This week's Disturbing Red Letters come from Luke 18. After encountering a rich ruler who refused to give his wealth to the poor and follow Jesus, Jesus responded by saying, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”

But what exactly does Jesus mean? Is he saying that rich people are going to miss heaven? How much money does someone have to have before they're considered “rich”? And is Jesus speaking only to his audience back then—or is he speaking to us today? Listen in as we explore the meaning together!

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This week we continued our new series called Disturbing Red Letters, which focuses on the words of Jesus that can be experienced as exclusive, harsh, and downright impossible. This week we looked at two passages in which Jesus says that, if we want to follow him, we must hate our families and even skip their funerals. Yep, you read that right!  What do we do with these difficult words? What was Jesus even thinking? Join us as Lead Pastor Josh Scott examines these disturbing words!

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We began a new series this week called, Disturbing Red Letters, which focuses on the words of Jesus that can be experienced as exclusive, harsh, and downright impossible. We are diving into the deep end right off the bat by talking about John 14:6, where Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."  What does Jesus mean? Is this about going to heaven when we die, or something else? Can we understand this passage differently than many of us were taught? We think so!

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This week Lead Pastor Josh Scott was joined in conversation by Melody Winderweedle. Melody is a pastor in Chattanooga, and they discussed a provocative story from the Gospels of Mark and Matthew that depicts Jesus as learning something new and changing his mind as a result. Many interpreters have struggled with this story, but Melody and Josh find it fascinating and see it as an invitation to all of us to follow in Jesus's footsteps. 

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This Sunday Lead Pastor Josh Scott was joined in conversation by Brad Davis, Co-Chair of From Below: Rising Together for Coalfield Justice. From Below is part of the West Virginia Faith Collective, a partnership of faith-based organizations who are pursuing social justice through community organizing and advocacy. This was an eye-opening conversation that connected to so much of what we've been exploring in the Jesus story--God's dream of a world of justice and peace, and all the ways protecting wealth and power can distort and delay that vision.

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The Jesus we meet in the pages of the Gospels is a compassionate, generous prophet who announced the here and nowness of the Kingdom of God. He healed, fed, and included those on the margins, and taught his followers to do the same. How, then, did this Jesus morph into the Jesus who demonizes the poor, idolizes guns, and celebrates Christian Nationalism? Can we trace that metamorphosis? Can we recover the radical, historical Jesus while living in an empire that continually co-opts and distorts his message? Over the next two Sundays Josh will offer a mini-series that speaks to these questions and more.

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The Jesus we meet in the pages of the Gospels is a compassionate, generous prophet who announced the here and nowness of the Kingdom of God. He healed, fed, and included those on the margins, and taught his followers to do the same. How, then, did this Jesus morph into the Jesus who demonizes the poor, idolizes guns, and celebrates Christian Nationalism? Can we trace that metamorphosis? Can we recover the radical, historical Jesus while living in an empire that continually co-opts and distorts his message? Over the next two Sundays Josh will offer a mini-series that speaks to these questions and more. 

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There is no story in the Bible that has been weaponized more in the service of harm and exclusion than the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. This we, as we celebrated Pride together as a community, Josh took us into the context of this story which helped us discover what is really going on. Can this story be deweaponized? Is it possible that the interpretation many of us inherited misses the real meaning of the story? Listen in as we explore that and more!

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The first people Jesus invited to follow him were fishers. When they met Jesus they dropped their nets, docked their boats, and left everything to follow him. Have you ever wondered why? Why did Jesus start with fishers? Why did they immediately follow him? What is going on in the background of this story? The answer to that last question is a WHOLE LOT! In this sermon Josh takes us into the first century context of this story which opens up its meaning, and the meaning of Jesus, in surprising ways! 

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This Sunday we jumped back into our Bible Stories for Grown-Ups series by talking about the story of the three Hebrew boys and the fiery furnace from Daniel chapter three. What does this story mean in its context? What challenges or comforts does it offer to us in our own context? Josh discusses all that and more in this sermon!

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