Once Upon a Time: Meet the Ancestors 2/6

God wrestled Jacob, and gave him strong (enslaved) descendants. Jacob is scrappy, devious, and chosen by God to carry on the covenant with Abraham. The bloodline finally expands with his 12 sons (and unnumbered daughters); but by now God has competition for sovereignty, and Egypt’s Pharaoh claims God’s people (now “Israel”) as his own. Where does God go? Why does God wait?

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Once Upon a Time: Meet the Ancestors 1/6

God chose Abraham, and promised him the world. God’s relationship with Abraham (and Sarah and Hagar) begins a new era for God with God’s world – the narrowing of focus from “all creation” to just one family and its descendants. Maybe God and this family will find a way to be in harmony, a.k.a. covenant? Thereafter, Abraham becomes a meme of faithfulness beyond (before) religiosity. What God looks for in a person is trust, even when God’s promise-keeping is slow and subtle. 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Prayer Service after Insurrection, All Things Covid, and the failure to indict Jacob Blake’s killer

After a week of trauma, injustice, and violence, and following a known Covid exposure to the skeleton crew in the Big Red Barn, we had to adjust our worship service, both in content and manner of production. This week’s podcast includes all of the spoken portions of Sunday’s service.

God-With-Us: Call the Midwife 7//7

Global Jesus vs. local powers (a.k.a. Herod). The astrologers “from the East” who pay homage to toddler Jesus are ethnically, geopolitically, and religiously wrong for this story. But they signal to Herod, and to us, that something much bigger is happening in this child. God is staking a claim against Empire, and it feels like a threat. “Don’t you know, we’re talkin’ about a revolution, and it sounds like a whisper” (Tracy Chapman).

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

God-With-Us: Call the Midwife 6/7

Religion makes God possible. What if Simeon and Anna are the apologists we need for religious infrastructure, for a community of tradition and ritual and accountability? What if we could understand that the religion (the church) is not the thing, but it is the vehicle by which the thing can come to us? (It can come other ways, for sure, but early recognition of Jesus included these who were ensconced in traditional religious structure and community.) 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

God-With-Us: Call the Midwife 5/7

Christmas Eve is for dreamers. If we do the genealogy from Matthew on the First Sunday of Advent, we have Joseph and his dreaming available for a short meditation on Christmas Eve – an invitation for us to dream, our sanctified imaginations pulling us into new and beautiful possibilities in the days to come. There’s a lot of hope here… 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

God-With-Us: Call the Midwife 4/7

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. For John, Jesus arrives from cosmic pre-existence. And the only birth referenced by John is our birth – “But to all who received him…he gave power to become children of God, who were born…of God.” How about if Christmas is when we get born, our true identities made plain by the light of Christ?

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

God-With-Us: Call the Midwife 3/7

Lowly mother, lowly shepherds, lowly messiah. Luke has a strong economic theme running through his gospel, beginning at the beginning. From Luke we get the barn, the manger, the swaddling clothes, the impoverished holy family and their impoverished guests. When the angels show up to sing the shepherds toward that baby, what’s happening to our own sense of economic privilege and poverty?

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

God-With-Us: Call the Midwife 2/7

Baptism is the only birth that matters. For Mark, there’s no birth narrative – just a baptism. John is the midwife of Jesus’s new life; God the Father looks on in amazed pleasure (“Wow!”); Jesus comes of age in the desert; then he begins to speak in his own voice, and his first words? “The reign of God, y’all!”

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

God-With-Us: Call the Midwife 1/7

The #nastywomen who begat the messiah. Say their names: Tamar. Rahab. Ruth. Bathsheba. Mary. A reprise of a sermon Katie has preached twice before, in 2016 and 2019.

