[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 into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast. So we're glad you're here and thanks for listening.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Good morning.
Really, every week I'm like, good morning. You guys are like, good morning.
It's not that early.
Okay, so so many like, hey, thank you. Appreciate that, Roger.
Mark always does such an amazing job anytime he speaks. I really appreciate him leading us in communion this morning.
And I was so focused on how he was speaking the words of institution. We don't he. He referred to it as the words of institution. Today, we don't often refer to it that way. We're not. We're a fairly formal or informal church. So I always appreciate the. That Mark brings, like, a more exact sensibility to it. So I was so focused on his words of institution. And then right after we took the bread, I was like, in it. I was in that moment and then I heard somebody behind me say, oh, that bread's really good today.
And I was like, okay, mental notes.
Always buy the French bread from Walmart.
So that was fun.
For those of you who don't know, I'm Jason Coker. I'm one of the co lead ministers here. And we're going to continue on a teaching series that we've been calling Prophetic Imagination. We've been visiting passages mostly from the Hebrew Bible. Maybe Old Testament is how you normally think of it, but also started out in the New Testament, and we'll actually end up in the New Testament before this series is over.
And today we're going to continue that series. We've been really kind of asking ourselves, what can we learn from these prophetic characters in Scripture? What it means to have an imagination for something new, something different, something that's maybe possible beyond our imagination, something that we maybe didn't dare to imagine before. And spoiler, this is what I think prophets do. Prophets, generally speaking, don't, like, predict the future. Sometimes in churches, we are raised with the idea that prophets were prophets because they, like, foretold the future or something. In Judaism, that's not the case. Prophets were those who were able to imagine new possibilities and often critique their given society, their leaders, for not leaning into what was good and right and true. So we are going to continue with that series today, but I'm going to do my best to Squeeze my sermon into a smaller portion here at the beginning because we also, for those of you who are new, we also have a bit of a business meeting in the middle of my sermon to do. So I'm going to try to make that seem as little like a business meeting as possible. And I'm going to try to fold it into what I have to share today from Genesis chapter 15. I think it makes sense. If it doesn't, Tina will let me know later or at the time. Yes, that's true. That's true. But that's where we're going today. So today we're going to read from a passage in Genesis chapter 15, verses 1 through 6. If you didn't bring a Bible, the words will be up on the screen. Before we do that, though, would you just pray with me?
God, we thank you for today. We thank you for the time and the space that we have come to here this morning. The gift that you have given us of an opportunity to gather here on the corner of Freeman and Topeka in a place where people have been gathering for close to 100 years in a congregation that has been gathering every Sunday for almost 150 years now. We don't take that lightly. The idea that we are connected somehow to this legacy of people from the past who stretch out into the distance and all together with one voice, testify to the goodness of your promises.
It's our prayer today that you would reconnect us with a sense of your promises for us as individuals, as families and as a church, as a congregation. But you would connect us with the sense of that we pray all this in Jesus name, Amen. I've shared this before. I apologize if I talk about this too much. But Janelle and I like to camp, right? Like that's like our vacation, you know, like we'll hitch up a trailer and go camping. And one of our favorite places to camp. You heard this in her sermon a week or two ago now. We often like to go to the desert. There's something about, like being middle aged. Like, suddenly you like to go to the desert a lot. I never liked to the. I never like the desert. When I was a kid. It was stark, it was ugly. There was nothing interesting to look at, I thought. But now I'm like, we crave the desert. There's something about how stark it is that appeals to us. Maybe like the ability to be free from the noise of our lives, right? Both visually free and like free auditorially and free. Like feeling like we're in the middle of Nowhere. So we'll, like, pull our trailer out sometimes into the middle of nowhere in the desert, where it's also cheaper, which is good. And. And we'll camp there. And I think two summers ago, we were camping out by, like, Anza Borrego, but not in a particular spot. We're, like, on BLM kind of land, right? So, like, we were really in the middle of nothing, and I went out in the middle of the night. Now, I'm not going to be crude here, but for those of you who don't know, if you're not in your 50s, at some point in your life, you start waking up more often in the middle of the night for a particular reason.
