Zao MKE Church

Re-Release: Living as Resistance (Palm Sunday 2019)

This is a re-release of a sermon from 2019, recently featured on an episode of The Collective Table.

The name "Zao" is a greek word that means "to be among the living". This sermon highlights the ways that Zao as a community joins Jesus and the tradition of Jesus followers in seeking the fullness of life.

Our world is a mixture of creative, vibrant, beautiful life, alongside systems of death, destruction and oppression. At Zao, we look to Jesus and one another to fully seek life and dismantle the mechanisms of death that plague us as individuals, communities, and the world.

Lent: Bad Apples

God's love is subversive, powerful, and threatening to the systems of empire and oppression. That's why Jesus' preferred metaphors, like mustard seed and yeast, have bad connotations.

 

Jesus calls us to be modern day bad apples--ready to spoil the bunch for the kingdom.

Lent: Students of Love

Love is not simply a feeling or even a clear set of actions. It is an orientation to the world that changes everything. Following Jesus means studying the ways of love and letting it transform us into new beings.

Lent: Who Can Be Against Us?

Rapidly escalating anti-queer, anti-trans, and anti-drag rhetoric is turning into proposed or passed legislation all over the country. Adding in the layers of oppression for BIPOC, women, people with disabilities and more, it can feel like everyone is against us or someone we love.

 

But the scriptures promise that God's love is for us, and that no opposition, persecution, or structural oppression can overcome the power of God's love.

 

Love gives us the power of solidarity, which is the labor of hope for a new future in which all are free. Who can be against us?

Lent: Fruitful

With so many people arguing about "what the Bible says" and certainly what it all means, it is scripture itself that tells us how to determine what is true: examine the fruit a belief, a teaching, or a behavior bears.

 

What fruit has your life and belief borne? How can you cultivate a faith that nourishes, heals, and transforms?

Lent: From Dust

From dust we came, and to dust we shall return...

 

This is the refrain of the season of Lent, when we remember the weeks and days leading up to Jesus's death and resurrection. The humble and holy beginnings of human beings reminds us of our limitations, but also our connectedness to God, all of creation, and one another.

Epiphany: Shall We Dance?

Jesus loved to eat, drink and party, but those in power judged and criticized him for it. John rejected material pleasure and raged against sin, but the people in power hated that too. When it feels like we just can't win, what's really going on?

 

Jesus invites us to eat, drink, dance, abstain, weep, and wail, and all the while wonder: if the tone police will never be pleased, should we just stop playing their games?

Epiphany: More Than Enough

God is making a way of abundance, but it looks different from the opulence of capitalist empire. What do the margins know about abundance that those in power are unwilling to hear?

 

God provides enough for all now, speaks through the wisdom of those creating out of scraps, and promises that in the end, there is enough for all - even if the mighty must be cast down from their thrones to get there.

 

Please note: because of audio issues, the Scripture reading is not included in today's podcast. The Scripture passages being referenced are 1 Kings 17:8-16 and Luke 4:16-27.

Epiphany: A Sheltering People

God is described as a "sheltering God," offering protection from harm. The scriptures call God's people to follow in Her example by being "a shelter to the outcast."

 

With so many wounded by systemic oppression, church and religious abuse, childhood and relationship trauma, and more, we are instructed to cling to and protect one another in the name of our sheltering God.

What are you sheltering from? How can you be a shelter to vulnerable others?

Epiphany: When Churches Teach Hate

"Jesus loves you" falls pretty flat when it's spoken with hate, judgment, and condemnation. Though hyper-conservative Christians are the ones most often throwing around the term "false teaching," the scriptures actually warn us that evil teachings will harm the church and the people "through the hypocrisy of liars."

 

We'll dig into these warnings, including one that explicitly cautions against teachers who "forbid marriage" and don't understand or teach that "everything created by God is good."