[00:00:00] Foreign welcome to the collective table where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
[00:00:14] This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church.
[00:00:18] Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast.
[00:00:31] So we're glad you're here, and thanks for listening.
[00:00:39] Well, good morning again.
[00:00:41] We are wrapping up today a very short teaching series that we're calling OSC's DNA.
[00:00:50] And what we have done is really just very briefly visit a few passages of scripture to describe the three sort of core characteristics, you might say, of this church that have really developed over the past five to eight years. This church has been through a lot of change. Janelle alluded to that earlier today.
[00:01:11] Ten years ago, there were about 40 people who called this church home. Today there are about 400. Ten years ago there were about 30 or so people out of those 40 who were like, you know, in charge, which was interesting.
[00:01:27] That's not the case anymore.
[00:01:30] But it's become a very different congregation.
[00:01:34] And over that time, one thing that has happened that's been really fun for me as a minister and for Janelle as well, is to just see how this church has sort of stepped into a different identity. And that's really what we're talking about over these three services or these three sort of teams teachings is what has become our identity as a church. What is it that we're sort of leaning into that defines who we are today? I want to share with you the last passage in this very short teaching series. It's Matthew 25:31 to 46, and I want to read it to you now.
[00:02:10] And then, as usual, I want to ask that you sort of sit with this passage. I'm going to share what is really inspiring me about this particular passage today. For you, it might be something different. It's Matthew 25, verses 31 to 46 says this.
[00:02:27] When the Son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.
[00:02:35] Now, son of man, many of you know, is Jesus way of referring to himself or the Messiah.
[00:02:42] He is sort of owning this mantle of this expected Messiah that comes out of the history of Israel as an oppressed people.
[00:02:52] And he's responding to a particular question with this passage. But we'll get to that in just a moment. So when the Son of man comes in all his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Verse 22. And all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from the other, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
[00:03:15] And he'll put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. And then the king will say to those at his right hand, come, you that are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
[00:03:29] For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing.
[00:03:42] I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.
[00:03:48] And then the righteous will answer him, lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink?
[00:03:56] And when was it that we saw you as a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?
[00:04:05] And the king will answer them, truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.
[00:04:16] Then he will say to those at his left hand, you that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison, and you did not visit me.
[00:04:40] And then they also will answer, lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?
[00:04:51] And then he will answer them, truly, I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.
[00:05:00] And these will go away into eternal punishment, the righteous into eternal life.
[00:05:06] Would you just say a prayer with me?
[00:05:10] God, we thank you so much for this time in this space. We thank you for all that it means to be a part of this community of faith, all the ways that you have called us to welcome and include people who have been unwelcome or excluded in Christian spaces. We thank you that you have gathered people here who are courageous enough to question those boundaries.
[00:05:43] We ask, Lord, in the spirit of that same courage, that you would continue to stretch us, that we would continue to be challenged by how we may or may not be welcoming you, serving you, or attending to your needs as we see it reflected in our neighbors, our Co workers, our classmates, we ask that you would give us even more courage in the difficult and unpredictable times ahead to commit ourselves even more to helping those who are suffering.
[00:06:21] We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:06:25] Okay. Well, while Janelle was having a very spiritual crisis this week around communion and communion cups and whether or not that meant, like, that we were becoming the sort of church that, you know, didn't have a weightiness to it, which I just so loved that so much.
[00:06:38] I was having a very unspiritual crisis of my own that I want to share with you.
[00:06:45] Even though it wasn't spiritual, it was no less of a crisis, I assure you. And I'll just begin by saying some of you yourselves, not everybody, but some of you are like, there's something different about Jason today. I'm not sure what it is. You know, I can't believe I'm going to say this.
[00:07:00] There's something different about Jason today. I don't know what it is. Did he get a haircut? Did he lose some weight? Did he gain some weight? I don't know. What is it? And I'll just, you know, put you out of your misery and tell you I'm missing an eyebrow.
[00:07:21] Now, here's the downside of me telling you that I'm missing an eyebrow. Some of you didn't notice, and now it's all you're going to be able to look at for the rest of the time that I'm talking.
[00:07:34] So that's my crisis. And here's what happens. Some of you will know how this works, but, you know, like, I don't like to go to the barber, so I have, like, one of those fancy little, like, cordless, you know, electric shavers, right, that, you know, helps keep all the hairy parts of my body at a certain length.
