Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Faith

The search for meaning, purpose, and relationship. Our need for love compels us to seek it out, and when we find it, share it.

  • The challenge of Jesus’s teaching with the pious young man is that Jesus condemns wealth in a way few Americans are willing to accept.

  • The challenge of wealth for people in the United States is that we’d rather fight about what it implies about the person rather than their behavior.

  • As the disciples move closer to Jerusalem, our awareness of the journey mirrors theirs: distracted, distant, and self-directed.

  • This Week: Proper 22B Gospel: Mark 10:2-16 This week’s gospel is deceptive. It seems like it is about divorce. It seems straightforward. And we might be lulled into thinking it encourages a prohibition on divorce or else defends a Christian opposition to divorce. This is a pretty weak take. This gospel story concludes with even more…

  • The challenge in Jesus’s teaching on divorce is not that he praises “staying together,” but that we don’t get what together means.

  • We often categorize one’s commitment in marriage as traditional and conservative, but it is something far more transgressive.