We're living in what feels like a dystopian novel — and Octavia Butler saw it coming in 1993. Her Parable of the Sower imagined a world of climate collapse, privatized towns, and a politician promising to "make America great again." When the future feels foreclosed, who gets to imagine what comes next? This message pairs Butler's Afrofuturism with what may have been Jesus' first parable: a farmer scattering seed on different kinds of soil. Far from a feel-good farming story, it was told to poor tenant farmers crushed by debt — and its absurdly abundant harvest imagined the end of that entire system. Drawing on adrienne maree brown and Ruha Benjamin, this sermon asks: whose imagination are you living inside, and what would it take to change your soil? New to the parables series? Start here — this one holds the key to all the rest.

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.

Most of us want the benefits of community — safety, belonging, mutual support — but bristle at the friction that actual community requires. This sermon confronts that tension directly: why do we wait until we're "rich enough" to give, and what does it really cost to be part of something? Pastor Anthony explores an ancient letter where a broke, disaster-stricken community begged to be allowed to give — and what that tells us about generosity as a practice rather than a personality trait. He also takes apart the prosperity gospel, not to dismiss the desire to flourish, but to ask what real prosperity looks like when it doesn't leave anyone on the curb. If you're skeptical of church messaging around money, or just tired of feeling like generosity is for people with more to spare, this conversation offers a different frame.

Most of us carry more than we realize — not just stuff, but the anxiety that comes with it. The drive to accumulate, to secure, to hold on tight isn't a character flaw. It's what happens when we build our sense of self on things that can be taken away. In this sermon, Pastor Tonetta explores what it looks like to locate your identity somewhere other than your possessions — drawing on stories from ancient monastics, a French novel, and the surprisingly radical logic of the Sermon on the Mount. The question underneath it all: what do you own that owns you back? If you're wrestling with money, security, or what it means to live generously in an uncertain world, 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 learned that power means control — over people, outcomes, situations. But what if that definition is exactly what's breaking us, and breaking the world around us? Preached by Pastor Tonetta, this sermon uses the story of Antoinette Tuff — a bookkeeper who talked down an armed gunman using nothing but honesty and presence — alongside the Pentecost narrative to reframe what power actually is and what it's for. The case here is that real power moves toward people, not over them, and that the most radical thing you can do is speak, connect, and let go. Watch or listen to hear three concrete commitments that might change how you show up — in your relationships, your community, and the world.

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.

We all carry things we don't talk about — grief, shame, exhaustion, ambivalence about money and power. Most of us walk into rooms and put on our composure, because that's what we've been taught is acceptable. But what happens when the weight of it finally has to land somewhere? Pastor Tonetta draws on Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried' and the book of Nehemiah to make a case that you can't repair what you refuse to grieve — and that rebuilding anything worth having requires more than individual optimization. It requires commitment to particular people, a particular place, a particular wall. This one also gets honest about money — why progressive communities tend to go quiet about it, and what that silence actually costs.

You check your phone every 47 seconds. You say yes to everything and mean none of it. You refresh the news looking for a sign that something has finally gotten better. Somewhere in all of that, your actual life is happening — and nobody's really there for it. This week, Pastor Anthony looks at a moment where Jesus' closest friends ask exactly the wrong question, and what it reveals about where our attention goes when we're scared, overwhelmed, or just trying to manage the unmanageable. There's a distinction between what's yours to carry and what isn't — and learning the difference might be the most practical thing you do this week.

How do you keep living your regular life when the news is genuinely catastrophic? It's not denial — it's one of the most disorienting feelings of our moment. This week Pastor Anthony Parrott sits with that tension and refuses to offer an easy answer.   Drawing on a post-resurrection story most people overlook, he makes a case that small, ordinary acts — a meal, a text, showing up sad and confused — aren't a consolation prize for people without power. They're actually the model. And that staying at the table, even when you have nothing impressive to offer, might be the most honest form of resistance available.   New to The Table or just stumbling across this? You don't need a faith background to find something here. Come as you are.