[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to the collective table, where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week, we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties scripture with into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast.
So we're glad you're here, and thanks for listening.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: So today we're gonna jump into kind of a mini teaching series. Some of you might have seen the email that we sent out yesterday. We're gonna talk a little bit about what we're calling the Oceanside Sanctuary's DNA. In other words, sort of like, what are the. What are the ideas or the outcomes, sort of the core values that make us who we are. And we're doing this for a couple reasons. Number one, as you heard earlier today, it is the end of our fiscal year, which is kind of a big deal for us. So we're asking you to consider becoming supporting members. But in addition to that, the last Sunday of every year, we have our congregational meeting. You heard about that as well. And that's where we're asking you to vote on our budget. And we're also asking you to vote on new board members who are coming on. It's also an opportunity for you to just ask questions. And as we're leading up to that, I wanted to just make sure that we're explaining what these words mean, right? So if you go to our website, you'll see these words, inclusive, inspiring, and impactful plastered on the front page.
You'll also notice, if you haven't already, that our vision statement conspicuously contains these three words. Our vision statement as a church is to be an inclusive and inspiring and impactful expression of. Of Christian spirituality wherever it is needed. That's what we aspire to. This is what we hope to be someday. These are our outcomes. So what does that mean? And as we're asking you to show up here and to give your time and to. If you're able to support us fiscally, it occurred to us that maybe it might be good for you to have a sense of what it is that we're trying to accomplish.
So today I want to share with you a passage from the Gospels. It's Luke, chapter five. We're going to be taking a look at Luke chapter 5, verses 27 through 32, and we're going to jump in and read that passage. And then I'm going to share with you just how I think that is shaping our DNA as a congregation. Before we do that, Though, would you just pray with me as we settle in?
God, we thank you for today. We thank you for this time in this space, this opportunity for us to show up here, to get to know each other, to connect with each other as we also connect with you.
And we ask that as we commit ourselves to this time in this space, that you would continue to grow us and shape us into the kinds of people who are useful in this community, the kinds of people whose love and commitment to liberation is creating new opportunities for people to grow into the selves that you have created us to be. We ask that you do that work in us by your grace, in Jesus name. Amen.
Okay, so I want to read this passage to you and then just share with you how I think this is relevant to our DNA as a congregation. And maybe you might be noticing some things as well. And of course, you're always to notice your own things in these passages. And you, of course, agree to disagree with me if you'd like. Just don't tell me, just tell Janelle. So that actually is how it works. Usually.
I didn't get the laugh that I was expecting.
All right. Luke chapter 5, verse 27 says this. After this, he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi. He, of course, is Jesus. This is jumping in on the narrative of Jesus as he is calling as his disciples, as he is engaging in sort of these powerful ministry encounters, as he's beginning to sort of define and shape who he is as a person and what his ministry will look like. So we're jumping in in the midst of that sort of beginning of his ministry. And it says after this, that is, after healing a paralyzed person, he went out and he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me.
And he, being Levi, got up and left everything and followed Jesus. And then Levi gave a great banquet for him, for Jesus in his house. And there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them.
And the Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?
Jesus answered, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
I've come to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Now, I'm sure that you have heard all the things that I'm about to say, but it is of course a great honor for these tax collectors like Levi to be called to follow Jesus. Jesus was a rabbi, an Old School, 1st century ancient near Eastern rabbi. And as such, in his community, in the Hebrew community, he is highly revered.
Few people attain the status of a religious teacher in ancient Israel. And so for those who do, they are highly sought after. And to be counted as one of their disciples would have been an incredible elevation of your status.
Right? Like, people would have said, oh, wow, you are a follower of Jesus. They would have immediately been considered among those in society who were like, you know, elevating their rank. You know, it's a little bit like, you know, it doesn't mean much in our culture today to be a pastor. I'm not complaining. It's okay.
But people aren't like, oh, you're a pastor? Wow. You know, they cuss a little less in my presence or, you know, in Janelle's presence, but they're not, like, bowled over, you know, with excitement meeting a pastor. They're more like, what are you doing in my backyard party? You know, is it okay for me to be drinking?
But my grandfather, my grandfather, who was a sharecropper, literally, who migrated from eastern Texas to California as a teenager, picking cotton and whatever he could pick along the way to fund his little excursion to Southern California with his brother, my grandfather, who did not only not believe in Jesus, but didn't believe in God. And, you know, he. He bled, you know, the blue of the Democratic Party and was as racist as anybody you have ever met, right? I loved him. My grandfather, he just thought it was amazing that I was pastor. I might as well have been a doctor or a lawyer in his eyes, right? Because that generation, that generation, that older generation, saw my position as like a white collar position. It was amazing that I was a pastor.
