Upside Down Kingdom // Unsatisfying // Kate Murphy

Some of us are surprised, and a little ashamed, to admit how difficult just staying home with my family can be. We cycle through feelings of boredom, worry, panic, and frustration. As followers of Jesus, we thought this would be our time to shine with hope and wisdom and courage. We had hoped that this would be a season of great spiritual growth and deepened relationships and creativity and abounding love I thought it might be the beginning of a glorious renewal. Honestly? For many of us, including me, it hasn’t been. And that can be disappointing.

But—Jesus shows up for disappointed people

If you haven’t been the person you’d hoped to be in this extraordinary season, or—more devastatingly—if God hasn’t been active in the ways you hoped, this Sunday’s worship service is especially for you. Sometimes, the Upside Down Kingdom of God is so extra-ordinary we can’t miss it, even when we are in the midst of it. I hope you will listen in with us for some real. good. news.

Upside Down Kingdom // Unappealing // Kate Murphy

On Easter evening, Jesus broke into a room, where the disciples had barricaded themselves in fear, and breathed on them.

And what was in him was infectious and contagious. They caught his peace, his power—his Spirit. Jesus gave to them the most impressive and most valuable thing in all creation. And God offers the same to us today.

But do we even want it? In our kingdoms on earth, the Spirit of God is worthless: you can’t sell it or trade it, and everyone gets it for free. And being infected be the Spirit will totally change how people live. It did for the early disciples (just read past the gospel accounts into Acts to see how…), and it can for us if we let it.

Listen in to hear more.

Upside Down Kingdom // Unfinished // Kate Murphy

Mark’s account of the Gospel, and especially his story of the resurrection (which he would have learned from Peter, an eyewitness) is the worst. The story leaves out some of the best details and then ends without much good news at all.

The tomb is empty. But now what?

This Easter, amidst a pandemic and some difficulty seeing the good beyond the present moment when so much of our world is in crisis, we learn something meaningful and powerful about how Mark tells the story of the resurrection. And we learn it’s not so bad after all.

Upside Down Kingdom // Unimpressive // Kate Murphy

This Sunday, we enter into Holy Week. And many of the things we treasure most about these days will be absent. We won’t break bread around one long table for our beautiful Maundy Thursday meal and foot washing service. We won’t gather in a hushed and holy sanctuary to sing and pray and weep our way through the passion of Jesus on Good Friday. We won’t hold a prayer vigil on the lawn on Holy Saturday. There won’t be flowers on the cross or eggs on the lawn or pews packed with beautiful people on Easter Sunday.

We won’t have any of those things and I will miss them.

But, these things we won’t have—they were never the things that made this week holy. The things we’ll lack were never the things we were supposed to be celebrating. The moments we’ll miss were never meant to be the sacred center of this holy week that tethers us to our faith.

They were only signs. Beautiful and powerful—but only signs.  They were never holy—they only pointed us toward the Holy in our midst.

The life-giving Holy reality remains, and we may be able to see it and celebrate it and experience it more fully this year than ever.

I believe that these might be the most powerful holy days we ever live.

They will be stripped down and strange and uncomfortable. And they will help us see that it is God who gives us life, not our sacred rituals. We don’t produce Holy Week and Easter for ourselves—we make a space for God to reveal salvation through Jesus Christ.

So, I invite you to enter into this Holy Week with all the real feelings you have—doubt, loss, and fear are welcome. But, make room for some unreasonable expectations and wild anticipations. Because—it’s Holy Week, and there is power and life in the cross of Jesus our savior.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, those who understood who he was and why he was coming waved branches to celebrate. They rejoiced that he was the savior of the world. They celebrated that he was coming to destroy everything that destroys us. Authorities tried to shut them up, but Jesus said nothing can stop the joy and hope of those who know him.

So, nothing will stop us either.

Smashing Idols (a Lenten series) // Fear // Kate Murphy

We prayed and plotted out this Smashing Idols worship series months ago, asking the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom and direction. And, how amazing is it that God led us to decide that on March 22, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting public health and economic fallout, we would explore Fear and the false god that it is—how it steals and imprisons us and how we can break its power in our life.

Listen in to be encouraged as we keep moving, despite our fears, into God’s calling for us in this season.

Smashing Idols (a Lenten series) // Greed // Kate Murphy

Greed is probably our favorite idol to redefine. We agree that greed for other people is a problem. But for us? Well, we just put another label on it and re-frame the situation as if it is good for us to have the blessings we do, regardless of how it impacts someone else. But greed is more than consuming or saving . Greed is the assumption that everything — including every blessing — is for our own personal benefit and advantage.

That’s what makes greed an idol: the fact that we find security in it. And if there’s anything we’ve learned over the last week of crisis dealing with COVID-19, it’s that our storehouses of anything material are not truly secure.

So what do we do in response? We invite the Holy Spirit to smash an idol we have been grasping on to so that God can replace it with something better. Listen in to learn how.

Smashing Idols (a Lenten Series) // Lust // Kate Murphy

“Love people and use things,” the old saying goes, “because the opposite never works.” Still, we constantly find ourselves doing the opposite—loving things and using people. Anytime we treat a person like an object, even if only in our thoughts, we destroy a little piece of our own humanity. We hide it, we rationalize it, we normalize it—but Jesus isn’t having it.

So, listen in as we talk about the way Jesus defines lust, as opposed to what The Church or culture says it is.

Smashing Idols (a Lenten Series) // Pride // Kate Murphy

This Sunday, the first in the holy season of Lent, we begin a new worship series called “Smashing Idols.” You may be thinking—when is the last time anybody saw an idol? I promise you, they’re hidden in plain sight.

An idol is anything we put our trust in other than God—and, these days—our idols aren’t statues that we bow down before. Honestly, they are the sins we’ve normalized and enshrined in our personalities. This Sunday, we’re starting with the biggest idol of all—pride.

It’s pride that led the first humans to turning away from God in the garden, and it’s pride that blinds us to our own sinfulness. The good news, though, is that Jesus teaches us what it is like to come face-to-face with the enemy and to be tempted towards and yet turn down the spiritual snare of pride.

Let Love Lead // Love Leads Us Home // Kate Murphy

It was love that led Jesus to put his own beloved body between us and the raging powers of sin, death, fear, hate, and violence. And it is that same love that leads us close to our enemies in humility and, even closer, to home.

Because the truth is that sometimes, surprisingly, it is hard to let love lead us to the ones we love the most. To lean into this mystery, we are looking at one of Jesus’ most familiar stories, the parable of the prodigal son. In particular, we’re focusing on the unsatisfying ending of the older brother standing outside the homecoming party, not celebrating, but instead resenting his younger brother’s restoration to the family.

Mother Theresa famously said, “if you want to save the world, first go home and love your family.” Too often, when we do embrace the radical root of Christianity, we sometimes act as though we are too spiritually elite to love the people closest to us. But if it’s true that the way we love our enemies is the way we love God (which, by the way, it is true), then it’s equally true that the way we love our families is the way we love God.