Root + Branch Church

We conclude our series on relationships with a talk on empathy. What does the Good Samaritan parable have to teach us about empathy? A lot less than you might think.

“Blood is thicker than water,” that old devilish saying goes. The meaning of this phrase is pretty straightforward: family (blood) relations are inherently stronger than any other kind of non-familial (water) relationship or bond. Right? Nah. This rendition of the phrase actually carries the complete opposite meaning from the original phrase: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Funny how words get twisted.

Familial relationships can be great, aaaaand they can be the worst. Join us this week as we continue our examination of the relationships that make and break us. We will examine one of Jesus’s most famous parables - the prodigal son - and see what sense we can make of family, loosely defined.

This week we focus our attention on friendship. On one hand, maybe it's weird for a community of adults to talk about this thing which seems to hold diminishing importance for us as we move through the world. It is also not exactly the most famous of topics when it comes to Christianity and religion and spirituality in general. At the same time, adult friendships are important! Particularly so for a generation that is super transient, getting married later (if at all), having less kids, and has the internet (insert anti-tech screed here). Furthermore, there is actually a rich and robust history of thought around friendship as a theological and philosophical topic. One could even argue that when Jesus talked about love and relationships, he was informed more by his friendships than familial or romantic bonds. In any case, join us as we start to unpack the relationshipthat St. Augustine said was “sweeter than all the sweetness of [his] life." 

There is this thing called the Great Commission, the last five sentences that close out the Gospel of Matthew. It says things like “Go out and make disciples of all nations,” for which it has become a rallying cry for all sorts of efforts to evangelize and convert people. That makes a certain sort of sense, but divine command mixed with human fallibility is formula for disaster, perhaps THE formula for disaster. The kinds of so-called Christian efforts taking place in Alabama and elsewhere underscore just how deep fallibility runs, as well as how fraught the idea of evangelizing can be when mixed with bad theologies, politics, and a prejudiced view about what it means to actually show love. Before we consider if there is a better way to do this, it might be necessary to ask what “this” actually is. In other words, what does it mean for us, our community in particular, to share something with the world?

Easter 2019 - We talk about conspiracy theories and what it means to trust in the promise of resurrection. 

Kicking off a series of talks and conversations around sex, sexuality, gender, and such things, Tim shares a personal story, rails against dualism, and affirms the incarnation in all of us. 

While the Christmas story has all sorts of wild and magicals parts, we take a cue from Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she pauses for a second to take it all in. 

If everything you’ve ever known was turned on its head how would you feel? Probably not calm, confident, and comforted. But, distraught, uncertain, and uncomfortable. Yet, Isaiah’sprophecy (Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God) tells us that everything must change to prepare for Christ to come into the world. Valleys need raising and mountains and hills flattening. We’ve got to boldly shake it all up. So why don’t we? Why is change, even change that we know will be good for us—like saying “no” to that toxic relationship or giving up our facebook profiles—so hard?

This week we are going to talk about change. The changes that we yearn for, the changes that scare us, the changes that we might even be too afraid to admit that we need. We’ll grapple with the heart of the Advent message: that things don’t have to stay the same as they are—in fact, that they can’t stay the same if we do our work in preparing the way for Christ to come. Maybe we’ll discover a little of that comfort that Isaiah seemed to think change has to offer us, and some of the courage and hope that we need to change our lives for the better.

Grace is kind of a big deal in Christianity. Yet, it often takes a massive back seat to things like faith and love (so boring). Why is that? Maybe part of the reason is that grace is like the beginning stages of a romantic relationship. All that “hi, I like you” stuff is really fascinating until you get married and have kids and blah blah and then it's like it was just a point on a linear line towards death. But grace isn’t just a thing that gets us from A to Z. It is the thing that actually creates and shapes our destinations. And not just one time but continuously, again and again. It isn’t just the opening up of a possibility. It is possibility itself opened up to us as possibility. Which is why it’s so strange that we often think of grace as something like avoiding disaster or damnation. After all, why would a life that is all about the absence or avoidance of terrible things worth being thankful for?

Did God create the world because God was lonely? By definition, God (omnipotent, omnipresent, yada yada yada) couldn't be lonely right? That would mean that God lacked something. But heresy aside, the image of God as little child with no one to play with, using a child-like imagination to make platypus' and big ass whales (as the story goes) is a compelling one. Because a kid's imagination, weird and stubborn as it tends to be, is powerful and boundless. Without seeing life and relationships as this irresistible thing that contains a multitude of possibilities that sparks such a weird and stubborn desire that we are willing to reach out and give life to stuff, then loneliness wouldn't be a thing at all.