[00:07:54] And Janelle has convinced me long ago that I've reached the age where my eyebrows are a problem, right? Like, they have a tendency to, like, do this, right?
[00:08:04] And it took years for her to convince me to actually pay attention to that, to do something about it. And my little electric, like, you know, thing has a bunch of little clip on attachments. And one of them is very helpfully labeled eyebrow, but the others are like 3 and 4 and 5 and 6. It's like 3 millimeters, 4 millimeters, 5 millimeters. Anyway, my point is, there's not a small amount of emotional, intellectual energy keeping these attachments straight.
[00:08:34] Plus, the little thing that says eyebrows is very small.
[00:08:38] And there's another problem with getting older. It's Very hard to read things that are printed very small. So one morning, this, I think it was Friday morning, I was tending to my eyebrows and I pulled out several attachments and I found the attachment that said three, and I set it down. I found the attachment that said four, and I set it down. And lo and behold, I found the attachment that said eyebrows. And I took the razor and I skipped a very important step, which was to take the eyebrow attachment and actually affix it onto the end of the thing.
[00:09:19] Have you ever done something and you just were in shock that you can't undo what you just did?
[00:09:29] Like, there is no reversing this.
[00:09:39] Today's sermon is about impact.
[00:09:43] And my mistake was very impactful, and I have determined to live with the consequences.
[00:09:49] This is my, like, opportunity to, like, self flagellate publicly in front of all of you, because I guarantee this will never, ever happen.
[00:10:03] We've been talking a little bit about the DNA of the Oceanside Sanctuary. And what I want to share with you is that this passage exemplifies the third aspect of what it means for us to be the Oceanside Sanctuary.
[00:10:15] We visited these three things to be inclusive, inspiring, and impactful. The first week, I unpacked what I think it means for us to be inclusive. What I propose to you is that being inclusive, which means that we think that women ought to be able to lead regardless of their genitalia, and that queer people to be able to love regardless of who they love, that we ought to be able to welcome and include all kinds of marginalized people, not just because it feels good, not just because we're sort of mushy and we have, like, let go of the rules, but because it actually is what makes logical, reasonable, rational sense, that it is the smart, logical outcome of the gospel to include all people that we haven't just given ourselves over to, like, you know, the soft, squishy parts of our hearts, that it's just smart to do it, that it's what God intended, so we're inclusive. And then last week I said that we are an inspiring church, or at least we seek to be an inspiring church, which I said to you is really a word that literally just means to be filled by the spirit of God. And I said that one of the great insights of Dorothy Zola and the Catholic lay theologian, that she sort of picked this idea up from one of the interesting elements of, like, her. Her sort of idea of a church that embodies all three of these things, is that churches that tend to be very smart and Thoughtful and rational and intelligent tend not to be very inspiring. They tend not to be very spiritual. And that churches that tend to lean into being very spiritual, inspired, filled by the spirit of God, tend to shun being thoughtful, intelligent, smart. Right?
[00:11:57] And so I said to you, following the great cigarette smoking theologian, Dorothy Zola, do we have that picture? Can we just show that picture? I just love this picture. I just can't get over this picture.
[00:12:12] Someday I want this to be my picture. I don't smoke most of the time, but someday I want a picture of myself smoking a cigarette as if to say, I don't care anyway. That's Dorothy Zola, and she's the one that we sort of are modeling this after. So let's go back to that last slide.
[00:12:30] Her great insight, in my opinion, is that healthy churches, living churches, need to really embody both being thoughtful, intelligent on the one hand, and spiritual on the other. Today I want to suggest to you that the third sort of leg of that stool is to be organized, and I'll probably lean especially hard into this because there is no better depiction of disorganized and chaotic than me forgetting to put the attachment on my little electric razor and lopping off my eyebrow.
[00:13:06] We're pretty good at this church, I think, at those first two things.
[00:13:12] I mean, we could be better. You know, there's always room for improvement. We could certainly be like a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more intelligent, a little bit more committed to like really using our brains, the brains that God gave us. You know, we could certainly be better at that. We definitely could be more inspired and inspiring. We definitely could be more filled by the Spirit, led by the Spirit. We, we acknowledge that we could be better in that we want to be better at that. But like, sometimes we're just so disorganized.
[00:13:41] And so I'm inspired right now. That's a little ironic. I'm inspired by the call for us to be a church that is organized. And I think that that's an important element of being impactful.
