Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Sermons

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

  • There’s a moment at the end of a night when the sounds have disappeared and conversations fade. You look around and see the stragglers are all that’s left of the party. Often ones who helped set up or planned to help clean up. Ones who wait until everyone else is gone so that the real conversation can…

  • Rose and I were newlyweds. We were married almost a year when I lost my ring. It was at the end of school–literally the last day of my second year, and I was about to drive back over the border from Ontario into Michigan. Needless to say, I was freaking out. Proper 19C |  Luke…

  • This morning’s gospel is like a Facebook post. It begins divisively, then starts to sound rational, and then ends with an unattainable call to action full of shame. With a passage like this, Jesus could totally win the internet. Proper 18C  |  Luke 14:25-33 I’m gonna guess that like any good Facebook post, there’s going…

  • Jesus is a terrible dinner guest. One would think that by now the Pharisees would know better than to invite Jesus for dinner. He’s always complaining about how we treat the help and how exclusive the guest list is. He calls us out in front of our friends and all but calls us greedy and…

  • A preacher was on vacation and came home to a flood “of Biblical proportions.” He spoke of needing to canoe out of his Louisiana house and escape the devastation. That the preacher is notorious for a sense of ill-will to many and is politically powerful gave the experience a sense of delicious irony. Proper 16C…

  • “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” As much as I don’t want to preach on this gospel today, I fear for the thousands of churches and church goers who will wrestle with such a tricky and troubling passage. And how many…