And.
Right. And you're like, when did this start happening?
And that happened to me. And so this was before we have our current trailer, which has a bathroom. We were in this old 1969 aristocrat trailer that Janelle and I had, like, refurbished. There was no bathroom in it, so we had to get up and go outside to use the restroom. And I was standing out in the middle of the desert at, like, 3:00 in the morning, doing what you do at 3:00 in the morning. And I looked up and could not believe the stars.
Like, it took my breath away.
Like, there's something about. And I know you know this, but there's something about, like, being so far away from light pollution, so far away from the impacts of civilization, that you are able to, like, it looks like you're staring a billion years into the past.
Like, you can see the depth of the Milky Way in ways that you never knew. And I'm like a city kid. I was raised in Southern California, didn't spend a lot of time in the wilderness growing up. And so I'm always, like, awestruck by that. And I don't know about you, but for me, when I see an image of something vast and beautiful and incomprehensible, I am two things. I'm reminded how, like, infinitesimally small I am, which is a good thing, right? It's good to have that perspective. Like, I am a point of existence at one in one spot on the planet and in one particular spot across the timeline that is going to, like, be here and gone before anybody knows it. And somehow that comforts me.
Like, I don't know why that doesn't fill me with existential dread, but it doesn't. It has the exact opposite effect. I'm inspired by it. Like, my insignificance makes me feel like, so Many things are possible. Like, as if. If this is possible, then anything is possible.
Right now, I share that story because, you know, it's. It was a significant moment for me.
Afterwards, I was like, we got to buy a trailer with a bathroom. So.
Which we did. But in this story, Genesis, chapter one, verses one through six, I think Abram has a similar experience.
And so I want to read this to you and then ask you to just reflect on what you're noticing about this passage, and then I'll share with you what I think I'm noticing. It says, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abram. I'm your shield. Your reward shall be very great. Side note, I prefer the translation that says, and I am your very great reward. But that's not today's sermon. That's another sermon, verse two. But Abraham said, o Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus.
And Abram said, you have given me no offspring. And so a slave born to my house is to be my heir.
Now, pause here for a moment. What's been going on prior to this? I know you know the story of Abram, but the story, essentially in a nutshell, is he is. He's from Persia, right? He's from another place, another culture, another city. And he is convinced that he has to leave behind everything that he knows and go to discover something new. He believes God has called him to do this. And so he follows the call of God to leave behind everything that he knew to discover something new in his life. And then he proceeds to, like, you know, wander aimlessly from one situation to the next, you know, completely screw up every circumstance he stumbles into. He gets into a bunch of trouble because he claims that his wife is his sister, because he's afraid that, you know, people will be jealous for her. And then that turns out to cause real problems. And so. And then, of course, this promise involves him having offspring. And now he's getting really old. So when we come up here to Genesis 15, what's happening is Abram, many years later, is wondering, where's this promise? Where's this promise for offspring? Where's this promise for a future for me, for my lineage, for my family? Where's this promise of a better thing? I'm getting too old for this. And so he's, like, out in the middle of the wilderness, camping in a tent, right? And he wakes up in the middle of the night, frustrated, maybe Angry, confused, and says, God, what about your promise? What about what you said was going to happen? What about this better future that you promised for me? I don't even have an heir of my own.
That's the complaining that he's doing.
It's legitimate complaining. I think it's helpful sometimes to shake our fist at God and say, hey, what gives? I thought it was supposed to be better than this.
And Abram said, you've given me no offspring. And so a slave born in my house will be my heir. But the word of the Lord came to him. Okay, so this is Abram having an encounter with God.
The word of the Lord came to him, this man, meaning the son of the slave in his household. This man shall not be your heir. No one but your very own issue shall be your heir. And then he brought him, that is Abram outside and said, look toward the heavens and count the stars. If you're even able to count them, so shall your descendants be.
