We seek and shelter spiritual refugees, rally health for all who come, and fortify every tender soul with the strength to follow Jesus into a life of world-changing service.
OUR MISSIONAL PRIORITIES:
1. We do justice for LGBTQ+ humans, and support the people who love them.
2. We do kindness for people with mental illness and in emotional distress, and celebrate neurodiversity.
3. We do beauty for our God-Who-Is-Beautiful.
4. We do real relationship, no bullshit, ever.
5. We do whatever it takes to share this good news with the world God still loves.
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Mail here: P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060
Worship here: 5 pm CT Sundays; 5860 I-20 service road, Fort Worth 76119
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We cry out for the beloveds we’ve lost to death in 2020 and 2021. We’ll interrupt the Markan narrative for a stand-alone service to acknowledge the losses of life in these two weird years. There’s a lot of pent-up grief among our #churchfriends; let us surround each other with safety for lament and the comfort of God’s power over Death.
We cry out for security. The man with lots of stuff thought his security was in the stuff. The disciples, too, insist that they’ve divested themselves of everything valuable in this world. Jesus, though, suggests/promises that our security is in each other, both now and in God’s good/abundant/eternal future.
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.
We cry out for confirmation of self. Our quest for self-actualization (becoming the whole beautiful self God intends for you to be) is sometimes diminished to a competition – myself over others, myself in competition with others. Kristin Neff has recently written about self-esteem (self over others) vs. self-compassion (self with others). Jesus insists on a shift away from contemplation of one’s own esteem and toward imagining oneself in service of others; perhaps through Neff’s lens this could be less damaging to spiritual refugees and more empowering of empathy. (Service to others, after all, requires the theory of mind to understand who they are by first understanding self.)
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.
We cry out for faith. The prayer of the parent for the child’s salvation is the truest prayer we know. What if your church could be the safest place in the world to confess doubt, with a softness of heart that allows the possibility of belief? What if we could practice, together, Ricoeur’s dual vows, the “vow of rigor” and the “vow of obedience”?
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.
We cry out for clarity. The loud clamor for our attention and agreement – the incessant demand for our declarations of certainty and loyalty – we are practically guaranteed to make mistakes, to absorb disinformation and hyperbole, to experience the blurring of our vision till we see only “trees, walking.” Jesus can restore clarity of literal vision with a couple of tries (!), but it’s harder to grant or inspire clarity about his own identity, and what it means for how we move through the world. Who is he, and who are we meant to be in response? This is our project.
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.
What the world needs now is to think critically about our social media citizenship. The most sophisticated technology of our time has one purpose: to make us want to stay on a website. The social media “platforms” are, according to Hank Green, less like services we use and more like places where we live. They have their own governing bodies, their own currencies, and they call us not “customers” but “users.” And we “use” that technology to do a lot of really good things: to create art; to foster relationships; to critique the very platform that hosts our criticism. But what does it mean that so few people—the CEOs of a handful of corporations—have so much power over us? What if this is not a new thing—consolidated power in a central “location” where almost everyone “lives”—but an ancient thing happening in a new, well, “platform”? How can the wisdom of our ancestors in faith help us navigate our citizenship in these strange new lands?
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.
What the world needs now is to chill the freak out and realize that God's got this. Weird, ever warming weather. The threat of elections being stolen. The fear of not being accepted for who you are, just as you are in all of your complexities and multiple facets of your identity. In God's way of doing things, there is enough time. In God's way of doing things, there are enough workers. In God's way of doing things, you were already created perfectly wonderful in all of those weird and lovely ways that make you YOU. When. it looks as though nothing is possible, God provides more than enough
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.
What the world needs now is to be turned upside down. The beatitudes are a lovely description of a world, but seemingly not the world we are actually living in. What are we to make of a descriptive account (“blessed are…”) that does not seem to correspond to our reality? Reading this text, we are rehearsing a subversive script, trafficking in rumors, whispering conspiratorially about a coming time when the present world will be turned upside down, and a new world will emerge. The only way to prepare is to dare to live now as if that new world were already present.
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.
What the world needs now is daily bread. “Give us this day our daily bread” is not just an utterance of a memorized prayer, but a petition where all of The Divine One’s creations can and will be nurtured, allowing them to flourish. Food is essential to any culture, simply because we gotta eat! But even with this understanding, “Around the world, more than enough food is produced to feed the global population—but as many as 811 million people still go hungry.” 30-40% of food produced in the United States, alone, will be wasted. Jesus’s prayer to the disciples might push us a little bit further to think less about how stale our communion bread might be, more about who is starving at our open table, and what our food might be telling us to do. William DeShay Jackson brings us the message this week!
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.
What the world needs now is religious faith that supports our communal flourishing. Western, white individualism – including evangelical Christianity’s insistence on a “personal relationship with Jesus” as the pinnacle of spiritual experience – has contributed to the fragmentation of the human family. We have lost our sense that God’s dearest wish is for us to care for one another, to refrain from hurting one another, to regard each other with respect and dignity. Religious belief and practice that tears us from each other, sending us into our respective corners for private righteousness, is not the religious belief and practice that Jesus embodied and taught.
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.
What if David’s family is in ruins? Amnon’s rape of Tamar… Absalom’s murder of his brother and political-military rebellion against his father… David’s inability to adjudicate family matters (while he reigns all Israel!)… How do we measure his “professional” success vs. his personal failures? Is David revered, or cancelled? Or is there some third way?
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What if David is a rapist? All the previous chapters were about setting up a new administration, but now it’s settled. David is at home, bored, and turned on by his own sense of potency. What delusions are possible when too much power settles in one place/person?
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What if David oversteps his bounds? He wants to ensconce God more or less permanently in a “house” – imagining, perhaps, that putting down real estate roots means we’re here forever. But God says “no,” that God’s own Self is still running this show, and does not need David’s blessing in exchange for God’s.
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.
What if David was unashamed? The rowdy, raunchy dancing… the lack of decorum… the body positivity… can we handle that? Does Michal stand in for our constricted relationships with our own and others’ bodies?
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What if David was malformed by violence? David’s reign was secured by his constant readiness to go to war, and to have people murdered. He sat on a throne of blood – and claimed God’s blessing for his positioning. Huh.
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.
What if David was a “chaotic bisexual”? In David’s lament for Saul’s and Jonathan’s deaths, we are invited to remember how David and Jonathan loved each other, and how impossible that was then, and how liberating it might be to uncover that story.
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.
Jesus fucks with the economy. Another time Jesus sends somebody home (to his friends! v. 19), all that man’s neighbors beg Jesus to leave them the hell alone. He’s messed with sacred systems – the family system with an identified patient who’s no longer sick; the economic system (when he sent somebody’s livelihood over a seaside cliff). Yep, he’s scary.
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.
Jesus can’t go home again. As much as he’d like for you to be reconciled with your FOO, he himself didn’t find it possible to stay with his. He was way more interested in his FOC, and he didn’t care who knew it. Even his own mother.
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.
Jesus needs help. Saving the world is overwhelming. Some days Jesus could not even. So he figured out who he liked, and trusted, and asked them to pick up some of the burden. And maybe one (or more) of the ones he chose were rotten… but he didn’t seem too worried about that. The man just needed some help.
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.
Jesus is bad at religion. You can keep all the rules, or you can be a better human. Probably not both at the same time.
Editor’s note: due to technical difficulties, the audio for this week had to be recorded with an iPhone rather than through our soundboard.
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.