Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

September 2012

  • Being the Millstone Church (Eating Scripture)

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    2 min read

    Eating Mark 9:38-50   Last week, Jesus foretold His death for the second time. And the for the second time, the disciples don’t get it. No surprise there. For me, this was always a given. From the first time I really heard Peter get rejected by Jesus for getting out of line to the first conscious recognition…

    3

  • Get Busy Dying

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    6 min read

    a Homily for Proper 20B Text: Mark 9:30-37 Location, location, location Three times Jesus foretells his death in the gospel we attribute to Mark. Three times. In chapters 8, 9, and 10. Each one has a similar impact: Jesus’s teaching is misheard, misunderstood, and ignored by the disciples. Last week, we had the first of…

    1

  • It Is Not About You! (Eating Scripture)

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    1 min read

    This week, we dive into Mark 9:30-37, the second time Jesus foretells his death…and the second time the disciples step in it. Don’t worry; third time’s a charm. In this second bite at the apple, the disciples are shamed by the fact that they are being complete idiots when Jesus makes his second declaration. They are arguing…

    1

  • On Spelling It Out

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    2 min read

    It is normal today to say we live in an abnormal time. We think everything is damn confusing. Or not at all. We speak out of one side of our mouths that this is a time of all this conflicting data, but ideologues speak with such consistency and confidence. We recognize complex problems and we…

    5

  • A Growing Church is a Dying Church « The Theological Wanderings of a Street Pastor

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    1 min read

    Sometimes what we all need is some good ol’ truth-telling. The prophetic sort. The kind that we gloss over read each week from Jesus. J. Barrett Lee timed this one perfectly: A Growing Church is a Dying Church « The Theological Wanderings of a Street Pastor. In light of Sunday’s gospel, our call to sacrifice, here…

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  • Who do you say that Jesus is?

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    2 min read

    In Sunday’s gospel story, we had the famous pair of questions Jesus asks: Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am? As I was writing about this idea for our parish newsletter, I realized something important. These two questions have two more hidden questions, or more precisely, two hidden…

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