And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Okay, so some things that I'm taking away from this passage, I think Abram has this sort of stargazing moment. He's at a point of crisis in his life. He's trying to figure out what his future is. He's trying to figure out what God has for him. Did he go the wrong way? Did he make the wrong ch. Voices? And he has this inspiring, mind blowing experience of staring at the stars in the middle of the night and a voice coming to him, God coming to him and saying, this is what your offspring will be like.
So there are a bunch of things that I think we could take from this story. Things that many of you might really identify with. One would be, I think one lesson from Abram's story is that oftentimes we have to leave behind the old in order to enter into the new.
I mean, that's like the story of Christianity. It's death and resurrection. In order to experience newness in your life, in order to experience new birth, in order to experience genuine resurrection, you have to first be willing to die to what came before.
That's sort of baked into our faith and it's right there in this story. And that I think is very powerful.
I think it's also very powerful to notice that after he dies, so to speak, he gives in to what his old life was, that he spends a lot of time in sort of chaos. He wanders, he runs into all kinds of trouble, he makes terrible decisions. And I know that it's true that for me, when I left behind everything I knew in my life of faith and said, I'm not about these things anymore, that I had a period of several years where I really wandered, where I had to reckon with what I was leaving behind and what that meant for me. Who am I now? What does it mean for me to be a Christian? Am I a Christian? Do I believe in any of this stuff? Right? And of course, that's true for any kind of, like, leaving behind any kind of dying to self, whether it's your spiritual life or your family life or relationships or career. I think that's a common pattern.
We leave behind something old and then it's hard for a while.
And in the middle of that wilderness, in the middle of that wandering, oftentimes you're like, was this even worth it?
Did I make the right choice?
Was I wrong to do that?
I think that's where Abram is when we enter into this story.
I think another thing that's true about the story that I think is very powerful is we see Abram sort of coming to the end of himself. After that wandering, after that effort, after trying to get it right, he comes to the end of himself. And I think that's what's happening when he comes to God with a fist and shakes at him in the sky and says, hey, where's that promise that you gave me? I thought that this was going to work out. I think that's an indication that Abram is, like, just giving up. Like, okay, never mind. I can't make this happen. And I think that's powerful.
There's a whole bit after this which is another sermon where Abram enters into a covenant with God. And that covenant, that narrative is really important, really difficult, really fraught, because it's very violent.
But that's another sermon, too. We'll do that another time. But I do think a takeaway is oftentimes when we come to the end of ourselves after that period of chaos, we come to a new commitment in our lives where we say, okay, this is what I'm about.
This is how I'm going to live. This is how I'm going to be. And I think that happens in this passage.
But what I want to settle on for this passage is this verse here at the end that becomes very important for Christianity as a tradition.
In Genesis, chapter 15, it says this. And we'll go back to verse five. He brought him outside and said, look towards the heavens and count the stars, if you're able to count them. And Then he said to him, so shall your descendants be. Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars that you can't even count. And then it says in verse six, and he, meaning Abram, believed the Lord.
And he credited it or reckoned it or accounted it to Abram as righteousness.
This is an incredibly important passage in Judaism and Christianity because what's happening here is that Abram's act of belief, like, when he receives that promise and he believes it, the Jewish tradition says that that moment of belief means that Abram is righteous.
He's righteous, he's right, he's good, he's acceptable.
Now, this notion of Abram's belief becoming righteous gets twisted and screwed up in so many wrong ways by Christianity that I think it's important to, like, remember what Judaism means by this. Because, like, this is their scripture, this is their faith.
You won't find a bunch of people running around who are practicing Jews who would say, all that matters is what you believe.
In fact, that's not the tradition of righteousness in Judaism at all. This word righteous in this passage is sadaka in Hebrew. And sadaka means very straightforwardly. It means charity or justice.
When you do something good for somebody in need, when you relieve somebody of their suffering, when you change a system that is wrong and you make that system right, that is sadaka. It is righteousness.
So Jesus is referring to in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness sake, for for they will be satisfied. And what's nutty about Jesus's sentence there is that nobody who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is satisfied. Nobody. If you care about what's good and right and true, if you care about charity, if you care about relieving suffering, if you care about making unjust systems just, you will spend the rest of your life afflicted and miserable.
