[00:00:08] Speaker A: 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 into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast. So we're glad you're here, and thanks for listening.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Hey, listen, What I really want to be doing today is not delivering yet another book report on the Bible to you, which is what I do every week on this particular Sunday, what I want to be doing. And hopefully this is maybe where I lose some of you. That's okay. If you're new, you should probably know what you might be getting yourselves into.
The last thing that I want to be doing today is giving you some kind of a speech the Sunday after the most recent election. I would rather that you all came to my house and we had a bonfire and we drank, like, eight bottles of wine together.
That's the kind of church that I would really enjoy being a part of.
It's true. Last week I announced where we lived. Janelle informed me. So I suppose you could just show up.
We have been running through a series that we've called Setting Collective Tables. Some of you know this.
The theme of this series leading up to a very difficult, very contentious, very emotionally fraught election has been how do we gather around tables together who are with people who are often different than we are, who think differently, think about God differently, think about politics differently, think about families and kinship and relationships and marriage and sexuality and gender differently than you might think about it. How do we, in other words, share tables with people we might otherwise think of as enemies?
And so one of the fun things about doing what I do is taking the sermon you are planning on giving, and then after a particularly difficult event in our nation's history, throwing it out the window and deciding that the last thing that you really should be talking about or want to be talking about is the importance of listening to people on the other side of the table. That's what I was planning on doing today, but in full transparency, I don't want to.
And I actually think it's not necessarily a good idea to always sit at a table and listen to people who might be genuinely threatening.
I think there's a time and a place for that, and I think that the Christian gospel is very much about crossing difficult and maybe even dangerous boundaries or borders, rather, in order to engage people who you might fear.
But today I want to go in a little bit different direction and Just suggest some other possibilities to you.
I want to read to you this passage. This is my passage for today. And then I'll share with you what I'm noticing about it, encourage you to reflect on what you might be noticing as well. This is Luke chapter 5. I'm going to pick up the reading from Luke 5:12. But today's passage is really just one verse. And you'll see that up on the screen screen in a moment. But backing up to verse 12, Luke chapter 5 says this once when there was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and he begged him, lord, if you choose, you can make me clean. And then Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said, I do choose. Be made clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he ordered him to tell no one. Go, he said, show yourself to the priest as Moses commanded. Make an offering for your cleansing, for a testimony to them. But essentially don't tell anybody else about this. Verse 15.
But now more than ever, the word about Jesus spread abroad and many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. And here we reach our passage for today. But he, being Jesus, would withdraw to deserted places and pray.
I love the version of the Bible. I don't remember which one it is. I think it might be Niv that renders this. He would often withdraw to lonely places.
So today I want to talk to you about lonely places.
Because if it's possible for tens of millions of Americans to all feel lonely at the same time, I think it was this week.
And so I want to ask that you would pray with me before we jump into this God, would you just meet us here today?
Each of us, in our own way, touch our hearts and our minds, illuminate some elusive truth that might shine a light on who each of us really are, who we are meant to be and what we're meant to do and who we're meant to do it with.
And because without that, we just can't.
And so we pray for that grace today. In Jesus name, amen.
I've engaged in, by the way, it's going to be super obvious too, what my politics are today. Reading between the lines, if you didn't already know. I'm really sorry.
You really should have looked at the website before you came.
But Janelle and I have engaged in all kinds of therapeutic practices since Tuesday. We have spent time together in our house, cooking a little bit of food. We have spent a little bit of time in the yard. Mostly Janelle spends time in the yard. Like, you know, I'm, like, on my computer a lot, and she does yard work. And then she comes in all sweaty, and I feel guilty because she's been doing all the yard work. But that's very therapeutic for both of us. And then the other thing that we did this week that we've been doing more recently is walking at the beach.
You know, when we first moved here in 2008, we were at the beach, I kid you not, like, every single day now. We came from Ohio.
