He is Risen. It is the most important sentence in human history. But we have treated it as the period at the end of the sentence when it was always meant to be the opening.

This episode slows down inside the actual resurrection accounts. We begin in the dark with Mary Magdalene coming to tend a body, so deep in grief she mistakes the risen Jesus for a gardener, until he says her name. Because resurrection didn't come as a press release to the powerful. It came as a name spoken to a grieving woman before sunrise.

We walk through the full messy spectrum of resurrection responses, confused disciples, locked doors, and Thomas making demands. Nobody was ready. And Jesus, scarred, present, and patient, found every single one of them exactly where they were.

We sit with the wounds that didn't disappear. The glorified body is the scarred body. And we ask what it means that the resurrection body of Jesus looked nothing like what anyone expected and was glorious anyway.

And then we go to the courts. The Temple was a system that decided who could come close to God. Jesus ended it with his body. The church that rebuilds those courts is not being faithful to the resurrection. It is undoing it.

This episode names that directly. For the woman told to sit down. For the doubter told their questions make them dangerous. For the poor person told their poverty is a sign of God's disapproval. For the immigrant told this God is determined by borders. For the person whose body doesn't fit the world's standard of whole. For the person whose love has been called incompatible with Christian community. For the person still asking God who they are.

The curtain is gone. And he knows your name.

SCRIPTURE: John 20:1-18 | John 10:3 | Matthew 27:51 | Hebrews 9:12 | Hebrews 10:1

RESOURCES:

Dr. Brian Brock — Disability Theology

Wondrously Wounded: Theology, Disability and the Body of Christ

All other books

Beyond Faith as Usual Reading List

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

Holy Week lament is not a detour from the Easter story, it is the part we keep skipping. In this episode, we slow down and walk the full arc of Holy Week: two processions entering Jerusalem from opposite directions, the compression of a week that was always going to end at the cross, and the devastating silence of Holy Saturday, a silence the church has nearly forgotten how to inhabit.

This is an episode for the justice-weary, the deconstructing, the waiting, the Saturday people living in the in-between and handed platitudes instead of presence. We look at the cross not as a transaction but as exposure, sit with James Cone's theological connection between the cross and the lynching tree, and name the contemporary pattern of Scripture being weaponized to protect power while the actual teachings of Jesus about the poor, the stranger, and the marginalized get treated as political opinions.

Then we stay in Saturday. We sit with the disciples behind locked doors, with the lament Psalms that the Western church stopped singing, with Job's friends who got presence right before they got theology wrong. We look at what the Black church has always known about Saturday theology, a faith forged not as a spiritual discipline but as a survival necessity under four hundred years of suffering. And we reclaim the not-knowing, the unanswered prayers, the grief that doesn't resolve, as the oldest and most honest place in the story.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are Saturday people. And Saturday is holy.

Next week…resurrection. But maybe not the resurrection you were taught.

SCRIPTURE REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Luke 22:39-46 — The garden of Gethsemane
• Luke 22:44 — Sweat like drops of blood
• Matthew 21:12-13 — The temple clearing
• Matthew 26:26-28 — The last supper
• Psalm 22:1 — My God, my God, why have you forsaken me
• Psalm 13:1 — How long, O Lord, how long
• Job 2:11-13 — Job's friends sit in silence
• Job 38 — God speaks from the whirlwind
• Zechariah 9:9 — The king comes on a donkey
• John 20:1 — Mary Magdalene at the tomb

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

· The Many — Lament (spoken word, scripture, and music. A beautiful place to sit in your Saturday.)

· The Cross and the Lynching Tree — James Cone (deep end of the reading list: it will cost you something. Read it anyway.)

· Beyond Faith as Usual Reading List | Click Here!

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

Scripture used against women has been one of the most damaging tools in evangelical culture, and today we're naming it directly.

What if the church didn't just get it wrong? What if it used scripture to make sure you blamed yourself? In this episode of Jesus, Justice + Mercy, Kristen takes a hard look at three passages that have been weaponized against women, Ezekiel 34, Matthew 18, and 2 Corinthians 5, and shows what they actually say about harm, accountability, and repair.

This episode is for the woman who has been told her hurt was less important than institutional peace. For the woman who was sent back to a room that was hurting her, with a Bible verse attached. For the woman still carrying something that was never hers to carry.

What Ezekiel 34 Says

God's indictment of shepherds who scattered the flock instead of protecting it, and what that means for churches and institutions today. Real accountability looks like leadership willing to step down, outside accountability that isn't self-selected, and policies that protect people instead of reputations.

Matthew 18

The text most used to demand silence was actually written to give power to the wounded. Jesus hands the entire process to the person who was wronged, and he never asks them to rush.

