Middle Church Celebrations: Recent Episodes
Middle Collegiate Church
Worship Celebration
May 12, 2024
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
May 5, 2024
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
From Freedom Rising Conference 2024www.freedomrisingconference.comYou. Move. The World. To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
Practicing Curious Care This Earth Day
Kaitlin Curtice
Matthew 18:3-5 https://tinyurl.com/5f9a4c68
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
April 14, 2024
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
SermonWe Know We've Been ChangedRev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis1 John 3:1-4 https://tinyurl.com/4th757js
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
International Transgender Day of Visibility
April 7, 2024
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
A Little Less Than God
Tiq Milan
International Transgender Day of Visibility
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
Easter Sunday
Women's History Month
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
Nevertheless She Preached
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis
Easter Sunday 2024
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
Sixth Sunday in Lent
Women's History Month
featuring select songs from Jesus Christ Superstar
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
Women's History Month
Fifth Sunday in Lent
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
We Can Fix It!!!
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
"Women's Ways of Knowing..."
Fourth Sunday in Lent
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon"She Who Cherishes Our Hot Mess"Dr. Christena Cleveland
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
Third Sunday in Lent
Women's History Month
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
Misbehaving Women
Revs. Natalie Renee Perkins & Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
Second Sunday in Lent
Black History Month
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
SermonSilencing the SnakeRev. Dr. Jacqui LewisGenesis 3 - http://tinyurl.com/hcudh7wt
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
First Sunday of Lent
Black History Month
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
Next Time is Now
Rev. Natalie Renee Perkins
Genesis 9:8-17 - http://tinyurl.com/55b2n8nn
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
Lunar New Year
& Black History Month
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Shine, Shine, Shine
Chad Tanaka Pack
Mark 9:2-9 - http://tinyurl.com/bdhfby4v
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
SermonGreat ExpectationsRev. Dr. Jacqui LewisIsaiah 40:21-31 - http://tinyurl.com/84af3twv
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
"Astonishing Liberation"
Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft
Mark 1:21-28 - http://tinyurl.com/2factwxb
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
Close Encounters of the Kin-Dom Kind
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis
Mark 1:14-20 - http://tinyurl.com/ycxs7xp5
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Worship Celebration
King Sunday
Jan. 14, 2024
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
Let The River Run With Justice
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis
Amos 5:18-24 - http://tinyurl.com/bdeauwyu
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Sermon
WWJD (What Would Jesus Do)
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis
Mark 1:4-11 - http://tinyurl.com/4u6twtk2
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Choosing LOVE
Rev. Natalie Renee Perkins
Matthew 22: 34-39 http://tinyurl.com/4kbwfv6cTo learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Worship Celebration | Advent: Rebuild Joy | Dec. 24 2023
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Rebuild JoyRev. Dr. Jacqui LewisIsaiah 9: 2-9 - http://tinyurl.com/bdfmv4jtTo learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Worship Celebration | Advent: Reframe Love| Dec. 17 2023
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Luke 2:1-14(15-20): https://tinyurl.com/29pjnkee
Reframe Love
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Worship Celebration | Advent: Repair Peace | Dec. 10 2023
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Mark 1: 1-8 https://tinyurl.com/2p3x5sbk
"God’s birth is proclaimed by a prophet from the margins, and calls us to follow a pacificism that has too often been marginalized."
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Worship Celebration | Advent: Reclaim Hope | Dec. 3 2023
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Isaiah 40:1-11 - https://tinyurl.com/579wp45f
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Worship Celebration | Reign Of God Sunday | Nov. 26 2023
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Psalm 139 - The Message
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
Mark 8: 27-36
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Matthew 25: 1-13
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Matthew 23: 1-12
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Matthew 22: 34-46
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org. We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
Description - To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this sermon and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us.
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
To learn more about this worship celebration and what’s happening at Middle Church throughout the week, visit http://middlechurch.org . We are a movement of people who believe in the power of love. Period! Join us
The only way to survive this journey through the wilderness is to walk together. Listen out for who is walking in the wilderness too. How can we support one another in this journey towards God's promise for us?
This Handmaid's Tale bears eerie resemblance to post Roe America. The church needs to be prophetic in the way we respond to the (mis)use of women's bodies?
On this Lenten journey God is pursuing us with goodness and mercy. Take comfort in that.
God's got mountain top moments for each of us, for all of us. Close encounters will change us for good.
"We can't normalize obscenities whatever the source. What may look benign in a particular historical context--even a 'sacred' one--can be toxic today."
How can we lean more fully into our calling to reclaim and reframe Christian as the religion of Jesus and the prophets? Just Love.
Even in times of darkness, there is a light that shines in and through all of us. It is promised, my people have experienced it. You are my people. We can experience it together….
These two texts are what Jesus quotes as the greatest commandments. Love God with all we have and neighbor as self. Implications abound for our ethics in the public square.
The extreme highs and lows of the seasons of life are part of every human experience. We cannot control the outcome of each season, but we can decide how we are going to respond.
"A time and a season for everything"SCRIPTURE Ecclesiastes 3:1-8Mira Sawlani-JoynerThis video is made possible through generous contributions from people like you! Support the ongoing work of Middle Church now at http://www.middlechurch.org/donate. Learn more about Middle Church at http://www.middlechurch.org.
We are all called, Midwife love into the world. It takes all of us, the whole of creation.
• Joy is what sustains our hope.• Joy comes from relationship, when we root deeply together with those we love, it gives us the power to be the change we yearn for.• Even in our most dire moments, Middle has been filled with such unmistakable joy. It’s what will fuel our resurrection and rebirth.
What God intends for the world is utter transformation. No more enmity, even in the animal kingdom. God’s Spirit (Breath of Heaven) wants to use us, like she did Mary, in that transformation.
On this first Sunday of Advent, as we turn from darkness toward the light, what does it mean to wage peace?
What if we treated coming out as non-binary, a spiritual act for all of us, all of us repenting of being stuck there and opening our hearts to our own complexity and the beautiful
Who can you identify as people at the intersection of social justice issues who have often had to survive on crumbs? What action can you participate in to center their needs?
The church is called to repair the world with fierce love. What’s your part in that in these hot mess times?
An encounter with the love of Jesus reclaims us as God’s own. And God repairs us so we repair the world. This transformation might be difficult, but it will be for good.
If faith becomes preoccupied with reassuring ourselves about our own righteousness, we miss God’s call to justice — Humility isn’t about negating our own worth, it’s about seeing how our flourishing is interwoven with our neighbors’ — Love is a process, not a destination. It’s a story of continuous becoming we’re invited to enter
We are called to welcome the children, but to what? What is the world we want to give them? What is the context we need to create so children and their families flourish? What does it mean for us to live so we leave no child behind?