[00:13:57] And I want to share with you that I think that this passage is ultimately about being impactful.
[00:14:04] Jesus in Matthew chapter 25 is in the midst of a very long answer to a very short question.
[00:14:13] Way back the beginning of chapter 24, Jesus is asked by his disciples about the end, right? The coming day of the Lord, or Judgment Day would be. How many of you have heard of it?
[00:14:26] He's asked by his disciples, tell us about the end. Tell us about Judgment Day. Tell us about the day of the Lord. How will we know when that time is coming? When is it coming? And what you need to know is that they were eager for it to come.
[00:14:39] Because in the Hebrew tradition, judgment day was not a day of judgment for them.
[00:14:44] It was a day of judgment for the nations who were allied against Israel. It was a day of judgment for the Roman Empire, it was a day of judgment for those, you know, like pagan heathens that, you know, existed all around them. It was a day of reckoning, a day of vindication.
[00:15:07] And they were particularly looking for a messiah, the ancient Hebrews were, specifically because they were looking to be liberated, freed from their oppressive foreign neighbors, those who had invaded their land.
[00:15:22] And so they're hoping that Jesus is the Messiah that brings the day of the Lord. So basically they're saying, hey, when does the real stuff happen? Like, you know, you've been teaching us, you've been, like, performing miracles. We're following you all over the place. But then when does, like, the. The insurrection begin?
[00:15:41] Because we're ready. Like, we want that to happen.
[00:15:45] And Jesus gives them very long answer. And through Most of chapter 24, the answer could be boiled down very, you know, very oversimplified way to, hey, maybe don't be so eager because it's going to be a disaster.
[00:16:00] Lots of terrible things are going to happen at the end.
[00:16:05] And then it gets into Matthew 25. And in Matthew 25, Jesus gives them an interesting answer to how they can recognize when the day of the Lord comes.
[00:16:19] I know that's very annoying.
[00:16:21] It's not as bad for me.
[00:16:23] Okay, so Jesus answer to them like, how do you recognize when the day of the Lord is coming is to share three parables. And the first parable is the parable of the 10 virgins.
[00:16:37] The parable of the 10 virgins, I'll just summarize, is Jesus saying, well, you have to be prepared. You have to be ready. You have to be watchful. Those who are watchful won't miss the day of the Lord. Okay, fine, that's all well and good.
[00:16:53] How will we know if we're being watchful? Well, then he tells another parable. This is the parable of the faithful stewards.
[00:17:00] And in this, or for some of you, in your Bible, it says, the parable of the talents.
[00:17:05] The parable of the talents could be boiled down to. Jesus says, well, being watchful, being ready, being faithfully, like, you know, attending to the end means doing something meaningful with what you have, spending your resources in an effective way, being a good steward of what you've been given.
[00:17:27] And then they say, okay, whatever that means, right? So we have to be sort of ready. We have to be attentive, we have to be watchful. And being watchful, being ready, being attentive, means using what we have in an effective way. But what does that mean?
[00:17:40] Then Jesus gives them this parable, the one that I've read to you, the parable of the sheep and the goats.
[00:17:48] And this is a problematic parable because it seems to be about hell.
[00:17:53] But I want to suggest to you that it's not about hell.
[00:17:56] Jesus is using the very judgmental imagery of Gehenna, which is literally a smoldering trash pit. He uses that imagery to drive home another point entirely. And that point is that those who are ready for the end, those who are attentive to the end, those who are being faithful or with what they have been given, are those who relieve the suffering of others.
[00:18:31] That's it.
[00:18:33] It's an incredibly pointed parable.
[00:18:36] He takes the sheep, he puts them to one side. He takes the goats, he puts them to the other side. Jesus says, okay, let me make it really simple for you. There are two kinds of people in this world.
[00:18:46] There are the kinds of people who help those who suffer, and then there are the kinds of people who. Don't you want to be in this camp?
[00:18:59] The people who help those who are hungry, who are naked, who are foreigners, who are in prison.
[00:19:10] You want to know what it means to be faithful with what God has given you?
[00:19:15] Feed hungry people. You want to know what it means to be ready and attentive for the end of the day, the day of judgment, the end of this age.
[00:19:25] Visit those who are in prison.
[00:19:28] Bring kindness and compassion to those who are suffering.
[00:19:32] That's it.
[00:19:35] I mean, I wish that wasn't it.