2 Corinthians 5

The ministry of reconciliation was never meant to put the burden on the wounded. God moved first. The powerful one initiates. That is the theological logic of repair.

Repair vs Return

Repair and return are not the same decision. You get to make both on your own terms. A marriage, a church, a friendship, repair can happen, and return is still your choice. Always your choice.

In this episode:

• The verses used to silence women reporting abuse, assault, and affairs, and what they actually mean
• What Ezekiel 34 says about institutional failure and what real accountability requires
• How Matthew 18 was flipped from a text about the harmed person's power into a tool for institutional protection
• Why 2 Corinthians 5 puts the burden of repair on the powerful, not the wounded
• What real repair requires: truth-telling, accountability, and changed conditions
• The difference between repair and return, and why you get to choose both
• What healing looks like when the other party won't come to the table

Scripture referenced: Ezekiel 34 | Matthew 18:15–17 | 2 Corinthians 5:18–19 | Micah 6:8

Resources: RAINN: rainn.org National Domestic Violence Hotline: thehotline.org Church abuse accountability: GRACE, netgrace.org

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

Christian mercy and justice don't begin with grand gestures or perfect plans. They begin with a morning. A cup of coffee. The weight of a world that feels too broken to fix. And the question so many of us are carrying right now: what could I possibly do that would matter?

In this episode of Jesus, Justice + Mercy, Kristen starts exactly there - on her back porch, holding the weight of a bombed school in Iran, draft-age sons, a friend whose lights are on for now, and the creeping numbness around gun violence. From that honest, ordinary place, she makes the case that Christian mercy and justice were never meant to be big, dramatic, or perfect. They were meant to be faithful. Present tense. Today.

Through Micah 6:8, Zechariah 4:10, the mustard seed and yeast parables, and the extraordinary story of Fannie Lou Hamer, this episode answers the question: what does faithful actually look like on a Tuesday?

In this episode:

· Why we've gotten mercy wrong - we've made it grand and dramatic and paralyzed ourselves in the process

· Micah 6:8 as a present-tense call - not to solve, but to act, love, and walk

· Zechariah 4:10 and the word God spoke to a discouraged people rebuilding in rubble

· The mustard seed and the yeast - two images Jesus chose to show us how the kingdom actually moves

· The story of Fannie Lou Hamer - a sharecropper who showed up to register to vote and changed history

· The SAVE Act and why Fannie Lou's story is a present-tense warning

· What everyday mercy looks like: cooking a meal, folding clothes, sitting with someone

· Why proximity transforms you - and how showing up leads to city council meetings you never planned to attend

· What it means to follow a God who pitched a tent and moved into the neighborhood

Scripture referenced:

Micah 6:8

Zechariah 4:10

Matthew 13:31-33

John 1:14

This episode is part of Movement 3: Re-Build - Repair as Christian Witness

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

Neighborhood justice may not be what you think. Every day for over thirty years, Fred Rogers changed his shoes, hung up his jacket, and asked the same question: won't you be my neighbor? He understood something the church has largely forgotten, that the neighborhood is not a backdrop. That the people next door are not a project or a mission field for someone else. They are neighbors. And neighboring is a practice we have largely abandoned.

Most of us will send money across an ocean before we will knock on the door across the street. This episode asks why, and what it would cost us to tell a different story.

Neighborhood Justice, Proximity, and the Church: What We Cover
• Why distance makes justice feel safer, and what that reveals about how we have been formed

• Place-based justice as a Christological commitment, not a social movement catchphrase

• What John 1:14 actually says about where Jesus showed up, and why it matters

• Why Jeremiah 29:7 is not a comfort verse, and who God was actually talking to

• The difference between charity and repair, and why repair requires a zip code

• The Good Samaritan reframe: from 'who is my neighbor?' to 'who acted like one?'

• The Social Gospel movement, what it got right, what it got wrong, and the women who modeled it better than the institutions

• What MLK's theology of the Beloved Community has to do with your street

• Why mutual aid, rooted in Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities, looks more like Jesus than most church outreach

• Proximity as a spiritual discipline: what it looks like to practice it, fail at it, and start again

Referenced in This Episode
• Toward De-centering the New Testament | Mitzi J. Smith and Yung Suk Kim

• Christianity and the Social Crisis | Walter Rauschenbusch (1907)

• Episode 8: Reconciliation that holds

• Episode 50 Season 3 Bonus: What King Said About People Like Me | Letter from Birmingham Jail

• Episode 1, Season 3 | Ready or Not: The Year Courage Stopped Being Optional

Reflection Questions
• When you think about 'doing justice,' does your mind go near or far first? What does that tell you about how you have been formed?

• What is the difference between charit

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

Reconciliation without repair won’t hold.

