June 26, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Acts 2:42-47 The community of the early church engaged in communal practices of belonging and living into this new reality of Jew and Gentile doing life and faith together. In this seminal passage we find that love is belonging, love is a verb and love is solidarity. In light […]
June 12, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Matt. 3:13-17 (FNV and NASB) As we celebrate our church’s first baptism service, we are invited to remember our own baptism. In Jesus’ baptism, we see the power of remembrance and the grace of God’s belovedness bestowed on Jesus for his work. Remember your belovedness for in it […]
May 1, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Luke 24:36-49 God doesn’t give up on us and seeks us in life as well as in death. Jesus seeks us in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. In this resurrection encounter, Jesus walks through walls to get to our hearts. He extends a benediction […]
April 17, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Luke 24:1-12 Why do you look for the living among the dead? Why do you look for the Living One among dead places, dead institutions, dead situations where there aren’t signs of his life? The angels encourage the women at the garden tomb to remember the words of […]
April 3, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Genesis 38:1-30 Tucked in between the pages of Joseph as he is sold into slavery and heads to Egypt, is the one-page story of a mother of our faith. Tamar has often been misunderstood and misinterpreted under a patriarchal lens that depicts her as a whore. However, hers […]
March 20, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Genesis 32:24-31 Jacob, one of the fathers of our faith, has a history of wrestling. From the moment he was in his mother’s womb he wrestled with his twin brother Esau. Later in life he lied and deceived his father to steal Esau’s birthright blessing. 20 years after […]
March 6, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Genesis 16:6b-17 In the story of Hagar, we find the faithfulness of God to an enslaved, marginalized woman whom God sees in her affliction. Hagar becomes the first and only human, and the only woman to name God. God is the God who sees, the God who hears, […]
February 6, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Genesis 8:1-14 The receding of the waters after the flood story serves as a kind of metaphor for the global pandemic from which we continue to emerge from. Like Noah, we have been in survival mode for a long time. The receding waters invite us into a time […]
January 23, 2022 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Genesis 3:8-19 The curse in the garden has been seen as prescriptive for humanity and has distorted our view of God and each other, which has dehumanized women, men, and the marginalized. However, the curse is descriptive of the fall and not a blessing. The serpent came to […]
December 19, 2021 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Luke 2:8-20 The angels announce to the shepherds that Messiah Jesus was born. The shepherds are the least likely to get an invitation to see a King. Seen as dishonest people working a despised occupation. Yet the sign was that the king would be covered in straw in […]