That's What She Said

Matisse and the Goldfish: Jesus and the Parables 3/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Treasures old and new. The parable imagery turns to economic metaphors: treasure, pearls, a fishing haul, more treasure. “What is valuable?” Jesus seems to be asking. The reign of God requires our accurate appraisal, an eye trained to see prizes in fields crowded with other stuff. To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, clic...

Matisse and the Goldfish: Jesus and the Parables 2/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Seeds, weeds, yeast . “The reign of God is like…” Jesus says repeatedly, and he does his best to use workaday metaphors for something so ethereal. Farming and baking – so relatable – with a sprinkle of magical thinking, all those birds nesting in all those branches. How is our own work like a parable, down-to-earth and sprink...

Matisse and the Goldfish: Jesus and the Parables 1/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays To you it has been given. In this case, the parable itself becomes a recursive reason for parabling – because, like seeds sown in different terrains, the reign of God is not visible/hearable by everyone equally. Why does Jesus, following Isaiah, insist on raising the bar? What is the secret sauce of parables that make them hi...

Cutting Our Wisdom Teeth 4/4 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays The Wisdom from Above. This chapter begins with a serious warning about how we speak, given the violence we can do with words. (Don’t we know it!) And then it moves to describing the “gentleness born of wisdom.” The leaders we seek and revere in the church are not the ambitious or arrogant kind; they are the\ gentle ones who make peace – especially...

Cutting Our Wisdom Teeth 3/4 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Vindicated by Her Children. Jesus has an interesting take on wisdom – that part of the trick is recognizing it when you see it. I mean, what if Jesus himself came to your town, and you thought he was a fool (a glutton and a drunkard)? Jesus’s question to his critics: What does this way of being yield? And for us: Is our religion teaching us how to r...

Cutting Our Wisdom Teeth 2/4 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Seek It Like Silver. Wisdom is the subject of the whole of Proverbs – not because everybody has it, but because everybody should want it. It’s a gift that only God can give, but there is a path toward it that a person has to choose and re-choose. The only problem is, there are many paths, including alluring paths that lead to whatever is the opposit...

Cutting Our Wisdom Teeth 1/4 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Beyond the Jordan. “ In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month...” To open Deuteronomy, Moses recounts the Israelites’ journey through a generation’s worth of wilderness. He remembers for them how he set up a leadership structure, asking them to recommend the “wise, discerning, and reputable” among them. It’s a give-and-take – the...

Identity Politics: Who Are You? 8/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Who is one another? As at the end of all Paul’s letters, there is an assumption that the Galatian Christians are working out their faith together. Thus they need some minimal guidance about how to get along while they do it. Verse 2 is his elevator pitch: “Bear one another’s burdens; and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Finall...

Identity Politics: Who Are You? 7/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Who is the Spirit? Paul presents an unsettling (to us) duality between “flesh” and “Spirit” – a somewhat anachronistic, Hellenistic understanding of personhood. Maybe for us, his contrast would be better understood as “impulsive appetites” vs. “considered choices”? Or perhaps “self-pleasing” vs. “other-considering”? In any case, the “fruit of...

Identity Politics: Who Are You? 6/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Who is the Spirit? Paul presents an unsettling (to us) duality between “flesh” and “Spirit” – a somewhat anachronistic, Hellenistic understanding of personhood. Maybe for us, his contrast would be better understood as “impulsive appetites” vs. “considered choices”? Or perhaps “self-pleasing” vs. “other-considering”? In any case, the “fruit of...

Identity Politics: Who Are You? 5/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Who is Abraham? Here is the crux of Paul’s argument: that long before there was a Torah (religious law), there was a promise made by God to Abraham. Abraham had no 10 Commandments, no temple, no Leviticus, etc. All he had was faith: trust that God would keep God’s promises. And so, Paul says, that’s the only thing “required” for Abraham’s off...

Identity Politics: Who Are You? 4/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Who is Cephas? “Cephas” is the Aramaic form of “Peter,” i.e. Jesus’s most vocal and passionate disciple. Paul has caught Peter in blatant hypocrisy: keeping kosher when certain Jewish- Christian leaders are around, but freely noshing with Gentiles when they’re not. Paul says you can’t have it both ways. What does it mean to strive for integri...