Building the reign of God is urgent business, what is your part, right here and now? Make a commitment and let's GO!!!
In light of our theme of Repair and Rebuild, are you living, working, helping, and loving in ways that will lead us toward leaving our planet much better than we found it for our children?
While wandering in the wilderness, on the way to a new home, Israel found itself complaining. We’re out here hungry, and at least there was food back there. Back there was no more, but there would soon be a new place to call home. God surprised her people with bread in the morning and quail at night. How has God surprised you/us with blessings in this season of houselessness?
Consider this portion of our theme—repair and rebuild. How does it fit with searching for healing from the wounds of our nation and world?
What does Jesus mean when he says, “follow me” and how can we reimagine being beloved community?
What is your upper room? Where do we go to be held and reminded who we are? How do we mirror to ourselves and others this movement of love and justice?
When you have the spirit of no-strength, where do you go (or could you go) to find the wind at your back?
On poetry and metaphor, what image or metaphor of God has sustained you the most during this season? What call to action does this image or metaphor invoke today?
On poetry and metaphor, what image or metaphor of God has sustained you the most during this season? What call to action does this image or metaphor invoke today?
If we take this prayer seriously-we are called to revolution. This day. On earth as in heaven. What does that mean? Food. Shelter. Safety. Equality. Liberation. Justice. Mercy. Kindness. Fierce love for all. That's our vocation. This prayer our oath of office. Ready. Set. Go!!
If we take this prayer seriously-we are called to revolution. This day. On earth as in heaven. What does that mean? Food. Shelter. Safety. Equality. Liberation. Justice. Mercy. Kindness. Fierce love for all. That's our vocation. This prayer our oath of office. Ready. Set. Go!!
What have you encountered that helps reveal the hope within you? Is there something you can do that helps reveal the hope in others?
Love your neighbor. Sounds good. BUT it is hard a$$ work. Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan? He picks an outsider as an example of the way to love; an “other” who loved HARD shows what love looks like. Love is the only force that will heal our world; we better get good at it!
• Our intersectional justice work is imperative. As we imagine what it means to be free where will you put your time, talent and treasure? • What support will you need from Middle Church to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God? • How can our prophetic grief forge peace?
• What did your family teach you about racial dynamics in America? Is there anything you’ve had to unlearn? • What do you hear in today’s sermon that might give you the courage to heal the child in you? • When you hear “family is the site of liberation,” how can your family—chosen or otherwise—participate in building the Reign of God on earth?
•How are you mourning the slaughter of innocents in this country at the hands of gun violence? •What do we do with our outrage and anger? Can scripture help? •What happens when we transform masculine representations of God with something more inclusive and representative?
• Pentecost is a celebration of communication. What are you hearing Spirit say to you in this season about rebirth? • What are you being inspired to say and do in new ways because Spirit has come by you? • In some ways Middle is being reborn. What do you pray we will be like?
• How have you been wounded by white supremacism? • What personal story about race would write on your “leaf” to heal the nations? • What has been revealed to you as you’ve listened to this series of sermons on the Book of Revelation?
John’s Revelation is often interpreted through the lens of judgement; I’ve been reading it with hope. • Can you hear the hope-filled promise of a healed creation? A new heaven, new earth? Where does your imagination take you in terms of ecology—the care of our earthly home? • There are echoes here of the Genesis and the creation stories—that the human ones were banished from Eden but will now see God’s face. Victor Hugo wrote, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Can this heal us? • The Tree of Life now has 12 kinds of fruits and leaves for the healing of the nations. All the nations. What does this indicate about God’s full intention for the world?
• In these times of trauma, what needs to be healed in you? • How can you participate in the healing of the nations? • How would you describe Middle’s calling to make things new?
• How does your self-centeredness get in the way of seeing yourself as closely connected to the world? What is one thing you can do to let go of your ego? • Wish someone a Happy Mother’s Day—maybe someone whom you wouldn’t usually think of as a mother figure in your life. If they have passed away, find a way to offer good wishes, like lighting a candle or writing a card. • When have you most clearly seen the light of Christ? Where were you? Who were you with? What made the moment special?
• How will you celebrate and honor Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month? • Do you have a fishing story? What is it? Think Back. How might’ve God called for your attention? • How can we, this month, live into being dancers and maroons who form a floating village? How can we best show up?
• If God is Love, who is Jesus? • How does this sermon help you liberate Jesus from the box he is in? • How can we rise as Easter people all year long?
• This greatest story ever told features God coming all the way down into human history as Word made flesh. How does that word live in you? • How can you be the Rising? • How can we -this here flesh-be the resurrection?
• Where do you see conflict between these two realms on the political stage? In the media? In your personal life? • What can you do to enact the values God’s reign: in your family? in social media? in your everyday life?
• What is God telling you in this wilderness journey? • When you look around your life, where, what, or who has God provided that has been a way in the wilderness or a river in the desert? • Through the prophet Isaiah God declares to be doing a new thing. Do you perceive it?
• Why do we resist that which is good for us? • How might our “coming home to God” heal us in this season of Lent? • When have we been the caregiver welcoming, and when have we been the child leaving?
• How does grit and determination factor into God’s call on your life? • Where do you see this enacted in the world—both good and bad? • How can a can a community use this toward societal shift?
• Jesus’ testing in Luke’s gospel depicts him as a model Jewish human being. What does it teach you about being human? • As we consider how to “wade in the wilderness,” during Lent, what does Jesus’ response to testing teach us about both being still and building a movement? • As the living body of Jesus, how does our partnership with God give us tools to heal the world?
• Where in your life are you wrestling between what you are hearing from God versus what you are feeling within yourself? • God is not calling us to take mistreatment. God is calling us to not recycle the behaviors of evil, oppression, violence, and hate from our perceived enemies. Where in your life can you end a cycle of evil, oppression, violence, and hate? • Fierce Love is rooted in a deep love of self, community, and world. Where are you being challenged to love the difficult parts of yourself, community, and world better?
• They came with dis-ease, troubled, powerless--to hear and to be healed. What do you want God to do for you? • Blessed were the poor, the hungry, the weeping. Where is your poverty, your hunger, what makes you weep? Why is that a blessing? • Why are we to leap with joy when hated or reviled? How does that translate to our current socio-political context?
• Prayer Life Check-in! Take some time this week to examine what your prayer life looks like. Do you set aside specific times to pray? What is your conversation with God like? If you haven't been setting aside time, create a routine this week.
• Jesus’ call to ministry is ours; we are the living Body of X. What does it mean to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind?
• How does God's unfailing love for all creation source our love of self? • What does it mean for us to take refuge in God and create refuge for others? • Connect the dots between a Beloved Community and a Just Community.
As you listen to the sermon, reflect on this theme: It feels like compassion and kindness aren’t enough to overcome the evil we face, but actually they’re the only things that can. God could have come as a conquering army, but manifested as vulnerable love instead. What does this vulnerable fierce love have for us in this season?
