Root + Branch Church

Lent 2022 - Let Go

Preacher: Virginia White

Reading: Mark 8: 27-35

It might be a surprise that “Lent” has an etymological connection to the word “lengthening.” For many of us, if Lent means anything at all, it evokes ideas about mortality, self-denial, and “giving something up.” But these 40-days don’t end with the cross on Good Friday, they lead to the resurrection on Easter. Just as the world around us welcomes longer brighter spring days, luring back the tree buds, and coaxing the flowers to open in bloom once again, this spiritual season is meant to draw us into new life. Perhaps reframing the practices of Lent from the harsh self-disciplinary image “giving things up,” to the looser invitation to “let things go,” to enter into the messiness, maybe even lostness, of that space beyond our self-management, might be just the posture we need to discover new life on Easter morning.

Lent 2022 - Asking Why?

Preacher: Tim Kim. 
Reading: Luke 13:1-9. 

Lent is a journey towards Easter, one that involves reflecting on things that many of us might find unpleasant and difficult at the moment. No doubt, death and sin feel very salient at the moment. But, such things need not be dour for dour's sake. After all, as we'll talk about this week, any reflection on death is really a reflection on life.

Our Listening - Advent 2021

Preacher: Tim Kim - If Advent is a season of expectant waiting, what does it mean to wait well? How do we prepare with intention and purpose? We often turn in these moments to individual introspection, reflection, meditation. But as the story of Jesus' pre-arrival demonstrates, there is usually a messenger, a message, and a need to listen. Sometimes the messenger takes the form of Mary, as we talked about a couple weeks ago, and sometimes it looks like scary/weird John the Baptist (though in the painting above he looks more sad/sleepy). Sometimes the message is a beautiful song that calls into being a new world, and sometimes it is a voice in the wilderness screaming about things that are hard to take. There's a lot of both out there in the world right now. Are we listening?

Magnificat - Advent 2021

Preacher: Virginia White - At the same time as the physical world around us descends into longer nights, colder days, and the stillness of winter, the advent season invites us into a spirit of warm and eager anticipation of the birth of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Messiah into the world. But what does it mean for us to anticipate an event that has already happened in the past? How can we hold onto certain hope that something good is promised to us and will be given to us when the world around us seems so broken, so (literally) cold, so cruel? 

Advent asks us to hold the pains and disappointments of reality as we know it in tension with unshakeable expectation that no matter how difficult things may seem now, there is an ever present promise of a new and world-altering good yet to come. And even that this world re-making good thing that lies ahead of us in the future, has already been done before and so can be done again. 

Advent, then, is like this topsy-turvy time warp land where by remembering the amazement of Jesus’ birth all those years ago, again, we become more able to expect that God will once again do great and wondrous things to care for this world in the future. 

This week we will look to the woman who knew this time-warping experience well. Not long after Jesus’ mother-to-be gets word that she is going to give birth to the Messiah, while still pregnant with him, she breaks out into a prophetic song that explicitly describes the redistribution of wealth, the downfall of the mighty, and the uplifting of the hungry, poor, and outcast. Yet she speaks not in the future tense, but in the past. As if she has already seen God’s promise come to full completion. 

Might advent be calling us to become like Mary? Can we, too, become visionaries of a just and redeemed world, of which we are so certain and so moved, that we are ready to speak of it, and live into it, as if it were already here? Perhaps that is how Christ will come into the world again now.

Easter 2021

Easter music, sermon, and prayer specially made for a podcast. 

Our recommendation is that you take a walk while you listen with some people you love. 

 

Lent - Home Again

Sermon by Tim Kim on March 7, 2021

On repentance and the journey home. 

Lent - Desire & Temptation

Sermon by Tim Kim on February 21, 2021

First sermon of the season of lent. On getting in touch with our deepest desires and the things that tempt us.

Meditations on God's Love for Me

Sermon by Tim Kim on February 7, 2021.

What do we think we about when we hear that God Loves Us?

Part of our series on meditations on various on God and topics related to Lent.

What Do We Hope For?

Sermon for Advent 2020

Preacher: Tim Kim

Love Your Enemies - November 2020

On Jesus saying love your enemies, do not retaliate against violence, do not judge others, and do unto others as you would have them to do unto you. Crazy things like that.

Speaker: Tim Kim