We All Fall Down 3/5

East of Eden. The enmity between human beings is the immediate symptom and consequence of the brokenness. In the world “east of Eden” – which is the world we all live in now – competition for scarce resources feels real.

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We All Fall Down 2/5

Truth and consequences. Even the ground is broken now – yielding thorns instead of food. God names the consequences for the humans’ impudence, and also clothes them compassionately.

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We All Fall Down 1/5

They knew that they were naked. The originary humans come of age, their naivete spoiled. Let’s talk about whether that’s the ruination of humanity, or the completion of our “image-of-God- ness.”

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Begin Again 5/5

Naked and Unashamed. We probably can’t talk enough about the loving care that God has for our bodies, especially because the counter-testimony (your body is wrong, dangerous, untrustworthy, problematic) is so strong. We remember that one of the first signs of the humans’ brokenness in chp. 3 is their strong desire to cover up. Genesis 2 calls us back to an exalted state of “body positivity” – though there ought to be a better way to say that.

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Begin Again 4/5

Tilling & Keeping this Blessed Rock. When we think of “relationships” we’re usually speaking of people or Persons – relationships with family or friends, or perhaps with God. Maybe, for some of us, there’s a sense of “relationship” with an animal companion, but we sense that it’s not entirely mutual. (Fight me.) But what is the nature of the relationship that God designates for human beings with the planet God built us out of? “Tilling” and “keeping” (and “dominion,” from chp. 1) are words that deserve our attention, especially in this age of eco-anxiety after a long era of eco-domination.

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Begin Again 3/5

Rest Finishes the Work. Fundamentalists speak of a “six-day creation” – but that misses the work of the seventh day, which is rest. What if no job is really complete until there’s been time to rest from it? To let it sink into our tired bones, for us to process the work with our loved ones or in our dreams, to get some distance from the work and let it become meaningful... Being in the image of God as we are, rest is one of the ways we can be godly.

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Begin Again 2/5

The Quotidian Mysteries. In a book of this name, Kathleen Norris explores laundry as a spiritual practice. It relates to God’s creative work on the first several days when God is not mainly making something out of nothing, but rather separating this from that – light from dark, water from land, sky from surface, etc. God as an Orderer calls us to mimic this work in our own ordered lives – materially and ethically. A theological argument for making the bed?

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Begin Again 1/5

It’s all good. In the opening story of our sacred text, we encounter God’s imagination and intention in making a world that is good, and very good. Our faith has sometimes jumped too quickly to the brokenness of all things, but that’s not where God starts, nor where we begin. How would our theology be different if we started, always, from the goodness of all things, including ourselves?

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Home for the Holy-Days 7/7

Judea. Jesus’s sense of self requires that he turn toward Jerusalem – toward the concentration of religious and political power that will steal his life and threaten his followers. In what sense is this destiny his “home”? In Christian iconography, he has lived on the cross for 2,000 years...

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Home for the Holy-Days 6/7

Galilee. Jesus hits his stride in his home territory – at the height of his powers, he calls disciples, exorcises demons, heals diseases, and preaches his heart out. It’s a good New Year’s theme: what does it look like when you’re firing on all cylinders, doing exactly what you were baptized to do? When your life is working in some way that you, and your beloveds, can recognize?

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Home for the Holy-Days 4/7

The Jordan, and the Wilderness Beyond. Finally, we arrive at Mark’s “birth story” – which is not about the care that an infant passively receives, but about an adult who chooses to begin again, deliberately, with a new identity as God’s Son. Our baptisms afford us this same privilege, to choose our “yes” to God’s gift. The best Christmas present ever? (But that wilderness...)

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Home for the Holy-Days 3/7

Egypt. The circumstances of Jesus’s birth swirl with violence, and push his family to the desperate status of refugee. When we call ourselves “spiritual refugees,” this is what we mean: we deserved the home we had, but were forced out of its comforts by threat. Jesus lived this life, too.

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Home for the Holy-Days 2/7

Bethlehem. This is the kind of story your parents would tell about your birth – the water breaking too early, the frantic rush to the hospital in a snowstorm, a night spent in a waiting room because the L&D suites are full and the contractions are still too far apart... What does it mean, that our biographies begin before we even arrive? What does it mean, that Jesus shares this vulnerability in common with us?

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Home for the Holy-Days 1/7

No place to lay his head. It’s a hard reality about Jesus, that from the very first “Come and see” to his earliest disciples, he never promised stability to his followers. His homelessness becomes definitional for us, this uneasy sense of “not-at-homeness,” the dislocation of our citizenship in God’s empire rather than U.S. America. And maybe the consumer Christmas frenzy heightens our sense of not-belonging?

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Faith, Hope, Love 7/7

Christ the King Sunday. What if, on the last liturgical day before Advent (and the new year), we reflected on Jesus, our exemplar of faith, hope, and love?

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Faith, Hope, Love 5/7

The Thing With Feathers. The greatest may be love, but the most fragile is hope: “the active expectation that God will transform the world.” If the church is a learning lab for love, it is also a catalyst for hope – because what we do in here defies expectations, pulls some of God’s future into the present. Not just because we’re nice to each other, but because lives are being transformed.

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Faith, Hope, Love 4/7

Two Surprising Things about Faith. 1. The saving faith we require is not our own; it is Jesus’s faith. 2. The faith we long for is a gift of the Spirit, and held communally.

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Faith, Hope, Love 3/7

Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters. How do we hold onto hope for justice, as we regularly see those in power “push away the needy in the gate”? How do we hold faith through the injustice? What is our hope?

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Faith, Hope, Love 2/7

All You Need is Love. What does love require of us, actually?

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Faith, Hope, Love 1/7

Jehovah Jireh. We begin with the prototypical story of our ancestors’ faith: Abraham’s trust that God will fulfill God’s promises, even as God asks for the relinquishment of the promise’s fulfillment.

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 Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060