• God blessed Mary, filling her hunger with good things. What are you hungry for in terms of blessings? • Does the image of being pregnant with love resonate with you? How so? • What metaphor works for you in terms of bearing fierce love in the world?
• Knowing that God is in our midst, how might we approach political conversations around guns and reproductive rights? • How might we wait — as we are called to in the season of Advent — faithfully? • Is our faith intersectional? Should it be?
• In the midst of all the fires this past year—the pandemic, painful discourse in the public square, and our sanctuary fire—what did you find?
• What’s your dream for tomorrow? • What promise do you want God to keep? • What are you willing to do to partner with God?
• If we are intentional and purposeful in our spirit walk with God, why is it so difficult to see the truth and still believe the lies? • Let’s change the narrative for trans people, queer people, black brown people creating a safe space in our Middle family and carrying the truthful narrative to world. • Fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming community in 2021: https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-nonconforming- community-in-2021
• Have you ever had trouble loving yourself? What made it hard? How do you get your love-jones back? It’s OK if that is a work in progress! • Who is your most difficult neighbor to love? What can you do that can make that better? • How can you turn ferocious courage and rule-breaking kindness onto the world?
• How did today’s sermon speak to what love looks like in these times? • How does it inspire your life of faith and activism? • What is one take away or learning you might share with others?
• How do the themes of peace dignity and quality inform how we heal the world? • What actions can you take right now to help find America or help America find herself?
• Love self: How? • Love neighbor: How better? • Love the world: What does this mean today?
• The Psalmist yearns to remain in God’s house, and makes a case for why they belong there. What did you hear? • What are the characteristics of God’s house and how can our community “glow with God’s Glory?” • If our “church” is the whole world, who should we be sure to include in that great circle that dances around in God’s altar, and how?
• In Mark 5:36, Jesus says to Jairus, “do not fear, only believe.” What are you being called/ challenged to believe God about? • When are moments in your life you can recognize God bringing healing, wellness, and wholeness? • God’s desire for the world is that we should “be well and live.” How can you collaborate with God to bring wellness and life to yourself, your family, and your community?
• Why is the need for collective care so essential? • How might the Church be a teaching agent for collective care? • How have you been a recipient of or a giver of collective care?
How do you honor and move forward? • Where do you find joy in our fight? • What is stuck in your body? How can you release it?
• What would it look like to live in an economy of abundance? How would it feel? • Our working rights were won through collective action. How can we build that kind of solidarity now? • Jesus said “put down your nets” as an instruction to abandon predatory economic systems. What nets is God calling you to put down?
• What are the passions in your life which you might celebrate or honor more than you do? Try writing your own Song of Songs to celebrate what makes the blood pump in your veins! • Does your way of reading scripture liberate you to “rise to fierce love”? Why or why not? • How does (or might) loving your whole self (including your body and its needs and desires) help you to do the work of justice in the world?
• Someone once said, “Clothing makes community.” Think about your everyday life. How do you and your community literally and or figuratively wear truth, righteousness, and peace? • Be creative. Choose one: a) What other garments would you add to wear that are at our disposal to help us rise and withstand evil we see in our world? And why? b) Instead of a Roman Soldier, what other template might we use to imagine how we should stand? • Paul said, “Pray also for me ...” What might a letter from those in prisons today say to us about withstanding evil? What does it mean for us to pray for those in prison today?
• What does a world flourishing in peace look like? • What would it look like to rise in peace—in yourself—in your community—in our country—in our world—and as Middle Church? • White supremacy and capitalism hinder the peace God designed for us. What are other barriers and hindrances to God’s peace?
• What are your own “I am’s”? How do they reflect the complicated and rich experience of your own existence? Which “I am’s” do you show to the world? Which are just for you? • What are the “I am’s” you hold on to for support? The “I am’s” that undergird the most important parts of yourself? What are the “I am’s” you find uncomfortable? How might you make more space for these? • Are there “I am’s” you want to work to change? Are there new “I am’s” which are in the process of becoming or in the process of practicing to embody?
• What is one area of your life where you can implement an abundance mindset rather than one of scarcity? What difference would this make? • How do white supremacy and capitalism actively work against an abundance mindset? What can we/you do about it? • What would it look like for Middle to Rise to Abundance? What role can you take in that rising?
The prayers of the people offered in today's worship is the Buddhist practice of mettā bhāvanā.
• God shows us that boundaries are important for living a life of faith. Where in your own life do you perceive a need to reset appropriate boundaries? Or, to honor appropriate boundaries that have been set for you? • Dr. King said, “Riots are the language of the unheard.” Likewise, outbursts are often the outgrowth of repeated mistreatment. How can we be better to communicate when we are being mistreated, or respond to the mistreatment of others, before an outburst occurs? • Worship is an act of celebration and reverence (proper handling) of holy things. How can you be better at giving celebration and reverence to the holy things in your life?
• How can you be in better solidarity with trans, non-binary, and gender variant folx? What do you need to unlearn about gender in order to do so? • Who are the prophets among you and your community that you might have overlooked? What can you learn from them? • Is there anything keeping your body from being a site of liberation for yourself and others? What will help you become free?
• What does Pride mean to you, in light of and regardless of your sexuality or gender identity? • What risks are you willing to take for your light to shine? • How can you encourage and uplift others to follow the words of Jesus and be “the light of the world?”
• Charles Albert Tindley’s hymns chart his experience with the liberating love of God. What song sings your faith? • Are you feeling stormy about the state of our nation? How will your faith change the weather? • How does this movement of “LOVE. Period” inspire you to use your resources to create “shelter in a time of storm?”
• The God of the breasts is the female nature of God, who has both what humans would call feminine and masculine attributes. How do you experience those aspects? • We who are in God’s image are also anima and amimas. How do you experience yourself in that regard? • This two-spirit nature of humankind is as old as time. How did we get so strident and simplistic about the binary, in your mind? How can we undo this?
• Mark draws a contest between (son of God) and evil. Where do you see that battle? • Do your better angels ever duke it out with your lesser ones? • How do we as people of faith engage powers and principalities in the public square?
• How can you turn “love into action”? • Name a person who is no longer alive whose spirit embodies “Love as an Action”. • In what ways can you invite the spirit of self care into your life to keep yourself “refueled and a flamed” as the scripture advises us?
• The phrase “divided tongues as of fire” is meant to convey the presence of God in the scene Luke describes. Any new insights on where God is today? • How is the world most “on fire” in your mind, and what might you do about it? • How can you help Middle rise from the fire and be more filled with Holy Spirit?
• That we stand firm like the trees planted by the waters that no matter what we face we will stand strong. • Know that the AAPI community does not stand alone. • Learn about our heritage and never forget where we came from and do not let our voices be silenced.