So to be a follower of a rabbi in the ancient near east was a little bit like that. They were like white collar professionals. They established the tone of moral and ethical instruction.
And so to be called to follow a rabbi was a great honor. And here Jesus is calling, among other problematic people, he's calling a tax collector.
Tax collector is a Jewish person, a Hebrew person, who has chosen to work for the invading foreigners, the Romans, and collect taxes. You know, nobody likes to be, you know, asked for taxes in the first place. But here's one of their own, one of their own Jewish comrades taking their money, collecting their taxes on behalf of this foreign occupying army.
And then on top of that, the way that folks like Levi would have made their money is to, you know, collect a little extra for themselves. And so they're hated. They're reviled people to one of these hated and reviled people Jesus calls to be his disciple, one of his followers.
In fact, it's according tradition, Levi is Matthew, the one for whom the first gospel is named after Matthew, or Levi is in this text, is so overwhelmed with gratitude, so excited that he throws a banquet, a big party in his house, and invites everybody. Because all these people, the Pharisees and the scribes, again, remember, they're the upper echelon, they're the elite of society, right? Levi has to be like, finally, I get to be at a party with these folks and it's in his own house.
And of course, that doesn't go over very well.
This is the story, right? The story, of course, is that the elites, the white collar professionals, the most powerful in society, are sharing a table with the most reviled, the outcasts, the sinners, the traitors, really.
And there's some tension between them.
The Pharisees and the scribes say, what are you doing inviting tax collectors here and sinners here? And then Jesus gives us his sort of famous response, which is, it's those who are unwell who need a physician, not those who are healthy.
What Jesus is doing here, of course, should be super obvious. Plus, I've already told you, we're talking about inclusion, right? What Jesus is doing here is he's demonstrating for everybody who's there at the party and everybody who's observing that this is who God is, that God is not a God of status, that God is not a God of classes, that God is not a God of tribalism or separation or exclusion, that God is made of exactly the kind of stuff that overlooks those borders and boundaries and includes everybody, that that is who God is. God is a God of inclusion.
And so one of our sort of bits of DNA here is to be an inclusive church. And I've shown you this graphic. I don't usually do slides. I hate slides when I teach. It's just not my thing. Right. But I wanted to show you this because there's something important that I think you should know, and that is that these three words that we talk about, inclusive, inspiring and impactful to describe our church. The DNA of our church is really built on something else that I stole. And I'll show you the next slide for that.
What I stole is a bit of something. Can you show me the slide that has the woman on it?
Yeah. This is Dorothy Zola and she is my hero because she is a Lutheran theologian who's smoking a cigarette, like that is so punk rock.
So I just love her because of this picture. But also, I really love Dorothy Zola's theology.
One of the things that she did is she stole this idea from a Catholic theologian who said that the church is essentially made up of three elements. And I'll show you those next if we can put up that next slide.
The church is essentially made up of three elements, and I'm calling those elements thoughtful, spiritual, and organized.
So when we talk about this being an inspiring, inclusive, and impactful church, it's really built on this notion. Those are the three outcomes that we are trying to achieve, that we're trying to embody. But it's really built on this idea that a living church, Dorothy Zola said that a church that is genuinely alive, right, like living, growing, thriving, has all three of these elements in it.
And what she sort of her innovation that she brought to this was to say most churches and most church traditions tend to specialize and focus on someone.
And you probably know this, right? You've all, like, been in a million different churches, I'm sure. And you know that some churches are what I'm calling thoughtful, but Zola would say that that's sort of analytical or intellectual.
Haven't you guys been to churches where, like, the entire power structure, all the currency of influence, was about how smart they were, like, like how intricately analytical and intellectual their theology was, how, like, carefully they had constructed everything to. To make perfect sense so that there were no gaps between what was right and what was wrong. And if you wanted to know what God thought about everything, you could ask the pastor and they could go to a book of theology and tell you what God thought about literally everything. Those are the churches and traditions that specialize in being intellectual or analytical. What I'm calling thoughtful, I don't like the word intellectual because it's elitist. And Von Hugo, who's the theologian that this came from, was an elitist, so that makes sense. But here I would rather we talk about being thoughtful, that we believe in our brains, that we believe in being smart, that we believe in thinking with that hemisphere, the one that does sort of analyze things and categorize them and understand how they work, that God created that part of us, and that's a good thing, that we should lean into being smart people of faith, that we should be thoughtful, but that it's a problem when our entire church is built on just being smart.