Identity Politics: Who Are You? 3/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Who is Paul? Paul the Apostle had a violent, anti-Christian past. It was hard to overcome, and he might have asked for the approval of the OG apostles (i.e. the ones who knew Jesus). But he eschewed their credentialing and asserted his own identity as an apostle “through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (1:1). Wh...

Identity Politics: Who Are You? 2/8 Rev. Tyler Araki Who is Joseph? From a favored child, to slavery, sexual objectification and assault, prisoner, forgotten, to finally the second most powerful person in Egypt. Joseph’s life is a traumatic roller coaster, with incredible peaks, and horrid valleys. To put it another way, Joseph is a spiritual refugee. So many of us are like him in some way. And, l...

Identity Politics: Who Are You? 1/8 Ken Ehrke   I Am Not Only Good Enough -- I Am Enough! Ken Ehrke visits us to speak about fully embodying Sabbath Rest in Exodus 20:8-11. To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media:  Facebook ,  Twitter , and  Instagram . Or, email us the old-fashioned way: info...

NSFC: Spirituality, Sex, and Longing in the Song of Songs 6/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Longing for Intimacy with God is Sexy. The sex described in the Song of Songs is neither transactional (the joining of families and property) nor procreative. It’s just the pure pleasure of wanting, enjoying, and wanting again the complete union of one person with another. The church has long interpreted this erotic...

NSFC: Spirituality, Sex, and Longing in the Song of Songs 5/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Monogamy is Sexy. These lovers anticipate their marriage, but even before the covenant vows they are pledged solely to each other. This is not a constraint on their freedom but the very nature of the height of love: that each lover is so consumed by passion for the other that there is simply no room for anyone else i...

NSFC: Spirituality, Sex, and Longing in the Song of Songs 4/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Mutuality is Sexy. Notably, the SoS is a duet between lovers – a woman and man, in this case. Moreover, the woman’s voice is first and last, and it is she who sets the terms of their relationship in both love and sex. The lovers seek each other, wait for each other, ask for each other, pine for each other, in a way t...

NSFC: Spirituality, Sex, and Longing in the Song of Songs 3/6 Jillian Moran Come as You Are. The Corinthian Christians worried about what they needed to change, repair, or complete before they could be accepted into the fellowship of Christ. Paul responds that God’s call comes before our lives are well in order, and perfection (or even having your shit together) is not a prerequisite. God invites...

NSFC: Spirituality, Sex, and Longing in the Song of Songs 2/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays The Earth is Sexy. The SoS overflows with imagery from the natural world – flora and fauna, sights and smells, an extravaganza (orgy?) of appreciation for a well-watered spring. The lovers meet and make out (make love?) outside; they compare each other’s beauty to things they’ve seen in nature; nature stirs their des...

NSFC: Spirituality, Sex, and Longing in the Song of Songs 1/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Your Body is Sexy. We can’t get around it in the SoS – bodies are beautiful, especially in the eyes of someone who knows and loves your body. And sex, too, as something (most of) our bodies want, is sexy and good and blessed and biblical. To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and l...

[Redacted]: Conspiring with Jesus 7/7 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Contemplation of your baptism, past or future. Through our baptisms, we join the communion of the saints around the world, past and future. We are a link in a long chain of those who preserve the story, “the keepers of the horn” in Cormac McCarthy’s phrase in No Country for Old Men . How wonderful to be part of something so old and so beaut...

[Redacted]: Conspiring with Jesus 6/7 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Presence, the best you can, at gatherings of the church. Jesus’s assessment of the times he lived in was pretty grim: arrests and trials, intra-family strife, secrecy and murder. It’s no less (or more) true now – discipleship is a dangerous business. This is no time to cocoon at home alone. To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click thr...

[Redacted]: Conspiring with Jesus 5/7 Rev. Remi Shores Cultivation of spiritual gifts for the life of our church and community. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” Jesus says, and it feels true today, too. What does it take to be part of a DIY church? What’s the difference in a consumer-client culture and citizenship in a community? To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click...

[Redacted]: Conspiring with Jesus 4/7 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Participation in the church’s discernment for our next steps together. There are so many decisions to be made when we are confronted with Jesus’s presence and power. Who is he? Can he really do what he says he can do? Whose side is he on, anyway? And in contemporary life: what does he intend for us to do and be now, and next? To tell us you...