• We are shaped and sustained by a language of love. • Love isn't content to leave us where we are as individuals or as a community—it will grow us. • There are so many ways we translate, we speak, we embody that love in the world. What are the ways in which you translate, speak, and embody love in the world?
• Where do you come from? Really . . . • How can you celebrate your identities—ethnicity, language, culture, gender/sexuality—as a gift from God and the universe? • What new insight did you learn today from our Latinx/Hispanic family about their walk of faith in this nation?
• Do you have an experience like Zainab’s that proved to you that life works? • Where/how do you experience the goodness and mercy of God following you? • What’s your key inspiration from today’s worship?
• Sometimes we’re looking for love and can’t find it. Train your eyes, for a moment—where do you see the fiercest love at work? • It takes courage to imagine a loving society that actually starts with us. What’s your growing edge, when it comes to loving the world to healing? • What are you dreaming about? For you? Your posse? The world? Aim at that. Ready, set, go!
• Who are the people included and/or excluding in your community? How are the people in and out of your community extensions of who God is calling you to be? • What is your place in the community? What is your duty and responsibility to those who came before you and those who will come after? • How can you share God's amazing grace to love as Christ loves, to heal as Christ heals, and to live as Christ lives?
• When you think of Jesus, which comes to mind first: Rabbi, Friend, Savior, Judge? • How would you describe the Jesus preached at Middle Church? The Jesus represented on the national stage? • What’s the core message of Jesus that guides your life? Does it need updating in any way?
• Where do you see conflict between these two realms on the political stage? In the media? In your personal life? • What can you do to enact the values God’s reign: in your family? in social media? in your everyday life?
• Which common Christian sentences and phrases do you think will be uncovered by our descendants? What do we hope they will find? How are the two different? • This week, commit to a meditative practice every day. Gift yourself with seven days of reconnecting to knowing God. • Think about three decisions from last week that were God-rooted action and/or Love-rooted activism and three that were not. Consider the differences between the two. How does this help you realign yourself in our new framing?
Rev. Dr. Damaris D. Whittaker – Fort Washington Collegiate Church Rev. Dr. Michael Bos – Marble Collegiate Church Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis – Middle Collegiate Church Rev. William Critzman – West End Collegiate Church Rev. Julie Johnson Staples, J.D. – Intersections International
• Grieving can feel like sitting in the dark, but it might actually be walking toward the light. • Imagine now walking in the light, with God, with your grief. How does that feel? • How might acknowledging our grief save us? How might truth make us whole?
• The first Sunday in March last year was the last time we gathered in the Middle Church sanctuary. What thoughts and feelings arise in you as you mark this anniversary and the oneyear anniversary of the onset of COVID in the U.S.? • Where have you flipped over tables in the name of Justice and Love in your own life? Where might you? • What does Church beyond walls look like to you? Who do you hope Middle to be?
• If you could change your name to something that says who you truly are, what would it be? Whisper it to God. Shout it. Claim it. • Our circumstances change us. Name one thing this year that etched something new on you, pushed something new out of you. • Right now, right where you are, choreograph your part in the movement of Middle Church. Rehearse it, take a selfie of you doing it and tag us on social media.
• Who are the people God might be calling you to listen to during this Lenten season? Where are they located? How might we all be changed by going nearer to them and listening more intentionally to their stories? • Repentance means to turn or return, so how might God be challenging you to turn (or return) within yourself to reflect more intently on what God is calling for your life? • How might we co-labor with God through Jesus Christ to return near the reign of God on earth? LAST WEEK: TIME TO SHINE • How are you celebrating Lunar New Year? How is God helping you with a new beginning today? • In what contexts do you have privilege? How might you use that social privilege to change stories of injustice? • In the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court decision Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Chinese American laundry owners in San Francisco successfully advocated for their rights. Learn more about this case online, and share what you learn with a friend. PRAYER CORNER Please pray with us this week for these people and concerns. We are praying for all our Middle family every day. Teresa Benevides; Kapsner family; Gloria Cunningham Burgess; Alicia Swain; Janna Myers; Devora Jones; Pam Payne; Connie Blackwell; Renee Cunningham Marshall; Joe Tigner; Jessie Matei; Bridget Kelso Anthony; Amanda Ashcraft; The Raider Nation and Jacqui Lewis. To make a prayer request, request a call from a Middle pastor, or inquire about financial assistance, visit middlechurch.org/prayer. Need Care? CLICK HERE for more information CLICK HERE
• How are you celebrating Lunar New Year? How is God helping you with a new beginning today? • In what contexts do you have privilege? How might you use that social privilege to change stories of injustice? • In the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court decision Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Chinese American laundry owners in San Francisco successfully advocated for their rights. Learn more about this case online, and share what you learn with a friend.
• I’m tired. All kinda of ways tired. Aren’t you? How do you restore your soul when you’re whipped? • Old or young God gives power to the faint and the powerless. Where do you need power right now? How will you use it? • “Wait on God . . . Renew your strength.” How will you wait?
• If house is a metaphor for psyche or spirit, is there any place your house is messy? • From your point of view, what “Unclean Spirits” are haunting our culture? • Fill in the blanks: If I clean-up my _________________________, that will help clean up our culture’s _________________________. • Our deacons are called to care. What are you called to?
• When you hear, “The Reign of God has come near,” what do you see? • What does it mean in your life to follow Rabbi Jesus? • How might Middle Church make “following Jesus” a path for more people?
• Reflecting back on last Sunday, what is the Reign of God like for you? • When you think about restoration, where do you need it and how? • At the start of this Advent journey, how are you defining/finding hope?
• God’s word promises that we are fed justice. What are we feeding the world? Are we feeding God’s food—or someone else’s? What are we feeding ourselves?
• The church in Jerusalem believed Jesus when he said the work of the church is to love God, love neighbor, and love self. What can we learn from the church in Jerusalem and Barnabas that can bring us together to heal our current divide?
• When you think of “justice rolling down like waters,” what does your life look like? Our city? This nation? • What does “righteousness like a mighty steam” mean to this Middle community? How do you make that happen?
• What’s your testimony of God protecting you from enemies, of God gathering you when you were lost? What’s your testimony of God leading you to safe places to flourish, of God satisfying your hunger and thirst? • If we are the body of the living God, running God’s household for God, how do we live our lives of faith in these days? • What’s love got to do with it?
• Which of your neighbors needs fair judgement? • Which of your neighbors need to be rebuked frankly? • Which of your neighbors need you forgive them, drop your grudge against them, and love them as you love yourself?
• How is God speaking to our young people? How can we help them listen? How can we collectively listen? • What is God calling us to do? Who is God calling us to be?
• How did today’s sermon speak to what love looks like in these times? • How does it inspire your life of faith and activism? • What is one take away or learning you might share with others?