So Zola said that we also need to be a church that's spiritual, and we'll get into that next week. I won't explain necessarily, and unpack all of that, but that we need to be a church of people who also are encountering something other outside of our brains, our own ability to be impressed with our thoughts, that the whole point of spirituality is that we make contact with some other thing that we can't explain.
And of course, there are whole churches and traditions that specialize entirely on that.
The joke that we sometimes tell Janelle and I with each other because we came out of Pentecostalism for a long time is that that church at the top that's defined by being utterly thoughtful are often referred to as like, intelligence on ice, right? Like, they're so smart, but they're like, so pent up and reserved, right? They're not comfortable with any emotional expressions of their body. And then, of course, there are churches that are so spiritual and they reject intelligence, they reject being thoughtful, they reject sort of, you know, high minded theology. And sometimes we would say that those are, those churches are ignorance on fire.
And, you know, ignorance on fire will get a lot done.
And it's the thing about being spiritual, the thing about, like, having a sense of contemplative or mystical spirituality in life is that it will set you on fire.
Making contact with this mysterious thing, this other that we call God will light you on fire and move you in a certain direction. And that thing that we call passion will get you far.
And Zola said, the problem is we tend to separate those two things and then they compete with each other. But a healthy church, a living church, needs both. And actually, a healthy church, a living church, needs the third thing too, which Zola and Von Hugo called the institution, but I hate that word for a bunch of reasons. So I'm calling it organized.
The reality is you can't get anything done at scale, you can't get anything done of substance without being organized.
People who made the coffee this morning ran around a little bit like, yeah, amazing. By the way, thank you for making the coffee. But our failing as a church that sometimes struggles to be as organized as we should be is at one point they couldn't find, like, the regular coffee. All they could find was decaf. That is a failure of organization that almost resulted in an emergency.
You can't get good coffee made if you can't organize things. So the point is this. Janelle and I often talk about being a church that is alive and gets things done and is on fire and is smart and intelligent about what it does, that does all of those things because we lean into all three of those expressions. Now, if we could go back to the next slide. Not back. Go forward to the next slide.
For us, that starts with being thoughtful, with being smart about what we do. And here's the thing.
We're talking today about being an inclusive church and how that's part of our DNA. And here's the bit that I want to say to you today.
I think that a lot of people, and maybe even a lot of you, think that to be an inclusive church. And by that, I mean the kind of church that not only welcomes women, but empowers them to actually lead according to their gifts. That's part of what I mean by being an inclusive church. Or being an inclusive church means that we don't just welcome LGBTQ folks. We don't just welcome queer people. We say, God loves you just the way you are. God made you the way that you are, and love is love, no matter what you. You are included and empowered here to be who you are. That's what we mean by inclusive. I think a lot of people, and maybe even some of you, think that being inclusive in that way is really like bending the rules a little bit.
And so when you tell people, I go to a church that, you know, like, welcomes and celebrates gay people, maybe there's a part of you that's like, I know, that's sort of bending the rules, but we bend the rules because we're one of those churches that's all about love.
And some of you might think that love is about bending the rules.
What I would like to suggest to you today, that being an inclusive church is not an outgrowth of us just being, like, so soft and squishy and loving and compassionate that we're just willing to bend the rules.
We're an inclusive church because it's smart.
We're an inclusive church because it represents the very best, rational, reasonable, analytical expressions of theology.
We are an inclusive church because it really is the gospel.
And when we're smart about the gospel, we recognize that that is our only choice.
And I would like to show you that that is true. Not only because Jesus threw a party and invited a tax collector to it and then told those who judged the tax collector, why would you judge this? This is the reason why I'm here. This is the whole reason I exist, is to include people who are excluded. Just in case you thought that this was Jesus bending the rules, I want you to know that this is baked into this book from start to to finish, that everything in this book, from the Hebrew Bible to the Christian Scriptures, is about moving God and us towards genuinely including all people.
And of course, as Christians, it starts with Jesus. So we are inclusive because Jesus included working class fishermen and blind beggars and the Samaritan woman at the well, and the Roman centurion and criminals, like the thief on the cross and, you know, like lawyer type, you know, experts like Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee. Jesus literally included everybody. So when we look at Jesus's ministry as Christians, we should see that he is saying that the Gospel is about welcoming those who have been unwelcome, that the Gospel is about including those who have been excluded.
But going back a little farther than that, did you know that Jesus or that God called God's own people from among a group of slaves, Egypt.
That when God looked down upon the earth and thought, who am I going to choose to be my people? He didn't choose the imperial powers of the world. He chose a group of people who were utterly oppressed and marginalized and beaten into submission. These were his people.
