Denver Community Church

November 1, 2009: Language and Violence – Michael Hidalgo

We have reduced human beings to statistics, commodities, objects removing the truest identity of any person, and that is Image Bearers. This is not a call to be polite, to be passive, or to be the kind of people who simply choose the easiest way. This is a call to remove ourselves from the violence that our culture does to us everyday. 

This is not always punching somebody in the face, but it is speaking of them as something other than who they really are (slander is to characterize people as something they are not … and slander is language that grows out of anger, rage, and malice). Many would wonder where the idea of violence is in our culture … maybe it is all around us, and maybe we are in it. 

We do not recognize that we often are so saturated in our culture that we no longer hear or see the violence that is all around us. But it is here. We are an angry culture precisely because we have submitted ourselves to the social-political-corporate mentality of bigger, stronger, faster, more productive … we have begun to align ourselves in the most subtle ways within this world. As such we have learned to cover over who we really are. 

We need to understand who we are called to become we need to look beyond the anxiety that our culture creates in us. When we do we will find fear, beneath that we will find hurt and beneath the hurt will be guilt. This guilt produces rage and hatred which comes out of our own frustrated desire to be who we were created to be, and that is people who are dearly loved. In every feeling, look deeply. Explore without ceasing. At the bottom there is love, which is who God is, and we are made in his image.

October 25, 2009: God and Violence – Michael Hidalgo

Exploring the wrath of God. Let’s be honest, the wrath, anger, and fury of God is just not popular anymore. But why? It is clearly a part of who God is, but how can a God who is “love” do such things to his kids? 

If God did not get angry, I think we would have to wonder how passionate his love was in the first place. After all what is the right response to reversing and perverting the beautiful creation that he has put forth? God’s wrath can be seen in the brokenness, dehumanization and barrenness that idolatry and sexuality produces. 

For those who have been brutalized, exploited, and oppressed who do they have to go to? Who will hear their cries? When we consider God’s wrath in light of the injustice that we see all around us it suddenly makes sense. 

October 18, 2009: Sex and Violence – Michael Hidalgo

Why are sex, greed, and idolatry all in the same list?

Sexuality is something today that has given way to our culture of violence. We live in a culture that has industrialized sexuality in such a way that we have begun to exploit the most sacred of unions. Wendell Berry writes, “Like any other industrial enterprise, industrial sexuality seeks to conquer nature by exploiting it and ignoring the consequences.”

Sex is the ultimate physical expression of love given to us by God to participate in the ongoing process of creation. By design it is about giving oneself to the other. Our culture has reversed this into “getting some” thereby turning sex into something we are getting … when taken further sex is something we are taking from someone else for our own pleasure. When we speak of conquering, getting, or taking we are using a violent language rooted in greed. 

All of this comes from the worship of a false God. (See Hosea’s metaphor of sex, economic injustice, and idolatry). If we turn away from the God who created us we will turn to something else, which is an idol. In the words of John Kavanaugh, “Remade in the image and likeness of our own handiwork, we are revealed as commodities. Idolatry exacts its full price from us. We are robbed of our very humanity.” Which sounds quite violent doesn’t it?

October 11, 2009: Up There and Down Here – Michael Hidalgo

We need to be clear, setting our minds on things above does not mean “being so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.” It means committing ourselves to the ministry of Jesus who is in heaven. As we live our lives here we need to do so in anticipation of our future. We need to live recognizing what our lives and the world will be like and working toward that now.

October 4, 2009: What is the Church – Jon Gettings

September 27, 2009: The Medium is the Message – Dave Neuhausel

“Mission” is one of those words that we most often associate with a “trip” or some sort of assignment to an overseas post in a remote village.  This stereotype is centered around understanding mission as something that is done by a certain type of person, in a certain unique location.  The striking reality in scripture is that God is a “missional God”, and has been since the beginning of time.  

 

Mission is not therefore a human project, but a divine one…  The arch of scripture unfolds as a story in which God has been redeeming the whole of creation and he has chosen us to be his message.  The scandalous reality of the gospel message is that he uses losers to reach the lost.   In fact, God not only invites, but commands that we “embody” this mission ourselves.  Like it or not as Christ followers we are “on mission”…  There is no such thing as a static existence.  Life is made up of the countless moments, relationships and opportunities in which we either embrace this mission as God’s people or we allow life to simply happen to us.  In whatever case, the world is watching…

September 20, 2009: Ancient, Present, Future – Michael Hidalgo

Catholic, Protestant, First, Second, Third Baptist, Emergent, Reformed, Neo-Reformed, and the list could go on. All of these tags are ways we find ourselves describing the church. 

Some churches however want to be known by what they are not. We have our list of things that make us distinctive. Our lists draw boundaries separating local congregations from others. Over the last five hundred years, the Church has chosen to embrace these divisions rather than celebrating who we are both in our past and in our present.

We have bought into rugged individualism. As individuals, we believe our experience within the church is private, and does not need to include others. The attitude of the individual is indicative of the attitude of the whole. We remain separate from one another and live out an individual faith that is particular to each person. Living this way makes it difficult to believe that all Christians share the same heritage.

For a Baptist to hear that a Catholic has the same historical roots would be like meeting a guy you have never seen who tells you that he is your brother. That would complicate the world we have come to know and presently live in. We could only make sense of a new brother by learning where he is from and telling him where we are from. The role of tradition is to tell us where we are from.

September 13, 2009: All of You and All of Me – Michael Hidalgo

The good news of Jesus announces redemption for all parts of life. We experience redemption in our relationships with God, self, one another, and the earth. We understand that our mind, body and soul are intertwined. We will live out the continual transformation and wholeness that we have been given by the free gift of Jesus.

Jesus heals people spiritually and physically. Which is interesting. Because if our “problem” as human beings is only about our spiritual condition then why does Jesus take time to heal those who are lame, blind, and raise people from the dead? It seems that Jesus was about bringing all parts of us back to the way things should be. 

It is not just about our own salvation and getting out of here. This is what the Gnostics taught. It is about reclaiming all of creation – the spiritual and the physical. 

September 6, 2009: A Living Eucharist – Michael Hidalgo

We speak about the church a lot. But what is the church? So often we speak of things that have meaning, but we cannot really articulate exactly what it is. For the next four weeks we will explore who the Church is … because the church is not a what it is a who … for the Church are God’s people who live in the world as a part of his movement. 

And that is what the Church is. It is a movement of men, women, and children throughout the world who are living out the mission of Jesus in their context. It is a group of people storming the gates of hell and reversing the curse from Eden. 

August 30, 2009: Deeper Desire – Michael Hidalgo

The grass is always greener … Whether it is a car, a boat, a body type, a group of friends. We can always think of something that if “we just had that” we would be happier. When we build our lives on temporary things we deny the eternal beings that we are.

We must be people who pursue the eternal things, for only the eternal can fulfill our needs for we are people who are eternal. Let’s move away from materialism, and move toward true spirituality. This is the life to which God is calling us.