[00:19:38] I wish Jesus said, you know, there are two kinds of people in this world. On the one hand, there are the people who read the niv, and on the other hand, there are people who read the King James Version. And if you read the niv, you're good.
[00:19:50] Like, that would be so much easier.
[00:19:54] Or like, you know, there are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who, you know, adhere to a kind of supercessionist understanding of God, and those who do not. And you want to be in this camp, that would be so much easier.
[00:20:10] But instead, he really does say, there are two kinds of people in this world, those who try to help relieve suffering and those who do not.
[00:20:22] If you're the one who tries to help relieve suffering, you're Ready.
[00:20:28] You're ready for God to come. You're ready for the end of this age. You're ready for the apocalypse.
[00:20:34] Don't sweat it.
[00:20:37] And for that reason, like, I'll admit, mostly because I want to be ready for the Apocalypse. We are a church that attempts to be impactful.
[00:20:49] We desperately want this to be a community that impacts this community for good.
[00:20:58] We desperately want to be a church that relieves as much suffering as we possibly can.
[00:21:06] I don't care who's suffering. I don't care what color your skin is, what your ethnic background is. We don't care what your sexuality is. We don't care what your religious affiliation is. If you're suffering and you're human, we want to do anything we possibly can to relieve that.
[00:21:26] And that's hard because the world is full of enormous suffering, most of which we can't do anything about.
[00:21:37] And so it takes tremendous effort to just do a bit of good here in Oceanside.
[00:21:50] And that effort, we have learned the effort to be impactful is mostly about being organized.
[00:22:01] It's mostly about being organized. It's mostly about, like, having your crap together.
[00:22:09] Because here's the thing about it, like, any one of us can do good.
[00:22:13] Any one of us.
[00:22:15] Any one of us as an individual can go out and we can make a little bit of difference by being kind to somebody who's maybe struggling in their life, by. By having a little bit more empathy and recognizing what we have to bring to that situation and maybe doing a little something. Any one of us can be a little bit better. Any one of us can do a little less harm in the world.
[00:22:38] But here's what's hard, right? So if you were raised on Disney films like my kids were, you might think that if just all of us individually do our best, that the world will become a better place. And can I just tell you that it is a part of the disillusionment of maturity to realize that that is a lie.
[00:23:00] It's not enough for all of us as individuals to do something, because suffering exists at scale.
[00:23:13] Suffering is structurally built into our systems.
[00:23:19] And those who cause suffering, either out of callous disregard for other human beings or out of intentional evil. Those who cause suffering are highly organized.
[00:23:35] So to impact the world for good, we also have to be organized.
[00:23:43] Now, here's what I think is really interesting about Jesus's parable here, is that he doesn't just say that we need to be people who are trying to impact the world for good. He goes about this in a really. I Think sort of fascinating way.
[00:23:58] What he does is he challenges his disciples idea of identity.
[00:24:05] You remember this bit where Jesus says, I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink and I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing and I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.
[00:24:17] And then the righteous will answer him. This is the fascinating part you guys.
[00:24:22] The righteous will answer him, when?
[00:24:28] When did we see you naked? When did we see you in prison? When did we see you hungry?
[00:24:38] The people who are doing the good that Jesus describes don't even realize that they have done it to God.
[00:24:46] And likewise the people who have caused the suffering, they ask the same question, well, when did we see you hungry or naked or in prison or.
[00:24:55] And he says very interestingly, when you did it to anybody who was suffering, you were doing it to me.
[00:25:06] What I think is interesting about this is that Jesus challenges the whole idea of identity by saying this.
[00:25:15] Because if you are an ancient Hebrew, you are depending on your identity.
[00:25:21] Like you're saying, hey, it's all good because we are sons and daughters of Abraham. It's all good because we are a part of the chosen people. In fact, it's one of the three tenets of ancient Judaism is election, right? It's monotheism, election and eschatology.
[00:25:37] Election means God chose them, so their identity is that they belong to God.
[00:25:42] And what this leads to is a kind of taking for granted that their identity, all the external markers, all the coded ways that they guarantee that they are a part of the right people, all of that is assumed to mean that they are good, that they are in.
[00:26:04] But Jesus dismantles that. And it's not just here. This is really the culmination of Jesus dismantling identity. Back In Matthew chapter 12, you know, some people come running up to Jesus. He's out doing his thing, you know, he's turning water into wine, you know, and healing people and all kinds of stuff.