• How does the law of Love matter to how we live in Middle Church Community—our home? • This nation is our home, as well. What does an ethic of love have to say to about our politics? • What’s love got to do with how you live at home with your family, roommates, partner, children . . .?
God’s power is at work in us. • What are we going to do with the power in our hands? • How can we leverage our power for the good of humanity?
• How did today’s sermon speak to what love looks like in these times? • How does it inspire your life of faith and activism? • What is one take away or learning you might share with others?
• How is God calling us to trust Her in this moment? • How is She showing us a path to the promised land that does not require violence?
• What does it look like to be accepted in your communities? • What if every day we recommitted ourselves to putting on the love of the Lord, the compassion of the Lord?
• How did today’s sermon speak to what love looks like in these times? • How does it inspire your life of faith and activism? • What is one take away or learning you might share with others?
• How can we stay focused on faith, hope, and love when there is so much trouble in the world? • What can you do right now to create unity and harmony for yourself, your kindred, and not so kindred?
• How did today’s sermon speak to what love looks like in these times? • How does it inspire your life of faith and activism? • What is one take away or learning you might share with others?
• Are there situations or relationships in your life where you have behaved like Jacob? How have they been shaped by fear, self-reliance, or a need to understand things on your own terms? • How would your approach toward accountability change if you leaned into the transformative promise and faithfulness of God’s vision for you?
• How did today’s sermon speak to what love looks like in these times? • How does it inspire your life of faith and activism? • What is one take away or learning you might share with others?
• Identify ways in which you’ve felt your worth called into question. • How can Thecla’s story help combat this question? • Name three things you can do to help remind yourself of your God-given worth.
• How did today’s sermon speak to what love looks like in these times? • How does it inspire your life of faith and activism? • What is one take away or learning you might share with others?
View Queer Faith: In Our Own Words featuring Kevin Garcia, Austen Hartke, Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart, Taylor Amari Little, J Mase III, Sarah Ngu, and Michael Vasquez, and co-hosted by Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Ph.D. and Georgia Bridgers. Reclaim and reframe the stories we tell, and hold a different truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgZdATkGyug
• Today’s scripture speaks of a year of jubilee, a time every 50 years for a complete reset and restore. How can we work for a jubilee for this nation—a time to stop trying to make things work that are broken at the core and, instead, reset and restore so that all may thrive?
• We’re in a moment of sacred space between the divine and human, between divine promise and human possibility, between heaven and earth, between what can be and what is. Can we make democracy real? Can the news of freedom, though late, be true? Can we laugh like Sarah at the promises of God and give birth to our hope in every generation?
• What does this sermon call you to be and do in the matter of Black lives? • Learn about ways you can take action at 10 Ways to Fight for an Antiracist World - https://www.middlechurch.org/news/10-ways-fight-antiracist-world
•Pentecost is a miracle of communication. What are you called to communicate in the matter of Black Lives and how. •Shavuot is the Jewish holiday that celebrates God’s law being given to the people. What is God calling us to do right now? What’s your role in it? •Register for themaster class, The Call of This Moment: An Anti-Racism Workshop with Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewison June 17 and 18.
•What battle are you fighting today? How might you use divine love in battle? •How might the idea of a yin-yang Jesus Christ deepen your understanding of him?
•Where are we finding/looking for God? What have we wrongly constructed and worshipped as God? •God is not far from us because “we too are God’s offspring.”How might we live differently as God's offspring?What does it mean to be offspring of God?
No matter your ethnicity or gender, become a student of Black Feminist thought: Consider getting a copy of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines(edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs). Follow her @alexispauline Immerse yourself in the poetry ofAudre Lorde at poetryfoundation.org/poets/audre-lordeand follow the Audre Lorde Project (ALP.org)
• Jesus made love go viral in tough times by socially distancing periodically. How can we use this time to get clear about how to make love go viral?
• Get educated about the way COVID-19 is ravaging the poor and Black and Brown people. Follow the Poor People’s Campaign/William Barber, Ruby Sales, and Traci Blackmon. • Read and Write: Read Amos, Chapter 5, The Message version, every day for the next week. Each day after reading, write a letter demanding a response to COVID-19 that acknowledges the poor, Black and Brown people, the essential workers who are predominantly female and Black. • Your senators • Your congress person • The governor of your state • The mayor your city/town • Your local newspaper • Do small acts of self and neighborly love. • Buy a book of stamps from the USPS • Put your name and phone number on your neighbors’ doors so they can access you in case of emergency • Put your mask on, go outside for fresh air every day, keeping your distance. • Call somebody you love, let them hear your voice, every day
• What would it take for you to imagine being on the other side of this moment? • What does it mean to care for the Earth? • What do you need to rethink, reread, or reimagine in order for us to move forward more justly?
• Before there were buildings with stained glass windows, there was a church. The church was the people and the first preacher was Mary. What are you called to preach right now and to whom? • In the midst of this pandemic, what are you rising to? • How does this moment make you want to use yourself and your resources?
•Holy Week is the climax in a contest between good and evil; generosity and greed; peace and violence. What lessons are there for you and your community today? •How are you being the surprising one we’ve been waiting for to heal the world? What is your calling right now?
• Have you ever been “thirsty,” “needed a drink,” and God showed up? When? Remember every detail. • How is this moment—sickness, hatred-gone-viral, and so much we can’t breathe—an opportunity for God to show up? Where? How?
• In the midst of what feels like dried up life, in the midst of death, we are called to speak life into the world. Where do you find life? Signs of life?
Even Jesus could not do his ministry without love, assistance, and care! What does care look like to you?
-Have you experienced God's Glory recently? How? Where? -Glory is like a significant, female neighbor. Now, have you felt that? What did she want you to do?
• How will you respond to the call for economic justice? It will require you to be a revolutionary, like Jesus. • Can we be the hands and feet of God and say, “Here I am” to each other? • Vanessa is the author of Achieve Financial Victory: 7 Ways to Win With Your Money available on Amazon.com.
• Bend the arc toward justice by following The King Center in Atlanta @TheKingCenter, The Equal Justice Initiative @eji_org, Ruby Sales @RubyNSales. • Get a copy of A Testament of Hope. Spend this year reading the lesser known writings of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Start with his sermon, “Beyond Vietnam.” Listen for your call to bend the arc and repair the breach. • Register tomorrow for RevLove 2020: Toward a More Perfect Union. See information at right for our one-day flash sale.
When have you heard the voice of God? How can we discern gods voice? How is gods voice #inthemiddleofit with us?
• God’s word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood, bringing the Reign of God on earth. How does that change the hood? The nation? The world?
• How does the story of Jesus in Egypt relate to our current context? How does it relate to your life?
