That's What She Said

Sound the Warning 5/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Warning: Jesus upsets the powers, and the powers are capable of anything, even hurting children. We know it’s true; we have seen such violence in our own time. Gaza; Sudan; Ukraine. U.S. America, where basic nutrition programs are dangled over a fiery pit of congressional posturing. Texas, where health care for children – not only gender-affirming health c...

Sound the Warning 4/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Warning: Jesus asks hard things of us. Joseph had a lot to lose, standing by Mary. But this is the thing about Jesus: he forces us to confront who we really are, what we really want; and what we’re actually willing to give up to be that person, to want those things. To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a co...

Sound the Warning 3/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Warning: Jesus widens our circles. And not everybody enjoys the widening of our circles. We like to imagine that we’re on an elite, “insider” tier. What does it do to our sense of self-worth if everybody can get in? How do we reorient our estimation of self so that we love to share the privilege we’ve been granted? (This is a key difference between patriot...

Sound the Warning 2/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Warning: Jesus changes literally everything. John the Baptist was suspicious of those who came for his baptism without any intention to let go old ways of being and take up a new life. All he could do was wash away the old, he said; but Jesus would burn it off. How does the bright-hot Light of the World laser away the accretions of life in this weird world...

Sound the Warning 1/6 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Warning: God is not done with us yet. Jesus warns his followers to “stay awake,” because the current iteration of God’s presence among them is not the last. As we contend with over- saturation of our spirits by bad news and constant policy alarms, how do we remain people who are watchful for God’s presence, not in an “end of the world” kind of way but in a...

Jesus Has a Headache 4/4 Carissa Robinson Money gives Jesus a headache. What kind of dummy goes to Jesus to ask for a ruling on an inheritance? But it’s a good thing someone did, because we got a lot of financial advice from Jesus from that dumb question. His main word to the wise: God provides, and if you think otherwise, you’ll waste your life working and hoarding and imagining you’ve done it al...

Jesus Has a Headache 3/4 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Blasphemy gives Jesus a headache. There are better and worse ways to talk about God’s power and presence – and there’s a way so much worse that we call it blasphemy . Jesus cautions us to be careful how we talk, how we articulate what God is and isn’t doing in our world. It’s not always easy to know; and part of what we do in church together is practice...

Jesus Has a Headache 2/4 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Posturing gives Jesus a headache. The VRPs (Very Religious Persons) are doing their jobs: rigorously patrolling the boundaries of their religious community for its protection. But Jesus can see through their surface-level service, right into their self-righteous hearts. Finally, with Jesus, there aren’t any secrets. What would it mean to live life so tr...

Jesus Has a Headache 1/4 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Evil gives Jesus a headache. The demonic forces Jesus exorcised held people captive, so his liberating work meant setting people free from those psycho-spiritual chains. But that liberative work makes privileged people suspicious. Plus, sometimes it doesn’t exactly “work” – seven more troublemakers come in to replace what’s been kicked out. It’s tricky,...

One Hit Wonders 8/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays God Is Love. The story goes: the elderly apostle John is asked to preach to the gathered crowd. He creaks to his feet and says, “Little children, love one another.” And he creaks back into his chair. “Brother John, don’t you want to say more?” asks the host. “What else is there?” old John replies. To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the...

One Hit Wonders 7/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Now You Are God’s People. The author writes to people for whom God’s merciful selection is new, and delicious (“if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good,” v. 3). And so he exhorts them to remember that theirs is not an individual project, but that their identity is collective. In partnership with Jesus, the “living stone,” they themselves become livin...

One Hit Wonders 6/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays A Threefold Cord is Not Quickly Broken. The poet decries the (neoliberal capitalist?) project whereby we work and work and work, “no end to all [our] toil” (v. 7), as “vanity.” Then they move into a rhapsody about loving friendship, where people in loving relationships “have a good reward for their toil” (v. 9). Why do we need friendship to temper and redeem...

One Hit Wonders 5/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength. Ezra and Nehemiah worked together to rebuild Jerusalem following the Babylonian sacking of 586 BCE. Along the way they re-established Israel’s religious identity, including this scene of reading re-discovered scripture, with interpreters helping the people understand. And when the people are overwhelmed by the beauty? ch...

