Sermon Audio:  “Is this not the fast that I choose:...to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke?” Sometimes liberation happens in an instant; with great power, the Spirit of God releases us from some great oppression. We recall the story of the exodus, the resurrection, the healing of lepers. Paul and Silas busted out of prison. More often, though, liberation is a long walk, full of resistance, struggle, and repentance. Perhaps we can think of growing into freedom, like how, over years, the persistent work of shoots and sprouts can fracture pavement and liberate the land beneath. I want to share with you this morning a testimony of this slow kind of freedom, of how many seeds took root in my concrete heart and grew to set me loose from the violence on my dinner table. Thanks be to God, now I can eat in peace.
Five years ago, I watched a goat die in my arms. She was called Cinnamon, and her death was an accident. I was working at the time as a livestock volunteer at Heifer Ranch, a large farm and education center operated by Heifer International. My work was to help care for Cinnamon and all the other animals there. She had been in a temporary paddock with the other dairy goats. We used portable electric net fencing to set up grazing areas all over the Ranch. The goats helped us maintain healthy grassland by clearing foliage from brushy places. Sometime during the night, Cinnamon had become entangled in the fence. Normally, the pulse of electricity in the fence would give a shock that hurts about as much as being pinched or poked with a needle. Once she was stuck, that pulse became a torturous metronome in the pre-dawn hours. She was crying out in pain as we came to check the goats in the morning. Her eyelids and gums, normally flush and red, were ghostly white. A few minutes after we injected a dose of opiates, she died.
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By: Rev. Dr. Jarrod Cochran  I've chewed on the whole Kim Davis controversy in the media for the last few days and I think I've gathered my thoughts enough to make a greater comment. I'm a radical Christian, so naturally I support disobeying authority when it works against, subjugates, and oppresses others. Following a long line of Jewish prophets and Jesus himself, creative, nonviolent civil disobedience is called for against corruption and injustice.
With that said, I've seen quite a few posts attributing Davis' refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in line with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his defiance of an unjust government. However, King and the countless other leaders in the Civil Rights Movement defied a government to obtain equal rights, while Davis adamantly stands opposed to granting equal rights towards those she deems go against "God's will". Make no mistake, Kim Davis nor the profiteers who are piggy-backing on her 15 minutes of fame for political points (Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz) are anything close to prophets. If we must to attempt to compare Davis and Company to people of eras past, we would find her not on the side of King but amid the throng of racists on the sidewalk supporting segregation during one of King's marches. |
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October 2017
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