[00:26:21] And so people run up and they say, hey Jesus, your mom and your brothers, they're calling for you, they want you back at home.
[00:26:29] I'm just reading between the lines, but I get the impression that like Jesus family is sort of done with Jesus and his little project.
[00:26:36] And they're like, hey, go get our son, go get our brother, bring him back home. Jesus says something really fascinating in Matthew chapter 12. He says, oh no. And he points to all the people that he's ministering to, all the People who are following him. And he says, these are my mother and my brothers.
[00:26:54] When he does that, he radically challenges the idea of identity.
[00:27:02] He says, oh, I don't belong to them because of blood. I belong to them because of the kingdom.
[00:27:11] In Luke chapter 10, this is probably his most famous way of interrogating and challenging identity. It's the parable of the Good Samaritan.
[00:27:19] The Good Samaritan is all about somebody who everybody assumes is bad because he's a Samaritan doing what is righteous and good.
[00:27:30] It would be like today, depending on what your political affiliation is like, that parable might be called the parable of the good Republican or the good Democrat or the good right leaning Libertarian, or the parable of the good anarchist, or the parable of the good democratic socialist. Whoever it is that your enemy is.
[00:27:52] Jesus challenges the idea of identity. The idea that the way we clothe ourselves with markers of belonging somehow become a proxy for our righteousness. And Jesus says, that is not how righteousness works.
[00:28:10] You're not good, you're not okay, you're not in because you wear the right clothes or wear the right religious, you know, symbolism around your neck or read the right version of the Bible.
[00:28:21] That's not what gets the job done.
[00:28:25] John the Baptist agrees, by the way. In Matthew chapter three, while all of his interrogators come running out to him, John says something amazing to them in in Matthew chapter three, he says, do not say to yourselves you are children of Abraham.
[00:28:42] He's saying the same thing. He's saying, you can't consider yourselves okay just because you're Jewish.
[00:28:49] He says, do not say to yourselves, we are children of Abraham. For I say to you that God could raise up new children from these rocks on the ground.
[00:29:01] Later he says, you know, the ax is at the root of the tree. God is ready to cut you down because you're not doing what's right.
[00:29:10] And this is not new. This is not new to Jesus. This is not new to John. The idea of identity is an obsession for ancient Hebrew scripture.
[00:29:20] In Deuteronomy 7:6, I love this passage.
[00:29:25] Deuteronomy, chapter 7, verse 6. Moses says that God chose Israel as a treasured possession.
[00:29:37] A treasured possession.
[00:29:41] That's ironic imagery because what you need to know is that ancient Hebrews were considered anything but treasured.
[00:29:53] Ancient Hebrews were reviled and hated. They were slaves in Egypt. The point of this is that God chose them.
[00:30:06] Their identity comes not from their choosing God, but from God choosing them.
[00:30:17] The point of that is that God can Choose anyone.
[00:30:21] If God can choose a bunch of ancient Semitic slaves from Egypt and make them his treasured possession, then God can choose anyone. In who are you to say that God can't?
[00:30:37] You didn't bring your smarts to this relationship.
[00:30:43] God chose you by God's own spirit. Jesus escalates this interrogation of identity when he says, God not only identifies with ancient Hebrew slaves. God not only identifies with those who are, you know, followers of the Torah, God identifies with those who are hungry.
[00:31:06] God identifies with those who are in prison.
[00:31:09] God identifies with those who are naked.
[00:31:14] The challenge here is that every time we encounter somebody who is suffering, we have encountered God.
[00:31:26] We have gotten the whole idea of identity and belonging utterly backwards.
[00:31:33] We don't belong because we chose to belong. We belong because God chose us. And what that means is that God identifies with those who are lowly.
[00:31:44] I love the way Dorothy Day talks about this. She's the great Catholic social worker from the 20th century. Dorothy Day says, I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.
[00:32:04] I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.
[00:32:10] And I love that quote because there's a lot of people I really don't like, honestly.
[00:32:20] People I don't want to spend time with, people whose texts I don't answer for days at a time, people whose, you know, emails I went to spam.
[00:32:28] You know, people who, when they come out of their front doors and wander into their front yards, I go inside just because I don't want to talk to them.
[00:32:38] People that I skip Thanksgiving because I don't want to sit across the table from them. My life is so full of, like, insanely stupid, annoying and unlikable people that Dorothy Day reminds me that I probably don't love God very much.
