The Table Church DC

Description: Most of us were handed a set of rules about sex before we were ever given a framework for thinking about it — and for many people, especially those raised in religious communities, those rules came wrapped in shame, fear, and silence. The damage is real, well-documented, and affects far more people than the church tends to admit. In this sermon, Bekki reexamines a familiar Bible story through a different lens — and makes the case that fear-based approaches to sexuality don't produce health or wholeness, they produce hiding. Drawing on personal experience, trauma research, and a close reading of the gospel, she offers a vision of sexuality rooted in love, liberation, and abundance rather than control and condemnation. Whether you're deconstructing, done with church, or just curious — this one's worth your time.

What if one of the most important things we're carrying is something we forgot we had? In this week's installment of "Everything We Carry," Matt opens up 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 to talk about spiritual gifts — the ones we've buried, the ones we're nervous to use, and the ones that still work even after years in the bottom of the bag. He names the wounds many of us carry from places where the gifts were misused, and asks what it would look like for a community like ours to nurture them honestly: especially prophecy, the gift of bridging the gap between the world as it is and the liberated world that is to come. Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:7–11; Romans 12:6–8 · Series: Everything We Carry · Preached by Matt at The Table Church, Washington, DC.

Most of us know we have some form of privilege — racial, economic, positional — but knowing it and actually doing something with it are very different things. What do you do with the guilt? The discomfort? The uncertainty about whether listening and learning is enough? Elder Daniel explores the story of Pharaoh's daughter — a woman defined entirely by the dominant system around her — and what it looks like to move from awareness to action. The framework he offers isn't about charity or allyship. It's about conspiracy: funding the revolution, betraying the systems that gave you your advantages, and what that kind of commitment actually costs. New to The Table? This sermon is part of our series Everything We Carry. Pull up a seat.

You've been showing up, doing the work, trying to live with integrity—and the results aren't there. Policies get worse. People leave. Relationships fracture. So you're left with a brutal question: Is any of this actually worth it? This sermon explores the prophet Jeremiah, who preached justice for 23 years and saw zero measurable success. Through his story and the words of Martin Luther King Jr., we examine what happens when we stop measuring our faithfulness by outcomes and start asking a different question: What if the rightness of something doesn't depend on whether it's winning? What would it mean to commit to a long obedience in the same direction—not because the KPIs look good, but because the work itself is true? For anyone exhausted by activism, burned out on hope, or wondering if they should just give up—this is about finding a way to keep going that doesn't rely on immediate success. It's about planting seeds underground where nobody's watching, trusting what you cannot yet see.

What happens when the promises of progress turn into frustration? When the institutions we've trusted prove unfaithful? Drawing on MLK's lesser-known "three evils" speech and the ancient prophet Jeremiah, this sermon explores what it means to be faithful when everything you've taken for granted is crumbling. It's about surviving Saturday—that disorienting space between disaster and restoration. The core message is simple but uncomfortable: we've mistaken proximity for participation. We say "I go to church" the same way people once chanted "this is the temple of the Lord"—as if showing up could substitute for the harder work of actually listening and changing. Jeremiah's indictment was clear: the people had done everything except the one thing that mattered. They performed religion while ignoring its substance. The invitation is to become "creatively maladjusted" in a world where deceptive words are everywhere. To stop being passive recipients and start actively making meaning. To ask yourself: where, when, and how will you actually listen?

Fear has a way of convincing us that silence and compliance will keep us safe—but what happens when staying quiet means cooperating with harm? This sermon explores how fear gets weaponized to control us, especially in times when oppressive power seems to be winning. Through the story of the Magi, we see what it looks like when an encounter with something true makes compliance intolerable. Shae Washington unpacks four questions that might help us resist letting fear dictate our choices: Where are we focusing our attention? What ways is God trying to guide us that we're missing? And uncomfortably—what patterns of fear-driven harm do we need to dismantle in ourselves? The Magi didn't confront Herod with speeches or swords. They simply chose another way home. If you're exhausted from hypervigilance and looking for permission to rest while still resisting, or if you're searching for what your "alternative route" might look like in 2026, this one's for you.

Not all fear is the same. Some fear protects you from real danger—and if you've experienced religious trauma or spiritual abuse, those fears are legitimate. But other fear is trickier: it's the voice telling you you're not capable, not worthy, that you can't trust yourself. This sermon explores how to tell the difference between protective fear and the fear of inadequacy that keeps you small. Drawing on the stories of Mary and Jeremiah—both of whom faced genuine, life-threatening risks—Antonio offers a framework that doesn't gaslight you about danger but also doesn't let fear of your own potential win. The goal isn't moving forward fearlessly, but faithfully. Baby steps count. And yes, you can say yes while still trembling.

What do you do when you've buried your hopes because holding onto them hurt too much? When the world feels so dark that giving up seems like the only way to survive the next day? This Advent sermon explores an uncomfortable truth: hope isn't always comforting—sometimes it's terrifying. Drawing from an ancient poet writing amid literal apocalypse and a couple who'd long given up on their dream, this message wrestles with two competing realities. Sometimes our circumstances don't change the way we want, but hope can still emerge in unexpected ways. Other times, hope breaks through demanding we seize it—but fear keeps us from reaching out. Whether you're facing political despair, personal disappointments, or just trying to figure out how to keep going, this sermon offers a framework for distinguishing between what we can change and what we can't—and why showing up matters either way.