Jesus Remodels the World 3/7

Feeding people. In the eucharistic economy, there is always enough for everyone to get what they need. The sharing of food teaches us to share everything, even the intangibles that are hard to measure but plentiful just the same, in God’s economy.

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Jesus Remodels the World 2/7

It’s important to be woke, yes, but rest is just as important. And not enough of us get (or are able to get) the rest we need.

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 Remodels the World 1/7

Parables. Some seeds flourish, some don’t. What kind of soil are they planted in? How does Jesus invite us to grow and become useful? What conditions are necessary for our growth? We’re gonna play with this till we get tired. 

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.

Pride, Protest, and the Language of Lament 5/5

Confession as relief. A conspiracy of white silence around race and racism makes it damn near impossible for the white church, white LGBTQ+ persons, and white people generally to own our part in the chronic systemic oppression that breaks out in acute episodes of insult, injury, and even death. Ultimately, racism is hurting all of us, denying all of us our full humanity. “[Our] strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah.” This episode of the podcast closes with a litany of confession written by Remi Shores.

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.

Pride, Protest, and the Language of Lament 4/5

The hate u give. The “imprecatory” (“cursing”) psalms give us permission to confess the hate that builds up in our hearts, poisoning us if we keep it in. When we ask God to hurt people who have hurt us, and/or people who are hurting others, we are demonstrating a kind of humility, submitting ourselves to God’s own judgment about who/when/whether to punish. We release the hate and its consequences from our hands, placing the enemy in God’s hands. We are not the judge, jury, executioner – as much as would like to be. It is safe to admit that 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.

Pride, Protest, and the Language of Lament 3/5

They set your sanctuary on fire. When religion is weaponized against God’s own interests (i.e. against the dignity of the whole human family), how do the faithful remain worshipful and hopeful? This psalm tells of the infiltration and desecration of the Jerusalem temple by foreign troops. We have seen the Bible, the church, and Christian faith itself desecrated by those who claim its power for the exclusion and denigration of queer people, of black people, of women, and more. What does it mean to be Christian against the tide of evangelical (majority) support for inhumane policies and practices?

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.

Pride, Protest, and the Language of Lament 2/5

In the haunt of jackals. Originally a prayer after losing in military battle, this psalm speaks to the sense that God has abandoned innocent people in their struggle. “Taunters” and “revilers” scorn the pray-ers, filling them with “disgrace” and “shame.” Their “bodies cling to the ground.” They declare their innocence – i.e. they are persecuted for the “crime” of their identity, rather than punished for any actual wrongdoing. Here we notice that this prayer could be on the lips of queer protesters at Stonewall, or black protesters at BLM riots across the country. It ends with a challenge to God: “Wake up!”

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.

Pride, Protest, and the Language of Lament 1/5

The long season of Sundays after Pentecost, also called Ordinary Time, feels anything but ordinary this year. The “long pause” of the pandemic has given way to a rush of civil unrest around race and racism in this country, and there is plenty of grief to go around.

LGBTQ+ Pride month usually evokes joyous celebration. But this year we’re contemplating how the progress achieved by one segment of the human family can be leveraged for the sake of another. We want to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter, in part by carrying on an internal, mostly white-people-to-white-people conversation about racism and white supremacy, the original and ongoing sins of the North American project and the North American church.

We’ll use Psalm 27 as the supporting reading every week, casting it as a Pride psalm and an anti-racist psalm, as it expresses faith in the promise of divine shelter for those who are most vulnerable in this world. “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” 

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Singing at the end of the world as we know it. Jerusalemites exiled to Babylon in the 6th century BCE found it impossible to go on with life as usual. Their songs went silent. They swam in a swirl of sadness (“there we sat down and there we wept”) and rage (“happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us”). Psalms of lament give voice to both these feelings; both are welcome in God’s house, God’s family, God’s ear. Any church that denies or ignores the emotional/spiritual cost that is being extracted from us all is whistling in the dark.

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.

Formation: Scriptures That Made Us Who We Are 7/7

“On All Flesh”: the inclusive, empowering vision of church, then and now. Church leaders are prone to condescend to church members, to the point that members are infantilized and unable to imagine themselves empowered for life-with-God. At Galileo we maintain: we are each and all grown-ass adults imbued with the Holy Spirit of the living Christ. We should treat each other that way, and the ecclesial infrastructure should support that. Without that empowerment, the amazing vision of Acts 2:43-47 is impossible. Also: happy 7th birthday to 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 PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.

Formation: Scriptures That Made Us Who We Are 6/7

When God Gets Everything God Wants: Ain’t Gonna Study War No More. The prophets of old could see it: the arc of the moral universe, bending toward justice. Here is a strong vision of economic justice powered not by violence or the threat of violence; but God’s own creative Word, speaking fairness into reality. Rev. Dr. Irie Session preaches!

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.

Formation: Scriptures That Made Us Who We Are 5/7

Ministry Intern Josh Bridges preaches on The Magnificat, and he has some powerful words for us today. Here’s a little taste: “History is an act of persuasion.” You’re not going to want to miss this one.

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.

Formation: Scriptures That Made Us Who We Are 4/7

Let Us Then Go to Him, Outside the Camp. We used to think “welcome” was the main thing. But getting “them” in here with “us” isn’t our highest aspiration, is it? What does it mean for a church’s identity, to be constantly seeking the margins, the ones who are still not here yet?

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.

Formation: Scriptures That Made Us Who We Are 3/7

Dirt Under Our Fingernails. Here is Jesus-In-a-Hamster-Ball, making all these reign-of-God things happen – and some people are thrilled, and some people are enraged. How does he do that? But mainly – who are these “friends” who claw away the roof to get their guy near enough to Jesus for Jesus to do his Jesus-thang? And how much dirtier can our own fingernails get, for Christ’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.

Formation: Scripture That Made Us Who We Are 2/7

Bruised reeds, dimly burning wicks, and the gentle gospel of “maybe all is not lost.” From the start, we imagined that spiritual refugees would not survive a loud, authoritative (authoritarian?) evangelistic approach. What if we inverted the preaching paradigm and approached this world in humility? It’s a sea change the church must make for its future, and the future of the world God still loves.

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.

Formation: Scripture That Made Us Who We Are 1/7

Won’t you be my neighbor? Katie can only ever preach the parable of the Good Samaritan from the perspective of the lawyer whose expectations about who’s in and who’s out, who’s ahead and who’s behind, are upended in Jesus’s worldmaking story. What happens when a contemporary Samaritan hears, and preaches, the same 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.

Easter Sunday, 2020

Decision fatigue, coronatide, the two Marys, Jesus is risen indeed.

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.

Good Friday, 2020

A meditation from Rev. Dr. Katie Hays at the beginning of our Good Friday service.

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.

Palm Sunday, 2020

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6 Things That Scare Me 6/6

#6: Resurrection. Okay, so Lazarus isn’t technically resurrected here; he still has to die again, so we’ll call this resuscitation. But still – the vast unspeakable power of God over the power of death, vested in Jesus in this story – that I might be part of the eternal, ongoing fabric of the universe – that I don’t know what that means, or looks like – whoa, man

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.

6 Things That Scare Me 5/6

#5: Blindness. Literal blindness, for sure, is terrifying. But the way John constructs this story, the blindness is entrenched in those who think they see. “The eye cannot see itself,” the philosophers said. So what am I missing? What would be revealed to me if I were healed?

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.