Severed Spirituality

:: Click here for today's message :: Stephen O'Bent, Minister of Music & Arts at First Congregational Church, Bellevue, has produced an original song and video for Pentecost.  It can be found here. :: Click here for the song "Glory" by Common and John Legend :: Call to Worship: I have privilege as a non-Black person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice: I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery) I can go birding (#ChristianCooper) I can go to church (#Charleston9) I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemSean and #AtatianaJefferson) I can sleep (#AiyanaJones) I can play loud music (#JordanDavis) I can party on New Years (#OscarGrant) I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards) I can hold a hair brush while leaving my own bachelor party (#SeanBell) I can decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese) I can play cops and robbers (#TamirRice) I can sell CDs (#AltonSterling) I can shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford) I can walk

Good morning. I was planning this week on using today’s passage from first Corinthians as the jumping off point for a message examining the difference between unity and silence. How, throughout the history of the world as well as the church, under structures of violence, marginalized communities have been told that they need to find common ground with their oppressors. And this idea is passed off as a virtue. I wanted to talk about how a lack of conflict is not always actually peace, but rather might just be the effective silencing of oppressed voices by the dominant culture. So, you’ll see a quote from Audre Lorde in your bulletin that speaks to this. But the more I sat and studied, the more I kept coming back to several conversations I’ve had over the last couple of weeks with people feeling overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of difficult news from around the world. It’s something we’ve even talked about in our services recently. Australia burning, the suffering in Puerto Ric

I think it’s important to clarify something about today’s gospel passage right off the bat. For some of us who came through a more, perhaps, conservative theology, this passage was often used as a clear biblical mandate on the realities and the dynamics of Heaven and Hell. Live a godly life, die and go to heaven. Live a life of sin, you end up in a literal Hell chock full of the fires of damnation and eternal suffering. Of course, taken in its total context and what we know about the gospel of Luke, it becomes difficult to read this passage as simply a “turn or burn” altar call. And many of us have a difficult time with that kind of theological thinking anyway. No, not only is this a parable being told by Jesus, parables being the metaphors or theopoetics that Jesus used to convey larger messages that usually had little to do with the story on its face, we here have discussed several times how the gospel of Luke was far more concerned with the social ramifications of our actions v

NOTE: With the recent announcement of a fourth installment of  The Matrix  series in the works, as well as this year being the 20th anniversary of the original film, I thought it might be fun to dust off an old article I wrote on the topic of religious dogma within the trilogy. I hope you’ll enjoy! - Jess Since it was first released in 1999,  The Matrix , directed by sisters Lilly and Lana Wachowski, has had a considerable impact on the wider popular culture, the consequences of which are still being felt twenty years later. Through its unique and ingenious blending of various religious motifs, cyberpunk staples, Japanese anime, a heavy reliance on the works of Joseph Campbell, as well as groundbreaking special effects that revolutionized the film industry,  The Matrix  has secured a place in history as not only an entertaining film, but one rife with theological depth and meaning. In addition, the subsequent sequels,  The Matrix Reloaded  and  The Matrix Revolutions , while o