Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

Douglass Blvd Christian Church
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Christianity
  • Updated Bimonthly

Every Sunday @ 11am in Louisville, KY, Rev. Derek Penwell broadens our minds with his sermons. Now, thanks to the interwebs, we can share them with you.

  1. Jul 20

    Mistaken for a Weed (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)

    Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash So what do we do in the meantime, in a field we're not allowed to sort, standing next to plants whose allegiance we don't know? I don't have a good answer for you. I'm starting to think the parable doesn't want me to have one. This story won't let us pull the weeds, and it won't let us pretend the weeds don't matter. It won't let us play executioner, and it won't let us bless a field where a man can be shot on his way to work and written off as some kind of invasive contaminant. This story hands us both of those refusals, and then it just stops. Let both grow together until the harvest. God says, “You let me worry about it.” Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc Mistaken for a Weed (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) Derek Penwell

    Mistaken for a Weed (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)

  2. Jul 6

    Real Freedom (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-39)

    Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash For people who don’t know what they really want, who don’t know real freedom, everything and nothing looks good. “We played the flute for you, and did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn." But if you’ve been living at the bottom of the pile, living with the pain of being last in line, of always feeling like your life is lived at the mercy of a system designed to keep itself in power and to keep you helpless; if you’ve been told that the life you live, the love you bear for another human being isn’t real life, isn’t real love... then I’ve got good news for you. Jesus offers true emancipation, not the endless multiplication of choices, but the liberation of being entrusted with a purpose, of being yoked with a people whose vocation consists of helping to bear one another’s burdens. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc Real Freedom (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-39) Derek Penwell

    Real Freedom (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-39)

  3. May 12

    What Does the Spirit of Truth Look Like? (John 14:15-21)

    Jesus was an advocate for the poor, the hungry, the sick and despairing, the forgotten and the powerless, right? If you want to see the Advocate Jesus sent, then look around you for those who look like that; look for the fruit they produce. Standing up for people this culture doesn’t think are worth it is hard, painful work. But that’s what the Advocate looks like, that’s how the Spirit of Truth sounds. Every time you see someone standing up for the vulnerable, you’ve seen the Holy Spirit. Every time you hear a voice raised in opposition to oppression and violence, you’ve heard the Spirit of Truth. We are the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. We put flesh on the abstraction. We incarnate the breath of God right here. The fruit we’re called to produce is the Holy Spirit’s advanced billing for most of the rest of the world. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc What Does the Spirit of Truth Look Like? (John 14:15-21) Derek Penwell

    What Does the Spirit of Truth Look Like? (John 14:15-21)

  4. May 4

    Closer Than Certain (John 14:1-14)

    Photo by Yetkin Ağaç: https://www.pexels.com/photo/industrial-factory-interior-with-conveyor-belt-34718926/ So, maybe the promise isn’t that we’ll always get the sign we asked for. Maybe the promise is that when we’re driving through the dark toward the thing we dread, when we’re standing in the room where the future’s come apart, when we’re begging God to be obvious for once, we’re not praying into the void. We’re praying to the One who’s already come close. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc Closer Than Certain (John 14:1-14) Derek Penwell

    Closer Than Certain (John 14:1-14)

  5. Apr 27

    Who Gets to Decide Who Belongs? (John 10:1-10)

    https://www.pexels.com/photo/shepherd-leading-a-donkey-through-a-flock-of-sheep-26800637/ We've built walls in Jesus's name. You know, around who can receive communion, and who has to sit with their hands in their laps and watch. Walls around who can be ordained and who can feel the call, and still be told the door is closed to them. Around who can be married in the church and who has to find another venue, another officiant, another community willing to say yes ... because “we don't allow that sort of thing around here.” Around who belongs and who's welcome to worship, but not really welcomed to be part of the club. We've set up traffic cones and enforced those barriers with great ruthlessness and considerable theological sophistication, and we've called it “faithfulness.” Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc Who Gets to Decide Who Belongs? (John 10:1-10) Derek Penwell

    Who Gets to Decide Who Belongs? (John 10:1-10)

  6. Apr 26

    The Stranger on the Road (Luke 24:13-35)

    Luke's making a specific claim about where resurrection actually shows up. Not in the place of triumph or the halls of power. It doesn't show up among the people who've already got everything figured out. Resurrection shows up on a dusty road outside a dangerous city, seething with violence. At an ordinary table. In the company of the stranger that their world told them to be super careful about. If we're waiting for the risen Jesus to appear in a form that doesn't unsettle us, we may already have walked right past him somewhere between here and Jerusalem. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc The Stranger on the Road (Luke 24:13-35) Derek Penwell

    The Stranger on the Road (Luke 24:13-35)

  7. Apr 19

    What Thomas Knew That We Don't (John 20: 19-31)

    The Emperor Domitian wanted to be addressed as “lord and god.” So, we’re not talking about John employing poetic language. Having Thomas address Jesus as “my Lord and my God” was treasonous language backed by the full weight of Roman imperial power. So when the community John’s writing to hears Thomas say "my Lord and my God," they catch it immediately. John’s doing what writers under empire have always done when they can't say the dangerous thing directly: he projects it back onto an earlier moment so his readers understand what's actually at stake. Thomas speaks the words in the first part of the century. But John's readers and Domitian's subjects hear the challenge to empire at the end of that century. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc What Thomas Knew That We Don't (John 20: 19-31) Derek Penwell

    What Thomas Knew That We Don't (John 20: 19-31)

  8. Apr 19

    Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem (Matthew 28:1-10)

    Photo by Cdoncel on Unsplash The women tell the truth first, while the systems take their time catching up. The people with the least protection and the least institutional credibility see something real, but the people with money and power move faster than the speed of sound to explain it away. But that pattern isn't just first-century Jerusalem, is it? Any community that's ever watched an official story steamroll the thing that all the witnesses knew to be true knows what’s going on. Think about Renee Good and Alex Pretti. I mean, it's possible to capture everything in high definition video and still have it not be enough to slip past the “official account” without being contorted into something unrecognizable. Resurrection, it turns out, isn't just a theological claim about what happened to Jesus. It's a claim about whose testimony counts as true. Subscribe to us on iTunes! Sermon text: web | doc Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem (Matthew 28:1-10) Derek Penwell

    Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem (Matthew 28:1-10)
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Every Sunday @ 11am in Louisville, KY, Rev. Derek Penwell broadens our minds with his sermons. Now, thanks to the interwebs, we can share them with you.

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