Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Prayer

  • Let’s be honest. The disciples asked Jesus how to pray. How. Not what. How. Teach us how to pray! They ask him. Jesus responds to their request with “When you pray, say:” Jesus doesn’t teach them how to pray. Proper 12C  |  Luke 11:1-13 If we remember back in chapters 9 and 10, Jesus is…

  • Broken

    The mangled parts of a red stroller strewn across grass and concrete a tire in the middle of the road and I pray to God no one was in it.

  • I try not to be a micromanager. Preparing our worship, inspiring, gathering, inviting into participation is a big part of what I am called to do as a priest. The training we receive in seminary is intended to give us a certain expertise. My writing training has given me certain skills (and ego) to lead…

  • Toward the end of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, he wrote something that sounds a lot like this: I’ve given you something really, really important, maybe the most important thing that I’ve learned: Christ died because we sin. He was buried. Two days later he was brought to life like it says in our Hebrew…

  • Word obsessed

    Lately, though, words have begun to mean even more to me. Not simply because I write, teach, and preach as a priest or as a sentry posted to defend orthodoxy from the heretics. [That’s all nonsense to me, by the way.] But because our faith keeps coming back to words. Simply words. Having words. Words…

  • Do

    Jesus’s departing prayer incites a different kind of revolution Easter 7B  |  John 17:6-19   A Strange Prayer I might get into trouble for saying this, but please don’t pray like Jesus. If you take John 17 as your example and try to learn to pray like this, then, I don’t know if we can…