One Hit Wonders • Intermezzo • 2/2 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays The Leader, in Diligence. How do congregations of people discern collectively who their leaders should be? What help does God give in that process, and how do we access that help? (Spoiler alert: Something, Something, Holy Spirit.) To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on...

One Hit Wonders • Intermezzo • 1/2 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Last of All, Servant of All. God has always employed real live humans for the task of directing and caring for God’s people. What kind of people are best suited for this work? Those who serve relentlessly, conscientiously, joyfully. We’ll celebrate stories of church leaders who have sacrificed much for the sake of the “flock” they “shepherd.”...

One Hit Wonders 4/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays There Is Still a Vision. Habakkuk is a prophet with writer’s block – he does not have a word from the Lord or from the distant battlefield, and that’s making him antsy. He climbs the ramparts of Jerusalem’s wall to scan the horizon, trusting that a runner will come. And instead, he gets a word from the Lord, kinda: “Wait, and listen, and trust that I’ve got...

One Hit Wonders 3/8 Carissa Robinson I Will Pour Out My Spirit on All Flesh. Joel’s prophetic call to repentance urges Judah (the southern kingdom remaining after northern Israel’s fall to Assyria) to repair their social structure and return to faithfulness. And assuming they will, God promises bloody revenge on the nation-states that have taken advantage of their weakness. The prophet imagines a...

One Hit Wonders 2/8 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays The Lord Bless You and Keep You. The Book of Numbers is filled with census data of the wandering Israelites, and a collection of laws for keeping social order among those thousands of people. One tribe, the Levites, and all its subfamilies, is designated to translate between God and the people as temple-servants (or priests). The Levites are given an all-tim...

One Hit Wonders 1/8 Rev. Amber Baker New Mercies, Every Morning. Lamentations is a collection of poetry composed and compiled shortly after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The poems name God as the punisher of all Israel’s sin. This is a God who initiates massive, generational suffering and blames the victim for it; imperial armies are only God’s instruments of torture. BUT in the middle of the...

Soul Food for Right Now 10/10 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Love the Earth. Jesus’s first parable (in Luke) is about growing food – the experience of planting grain in plowed earth, watching it grow, observing where it thrives and where it doesn’t. Of course it’s metaphorically about the reign of God – in whom it takes hold and in whom it doesn’t. And it’s meant to be at least a little bit funny; the farmer...

Soul Food for Right Now 9/10 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Be in Your Body. Jesus points out to his host that his body could have used care – his head, his hands, his feet were all in need of gentle attention. The uninvited woman who gave care to his body used her body for his sake, kneeling to wipe his feet with her hair. It’s a sensual service for a sensual savior who cares for his fully embodied self. No...

Soul Food for Right Now 8/10 Rev. Dr. Katie Hays Speak Truth to Power. John the Baptist reappears in this gospel from a prison cell, conducting a conversation with Jesus via messengers. Jesus follows up with a deeply complimentary description of John’s brave work, acknowledging the reality that the gospel of God’s reign is not good news for everyone (i.e. those in power with so much to lose). To t...

Soul Food for Right Now 7/10 Carissa Robinson Cross a Boundary. The centurion (Roman officer) should not care about his enslaved person. Jesus should not care about the centurion. But here they all are, caring about each other across the boundaries humans make. What if a deliberate demographic crossover (generational, class, language, and otherwise) could make more room for God to work in the syne...

Soul Food for Right Now 6/10 Carissa Robinson Be the Neighbor. How are we meant to comport ourselves in a world where our neighbors scorn our existence? When we are made to feel unwanted, even unsafe, by our fellow citizens? Jesus has an idea about that: love, blessing, non-judgment. This is likely a life-long practice, quite impossible to get quickly “correct” and move on. To tell us your thought...

Soul Food for Right Now 5/10 Carissa Robinson Lament Honestly. The “Sermon on the Plain” is noticeably more grounded than Matthew’s version. Jesus here attends to the material condition of his followers’ lives, and dares to speak the truth about that. He says God knows it’s true, and has in mind a reversal of fortune that will honor the truth of their daily experience of lack. Carisa Robinson is p...