[00:32:56] It's a constant challenge because when I encounter them, Matthew 25 tells me I'm encountering God.
[00:33:11] And so their identity, their identity in God, the identity of every hungry person, the identity of every poorly clothed or God forbid naked person, or the identity of every prisoner, no matter how guilty they are, Their identity is defined by God's choosing them, not me choosing them.
[00:33:38] So I'm confronted by that every time I meet people that I don't like, that I don't trust, that I don't want to be around for this reason because I love God so little. I need you.
[00:33:58] Because if fixing the world, repairing the world, doing righteousness in the world depended on me, none of it would get done.
[00:34:12] And so we need each other.
[00:34:16] We need a community of people. Who are committed to helping each other to relieve a little bit of suffering in the world. Even when it's people that I don't like.
[00:34:32] This is how we scale up the good that we can all individually do.
[00:34:39] This is how we create structures of righteousness.
[00:34:43] I'll let you know a little secret. That's what I think church is.
[00:34:48] Church is just a strategy for scaling up good in the world.
[00:34:56] It's a political organizing scheme.
[00:35:00] Not political in the sense of, like, getting you to vote for the person I think you should vote for, but political in the sense that what we do impacts our community and is therefore unavoidably political.
[00:35:15] Feeding hungry people, it turns out, is quite political.
[00:35:20] Visiting those who are in prison is political.
[00:35:24] Relieving suffering, unfortunately, is political.
[00:35:28] So the church exists for us to be organized about it.
[00:35:33] Now, to be organized isn't enough, obviously. We could be organized and do terrible things.
[00:35:40] The world is full of institutions that are organized to do bad.
[00:35:47] So being organized isn't all that it takes. We also need to be thoughtful and full of the spirit.
[00:35:56] But being organized will help us amplify our impact for good. And it will help diminish the inadvertent, unintentional ways that. That we cause harm even from the best intentions.
[00:36:12] And so we try to be as impactful and as organized as we can about it.
[00:36:20] Okay, we don't have time to talk about this. We're not going to talk about this. Don't worry. But as you came in, hopefully you also received this handout. It's a summary of our Mission 2030 dreaming session that we did at the beginning of June. And I'm only bringing it up for two reasons. Number one, because it's an example of us trying to be organized.
[00:36:40] We are spending this whole year, our 150th year, as a congregation trying to figure out where the spirit of God is leading us, trying to be thoughtful about it and trying to be organized about it so that our next five years can be as impactful as possible.
[00:37:01] And you are helping us to do that.
[00:37:03] And so this is a summary of what we heard from those of you who participated in our Dreaming session, which was the first Sunday in June.
[00:37:12] Please have a look at it. When you have an opportunity, tell us if you feel like this is accurately representing what you think is true about this crazy endeavor that we are in together.
[00:37:27] The core commitments that I think are worth paying attention to, that we're beginning to discern from what you have told us, is that this is a church of radical belonging that this is a church that believes in putting our faith into action.
[00:37:42] That this is a church that believes in holistic partnerships with other nonprofits and local government organizations and businesses.
[00:37:51] That this is a church that believes in liberating discipleship and learning to follow Jesus for the purpose of liberating people who are oppressed. And that a lot of this leans on this idea of a kind of living, sacred story that we are shaping together.
[00:38:09] Some of this is new for us, that's exciting to us, that we're beginning to grow and lean into new things. But I wanted you to know that that is what this is about. It's about us learning to do this together.
[00:38:24] Amen.
[00:38:25] Would you pray with me?
[00:38:27] God, we thank you again for today and this opportunity for us to gather, for us to unpack a little bit what it means for us to be the Oceanside Sanctuary.
[00:38:42] How we are being drawn into a community that believes in being inclusive, welcoming all people radically doing away with the boundaries that have harmed and oppressed others.
[00:39:01] But also a church that is truly inspired, filled by your spirit, following after where your spirit is going.
[00:39:10] And lastly, that we are being drawn into doing this in a way that is organized and intentional so that we can have the most impact on our community for good.
[00:39:24] It's my prayer, God, that you would fill us all with a sense of courage to lean more deeply into these commitments and that you would really set our imaginations on fire for what's possible in the future.
[00:39:39] We pray all this in Jesus name.
[00:39:41] Amen.
[00:39:47] Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in.
[00:39:53] To learn more about our community or to support the work we do, Visit
[email protected] We hope to see you again soon.