And so it's. I know some may be more afflicted at least once a month than others. So it's crazy that Jesus says those who hunger for tzedakah will be satisfied in the kingdom of God.
Anyway, the point is, tzedakah means when you do good stuff. That's what it means when you do good stuff. Now, what's revolutionary About Genesis, chapter 15, verses 5 and 6, is that in Judaism, in the heart of this tradition that says tzedakah is when you do good stuff, that Abram did something good when he believed, we tend to, like, bifurcate belief in action.
We tend to make that a kind of Dichotomy, right? But here in Judaism, what they're saying is, boy, we want to be good. We want to be right. We want to be righteous. We want the world to be fixed. We want the world to be prepared. But, like, how do we do that? How do we do that work of repairing the world? How do we do the work of righteousness? And this passage indicates that when we, like, dig down into what righteousness is, when we get to the core of it, the heart of it, what we discover is what we believe.
The great insight of Judaism is if you want to know why you act the way you do, find out what you actually believe.
And so belief is terribly important.
What do you really believe?
It's not all that's important.
Great mistake of Protestant Christianity, of which I'm like, you know, a proud member of Protestant Christianity, because I, like, protest everything, right? But, like, the great mistake of Protestant Christianity is to take this idea and to say, all that matters is belief.
And so if I give you a list of things that you should believe and you say, yeah, I believe those things, then we're all like, yep, you're good.
You can do whatever you want. Thank God. Jesus forgives you.
All that matters is what's inside. No, that's an enormous perversion of Genesis chapter 15 and everything that Paul wrote.
Paul didn't believe that.
Instead, it's a.
It's a. What is it?
It's a dialectic.
It's a rhythm.
It's a kind of rhythm of realizing that the way that you act is actually a revelation of what you really believe. And then as you dig into what you really believe, you're like, oh, I didn't know I believed that. No wonder I'm acting this way, right? And then there may be an opportunity for you to actually interrogate your beliefs and change your mind. There's a word for that in religion. It's called repentance. And then you start acting differently.
I mean, there's so many examples that I could give from your marriage, but I won't.
Oh, that's why I speak that way to my children. That's why I speak that way to my partner. Anyway, the point is this. Tzedakah means that what we actually believe is a kind of action, that it's the root of what we really believe.
And this is where I think this passage is helpful for our series, Prophetic Imagination. Because what Abram believed was something that was impossible. And this is really the heart of this passage for Judaism, that what makes Abram's belief Righteousness is not just that he believed, but we all believe something. No action is possible without belief, but rather that Abram believed something that God promised that was ridiculous.
That this old man and this old woman, who were utterly childless as far as they knew, barren, would somehow give birth to a people as numerous as the stars. That's just absurd.
But Abraham believed it.
So prophetic imagination, then, among other things that we've covered in this series, means the ability to believe the impossible.
And I know. I know how crazy that sounds, because a lot of people who look a lot like me and stand in places just like this, in buildings just like this, have told you that to be a good Christian, you have to be willing to believe the impossible. And then I get to tell you what the impossible is, and it, like, makes me richer or whatever. Right?
So don't believe me.
But tzedakah means the ability to have an imagination for something that's good and right and true, but seems totally impossible.
Like, I don't know, a United States of America without white supremacy.
I can't think of anything more impossible than that, except for maybe a Christian church without homophobia.
Okay, that's definitely impossible.
Or, I don't know, a culture without misogyny.
These are impossible things, but in my opinion, in my humble opinion, they're righteous.
Okay, so this brings us to our business meeting.
Some of you know that our church is in the middle of a process called Mission 2030, where we're kind of reimagining our future.
We do this about every five years.
2025 is the last year of our current mission commitment, which is what we call sort of our vision for the future.
And many of you have already participated in this process. We're not going to go over it, but on one side of this flyer that you received today is an outline of what this process is, is looking like so that you can actually see where we're going. But what I need to share with you today is what you have already told us you believe about this church.