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Wait for It: The Early Church and Us 8/8

Sheep and goats, “You did it unto me.” The “Son of Humanity” so identifies with the small, oppressed, marginalized people of the world that our lives can be assessed by how we have aligned ourselves with respect to them. Think of the gladiator games, where the emperor gave a thumbs up or thumbs down for the life of the competitors. Here, the emperor is replaced by “the least of these my brethren,” collectively informing Jesus the King as to the worthiness of each ovine in the judgment queue. A note: this is a parable, making extensive use of metaphor. It’s not a literal description of a “judgment day,” but it’s an imaginative exercise about an imagined future meant to provoke real action, here and now. 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Wait For It: The Early Church and Us 7/8

Buried talents. Using a capitalist analogy, Jesus seems to advocate for risk-taking in the life of his disciples. We don’t wait for God to act by hunkering down, passive and careful, hands closed tightly around what we’ve got. Rather, we release and relinquish, finding courage in our understanding of who God is – not the “harsh man” of v. 24, making us too afraid to act. What is it about God’s nature that empowers us to take risks for God’s sake?

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Wait for It: The Early Church and Us 6/8

Ten bridesmaids. The Christian liturgical year closes out with three parables from Matthew 25. The one about the bridesmaids seems to indicate Jesus’s awareness that what we’re waiting for may take a long time, longer than we want, longer than we’re ready for. What are we likely to run out of, if we haven’t filled our tanks? (And is it really his advice that those with plenty should not share with those in need? Can we push back on that? But he’s right in guessing that it’s our impulse to hoard, and to take some pleasure in other people’s “foolish” unpreparedness.) 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Wait for It: The Early Church and Us 5/8

“Children of light, children of the day.” In vv. 1-11, Paul describes our waiting as an active readiness – staying woke, keeping awareness that all is not well until we are at home in God’s heart. What does the uniform of faith, hope, and love (v. 8) prepare us for while we wait? And the closing instructions in vv. 12-28 – it’s a laundry list of virtues for life in community and life with God. 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Wait for It: The Early Church and Us 4/8

“So that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” While we wait, people die. Paul’s own mythology of angels and trumpets in the clouds is not exactly resonant to our ears, but the hope of “being with the Lord forever” is still how we “encourage one another.” We say, “Death does not get the last word – as it did not with Jesus, so it will not with us” (v. 14, paraphrased).

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Wait for It: The Early Church and Us 3/8

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification.” The Thessalonians’ cultural context included expressions of sexuality that were exploitative and used in the politics of domination. Bringing one’s body and all its uses into alignment with God’s dream for the world is a strong and subversive statement against social hierarchy and a culture of abuse.

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Wait for It: The Early Church and Us 2/8

Like siblings, like a wetnurse/mother, like a father, like orphans. Paul packs this chapter with familial metaphors to describe the closeness and affection he feels for the church, and they for each other. He emphasizes the necessity of holding each other close while we wait for God to act on our behalf. But he also acknowledges the pain of separation, attributing it to “Satan” because it is a powerful adversary to the faith, hope, and love of chapter 1. 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Wait For It: The Early Church and Us 1/8

“In spite of persecution, you received the word with joy.” 1 Thessalonians is the earliest Christian writing, predating the gospels and all the other epistles of the New Testament. Paul here narrates the little church’s story back to the church, giving thanks for how the gospel took root among them, and recalling how they settled in to wait. They waited as we do: for the culmination of all the gospel’s promises. While they waited, they were persecuted. We’ll talk about the nature of their persecution and ours, and why we keep waiting after all this time.

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Leadership Lessons from a Passionate Prophet 4/4

Healthy spiritual leaders get the job done but not alone. The African proverb, “It’s takes a Village to raise a child,” also has implications for spiritual leadership. It takes a village to carry out the plans and purposes of God. Whether you’re a pastor, lay person, ministry leader or member, you need other people partnering with you to accomplish and carry out the ministry mission. Nehemiah knew it too. He understood his role not as a solopreneur but a leader in need of a community to collaborators for the common good. 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Leadership Lessons from a Passionate Prophet 3/4

Healthy spiritual leaders are that way because they have been through the fire. They have gained wisdom from their mistakes, pitfalls, and personal insecurities. One of major the mistakes spiritual leaders make is underestimating opposition. All too often spiritual leaders assume those they’ve been called or hired to lead are willing going to follow their leadership. Not so. There will be opposition. Nehemiah had opposition, haters who didn’t want he or his people to rebuild, to flourish. Nehemiah also shows us a way forward. He demonstrates how to handle haters. 

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@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.