There's at least one buckeye in the room. Unfortunately, we lived in Ohio for four years. When we came back here, we were like, oh, Mexican food and the beach, like, you know, it was a revelation. And so we spent, like, you know, every day at the beach for the first couple years we lived here. Very, very therapeutic. And then just like, probably like a lot of you, we sort of forgot about the beach. And, you know, kids got older and they got busier doing other things, and we don't go to the beach very much anymore. So this week we went to the beach twice. And it actually has been lovely. Like, walking on the beach, turns out, is not just a romantic cliche from a Barry Manilow song. It actually is really lovely, really therapeutic.
And at one point, we were walking back from the beach through the harbor, and I saw a gentleman, an older gentleman with a T shirt that said, do you need prayer?
Question mark.
Now, if you've been hanging around here for several weeks, you know that I have brought up to you several anecdotes about T shirts. When I was younger, I believed in Jesus so much that I made T shirts about Jesus that said things like really attractive, pithy things like, ask me about Jesus, right? Or repent. Very clever. I know these turned out to not be very useful evangelistic tools, but I thought it was very cool, you know, just the same. So, consequently, when I see today, because I've been through sort of the crucible of a brand of Christianity that uses those sort of soft gestures to dominate people. When I see people wearing shirts that say, do you need prayer? It feels like an orange flag to me. I'm not going to lie, right? It feels a little like, no, I don't need prayer. Probably not from anybody who would wear a shirt that says, do you need prayer?
And I know that's terribly jaded and cynical of me, and I'm sorry. But I know this game. I played this game. I was very good at this game, and the game goes something like this. I entice you with an opportunity to engage with me around ideas about God and Jesus and Christianity in the right way and the wrong way to be in life. And I do it by offering you something innocuous. Like. Like, don't you just feel guilty saying you don't want prayer?
It's a terribly effective way to draw people in and then to convince them that they're wrong about everything in their lives. And guess what? You're right about it.
And so when I see that, I have to admit it's an orange flag. It's an orange flag. It's the best way I can put it. The red flag was he was wearing a hat that said Trump. And the letters were in, like, red, white, and blue.
And I was like, this combination definitely does not work. Like, not for me, not for a lot of people.
If your politics are conservative, that's okay. I honestly have no problem with that. I mean, I have disagreements, but not, like, a problem with that. What I have a problem with is that somebody wearing a hat that says Trump and a shirt that says do you need prayer? Is somehow blissfully unaware of the fact that this brand he's wearing on his head literally means harm and danger for every woman in this country, whether they know it or not. For every person of color in this country, whether they know it or not. For every LGBTQ person in this country, whether they know it or not. Those bodies are not safe, and they will be increasingly unsafe beginning January 20th.
And I promise you, this is not about your political philosophy.
Are you a fiscal conservative? Fine, we can disagree about that. I'm the opposite of a fiscal conservative. I think we should throw money at everything.
Okay, I'm not going to go there. So the point is this. The point is, I was moderately triggered on my therapeutic walk at the beach by seeing the guy with the T shirt that said, do you need prayer? And the Trump hat.
This is not, to me what prayer is.
Here we have a passage about Jesus going to pray, and Jesus has been, up to this point in Luke chapter five, very, very busy with people. By the way, you heard me read the bit about the leper who wants to be healed. And then Jesus is like, yeah, yeah, okay, I definitely want to heal you. Jesus heals him. Before that, he was calling the disciples. This is the beginning of his ministry. So he goes out into the countryside, and he begins to gather the people who he is going to enlist as his students, people who would not normally qualify to be students of a Rabbi. Before that he was preaching in the synagogue. Before that he was casting a demon out of somebody. Before that he was resurrecting somebody. Before that he was being tempted in the desert. Oh, and by the way, in the midst of all of this, he goes to his homet and they reject him and want to kill him. Jesus has been really busy and we've been talking about being with people in this series. As I mentioned, our series is about sitting at collective tables, tables full of people who are different than we are. And we've been talking about how to do that and how to prepare ourselves for that and how to practice that in a way that is good, that brings peace and justice and goodness into this world. But sometimes you need to get away from people.
