Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Sermons

Sermons preached in a context, but written for people of all sorts and conditions.

  • In Acts 1, the disciples take their first act after the Ascension: replace Judas. But the story of our lives shows that replacing him only papers over the trauma. Jesus taught them as much. Their work isn’t to forget their enemies, but to love them. Not to pretend the world is broken, but work to…

  • Abide the Rules?

    Jesus has a pretty conflicting relationship to the rules. And for many Christians, you’d think Jesus gave us a mountain of rules to follow. But really there is just one really vague rule and he constantly urges us to look past the rest to see it. Rule-breaking and rule-making in the love of Jesus Easter…

  • In Philip’s baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, we see our own invitation to embody God’s love, share in the redeeming of the world, and the offering of hope in the middle of nowhere. If we recognize the invitation for what it is: our everything. an invitation to embody God’s love Easter 5B  | Acts 8:26-40,…

  • Jesus speaks about something much deeper than shepherds and sheep — he embodies the very sacrificial love of God to show us how it’s done. the good parent stands up for all children Easter 4B  |  Acts 4:5-12, John 10:11-18 Parents and children. That’s what we’re going to talk about this morning. But as we…

  • Being Present

    While Easter stories rely on the absence of Jesus in the empty tomb, they also establish the presence of Jesus with the apostles to be the presence of Christ for each other. Easter and the returning presence of Jesus Easter 3B  | Luke 24:36b-48 When someone tells me they like the prequels to Star Wars,…

  • In our readings from Acts and John, we get two very different stories of the apostles responding to the risen Christ. But they both actually point to the same teaching. Luke and John reveal a false choiceEaster 2B  | Acts 4:32-35, John 20:19-31 In Holy Week, we traced the last week of Jesus with the…