Episodes

  • A Story of Hope for our Present Moment

    A Story of Hope for our Present Moment
    Mar 19 2026
    John 11:1-45 The command Jesus gives at the tomb in our reading is also significant. Although Jesus calls Lazarus out of the grave, he then tells the surrounding community, “Unbind him, and let him go.” In our reading this week, Lazarus emerges alive, but still wrapped in the burial cloths. It is the community’s task to remove them. Seen this way, the resurrection of Lazarus becomes not only a miracle story but a call. Communities that follow Jesus are invited to help roll away the stones of injustice and participate in the unbinding of those whom death-dealing systems have harmed and wrapped in despair now. In the story of Lazarus, resurrection interrupts grief and despair in the present, today, not later. It doesn’t ask us to wait for hope in the future. It offers us hope for today. It restores a person to community, relationship, and dignity today, not only as Martha says, “in the resurrection.” Christian social justice work can be understood in similar terms. Ours is the work of participating in life-giving transformation here and now. For more go to renewedheartministries.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    20 mins
  • Justice Lessons From Being Expelled

    Justice Lessons From Being Expelled
    Mar 12 2026
    John 9:1-41 This week’s reading presents to us a story of standing up to the status quo and the risks involved in standing with the marginalized when doing so contradicts religious and political institutions. This kind of action is not abstract sentiment. It is costly. It demands we move from private belief to public solidarity, to love our world and those in it who are being harmed, even when that harm is supported by religiosity. Following the Jesus of our story this week also calls us to confront systems that crush life and stand where solidarity and harm mitigation is risky. Our story calls us to step out of our comfort zones and redirect our loyalties, resist injustice, and commit to transformative action alongside the marginalized, for the flourishing and thriving of all as we work to shape our world into a just, compassionate, safe home for everyone. For more go to renewedheartministries.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    20 mins
  • Justice Lessons at the Well

    Justice Lessons at the Well
    Mar 5 2026
    John 4:5-42 Jesus’ words echo all the way down to us today and affirm us as we challenge systems that restrict access based on race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and religious gatekeeping today. If what Jesus said is true about access to God, it should also lead us to challenge systems that exclude access to justice. The Samaritan woman, who was marginalized by ethnicity, gender, and social stigma, is treated as a human being with value in John’s story. Her question matters. Her voice is honored. Justice work begins the same way: by centering those most excluded and trusting their questions as genuine sources of divine revelation. “Spirit and truth” resists empty religiosity that divorces worship from lived reality. Truth is not mere doctrine; in John’s Gospel truth is embodied in Jesus’ life-giving, boundary-breaking love, just as the synoptic Gospels define that lived love as concrete justice for those being harmed by Herod’s and the temple’s complicity with Roman exploitation. Worship that ignores oppression, poverty, racism, or patriarchy leads to worshipers who ignore these realities in our material lives as well, and that kind of worship and actions are incomplete. “God is spirit” in this context means that God is much larger than the institutions that try to trap the Divine and control access to it. God is Spirit and that Spirit is present wherever people struggle for for their humanity, liberation, justice, and wholeness. Streets, shelters, protest lines, classrooms, and kitchens all become legitimate spaces of worship when animated by Spirit and truth. The question is no longer where we worship, but how we live, whether our practices align with the liberation, justice, and love we see Jesus modeled towards others in the gospel stories. For more go to renewedheartministries.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    19 mins
  • Nicodemus Visits Jesus

    Nicodemus Visits Jesus
    Feb 26 2026
    John 3:1-17 Even though Nicodemus is coming to him “at night” as an attempt to save his privilege and status, Jesus knows that it is not possible for Nicodemus to tell the truth without reprisals. Allyship for Nicodemus will cost him something, and this helps us interpret Jesus’ language about being born again in a more life-giving way. Jesus is not saying to Nicodemus that we are all somehow broken as humans and must be born again, as the traditional interpretation states. Rather he is saying that Nicodemus has ascended a professional ladder, and now that he is reaching the top, Jesus tells him the ladder's leaning up against the wrong wall. Nicodemus must start over. Our reading this week gives us an opportunity to interpret John's theological vision, not as anti-world escapism, but as a sustained, justice-rooted practice in our churches and public life today, together. For more go to renewedheartministries.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    20 mins
  • The Temptations of Jesus and Our Justice Work Today

