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This week, Dennis Allan walks through Philippians 2:5-11. Paul exhorts the Philippine church to have the same mindset of Jesus, a mindset that's marked by an intentional downward descent. Jesus, even though he was co-equal with God, did not consider his status or privilege something to be grasped onto and used for his own advantage. Instead, he humbled and emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant and dying on a cross. Jesus, even though he's the world's true king, travels down a path of shame, living and dying in the most humiliating of ways, at least based on Roman social values. Yet, God's response was to exalt him, to make his name the name at which every knee should bow. Because it is intrinsic to God's character to exalt those who humble themselves. Paul is teaching the church in Philippi how to build a shared, public life in a Roman city that's worthy of the gospel. It's also how we're meant to conform and pattern our lives today.

We tend to think that things like doctrinal positions unite us. But what they really do is draw a line in the sand, identifying who can belong and who can't. In the modern American Church we outsource the work of communal discernment to things like belief statements, where we can visit a church's website, know everything they believe, and then decide, before we've ever met an actual person at that church, if it's a place we can fit in. And it's an indication as to why evangelical Christians tend to pick churches based on political convictions rather than relational commitments. But the church Paul describes in Philippians is one that is capable of holding deep theological differences and yet remaining committed to one another. Because commitment has less to do with doctrinal commitments and more to do with disposition, our commitments to how we'll relate to one another. This week, Dennis Allan walks through Philippians 2:1-4, looking at what truly unites a church.

This week, Pastor Dennis Allan introduces a new eight-week series focused on Paul's letter to the Philippians. In just the first chapter of the letter, Paul tells the Philippians to live lives that are worthy of the gospel. It's not just an exhortation, that Christians should try their hardest to live in such a way that Jesus is made known. Rather, Paul is teaching the Philippians that their true and primary citizenship is in the Kingdom of Heaven and in that Kingdom the gospel functions as the Constitution might in the United States. The gospel doesn't only save us, it governs our lives. It's meant to give shape and form to how we, as followers of Jesus, live not just in our private, individual lives, but in our public, corporate lives. Just like the Philippians who resided in one of the most thoroughly Roman cities in the empire, we live in a nation that demands allegiance to its culture, values, and ways. But it isn't the American way that governs or guides our lives. It's the gospel.

The vulnerable are a class of people near to God's heart. They're also a class of people the Old Testament law seeks to protect, whether the person is an orphan, widow, under-resourced, or a foreigner, people who lack power. But the law also seeks to protect the most powerful person in Israel, the king. Now, the Scriptures never seek to equate the orphan's or widow's vulnerability with that of the king. Simply, the exposure these groups face are structurally different. Yet, the law is designed to provide protections to every person, regardless of power, wealth, or social standing. What does it look like when we, as the church, don't seek to equate our vulnerabilities with one another, yet recognize that at different times, in changing seasons, and for various reasons each of us can be vulnerable. How can we build structures that care for, protect, and provide for those who are vulnerable every day and those who experience it periodically?

In the parable of the ten virgins Jesus tells a story about ten women, all of whom are invited to a wedding feast. They each bring lamps, but only five bring extra oil. This only becomes an issue when the bridegroom is delayed. The women all fall asleep, and when the announcement that the groom is finally on his way comes, they all wake up, but the five without extra oil, they need to leave the site of the feast to purchase more oil. The groom arrives while they're away and they get left out of the feast. In fact, the groom says to them "I don't know you." In short, Jesus is teaching his disciples how they're supposed to live in between his ascension and his second coming. They're supposed to wait, watch, and discern, ensuring that they live the way he did while he's gone. Then, when Jesus does return, they'll be welcomed into the eternal wedding feast. And this is how we're supposed to live, too.

In the Parable of the Wheat and Tares Jesus describes to his disciples that it's better for his people to live among those who disagree with them, even those antagonistic toward their way of living and being. Jesus also teaches that the work of judgment, of deciding who is in the Kingdom and who is out, isn't work that is meant for his people. No matter how much we might want to draw lines, delineating who's in and who's out and then loving, serving, and caring for people based on those lines of demarcation, Jesus's followers are actually meant to draw lines of inclusion.

This week, Carrie Buckner explores the parable of the barren fig tree and its implications for understanding God's character. In 1986 Manchester United, a Premier League soccer team, hired an unproven manager whose first three seasons were all losing seasons. But, rather than fire him, the club remained patient, and that patience produces one of the most decorated tenure's in soccer history. The parable, at its heart, is a picture of divine patience and mercy that runs deeper and that's more extravagant than what we often extend to ourselves and others. We live in a culture that demands immediate results, yet this parable invites us to stop comparing our growth to against everyone else's.