• Because God was in the middle of it, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary had their circumstances transformed. How has God transformed YOUR circumstances?
• What new path might God be calling you to travel? What resources would you need for that journey? Use a journal or sketchbook to capture your thoughts. • How will you deepen your relationship with God in 2020 through the ministries of Middle Church? Perhaps you could participate in a small group. Or volunteer as an usher. Or set up a recurring donation. Include this question in your prayers during December.
• The season of Advent comes with the promise that an embodied God changes things. Wars cease. Enmity ceases. Storms pass, leaving rainbows of love. Where do you see the embodied God at work in your life?
• As we journey into the unknown, we sometimes get lost on the way. But lost is a place, too, and sometimes you have to stay there for a while and work things out. How can we reflect about our time spent in the dark night of the soul?
• The God of Exodus has liberated us to heal the world. What is your job to do? At work? At home? At play? • How do we repair what was broken in 1619? What is the role of Middle Church in reparations?
• When is a time you’ve felt seen by God? • Who or what do you need to see? What's making that difficult? • Who’s coming to dinner?
• Resistance is a spiritual gift. Where and how did your ancestors resist? • How about you? How does your faith call you to fight for justice?
• How do we hold all ages in our love and justice work? • How do we celebrate the gifts, passions, and leadership of our young people? • How do we work together to build and be the beloved community that Dr. King wrote about?
• How did today’s sermon and music inspire you for the week ahead? How can you be a part of God’s vision?
• How did today’s sermon and music inspire you for the week ahead? How can you be a part of God’s vision?
• Young people have lead the way to peace for generations. Remind yourself of your younger you; what we’re you passionate about fixing in the world? • How does your inner young person want to do right now to heal the world? • What are three things you can do to make peace in your circle of relationships? • Attend the Puerto Rico Talk Back today at 1:30 PM to learn more about their summer trip to Puerto Rico from our Youth Service-Learning team. • To support the work of The Peace Studio, visit thepeacestudio.org
• This whole section of Luke is about loss: woman loses coin, shepherd loses sheep, father loses son. We’ve all lost something; as Ruby says, "Where does it hurt?" • Something pushes the younger son to leave “home,” and then he “comes to himself” and returns to love. Is his story in any way like yours? • The father’s joy that what was lost is now found points to God’s joy when we turn back toward God. Take a moment and tell God about any way you need to turn around, and ask for help to do so. • How do we make Middle Church more like “home” for you? For others?
• Breath, Spirit, Wind—they are the same words in Hebrew (Ruach) and Greek (Pneuma). • Where are you feeling BREATHless? Inhale now as a ritual to fill that space. • Where do you need an influx of Spirit in your life? • Where do you pray America will have the Winds of Change blow through?
• What does love look like to you? • What are ways people and Spirit has been hospitable to you? • This week what radical act of hospitality would you like to offer?
We learn a lot about God during times when God feels close. But Jesus and the prophets were clear that God would also feel distant at times. The text today is one of the several parables Jesus tells about an “absent God.” • What can we learn about God in God’s absence that we can’t learn in God’s presence? Is it possible to get clarity in absence as well as presence? • Where does God feel absent in your life, in your family, in your community and in the world?
• One way to think about human development is that a “good enough mother” holds us while we become whole. How is God a good-enough mom? • To quote my Mama Ruby, “Where does it hurt?” • How can God, Love, we, you help heal it?
• What is heaven like in your dreams? What images from scripture, other texts, or art shape that vision? • What can you do today, this week, this month to make heaven on earth?
• What are your take-aways from Rev. Julie’s sermon? To continue the discussion, join Rev. Julie for a sermon talkback today on the 4th Floor at 11:45 PM.
• What’s “good” about the Good Samaritan? • What does “Queer like Christ” mean to your life of faith?
• A little less than God—what does this mean for your sense of self? • What does it mean to steward each other’s lives? • Who need Middle Church, and how do you get them here?
• Visit middlechurch.org/Pride for all the ways to celebrate Pride and to commemorate 50 years since the Stonewall Riots that were a huge catalyst for social change
SCRIPTURE: Psalm 139 (http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=428319158) Meghan Kirksey “Queering Church” Ivan Anderson, Jorge Fontanez, Darren Major, preacher To learn more about Middle Church visit: http://www.middlechurch.org
• Three voices reflected on Psalm 139 today. What did you hear? What is your reflection?
• Where in your memory is someone who taught you about what God intends for humanity? What did you learn? What lesson do you take forward to the future and the soon-coming Reign of God.
As we honor the history of Asian people in the U.S.A., it is part of our spiritual journey to see through their eyes, hear the good news of God’s love through their perspectives. • What do you see? What do you hear? • How does that shape your understanding of the Holy?
Covenants of Empire and Covenants of God – 11:45 March 17, 2019 by Middle Collegiate Church
Covenants of Empire and Covenants of God – 9:30 March 17, 2019 by Middle Collegiate Church
Tell Me, How Did You Feel When You Come Out the Wilderness - August 5, 2018 by Middle Collegiate Church
• An apology is radical truth-telling. It liberates the one we’ve hurt, and us as well. Who needs an apology from you?
• How have you betrayed your sense of who you are this last year? • How have you betrayed your sense of who God is? • Have you forgven yourself?
• For you, where is the crucified body of Christ? Where do you find him in the suffering? • How can our love revolution resurrect the body of Christ?
• What "things of old" do you need to let go, put down, stop considering, so that the revolution can rise? • The God who makes a way in the wilderness, who puts rivers in the desert, is doing a new thing. What is that new thing? What does it take for us (as a people) to perceive it?
• On this Lenten journey, how are you transformed by love? • What’s on your heart? Complete the red pew card and share your thoughts.
• Sometimes God’s presence is elusive. How can you focus and see God everywhere? • I’m praying for the trnsformation in my life. Where do you need to be changed? • How does a close walk with God change how we use ourselves and resources?
THIS WEEK: THE POWER OF PROXIMITY • Is there a truth from your past that you must confront to receive liberating love? • What transformation might you experience as you move closer to this truth? • How or where is God inviting Middle to change so that we grow as an anti-racist church?
• Love and Justice come together in Jesus’ example. How do we link love and justice in our work and witness? • How is the love we extend to our “enemies” disruptive for the good?
• Isaiah 6.8: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” What voice are you hearing during these times? What work do you feel called to do?
• Red/gold envelope donations will support CAAAV, a pan-Asian community-based org that works to build the power of low-income Asian immigrants and refugees in NYC. CAAAV develops leadership in Asian communities to impact the policies and institutions that affect their lives and to participate in the movement for racial and economic justice.
• August 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans sold into bondage in an English colony in the “New” World. Visit www.400yearsofinequality.org to learn more about some of the efforts of remembrance and resistance to this legacy.
