Hope: Critique that Beckons

Hope: Critique that Beckons

Mike Roth

We live in a world in which things are always changing—certainty, health, relationships, even the version of faith we grew up with. And yet Paul, writing to a community tearing itself apart, lands on three things he insists will outlast everything else: faith, hope, and love. To be clear, these aren’t achievements to master or doctrines to defend, but the very shape of a life oriented toward God. In this series, we'll sit with these three ancient, yet lasting gifts and seek to rest deeply into them, even when everything else is stripped away.

This week, Pastor Mike turns to hope—not as a comforting feeling that helps us endure, but as something that refuses to make peace with the way things are. Drawing on Isaiah, the Gospels, and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, he asks what it looks like to let hope unsettle us into action rather than lull us into waiting.

Faith: Mystery that Grounds

Faith: Mystery that Grounds

Mike Roth

We live in a world in which things are always changing—certainty, health, relationships, even the version of faith we grew up with. And yet Paul, writing to a community tearing itself apart, lands on three things he insists will outlast everything else: faith, hope, and love. To be clear, these aren’t achievements to master or doctrines to defend, but the very shape of a life oriented toward God. In this series, we'll sit with these three ancient, yet lasting gifts and seek to rest deeply into them, even when everything else is stripped away.

This week we begin with faith—not as a set of beliefs to hold correctly in your head, but as something closer to trust: a load-bearing ground you can stand on and lean your weight into. For those of us who have torn a lot down, what remains underneath the rubble may be less a list of right ideas than an ocean of mystery—resurrection, incarnation, Trinity, atonement—wide enough to wade into and deep enough to hold us up.

Liberation: Mary & James Cone

Liberation: Mary & James Cone

Ben Conachan

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, our series closes with Mary and James Cone—a pregnant teenager in an occupied country, and a Black theologian raised under Jim Crow—who, two thousand years apart, tell the same story: that God sides with the oppressed, not with the powerful. Her song has been banned by governments who understood exactly what it meant, and his witness insists we see the cross as God in solidarity with the marginalized.

Feminism: Julian of Norwich & Anne Sexton

Feminism: Julian of Norwich & Anne Sexton

Mike Roth

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, Mike turns to two women six centuries apart—the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich and the poet Anne Sexton—who each embodied the work of feminism in their writing. From Julian's vision of Jesus as a nursing mother to Sexton's poems on grief, addiction, and an irreverent, card-playing God, both found their own language using the experience of women to illuminate the Divine.

Mysticism: Meister Eckhart & Bruno Barnhart

Mysticism: Meister Eckhart & Bruno Barnhart

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, we turn to two mystics—Meister Eckhart and Bruno Barnhart—who challenge the idea that God is somewhere "out there" and invite us instead to discover God as the very ground of our being. It's a vision of faith less about searching for the Divine and more about coming home, and learning to grow up into the kind of secure, mature love that makes us capable of real connection.