Jesus, Justice + Mercy: Bold faith, radical love and justice for the church
Jesus, Justice & Mercy
Bold faith, radical love, and justice for the church.
Welcome to Jesus, Justice & Mercy — a podcast for Christians who sense that justice matters but feel the tension between Jesus and much of what they see practiced in the church.
If you’re wrestling with inherited faith, questions that don’t have easy answers, or the growing gap between the Gospel and the world we’re navigating, you’re not alone.
I’m your host, Kristen Brock, rooted in the church and committed to following Jesus with honesty, courage, and compassion. Each season, we engage Scripture, history, and lived experience to explore the intersections of faith, justice, and discipleship. We talk about race, trauma, power, civic responsibility, and the ways faith has been both a source of harm and a force for healing.
Whether you’re deconstructing, rebuilding, or simply learning to ask better questions, this is a space for thoughtful reflection, faithful wrestling, and a faith shaped by justice, deeply rooted in Scripture.
Episodes
74 episodes
Shalom | Not Absence of Conflict. Wholeness for Everyone.
We use "shalom" as a Hebrew hello and goodbye, and mostly leave it there. But this word carries way more weight than a greeting. In Hebrew, shalom describes a state where nothing is missing, broken, or lacking; it shares a roo...
Hesed | Not Kindness. Stubborn Covenant Love.
Hesed: Not Kindness. Stubborn Covenant Love.Your Bible probably says kindness. Or mercy. Or lovingkindness. None of them quite get there.Hesed is the Hebrew word that shows up roughly 250 times in the Old Testament, and no ...
Mishpat | Not judgment. Justice for the Vulnerable.
Mishpat. Your Bible probably calls it judgment, and that translation isn't wrong; it's just incomplete. In Hebrew, mishpat comes from the root shafat, meaning "to judge, to govern, to set right." It appears over 400 times in the Old Testament, ...
Tzedakah | Not Righteousness. Justice.
Your Bible has been quietly mistranslating a word that shows up over 150 times, and the gap has shaped centuries of Christian formation. This week: tzedakah. Usually translated as "righteousness." Almost always meant something closer to justice...
Shabbat | Rest, Recalibration, and Why I'm Not Going Quiet
I missed last week. Here's why. We lost one of our cats, and grief doesn't keep a production schedule. But there's more. After two years of this work, I find myself worn out, and I've been sitting with that honestly.So today I'm giving y...
Unlocked: Pentecost for Doubters, Deconstructors, and the Depleted
Pentecost and social justice belong in the same sentence, and this Season 3 finale makes the case that they always have.This episode goes back to the room before the wind came. The locked room. Full of frightened, grieving, failing peopl...
Inside Out: A Mental Health Theology Big Enough to Hold the Dark
Mental health in the church is one of the most underprepared gaps in the Christian community, and for families in crisis, that gap has real consequences.This episode is personal. Kristen reads a piece of writing kept private for years, a...
Pulpit Fiction: The Women They Renamed, Silenced, and Forgot
Women in church leadership is not a new idea; it's a biblical one. The record is full of women leading, prophesying, teaching, and apostling. The church just worked very hard to make you forget them.In this episode, we go directly into t...
No Casseroles Required: What the Women of Scripture Knew About Grief
Grief doesn’t arrive alone. It brings everything you’ve ever lost with it. And the church has rarely known what to do with that. In this episode, we sit with the women of Scripture who grieved loudly, honestly, and without apology, ...
Undressed: Are We Unwittingly the Emperor?
What if the most dangerous thing happening in American Christianity right now isn't happening in Washington, it's happening in us? In this episode, Kristen sits with two early voices: Paul writing to a fractured community inside Cae...
No Tap-Dancing Required: A Theology of Being Beloved with Kieawnie Clar
Centering prayer isn’t about emptying your mind or saying the right things. According to Kieawnie Clar, it’s about finally stopping and letting God do what God needs to do.In this episode of Jesus, Justice and Mercy, Kristen sits dow...
Everyday Prophets: You Can't Heal What You Won't Name with Conscious Coore
What does it mean to offer care to people the church has already harmed? Conscious Coore, founder of Flamingo Trauma Recovery and educator in trauma-informed spiritual care, has been answering that question for years.In this first episod...
He Knows Your Name | A Resurrection for the Scarred, the Shut Out, and the Still Waiting
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 are Saturday People | A theology for the Weary, Waiting, and the In-Between
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 th...
The Texts They Used Against You: The truth about harm and repair
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 t...
Back Porch Mercy: What Faithful Looks Like on a Tuesday
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 po...
Won't You Be My Neighbor: What Mr. Rogers Understood That the Church Forgot
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,...
Starting in the Rubble: Reconciliation That Holds
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...
Faith in the Wilderness You Didn’t Choose: When Certainty Cracks and Comfort Fades
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 clo...
The Comfort We Called Holy: How White Christian Nationalism Formed Us
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 ref...
The Cost of Staying Awake: How Long, O Lord?
The Cost of Staying Awake can feel unbearable. This week isn’t a teaching episode; it’s a lament.In this raw and personal reflection, Kristen shares how cultural hypocrisy, sacred language used as cover, and the grief of wa...
Just Left of Centered: Black Theology, Liberation & the Gospel
What is Black theology, and why does it matter for Christian discipleship today?In this episode, Kristen offers an introduction to Black theology, not as a political framework or academic debate, but as wisdom forged in survival, resista...
Take a Break: Hamilton, Sabbath, and the Resistance of Rest
The empire wants you exhausted. Because exhausted people don't resist, they can only survive.This week, we're talking about rest as resistance. Not self-care. Not work-life balance. But Sabbath as protest against a system that defines yo...
Risky Business: It's Not Just an '80s Movie; Just Ask Esther
What does holy risk actually look like, and how is it formed?In a moment when the church has confused nationalism with faithfulness and cruelty with obedience, we need to recover what it means to follow Jesus courageously. But courage is...