• August 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans sold into bondage in an English colony in the “New” World. Visit www.400yearsofinequality.org to learn more about some of the efforts of rememberance and resistance to this legacy. • Baptism means many things to many people. If you were baptized, do you remember it? Have you been told stories about it? If you haven’t been baptized, what’s your impression of it? Have you ever felt “baptized by fire” and/or the Holy Spirit?
• As we enter a new year full of new promise, What might you do to robe yourself in love?
• Mary erupts into joyous song because she is pregnant with love. She is bearing God’s liberation in the world. You, too, are called to bear love and liberation into the world. How? Make an intention for the new year.
• Where do you see God gathering outcasts today? How can we join God in this work? • How does being aware of God in our midst change us? • What is this season of Advent teaching you about waiting?
• In what “wilderness” are you seeking God's peace and comfort? • How do you practice hope during hopeless times? • What can you do this week to prepare for the reign of God?
Love God. Love Neighbor. Love Self. Got it. BUT, who IS my neighbor? A question for then and now. Who is the neighbor you have the MOST difficulty loving? Write the person’s name here, or write a phrase to describe the type of people.
Begin to visualize how much they are like you. What do you have in common? This will help grow your empathy muscle. Jesus used a so-called other to teach his people about neighbor love. It is such an important and timeless lesson. This kind of #LoveTransforms: love that is revolutionary in its nature, love that sees more good about the other then they can see themselves. Love that dares to stare down hatred and violence and not return evil for evil. On the way to Thanksgiving and Advent, focus on love of the so-called other. See what it transforms in each of us.
• On All Saints Day, who are the ancestors you call on for encouragement and strength? How do their lives continue to impact you even after they are no longer here in their physical body? • In today’s gospel, what is unique about the scribe’'s interaction with Jesus? • When have you felt closest to the eternal? How can we live in a way that is “not far from the Kin-dom of God”?
• Our staff and consistory are leaning into the everlasting arms of Love, and inviting you into a vision in which #LoveTransforms each of us, and our society. What can you see? • Read the bulletin insert to learn more about our vision and goals.
• How are young people inspiring you to be hopeful amidst the dreariness of our political climate? • How can you mother children who aren't your own? Why is this important? • Commit to doing one thing this week that has the potential to improve the life of a child. Share what you did using #MCClivesofhope
• Where is God today? Do you feel closeness or distance? • How can you keep the sense or nearness as a daily praxis?
• The Discovery narrative is problematic. What other narratives need to be transformed by love? • How can you help change the story?
• Pray that good people of goodwill from every political party will be informed by their faith in Jesús as they consider politics on the national stage. • Follow Vote for Common Good https://www.votecommongood.com/ • Follow Middle Church as we standing with our Latinx family in these days and times.
• Why do you think the disciples have a hard time understanding Jesus’s identity? • What are the stories about Jesus, in the Bible and in culture, that mean the most to your understanding of the Gospel? • What stories about Jesus are most confusing or make it hard to grapple with the Good News?
• Reflect what it means in your life to be “doers of the word, not merely hearers” as the scriptures calls us to today. • How do you know when someone is really listening? • On Labor Day Sunday, what does labor and work have to do with the faith journey? What does it look like when you are living into labor that glorifies God? How are we responsible for creating life-giving work environments for others as well as ourselves?
• What circumstances can lull us into doing the “sensible” thing? • What is the real power of the “halfway mark” in our journey? • See the purpose, trust the promise, go…
• How can you live in wisdom and be intentional in the choices you make in your life? • Extend grace to others as has been extended to you by God. • Be in community with one another. We cannot do it alone, we need each other.
• Today’s sermon is in solidarity with the 21 youth who filed a constitutional lawsuit against the United States president and federal government —Juliana v. U.S.—for failure to meaningfully address climate change. Visit http://eachgeneration.org/ to learn more. • How do you see sustainability as an act of solidarity? • In relation to climate action, how can you be a part of intergenerational equity? • What climate action steps will you take, starting today?
• To learn more about Caravans to the Borderlands and the Vincent and Rosemarie Harding Center for Spiritual and Social Restoration visit https://www.hardingcenter.org/
• Take time to journal where you’ve felt God’s presence when you are in the wilderness. • What ritual would you like to create in your life?
• Where do you need God to have your back? • As God’s hands and heartbeat, how are you having this community’s back? • What might you do beyond this community to be a Revolutionary Lover?
• What surprises you by the story of John the Baptist in the gospel of Mark? • What lessons about the nature and behavior of oppression and power can you find in the story? • What would happen if we always kept in mind the person coming after us? How would our lives change
• The Psalmist says when we come to end/when we wake up, God is with us. In your own life of faith, what does it mean for God to be ever-present in your life, waking, sleeping, good times, and challenging times. Write an affirmation about that for yourself. • Fully-awake, or woke to the fact that God loves each of us with an up-close and personal love, how do we relate to each other. Can we see the God-ness in each of the so-called “other?” If so, what does that really mean in terms of the current political and social issues before us. Voting rights? Citizenship in territories, like Puerto Rico? The earning power of women and the way female bodies are viewed globally? LGBTQ rights, and the obvious erosion of human rights around the globe? In other words, how does our theology move all of us into the public square?
• What do you think it means to be an “heir”? What does it mean to be an “heir of God”? • Paul writes that we have received a “spirit of adoption,” not a “spirit of slavery.” How do the examples in the sermon illuminate what a spirit of adoption means for our lives? • Some Christian theology demonizes “flesh” as evil and “spirit” as good. How can this line of thought be taken in the wrong direction?
• Where are you planted? • Who or what is speaking into your life? • Is your “good” going somewhere?
• How does the psalmist’s prayer of thanksgiving make you think about the way God cares for you? • How might we better care for the Earth that sustains us? • Is there more you can tdo to be a steward of Middle Church?
• What needs to die from your past, in your present life, and in our culture in order for a new vision to live? • How does God/the Holy/Love live in you?
• Palm Sunday is about the conflcit between the values of the empire and the values of the Reign of God. What does this mean to YOUR life?
• What do these 10 words tell us about the identity of God? • What does it mean to be people of God? • Commit to one March with Middle in March as a way to solidify your identity: www.middlechurch.org/about/news/middle-churchs-ongoing-response-to-gun-reform
• What does our faith cause us to dare to do, boldly, to heal our souls and heal the world? • What does God’s faithfulness mean to us?
• Since the Kingdom of God is close, which political issues need a love and injustice intervention? • What can/should Middle do? Share your thoughts with consistory and staff on the insert.
• You know you’ve been to the mountaintop. What happened? How did it change you? • What are you called to do with that experience? • Read or watch all of Dr. King’s speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” (April 3, 1968). Let it wash over you. What is he preaching to you? to us?
