This Easter Rise Up
MGCLT Sermons
This week, we're rereading the Easter story not as a sentimental holiday but as one of the most politically disruptive moments in the entire tradition. Mary Magdalene — a woman whose testimony wasn't legally valid in her culture — becomes the first witness to the resurrection and the first person sent to carry the news. We talk about what it means to stay in the confusion, to be known by name, and why resurrection isn't something you commemorate. It's something you're summoned into. Missiongathering is a progressive, queer-affirming Christian community. Find us at missiongathering.com....
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Unlearning Empire Part 12: Holy Saturday
MGCLT Sermons
Holy Saturday. The day between death and resurrection. The day nobody knew how the story ended. We tend to skip this day — rushing from Good Friday's grief to Easter's triumph. But the disciples didn't get to skip it. They sat in it, for a whole day, not knowing. Today we try to do the same. We talk about the grief we rush past, the questions that don't get answered on a schedule, and what it means to be a community living in an extended Saturday — waiting, preparing, staying present to the possibility that love is not finished even when it looks finished. This episode is for anyone in a...
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Unlearning Empire Part 11: Good Friday
MGCLT Sermons
Good Friday. For centuries, Christians have tried to explain the cross. Some of those explanations have done enormous damage — glorifying suffering, justifying harm, making violence look holy. Today we slow down and look at the cross honestly: not as divine punishment, but as imperial violence. Not as God requiring a sacrifice, but as God entering the deepest wounds of the world to heal them from the inside. We talk about René Girard's scapegoat mechanism, Womanist theology's warning about glorified suffering, and James Cone's insistence that we cannot understand the gospel until we can see...
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Unlearning Empire Part 10: Maundy Thursday
MGCLT Sermons
Maundy Thursday. The last supper. The foot washing. The garden. The arrest. This is the night that holds more tenderness and more dread than any other night in Holy Week — and we're not going to rush through it. We talk about what it means that Jesus washed feet instead of commanding armies, why Gethsemane is the most honest portrait of faith in the entire Bible, and what it looks like to call the person who betrays you friend. This episode is for anyone in their own Gethsemane right now. You are not failing. You are not faithless. You are in the garden. Missiongathering is a progressive,...
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Unlearning Empire Part 8: Spy Wednesday
MGCLT Sermons
Spy Wednesday. While Jesus teaches in the temple, Judas slips away and makes a deal with the chief priests thirty pieces of silver in exchange for handing Jesus over. We've turned Judas into a cartoon villain. But what if that's exactly the wrong way to read him? Today we talk about how systems recruit our complicity quietly, the difference between loyalty to an institution and loyalty to what it claims to stand for, and the question Spy Wednesday is really asking: what are you going to do next? Missiongathering is a progressive, queer-affirming Christian community. Find us at...
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Unlearning Empire Part 7: Holy Monday
MGCLT Sermons
Holy Monday. Jesus walks into the temple the religious, economic, and political power center of Jerusalem and flips the tables of the money changers. We've been taught this was the one moment Jesus lost his temper. What if it was actually the most precise and intentional thing he did all week? We talk about what the temple system actually was, how empire hides inside sacred things, and the difference between systems that need to be reformed and systems that need to be interrupted. Missiongathering is a progressive, queer-affirming Christian community. Find us at missiongathering.com....
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Unlearning Empire Part 6: Palm Sunday
MGCLT Sermons
This week, we're rereading Palm Sunday not as a sentimental religious holiday but as an act of political imagination. Two processions entered Jerusalem that day. One looked like an empire. One looked like something else entirely. We talk about what that means for those of us who are done with churches that bless the status quo, and what it might actually mean to follow Jesus in public. Missiongathering is a progressive, queer-affirming Christian community. Find us at missiongathering.com. References in this episode: Walter Brueggemann, Marcus Borg, Cornel West, and Ched Myers.
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Unlearning Empire Part 8: Fig Tuesday
MGCLT Sermons
Holy Tuesday. Jesus curses a fig tree for having leaves but no fruit and it withers. At first glance it's one of the strangest things he ever does. But when you look closer, it's one of the most personal. We talk about what it costs to perform faith instead of having it, why so many of us were trained to produce leaves, and what it might mean to let the pretense end so something true can finally grow. This episode is for anyone carrying religious trauma around performance and belonging. You don't have to perform here. Missiongathering is a progressive, queer-affirming Christian community. Find...
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Unlearning Empire Part 5: Unbound
MGCLT Sermons
Lazarus walked out of the tomb still wrapped in grave cloths. Alive. But not yet free. That's the part of the resurrection story nobody talks about and it might be the most important part for right now. In Episode 5 of Unlearning Empire, our Lenten podcast series, we're asking the question empire doesn't want communities asking: Who is still bound and who will help unbind them? Because resurrection was never meant to be a solo act. And freedom was never meant to be a private spiritual experience. This one is for everyone who survived something and is still carrying what the tomb left...
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Unlearning Empire Part 2: Leave What's Killing You
MGCLT Sermons
Part 2 of our Lenten Series
info_outlineYou were never meant to do this alone. In “Interdependence,” Pastor Andrew traces a thread from the Body of Christ to ubuntu, disability justice, and ecosystems—showing how God’s design is mutual care, not heroic self-sufficiency. We name the myths that isolate us (bootstraps, perfectionism, toxic charity) and practice a better way: consent and boundaries, asking for help without shame, giving without control, and building networks of care where every gift matters and every wound is tended. If you’ve been taught that dependence is weakness, come hear the gospel’s counter story: love becomes real when it flows between us.