Sermons from Oak Church

10/20/2019 Psalm 122 Christian DaPonte   Christian DaPonte is Oak Church’s Pastoral Intern for the 2019-20 academic year from Duke Divinity School. He was born in the USA’s northern neighbor in the great city of Vancouver, BC, his family moved across the continent to metro Atlanta where he was raised and calls his hometown. He went to Samford University in […]

10/13/2019 Psalm 132 Chris Breslin   “You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.” -St. Augustine of Hippo   “The history of the ark was, for the Hebrews, a kind of theological handbook. It provided an account of the presence of God among the people” -Eugene Peterson   “Our sense of […]

10/06/2019 Psalm 48 Chris Breslin   “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”   “Make a place to sit down. / Sit down. Be quiet. / You must depend upon   affection, reading, knowledge, / skill—more of each / than you have—inspiration,   work, growing older, patience, / for patience joins time / to eternity. -Wendell […]

09/29/2019 Luke 16:19-31 Chris Breslin   I say móre: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is — Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces. -Gerard […]

09/22/2019 Luke 16:1-13 Chris Breslin   “[T]he unjust steward is nothing less than the Christ-figure in this parable, a dead ringer for Jesus himself. First of all, he dies and rises, like Jesus. Second, by his death and resurrection, he raises others, like Jesus. But third and most important of all, the unjust steward is the Christ-figure because he is […]

09/15/2019 Luke 15 Chris Breslin   “I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.” -Henri Nouwen   “Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.” -Marilynne Robinson   “The four structural elements in […]

09/08/2019 Luke 14:25-33 Chris Breslin   “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer   “Pragmatism, legalism, and greed cannot comprehend the power of ephemeral beauty. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness; the opposite of beauty is legalism. Legalism is hard determinism that slowly strangles the soul. Legalism injures by giving pragm...

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Duke Initiatives in Theology and Arts, we’re revisiting this sermon by Jeremy Begbie from February 22, 2015 at Oak Church during the first week of Lent from Luke 23:26-37.

09/01/2019 Luke 10:1-20 Yucheng Bai   Yucheng Bai is a doctoral student in World Religions in the Duke University Department of Religion. Originally from China, he has been a member of the Duke chapter of Graduate Christian Fellowship while in Durham.   Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering: This is Not the End by Arndt/Gungor Peace Like a River a Traditional […]

08/25/2019 Psalm 90 Chris Breslin   “Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home.” – Isaac Watts, O God Our Help in Ages Past   “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” -William Faulkner   “When I first started photographing industry it was […]

08/18/2019 Hebrews 11:29-12:2 Chris Breslin   “How subversive, raising a liberator under Pharaoh’s roof!  She joined their efforts to thwart the death edict and turn the tide of the Great River itself. Perhaps Jochebed, Bithiah and the young Miriam founded the Nile Network that day, women determined to use their subversive strength to plant seeds of liberation that would one […]

08/11/2019 Revelation 22 Chris Breslin   With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling   We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover […]

08/04/2019 Revelation 21:1-22:5 Mindy Erdmann   Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering: Fifty Miles of Elbow Room by McGhee Your Peace Will Make Us One by Assad Psalm 46 by Bifrost Arts We Abide, We Abide in You by McCracken Steadfast by McCracken/Jordan/Silverberg/Nouwen How Long? by Wardell Doxology   Behold the Lamb collage artwork by Chris Breslin (2019)   Revelation Reading: [&#82...

07/28/2019 Revelation 20 Chris Breslin   “There are two angels with a (hu)man—one of righteousness, and the other of iniquity.” -Shepherd of Hermas   “Most merciful God,  we confess that we have sinned against thee in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved thee with our whole […]

07/21/2019 Revelation 19:1-10 Chris Breslin   “For us, [sin] refers to something much more like the human tendency, the human propensity to f*ck up.  Or let’s add one more word; the human propensity to f*ck things up, because what we’re talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up accident, our passive role as […]

07/14/2019 Revelation 17:3-18 Sarah Neff   Behold the Lamb collage artwork by Chris Breslin (2019)   Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering: Eternity Already by DaPonte/DeConto/Walton All Creatures of Our God and King by St. Francis of Assisi Father Let Your Kingdom Come by Porter’s Gate Worship Project Hosanna by Fraser Agnus Dei by Smith Let it Be So by Way […]

07/07/2019 Revelation 12:1-17 Chris Breslin   “Jesus was faced with these same questions, but when he was asked to prove his power as the Son of God by the relevant behavior of changing stones into bread, he clung to his mission to proclaim the Word and said, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes […]

06/30/2019 Revelation 10-11 Andre Franklin   Andre Franklin is the pastor and planter of Vinea Church. The Franklins (wife Terri and little girls Mia & Minkah) are native Texans who moved to the East Durham community over a year ago. Andre loves to spend time with his family, travel , read, make specialty coffee, and try new foods.   “Thus […]

06/23/2019 Revelation 8:1-5 Chris Breslin   “Hope is a song in a weary throat.” -Pauli Murray   “I wanted to tell you to have a good, clear cantus firmus; that is the only way to a full and perfect sound, when the counterpoint has a firm support and can’t come adrift or get out of tune, while remaining a distinct […]

06/16/2019 Revelation 6-7 Chris Breslin   “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore their names are Death, Destruction, Pestilence, and Famine. But those are aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the […]

06/09/2019 Revelation 4&5 Chris Breslin   “Christians worship with a conviction that they are in the presence of God. Worship is an act of attention to the living God who rules, speaks and reveals, creates and redeems, orders and blesses. Outsiders, observing these acts of worship, see nothing like that. They see a few people singing unpopular songs, sometimes off-key, […]

06/02/2019 Revelation 2 & 3 Jeremiah Dodson   “Revelation is not about the antichrist, but about the living Christ. It is not about a rapture out of this world but about faithful discipleship in this world. That is, like every other New Testament book, Revelation is about Jesus Christ-  ‘A revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Rev 1:1)- and about following him […]

05/26/2019 Revelation 1:12-20 Chris Breslin   “Christ is the center and at the center.” -Eugene Peterson   “Jesus is a perfect photo of the Unseen God…The result is that he’s tops any way you look at it.” – Cotton Patch Gospel paraphrase of Colossians 1   Scripture: Romans 8:16 Daniel 7:13-14 Psalm 100:3 Revelation 1:6 Daniel 2 Genesis 1:3 John […]

05/19/2019 Revelation 1:1-11 Chris Breslin   “The imagination is our way into the divine Imagination, permitting us to see wholly- as a whole and holy- what we perceive as scattered, as order what we perceive as random.” -Wendell Berry   “Apocalypse is shorthand for Jesus Christ.” -Douglas Harink   “Jesus is a perfect photo of the Unseen God…The result is […]

05/12/2019 Luke 1:46-55 Chris Breslin   “My mother and grandmother taught me to ignore Mother’s Day (a commercial gimmick) from as long as I can remember. They loved to quote an old Episcopal minister who began the service by saying, this is not Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, this is the fourth Sunday of Easter!” -Fleming Rutledge   “Discipleship is […]