• How is your soul today? Where do you need to have the breath of God enter in and comfort you? • When you feel weary of the world, what do you do to restore your breathe? • Write a story in your journal about a time when God lifted you up from your lowest place. This Lent, add to your journal a short story once a week, to remind yourself of the Power of God.
• What were moments of spiritual transformation in your own life? • Who is someone in your life you want to forgive? Are you open to praying for them? • How do you create moments of renewal for your mind and body?
• What is your “stuff” that God might be using for this movement for love and justice? • Think of one person you can recruit to this movement. How will you do that? • What is revolutionary about the way God loves you? How can you amplify that awareness this year?
• Today is the first Sunday after Epiphany. How do the two stories associated with Epiphany, the visit of the wise men and Jesus's Baptism, intersect? Do they shed any light on "aha!" moments in your life? • People often pray for "epiphanies" in the new year, to gain clear divine guidance on their lives. But what happens in the Bible after the Epiphany stories? Does revelation from God necessarily mean all our problems will dissolve? Do the stories of Epiphany push us to think differently about those problems? • What spiritual gift is God trying to show you this year, and who are the wise people bringing them to you?
A Gospel Christmas Eve featuring the Jerriese Johnson Gospel Choir :: Dec 24 by Middle Collegiate Church
A Classy, Brassy Christmas Eve featuring the Middle Church Choir :: Dec 24 by Middle Collegiate Church
• How are you putting flesh on God’s dream? • What can you do to encourage others to own and be the light? • What do YOU believe about this story?
• What new insight about John’s gospel did you glean today? • Since you are flesh made word, how will you work on God’s dream between now and year end? • Where do your dreams and God’s dreams intersect?
• As you wait for the “very good news,” how do you spend your time? How do you live your hope?
• When have you most recently seen Jesus suffering? • How can we more fully tell the story of injustice in our nation? • How can we articulate God’s dream?
• How did today’s sermon open your mind about gender and gender performance? • What do you think now about human sexuality—God’s creation?
• As for me and my house—we will serve God. This is what Joshua said. What about you? What does it mean for you to serve our God? What are the personal commitments you make to Love, to the Universe, to the Holy? • How does that commitment manifest itself in terms of personal ethics? What do you teach the little people in your life? What do you model for your friends and family? • How can your personal commitment to serve God help complete God's dream of a healed and whole world?
• How did the sermon and music today help you understand and show love? • What will you do this week to show Revolutionary Love?
• Pray, meditate, or spend time in other faithful reflection to seek discernment, strength, and courage to value all children and act to put that value into practice. • Learn more about the challenges children and families face and how we can overcome them at childrensdefense.org. • Communicate regularly with your elected officials and urge them to champion the needs of children in poverty.
• About what do you want to fight with God? • How might you grow intimacy with God? • How do you want God to show up—right now—in your life and in the world?
— If you had to define your theology of money, what would you say? — When you make a budget, how much do you save for a rainy day? How much can you share with Middle Church to help heal souls and the world with RevolutionaryLove?
— Where will you find wonder in creation? — How will you become “like the youngest” and serve? — What action steps will you and your family/friends take to care for the earth? — Follow @ajmickelson and @marte.samuelstuen on Instagram to explore how we’re finding wonder and taking action with creation care. We’ll post with the hashtag #CareAndWonder through October 1st (Blessing of the Animals Day at Middle)— and we hope you will, too!
— What do you want God to see that you thnk is hidden? — What do you want to know more fully about yourself that is awesome and wonderful? — Since we are in God’s Love Army, what is your “dharma”?
— What do you think, now, is good about grief? — What are you mourning and what gift does that give you? — What activates your joy?
— In what space in your life do you need freedom? — In what space are you called to be a liberator? — Is there a space where both need to be liberated and to liberate others?
—How did the phrase “dancing in the streets” speak to you today? —What are you going to do about it?
—How would you describe the experience of Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus in Acts 9? A conversion? A transformation? An epiphany? A calling? —During this experience, Saul/Paul is blinded by the light of the Lord. But at the end of the story, the “scales” fall off and he can see again, except now with greater understanding. How can experiences that seem to expose our limitations actually allow us to deepen our understanding of God's love?
—The word discipline means “to teach.” What lessons do you learn from Rabbi Jesus? —What lessons do you teach to others? —If you were writing your epitaph, how would you complete this statement? “I learned ________________________________ about love from Jesus.”
—One gift of spirit is communication. In how many languages do we speak love to you at Middle Church? List three. —When you think of our vision for the future, what is one program or event you hope we will do for you and yours this next year? What gift will you bring so we can do it?
—When the Love Revolution has done its thing, what do you see? —Define Revolutionary Love for yourself and your community. —Join the Revolutionary Love Community at L2O: L2O.com/org/RevolutionaryLove —Register now for #RevLove18! bit.ly/RevLove18
—As you train your eyes to see God at work healing the world, what stands out? —Middle Church is BOLD in which ways? How can you help?
—Where have you seen signs of God's refuge and presence this last six weeks? —If you think of your own nurturing self-what I am calling "Mommy-ness," how does it look and what might you do to turn it more fully toward others? Toward yourself?
—Reflect on your life's journey. What important gate(s) have you passed through? How did you experience the presence of God then? —For an excellent introduction to Asian heritage in the U.S., read the National Center for Cultural Resources' "Asian Reflections on the American Landscape." https://www.nps.gov/heritageinitiatives/pubs/Asianisms.pdf
—When the Love Revolution has done its thing, what do you see? —Define Revolutionary Love for yourself and your community. —Join the Revolutionary Love Community at L2O: L2O.com/org/RevolutionaryLove —Register now for #RevLove18! bit.ly/RevLove18
—Where is the deadness in your life that needs rising? —Tell a story of a recent time when you noticed that the energy of life defied death. —What is your dream of Middle Church rising up? If you are the boss of us, how can we do this next year?
—On this Lenten Journey, where are you finding the courage to resist? Where are you seeing signs in the universe of the resilience of the human spirit? And where do you see evidence that we can rise, as a people, as a culture, as Living Souls?
—How did today's sermon confirm or challenge you sense of what it means to be "born again?" Have your thoughts been reconceived? —If you were preaching or teaching this text to someone not here today, what would you say is the good news? —On this Lenten Journey, how might you strengthen your intimacy with God??
—Today’s text is such lovely poetry about the very-preset help of our God. The psalmist speaks of God in nature. Where do you most feel the presence of God? —Pick up a pen or pencil. If you can, write a poem about the ways God helps you. If you’d rather, use pen/pencil to sketch how God is your helper. —Tweet or Post your poem or this week with #GodisOurRock
—How have you encountered God in an unusual way or place this Lent? —Jesus broke the rules to talk theology with the Samaritan woman. How are we called to break the rules in the name of God? —How has your sense of God's will for us in terms of gender/gender performance changed this month?