So the first real stage of this process was what we called the Discovery Process, where we asked the congregants here to tell us what you think about this place.
And so I want to share with you the results of that today. I think that's important.
And after today, what we're doing is we're asking people in the community, partners in the community, some of the same questions. What do you think about the Oceanside Sanctuary? Who are we really? When are we at our best? All those kinds of questions. So that we know not just what we think of this church, but we want to know, like, what does City hall think of this church? What does OPD think? I could tell you what OPD thinks about this church.
What does the LGBTQ Resource center think about this church? What does our denomination think about this church? What does Feeding San Diego, one of our partners in our food pantry, think about this church? Anyway, that's what we're doing next. But for now, this is what you have told us. And essentially the questions we asked you were a few variations on three questions. Number one, what do you think are our strengths? What do you think we're good at? Number two, what do you think are future possibilities for the Oceanside Sanctuary? Number three, what do you think are our challenges? And this is what those of you who participated in this identified. You said that we are an inclusive, welcoming and diverse congregation. And you love that. You think that's a strength of ours.
You said that we have thoughtful teaching and worship, but you thought that that was a strength of ours.
You said that we are committed to social justice, action and service in the community. And you think that is a strength of ours. You said that we are a community committed to connection and care, that we value your spiritual growth and your connection to each other. And you thought that that was the strength of ours.
And I'm so gratified by those first four things. Can I just tell you, because several years ago, like, as we were thinking about what kind of church we might want to be, like, we came up with, like, three words to describe what we hoped this church would be. And because I'm a recovering evangelical, I can only do these kinds of lists with alliteration. So it's like, I can't help it, right? And so we were like, we're gonna be an inclusive and inspiring and impactful congregation. And I see those three things in those first four very clearly.
Actually, that fourth one is new and kind of a surprise to me.
I'm not at all surprised to hear you all say, well, we're an inclusive and welcoming church. And we love that. We have, like, thoughtful teaching that makes us all angry every Sunday. And we love that. And we're committed to advocating for those who are suffering. And we love that. I did not expect any one of you to say that. We are a close knit community.
And I gotta say, like, that's not necessarily been something that we have been known for in the past.
So it is incredibly, like, gratifying to me to hear you all say that you feel like you're a part of a community that cares for each other. I hope that's true.
And if you don't feel that way, if you're like, I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know what they're talking about. Like, we want to help with that, but that's really important, I think. And then the fifth thing is also new and was a shock to me. Like, I just about fell out of my chair.
The fifth thing is that you think that the challenge that we have ahead is balancing growth with our mission and our ministry work.
And here's why that was a shock to me. It was a shock to me because overwhelmingly, a bunch of said, oh, we want this church to be bigger.
And that's usually not the case. Like, we're a church of about 300 people. You know, it doesn't look like that, because this is the kind of church where, like, you're like, yeah, I can go once a month. That's fine.
Which is great.
I'd come once a month if I could. But the other.
Did I say that out loud? Okay, so the other three weeks, I'd be on jeep tours with, like, you know, Danielle and Wendy. But I love this church so much.
But the point is, usually churches like this are like, oh, we don't want to grow, because we just, like, we know each other and we like knowing each other, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But it really surprises me to hear you say two things. Number one, we really want to grow. Like, some of you were like, this place should be a huge church because so many people, like, don't know that it exists. And that's nice.
But you're also very concerned that if we do keep growing, and you guys, we've grown a lot in the last two years. If you've been around for two years or more, you know that some of you are very worried that if we keep growing, that we're not going to keep doing those first four things.
And that's an important concern. It's why we're doing this.
What I want to suggest to you is this, that these five things, these. These five strengths, these five ambitions, these five values that this congregation has expressed.
It describes a church that really is impossible.
Like, this doesn't happen.
And what I'm wondering is, like, do you believe that it's possible?
Do you believe that it's possible for a church to be free of religious and ethnic and gender and sexual bigotry? Do you believe that that's Possible because it's really hard to find, like, religion is inherently conservative, and we are very intentionally not.