This week, Julia Allan walks through the Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32). Jesus presents this parable in the temple, the Tuesday of Holy Week, just moments after the chief priests demanded to know by what authority Jesus was teaching. In the parable, one son says the words their father wants to hear, but doesn't do what he said he would. The other outright refuses, then changes his mind and does what his father asked. And then, Jesus concludes by telling the religious leaders that tax collectors and prostitutes are actively entering the Kingdom ahead of them. The question that sits underneath the parable, a question that everyone in Jerusalem was already asking is, "Who is this?" That's a question we must ask ourselves, too. Who do we think Jesus is and will we grant him authority over our time, finances, gifts, work, and relationships?

This week, Dennis Allan talks through a short parable that Jesus tells immediately after being asked by his disciples to teach them to pray. Jesus responds to their request by teaching them the Lord's Prayer, a prayer that's meant to be an identity and mission-shaping prayer. It's a prayer that's constitutive of a people, telling them who they are and what their lives are meant to be about. And, Jesus is clear: God responds to his peoples' prayers by giving to them the Spirit. While not every prayer we pray is answered exactly how we'd like it to be, God does promise to be near to us, to walk with us, and to carry us through whatever it is we're facing or enduring. When we pray, we call out to a God who hears us and moves toward us.

Dr. Rafael Rodriguez walks through the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It's a parable that asks what kingdom citizenship not only looks like, but requires of its people. Jesus, through this parable, makes it clear that life in his kingdom requires a tangible, even concrete kind of neighbor-love that crosses over every social boundary, whether that be a religious, social, political, or ethnic. When God's people love their neighbors, no matter who they are, they're demonstrating covenant faithfulness. Loving our neighbor will require sacrifice and even a willingness to subordinate our own self-interest to the needs of others and, in so doing, we honor Jesus.

This week, Pastor Shaq Hager walks through the parable of the unforgiving servant, a parable that asks, "How extravagant is our king's forgiveness?" A servant owes an astronomical debt and the kind forgives all of it. That servant, then, turns around an requires someone repay a trivial debt to them and when they can't, the debtor is thrown in jail. It's a parable that reveals how difficult it can be to not only understand forgiveness, but then extend it to others the way the king extends it to his people. For citizens of the Kingdom, forgiveness isn’t a transaction. Instead, it’s the natural overflow of having been extravagantly forgiven, ourselves.

This week, Dr. Rafael Rodriguez explores Jesus's parable of the vineyard and its tenants. Jesus tells the parable in the temple courts one day after overturning the tables. It's a parable he shares in response to the question, "By what authority are you doing these things?" Jesus draws on the image of a vineyard, first offered by the prophet Isaiah, but in Jesus's telling the vineyards problem isn't the fruit but the workers who refuse to give the owner what belongs to him. It's a story of ridiculous grace, where the tenants believe murder can win an inheritance and an owner keeps sending servants. The question Jesus is presenting is twofold: what belongs to God and will we join him in offering his ridiculous love to everyone around us?

This week, Pastor Dennis Allan walks through the parable of the bags of gold (also known as the parable of the talents). Too often, we read this parable and think it's about money, that it Christianizes the American Dream. That, in the kingdom, Jesus distributes resource to those with greater talents and entrusts them with the task of producing more resource. But this isn't want the parable is about at all. Instead, it's about covenant faithfulness, how God's people are supposed to live their lives in between Jesus's ascension into heaven and his second coming. Namely, Christians are meant to receive all that belongs to Jesus and steward it the way he would've, in a way consistent with his character and ways. The return, that's not up to us. It's up to Jesus, because we are stewards and everything we have has always belonged to him.

A rich man, dressed in purple and fine linen lived in luxury every day. At his gate laid a beggar, longing to eat the food that fell from the rich man’s table. Then, both the beggar and the rich man die. The beggar is carried to Abraham’s side in heaven and the rich man was carried to Hades where he experienced torment. Somehow, every day the rich man walked past the beggar, named Lazarus. Every day he had the opportunity to see Lazarus’ plight and to use some of his resource to alleviate Lazarus’ suffering. But the rich man never saw Lazarus, at least not really. But, in the Kingdom, invisibility is impossible. As citizens of the Kingdom we’re invited to see, to notice, and to pay attention to the people sitting at the “gate” and who are in need or the people who exist at the margins of our community. We’re invited to notice and move close to them.

This week, Dennis Allan walks through the Parable of the Barn Builder (or, the Rich Fool). In the kingdom, Jesus makes clear that the life that is truly life is now found in an abundance of possessions. The life that is truly life—namely, Jesus himself—is found when his people use their excess to care for those who have need. Jesus means it when he says, "Whatever you do for the least of these, you do it for me." The barn builder, all on his own, took an abundant harvest and used it to enrich himself even further. What he should've done is brought people from his village together, sought their counsel, and made a communal decision about how to use his newfound abundance. Because, in the first-century, the land was a common good that belonged equally to everyone. It was never meant to become a private good that benefitted some, and not others. The implication is straightforward, but challenging. Our excess, it's obligated to our neighbors. Our abundance, it's meant for the well-being of others. This is the economic life of the kingdom citizens.