Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

intimacy

  • The story of the Last Supper, of gathering and teaching and eating and washing feet, is about our pain and fear of intimacy.

  • Trust

    The secret ingredient of love: trust. Choosing to trust. Being trusted; and trustworthy. This is all actually required for love.

  • In preaching repentance, John reveals the surprising truth about the mission of Jesus. That we are first called to admit that we were wrong. Advent 2B  |  Mark 1:1-8 Reading the opening verses of Mark, we’re often struck by what’s not there. There’s no Mary and Joseph. No trip to Bethlehem, to David’s city. We…

  • 7. But in Jesus, we are given human responsibility to create withness with one another. The nature of God is withness. From the divine dance of the Holy Trinity to the very withness of Jesus, all of God’s glory is withness. What I mean by “withness” is presence–the eternal and constant being with someone. And this idea of…

  • The ugliness is the brutality, not the day itself: it isn’t ugly. Not the sacrifice. Not what Jesus does in showing off the destructiveness of our obsession with power. Walking to his death defiantly humble, leaving Jerusalem displaying the same character with which he entered.

  • Keeping it 100

    When Jesus gathers his disciples for the Passover, Jesus does this one most radical act. No, not the Last Supper or the footwashing. What he does is treat Judas like one of the team. Like he isn’t about the betray him. The message, if we can hear it, is not only get together and eat,…