith is anything it is that which […]

08/02/2020 Psalm 68:4-6a Rev. Meg Hoffman & Rev. Chris Breslin   Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering: Nothing to Fear by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light by Thomerson I Shall Not Want by Assad/Brown New Wonders by McCracken

07/26/2020 John 11:14-44 Rev. Dr. Andy Byers   Slides for July 26, 2020 Godly Play at Home   More resources on Faith and the Apostles’ Creed: The Apostles’ Creed for Today by Justo Gonzalez The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine ed. By Colin Gunton The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider The Apostles’ Creed by Ben Myers […]

07/19/2020 John 21:9-19 Chris Breslin   “Kichijiro who has been the Judas figure throughout, turns out to be Fr. Rodrigues’s best friend, the most trusted confidant.  Kichijiro refuses to let Fr. Rodrigues give up his identity as a priest. As Andrew Garfield says Fr. Rodrigues’s last lines, “ “But our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, […]

07/12/2020 Ephesians 3:10-21 Charlene Brown   “The “rulers and authorities”— both the earthly authorities and their shadowy heavenly counterparts— always tend to create societies and social structures in their own flat, boring image, monochrome, uniform and one-dimensional. Worse: they tend to marginalize or kill people or groups who don’t fit their narrow band of acceptability.  The church i...

07/05/2020 Colossians 3:1-17 Chris Breslin   “Hope sounds like a song in a weary throat.” -Pauli Murray   Slides from July 5, 2020 Godly Play at Home The Tragic History of “I Can’t Breathe” (NY Times)   More resources on Faith and the Apostles’ Creed: The Apostles’ Creed for Today by Justo Gonzalez The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine ed. […]

06/28/2020 Acts 10:34-43 Chris Breslin “In his appearing we find neither a dualist rejection of the present world nor simply his arrival like a spaceman into the present world but rather a transformation of the present world and ourselves within it, so that it will at last be put to rights and we with it. Death and decay will be […]

06/21/2020 Ephesians 4:1-16 Chris Breslin   “[Picture a diver] stripping off garment after garment, making himself naked, then flashing for a moment in the air, and then down through the green, and warm, and sunlit water into the pitch black, cold, freezing water, down into the mud and slime, then up again, his lungs almost bursting, back again to the […]

06/14/2020 John 11:1-44 Chris Breslin   “I would not be a Christian apart from those tears.  Jesus’ wasteful tears.” –Steve Garber (recounted in Makoto Fujimura’s Tears for Fragile Emanations   Slides from June 14, 2020 Godly Play at Home   More resources on Faith and the Apostles’ Creed: The Apostles’ Creed for Today by Justo Gonzalez The Cambridge Companion to Christian […]

06/07/2020 Isaiah 53 Chris Breslin   “God’s ‘yes’ will always have the final say over our ‘no.’ God’s justice will always have the final say over our injustice.” -Mika Edmonson, The Power of Unearned Suffering: The Roots and Implications of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theodicy   “…power is a gift and is principally given for setting people free.” -Sam Wells, […]

05/31/2020 Passages from Luke 1 & 2 Dr. Chris E. W. Green   Slides from May 31, 2020 Godly Play at Home   More resources on Faith and the Apostles’ Creed: The Apostles’ Creed for Today by Justo Gonzalez The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine ed. By Colin Gunton The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider The […]

Fr. Mike Boone passed away unexpectedly on Tuesday May 26, 2020 at his home in Bremerton, WA. He was the rector and dean of St. Charles Anglican Cathedral. While Mike was in Durham, he was an avid early supporter of Oak Church. He believed deeply and creatively our mission in Lakewood. He shared in the calling of hope, healing, and […]

05/24/2020 Mark 8:27-35 Joe Longarino   Godly Play at Home   More resources on Faith and the Apostles’ Creed: The Apostles’ Creed for Today by Justo Gonzalez The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine ed. By Colin Gunton The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider The Apostles’ Creed by Ben Myers You Are What You Love by James […]

05/17/2020 Luke 15:11-32 Chris Breslin   “It’s the unlimited power to be there, to be faithful to and for a world that is deeply unstable and unjust and suspicious and uncooperative: the power to go on trying to get through at all costs, laboring and wrestling with the human heart…God is to be trusted as we would trust a loving […]

05/10/2020 1 Peter 2:2-10 Chris Breslin   Slides from May 10, 2020 Godly Play at Home   More resources on Faith and the Apostles’ Creed: The Apostles’ Creed for Today by Justo Gonzalez The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine ed. By Colin Gunton The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider The Apostles’ Creed by Ben Myers You […]

05/03/2020 Acts 2:42-47 Dr. Linda Gorham   Dr. Linda F. Gorham is the President and Founder of Spring in the Desert Ministries, Inc. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Morgan State University and her M.A and Ph. D. degrees in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She received her Master of Divinity degree […]