Like sometimes people are just too much.
Sometimes people on their T shirts and their hats and their well meaning, like religious doctrines and their political philosophies and their like insufferable outgoingness, you know, like people are just a lot.
And so like Jesus. Sometimes I think it's okay to be alone.
Sometimes it's important to leave that table full of people and to go find a lonely place to be by yourself.
Either because you are just done with people, you are incredibly busy, you have been giving to people and you need that space, or sometimes because let's face it, the people that you've been with just aren't that safe.
They're willing to vote away your rights, they're willing to tell you that you matter less than they do.
And when that happens, I think you need to leave them.
You need to be alone, you need to go away.
This, I think, is what we see Jesus doing. He does it constantly. By the way, nine times in the Gospels it says Jesus has this habit of leaving people and going and finding a lonely place, going and finding a place where he's isolated, going and finding a place where he can be completely by himself.
And I know this feels like counterintuitive because if you feel alone today in a world that seems a bit less safe than it did last Monday and feels like it's going to be a lot more dangerous come January 20th, you might think being alone is not what you need to do.
But the good news is God is in lonely places.
We have most of this book, by the way, is what we sometimes call the Old Testament, what I often call the Hebrew Bible. Most of this is ancient testimony from Jewish people who lived several thousand years ago. And the ancient testimony that they give to us is that God can be found in lonely places.
Psalm 27, 9, 10 says, do not leave me or forsake me.
This is the psalmist crying out from a place of loneliness and despair and hopelessness. Do not leave me or forsake me, God of my salvation. When my father and my mother have forsaken me, then the Lord will take care of me.
I can't tell you how many people feel like their mothers and fathers have forsaken them.
And even those who raised them or nurtured them, who taught them what it meant to be good and right in the world, suddenly are on the other side of what it means to be good and right in the world.
Psalm 23:4 says, Even though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Psalmists over and over again give testimony, give witness to this idea that when you are alone, when you feel utterly isolated and utterly in despair, that it is precisely in that place, if you will resist the temptation to fill it with something else, if you will resist the temptation to fill your isolation, your emptiness, your despair, if you will resist the temptation to relieve that tension, to not buy your way out of it or consume your way out of it, or friend your way out of it or learn your way out of it, if you will resist that and lean into it, that in that place of deep despair and isolation, God is present.
God can be found there.
It's one of the deep ironies of faith.
This, ultimately, I would say, is what prayer is.
I know it is such a, like, tired cliche when terrible things happen to offer our prayers, but I want to ask you, just for a moment, to entertain the possibility that prayer can still be good.
And I. And when I say prayer, I don't mean prayer. That is some kind of a magic trick for getting what you want from God. You know, like saying the right kinds of prayers and the right kinds of ways, with the right kind of attitude, the right kinds of beliefs, the right combination of, like, you know, magical passages of scripture, plus your, like, declarations about what God will do with you. And then suddenly God gives you what you want. That's not prayer.
I know.
It's really frustrating.
Nor is prayer a kind of transaction with a cosmic vending machine in the sky where we, like, give our prayers to God, and if we give enough, if we plunk enough, like, prayerful quarters into the vending machine, then out will come our new car or our nice house or our, you know, promotion at work or, you know, your spouse treating you the way that you think they should treat you or your children.
Performing the way that you think they should perform. Our relationship with God, our encounter with God is not a transaction again, for getting what we want. Prayer is also not a kinder, gentler way of evangelizing people, of getting them to see God and the world and others the way that you want them to see, because you package it in some kind of prayer.
Prayer, I think, instead, is this. It's listening.
It's just listening.
Before Tuesday, I was going to tell you all about what it takes to listen well to others, to really listen, empathetically, honestly, sincerely, to practice good listening skills.
But today I want to tell you that you cannot genuinely, honestly listen to anybody else until you learn to listen to God.
Here's what I mean by that.