And I don't mean Democrat, Republican, conservative. I mean, like, conservative. Like, oh, everything's working. We can't change anything. Like, we're very intentionally, like, constantly. No, no. Like, Abram. We have to be willing to leave where we are, to go where there's a new possibility.
This church is only here because we were willing to do that almost 10 years ago.
Do you really believe that it's possible for a church to have, like, teaching and worship and groups and classes where you really can be honest about who you are and what you think about God, including, like, whether you think there is a God and including whether or not you think that if there is a God, that. That God has a lot to answer for, because this is that kind of church right now.
I met a guy a couple weeks ago, brand new here. I don't see him. So I think I can tell this story. So I got up here, and I did the announcements. I wasn't preaching that day. I got up, I did the announcements, and then I went out. And I often, like, I have a hard time when I'm not preaching. Like, I'm very fidgety, you know, because I don't have any. I don't have. I'm not doing my job right? So I'm always, like, wandering around when I'm not preaching. And I wandered outside, and there's a guy out there. He's leaning against the wall, and he's doing this.
And I walked out, and he was like, oh, hey.
He said, I just. He must have recognized who I was, right? He's like, I just. Just out here. He's like, honestly, I just needed a break. Like, I just can't. I just can't do it too much. And I was like, yeah, what do you think I'm out here for?
I'm like, four songs is a lot. Like, no offense, but, like, when it gets too Jesus y up in here, I start getting a little nervous, right?
And so then we had a great conversation. And he was like, I don't even know what I'm doing here. I don't think I even believe in God. And I was like, oh, yeah, I know we got lots of people here like that. And he was like, really? I said, yeah. I said, there's a Jewish guy serving communion today.
And he was like, what?
I was like, hey, I got to get back in there because I'm the pastor, so I think that's good.
I think that's deeply healthy.
I think that if we could be the kind of church that teaches and gathers and worships in a way that really makes space for everybody without insisting that you all pretend to believe exactly the same things that I do, that we would be a much healthier church. But that's very unusual.
Do you really believe that that's possible? Do you really believe that it's possible for a church to have a real impact on its community, not just for good, but for the justice that is desperately needed for people who are harmed and marginalized and oppressed every day by society and especially by religion? Do you believe that that's possible? Do you believe that it's possible for a church to grow and still remain that kind of church?
So listen, I just have one thing really today to say to you. And that is that's really impossible.
It really is.
Can it happen?
I don't know. I hope so.
I can tell you that if it does happen, for the next five years, it will be because people like you were willing to work for it.
Like you were willing to show up and actually do stuff.
And what I mean by that is that you're actually, like, willing to show up for each other.
Like, actually willing to take your time and put your efforts, invest your life into other people.
If we're willing to do that, then it's possible. But it's not possible at all if we don't believe that it's possible today. For me, that's what the story of Abram is about.
Having a prophetic imagination for this church in this time and place means believing that this. This thing that is so hard to find could actually be possible despite what anybody says.
And I gotta tell you, you guys know this. You don't need me to tell you this, but I'm just gonna speak it out loud because I'm kind of angry about it.
There's never been a time in your entire life when there weren't more power and more people aligned to try to make sure that churches like this are eradicated and erased.
They're not just trying to stamp out DEI or the idea of systemic racism or gay marriage or women's rights. They want to stamp all of those things out too. But they also want to eradicate churches like this. Churches that have the chutzpah to say that the gospel is about helping and serving the least of these, no matter who they are.
And so this is hard, but I believe that it can happen.
And I hope you do, too.
My invitation to you as we sing our last song is, and this is a great song for us to end on, is that you consider the journey ahead and whether or not you want to contribute to what's possible here. I know I said the word contribute. I'm not about to ask you for money, but when I say contribute, I do mean money. But I also really, really, what I mean is you.
Is that something that you want to be a part of?
I do, and I'm grateful for those of you who have done it. So as we sing together this last song and Daniel leads us in worship, I just want to invite you to reflect on that. Amen. Amen.
[00:39:46] 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
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