In this episode, we explore why Scripture consistently ties reconciliation to restitution, accountability, and honest repair. From Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls, to the restitution laws in the Torah, to Zacchaeus’ fourfold repayment in Luke 19, the biblical pattern is clear: unity that lasts is built on truth.

Too often, the church reaches for reconciliation without addressing the damage beneath it. But repair is not the obstacle to reconciliation, it’s the path to it.

If we want belonging that can withstand pressure, we have to start in the rubble.

In This Episode:

• Why reconciliation without repair collapses
• Nehemiah and the theology of rebuilding
• Biblical restitution in Leviticus and Numbers
• Zacchaeus and fourfold repayment
• Isaiah 58 and structural justice
• The difference between forgiveness and communal repair
• Why grace sometimes takes the shape of cost

Scripture & References

• Nehemiah 1–2, 4, 6
• Leviticus 6:1–7
• Numbers 5:5–7
• Isaiah 58:6–8
• Luke 19:1–10
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

When certainty cracks and the foundations you once trusted feel unstable, it's easy to believe something has gone wrong. But what if disorientation isn't the opposite of faith? What if it's where deeper formation begins?

This week, we close out the Re-Member movement by naming what happens inside us when our theological frameworks shift. Defensiveness. Curiosity. Humility. The ache of belonging nowhere and everywhere at once. And the costly question: Do I still fit here?

We explore:

• What surfaces when certainty collapses (and why that's not failure)
• How Black theology models faith forged under pressure, not built on comfort
• The wilderness as both biblical metaphor and present reality
• Lent as holy disruption, exposure, surrender, and Good Friday honesty
• Why reconciliation without reckoning is just romanticism

Key Themes:

• Wilderness faith
• Theological disorientation
• Kenosis (self-emptying)
• Lament as faith without the mask
• Formation over certainty

Scripture Referenced:

• Philippians 2 (kenosis—the self-emptying of Christ)
• Exodus 16 (manna and the temptation to return to bondage)
• Psalm 22 ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?")
• Isaiah 43:18-19 ("I am about to do a new thing")

Practices for the Wilderness:

• Fast from defensiveness: When you feel yourself tighten, pause. What are you protecting?
• Listen to be changed: Not to respond or correct, but assuming the speaker might see something you haven't
• Refuse premature reconciliation: Stay in examination. Don't rush to tidy unity.

Next Week: We move into Re-Build and ask: What does repair as Christian witness actually look like?

A Note on Lent: We're a week into Lent, a season not of spiritual self-improvement, but of exposure and surrender. What if this year, instead of giving up chocolate or coffee, we fasted certainty? The need to be right? The reflex to center our feelings when confronted?

Disorientation is not the end of faith. It's often the beginning of discipleship.

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

White Christian nationalism shaped more than politics. It shaped discipleship.

In this episode, Kristen traces the formation story beneath today’s headlines. Long before it became a political slogan, white Christian nationalism formed reflexes on what felt holy, what felt threatening, and what felt worth defending.

This conversation explores:

• How “chosen nation” theology reshaped American Christian identity
• Why security, order, and national blessing began to feel spiritual
• The rise of “law and order” rhetoric within white evangelical institutions
• The Moral Majority era and the consolidation of faith and political power
• The contrast between white Christian formation and the formation of the Black church
• How Jesus consistently refused the fusion of faith and empire

Through Scripture (John 6; Luke 19; Mark 10, 11, 12; John 2), we trace a pattern: Jesus steps away from coercive crowns, mourns violent nationalism, redefines power, limits Caesar, and disrupts sacred systems.

This is not an episode about condemnation. It is about formation.

Because if we want to be formed by Jesus and shaped by justice, we have to be honest about what shaped us first.

White Christian nationalism is not just political. It distorts discipleship.

And discipleship can be re-formed.

Further Reading: Books on White Christian Nationalism and Christian Formation

If you want to go deeper, here is a list of books that trace patterns historically and theologically.

Core Recommendations

The Color of Compromise | Jemar Tisby
How the American church has been complicit in racism from slavery to today.

Jesus and John Wayne | Kristin Kobes Du Mez
How evangelical masculinity and militarism intertwined with Christian nationalism from the Cold War through Trump.

The Flag and the Cross | Philip Gorski & Samuel Perry
A sociological study of Christian nationalism as a cultural framework.

Taking America Back for God | Andrew Whitehead & Samuel Perry
Data-driven analysis of who embraces Christian nationalism and why.

White Too Long | Robert P. Jones
How white Christianity shaped racism and continues to perpetuate it, especially in the American South.

Historical Depth

The Cross and the Lynching Tree | James Cone
How white Christianity spiritualized violence & how Black theology confronted it.

Baptizing America | Melani McAlister
How evangelicals came to see the U.S. as central to God’s global plan.

One Nation Under God | Kevin Kruse
How “Christian America” r

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!