When I say that prayer is listening. What I mean is that it is listening in a space that is quiet enough, isolated enough, lonely enough, and maybe even desperate enough that you are ready to hear who you really are, who you were made to be, what you were made to do.
Do you know?
Do you know who you are apart from your mother, apart from your father, apart from your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your spouse or your church or your work? Do you know who you are?
Do you know, no matter what else might come and go in your life, who might live, who might die, who might be born, who might grow up to care for you, or who might forsake you because of their utter self absorption?
If I were to somehow remove everything and everyone of value in your life, would you know who you are if you don't?
If I don't know who I am, how can I be for those people what they need me to be?
How can I be for you or my family or my community, what I've been made to be if I don't know what that is?
When this happens?
When you are able to tune out, to be separated from all of the distractions and temptations of consumption in your life, when you're faced with nothing but your own reflection in the mirror, if you don't know who it is that you really are, then what do you have to give?
I think what happens in that space, and this is just my opinion, I think that what happens when you get into that place that is incredibly lonely is that you discover, paradoxically, that you're not alone, that there is something, that there is somebody, that there is this quality of existence, this love and goodness and kindness that perpetuates that came before you and will be here forever after you. And somehow, by some divine goodness, each of us can make Connection, contact with that goodness.
But there is a grace that floods into that space and we discover that who we really are is in relationship to something completely and totally other from us.
I think we call that thing God.
I think we cheapen it. When we think of this thing as, you know, a white bearded dude who lives in the sky who operates the vending machine that we've been plunking our prayers into all this time.
I think it's only in connection with that holy, completely, totally foreign, strange other thing that animates everything good that we figure out who we really are.
This is a kind of really deep listening that's hard to do in my experience, but I really do believe this, that it's our ability to hear this, this still small, quiet, gentle, completely non coercive, utterly patient and benevolent thing.
It's only by connecting with that that we have any hope of persevering in the work of bringing good news to the poor.
Recovery of sight for the blind, liberation for the oppressed. Listen, if any of you do any of that kind of work, if you have given yourselves professionally or non professionally to the work of repairing this world, what Jewish folks call tikkun olam, making this place right, if you have ever engaged in that kind of work at all, then you have found that you quickly run out of fuel because it is utterly lonely, utterly heartbreaking long term work.
We have not decolonized this patch of dirt because Tara got up here and read a land acknowledgement.
Being aware of the fact that there are indigenous people living in this area who have been divorced from the source of their goodness. Being aware of that is just the beginning.
Are we willing to do the work of actually making this community a better, safer place for them? Are we willing to do the work of making this community a better, safer place for the queer community, for people of color, for women? Is there a more ancient form of bigotry and hatred in the world than misogyny? I think not.
If you're going to do that work, you have to know who you are.
You have to know who you are apart from me sooner or later. If you want to do it and you want to persevere in it, and you want to have some measure of fruitfulness from it, you are going to have to find God on your own.
I can't do it for you.
We can't do it for you.
You can't outsource your connection to God.
I will also say that I don't think you can recognize God in each other until you learn to Recognize God in yourself.
And so when we come together, when we do leave those lonely places and we gather in spaces like this, when we sing together and pray together and laugh together and cry and lament together, when we do holy work together, when we meet each other and we hear each other, this too, I think, is a kind of prayer.
It's really being there for each other in the midst of the highs and the lows of gospel work, of repairing this world.
To do that, you don't need a T shirt, you don't need a hat with a pithy slogan on it. You just need to know by faith that this is the work that you are called to.
Amen.
Would you pray with me?
God, we thank you so much for the privilege of gathering in this space together, of rubbing shoulders with each other, seeking goodness and kindness and peace together.
We admit that we don't always come to these spaces ready to listen, ready to be alone with you or ready to be with you together.
We ask that you would give us the hope and the grace and the faith to lean into really listening to you, making contact with who you've made us to be and what you've made us to do. We pray that you would give us that gift. In Jesus name, Amen.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in.
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