Isaiah, of course, took this and ran with it. In Isaiah chapter two, he said, God is so loving, so inclusive, that all the nations will one day be included in God's goodness and God's grace. So much so that it will bring peace. And we will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Moses law, like the rules, required the people of Israel to make space in all the fields they planted for the poor so that they could eat. It required them to welcome aliens and strangers and foreigners into their midst. This is baked in from the very beginning.
We see this in the New Testament as well, of course. Acts chapter 10. Peter, Peter. Peter is shocked to discover that the spirit of God in Acts chapter 10 is with pagans.
The spirit of God is with the very people who are supposed to be outside.
Peter goes back and he tells all the other Christians and it causes so much trouble that they have to have a big argument about it. The first, first real argument in the church.
This great little story in Acts chapter 16 where Paul shows up at Philippi, he can't find the people that he's looking for, which are Jewish people who live in Philippi, Right? Because everywhere Paul went, because Paul was a Jew and Jesus was a Jew and the church was Jewish. At the beginning, Paul would go to these cities like Philippine, he'd look for the other Jews and he would talk to them about Jesus.
We got to Philippi, he couldn't find the people he's looking for. Instead, he found a group of women outside the gates of Philippi. At a river, praying. And he spoke to them there. And I'm here to tell you that that whole story, the point of that whole story is that the Spirit of God operates outside the gates, on the other side of what is authorized.
It's a story of inclusion.
Paul is so overcome by all of these kinds of things that In Galatians, chapter 3 28, he concludes, almost exasperated. You can almost hear the frustration in his voice.
Look, as far as I can tell, there is no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no free, no male, no female. There are no divisions among us in God's eyes. God's spirit comes to whomever. God wants God's spirit to come. And it doesn't matter what your divisions are.
God is including all people.
This is the gospel. It's not the only expression of the gospel, but it is a deeply important expression of the gospel.
And it matters a lot. I think it matters because, you know, some of you might know that in the middle part of the 20th century, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow identified that love and belonging is a fundamental human need.
We desperately need connection to each other, that we desperately need to know that we belong to other humans who see us for who we really are and accept us for who we really are and welcome us into a community that nourishes us according to our needs.
And you might also know that in our world today, in the United States today, people are literally dying slow deaths because they are alone.
When you are alone and disconnected and you don't have friends in your life and you don't have co workers that you trust and enjoy spending time with, it literally begins to kill you more quickly.
Rates of depression increase, your blood pressure increases, your anxiety increases.
Being disconnected and excluded literally kills you.
Our society is desperately in need of communities that say, you belong here if you want to, you are accepted just the way you are.
I think this matters because at this time in our history, our nation's history, in this political moment, there are increasingly two factions in society. And one of those factions wants to say that the United States is all about those who are winners, those who are wealthy, and those who are willing to be whitewashed, that the United States exists for those people.
And there's another group of people who would like to insist that who the United States actually is, that we actually exist.
For those who are tired and poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free, those words are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty has a name. Did you know that? That the Statue of Liberty has a name.
Statue's Name is Mother of Exiles.
That to me is an expression of inclusion.
It's an expression of the gospel.
And I think this matters because too many churches in America believe that it's not just the United States, but that the church also exists for the winners, for the wealthy, for the and for those who are willing to be whitewashed.
And we do not hold to that here.
We believe in this church that Christianity exists, that it was founded for the purpose of including the excluded and liberating the oppressed.
And I don't care how many churches in the world are willing to jump on a billion bigoted, fascist white supremacist train. This church will not be about that, ever. I don't care if we are part of the minority.
So in the moral words of Malcolm Reynolds, we don't hold to that.
If you got that reference, see me later.
When we invite you to show up here, we invite you into that, when we invite you to volunteer to give your time here. What we're inviting you to do is to help build that.
When we invite you to give your hard earned money to this place, we're asking you to invest in that.
We're asking you to help build a little pocket of inclusion in a world that is increasingly becoming exclusive and we think it's needed more than ever.
Amen.
Would you pray with me?
God, we thank you so much for today and for this opportunity for us to worship and to pray, to lift our voices.
We thank you for these words, for how these stories and narratives inspire us and stretch us and challenge us.
We thank you for how the person and the work of Jesus sometimes makes us uncomfortable and forces us to question whether or not we really believe it.
God, we admit today that we don't always believe it.
And we also admit that however short our faith might fall, that we want you to fill our hearts with trust and belief that a gospel that is inclusive and liberating is true, that it makes a real difference in people's lives. And we ask that you'd help us to be a part of that. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in, to learn more about our community or to support the work we do, Visit
[email protected] We hope to see you again soon, Sam.