    The Temptations of Jesus and Our Justice Work Today
    Feb 19 2026
    Matthew 4:1-11 This year’s season of Lent begins with Matthew’s version of Jesus’ temptations. Matthew’s version reminds us that the story of the temptations of Jesus is not about a private spiritual test for Jesus. The story portrays a confrontation with systems of power, scarcity, and domination. In the wilderness, Jesus faces three offers that mirror the injustices of the world: turning stones into bread, gaining political power, and using religion as performance. The problem of scarce resources and the call to turn stones into bread has historically been solved for the few at the top who ignoring the collective hunger of the masses. Similarly, the powerful have not collectively shared political power but seized it through violence. And religion, too, has often been used to legitimize control. But Matthew’s story is of a Jesus who refuses each temptation. Matthew’s Jesus rejects exploitation, coercive authority, and religious manipulation. His choices reveal a vision of justice rooted in faith, solidarity, and liberation, the kind of liberation that still today has the potential to challenge our contemporary oppressive structures and call Jesus-following communities to pursue economic justice, shared power, and faith expressed through action for the common good of all, even those the present system marginalizes and harms. For more go to renewedheartministries.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    22 mins
  • Justice Lessons from the Transfiguration

    Justice Lessons from the Transfiguration
    Feb 12 2026
    Matthew 17:1-9 For Matthew’s audience, following Jesus meant stepping into a living tradition of liberation and prophetic courage that stretches back through Moses and Elijah and continues in our social justice work today. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses represented God’s decisive intervention on behalf of the oppressed. The exodus is not merely a spiritual metaphor; it is a concrete act of liberation from economic exploitation, state violence, and dehumanization. To follow Jesus today, then, is to inherit his commitment to justice and freedom. It is to stand with those trapped in modern Pharaohs, systems of injustice and harm, and to declare that such systems are neither natural nor ordained. Elijah embodies another essential dimension of this tradition: speaking truth to power. Elijah confronts kings, exposes the violence hidden behind religious and political respectability, and refuses to bless unjust arrangements. His prophetic voice in the stories insisted that faithfulness to God cannot be separated from justice for the vulnerable. Jesus stands squarely in this lineage. He’s bringing this ancient struggle to its fullest clarity and urgency. In this sense, Christian social justice work is not a political add-on to faith; it is the faithful continuation of the work begun with Moses, sharpened by Elijah, and embodied in Jesus. Ours is a path that still leads from bondage toward freedom, from silence toward courageous truth, from death-dealing crosses of state violence to triumphant and overturning resurrections. For more go to renewedheartministries.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    18 mins
  • Extra: Tribulation Survival Guide: How To Stay Alive When Everything Else Is Dead with Stuart Delony

    Extra: Tribulation Survival Guide: How To Stay Alive When Everything Else Is Dead with Stuart Delony
    Feb 5 2026
    In this episode we interview Stuart Delony as he shares about his recent satirical book The Tribulation Survival Guide: How To Stay Alive When Everything Else Is Dead. For more go to renewedheartministries.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    39 mins
  • Salt, Light, a City on a Hill and a Justice Oriented Faith

    Salt, Light, a City on a Hill and a Justice Oriented Faith
    Feb 5 2026
    Matthew 5:13-20 Today, Jesus’ words caution against forms of Christianity that dismiss social responsibility in favor of spiritualized belief or personal salvation alone. They also challenge movements that appeal to “biblical values” while ignoring the prophetic demand for justice. Faithfulness to Jesus does not mean abandoning moral traditions or prophetic critique; it means carrying them forward in ways that confront contemporary injustices such as economic exploitation, racism, patriarchy, LGBTQ discrimination, mistreatment of migrant communities, and more. This passage is ultimately a call to a justice-shaped faith. It insists that following Jesus means participating in the long, unfinished work of aligning social life with God’s vision of justice, compassion, and liberation: the hope of both the law and the prophets. For more go to renewedheartministries.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    18 mins