[Redacted]: Conspiring with Jesus
April 12, 2026 - May 24, 2026
For the Sundays following Easter, inclusive of Pentecost Sunday, we’ll consider the seven habits of life in the co-conspiracy as described in our Covenant of Co-Conspiracy
We’ll attach each of the habits to a story or teaching from Matthew 8, 9, and 10, where the particular habit becomes a lens through which we’re hearing Jesus’s words or observing his actions.
Gracious receipt of care from the church family. One thing that Jesus recognizes in us is our need – our brokenness, unhealth, lack of resources. It’s not our favorite thing to show him, or each other. But to conspire with the beloveds who gather in his name, the confession of need is essential.
Sharing of material resources to further the church’s goals. Jesus has a way of commandeering resources for his own use – that boat, e.g., and those swine – probably because he has so little of his own (“Foxes have holes... but the Son of Man has nowhere...”). In what sense have our own resources been conscripted for his work?
Extension of the church’s welcome to friends, neighbors, strangers, and enemies. Two stories of invitation: the friends who bring a paralytic to Jesus’s feet, and Jesus calling Matthew to come along. None of us comes to faith alone; our discipleship journey is the opposite of the U.S. American “self-made man [sic]”. Who are the helpers who are bringing us along, even now? And for whom are we the inviters?
Participation in the church’s discernment for our next steps together. There are so many decisions to be made when we are confronted with Jesus’s presence and power. Who is he? Can he really do what he says he can do? Whose side is he on, anyway? And in contemporary life: what does he intend for us to do and be now, and next?
Cultivation of spiritual gifts for the life of our church and community. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” Jesus says, and it feels true today, too. What does it take to be part of a DIY church? What’s the difference in a consumer-client culture and citizenship in a community?
Presence, the best you can, at gatherings of the church. Jesus’s assessment of the times he lived in was pretty grim: arrests and trials, intra-family strife, secrecy and murder. It’s no less (or more) true now – discipleship is a dangerous business. This is no time to cocoon at home alone.
Contemplation of your baptism, past or future. Through our baptisms, we join the communion of the saints around the world, past and future. We are a link in a long chain of those who preserve the story, “the keepers of the horn” in Cormac McCarthy’s phrase in No Country for Old Men. How wonderful to be part of something so old and so beautiful!