[00:00:00] Foreign.
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[00:00:40] Well, good morning. Welcome to Oceanside Sanctuary. For those of you who don't know, I'm Jason Cook. I'm one of the co pastors here at Oceanside Sanctuary, and we have been working through a series on spiritual practices that I get to continue with you today. We're going to wrap it up next week, but today I want to talk to you about maybe one of my favorite spiritual practices. And I'm going to guess that it might be yours, too.
[00:01:06] Up to this point, we have been talking about some of the things that we can do. That's what practice means, some of the things that we can do with our bodies, with our voices, with our minds, with our community in order to cultivate a deeper sense of connection to God, to spirit, to a sense of goodness that pervades the entire world that we live in. And that's called practice because it's something that we have to be intentional about. Today I want to talk to you about something that I think is very important for us to be intentional about.
[00:01:42] I want to read to you this passage From Deuteronomy, chapter 14, verses 22 through 20, and I want to share with you some of what I'm noticing in this passage, and I hope you will notice some things as well. Deuteronomy, chapter 14, verse 22 says this. We should have the words up on the screen. If you don't have a Bible with you, set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field. Now, I'll just stop there before anybody runs for the exits. This is not a sermon about you giving money to the church.
[00:02:21] I know many of you were brought up to believe that tithing is a spiritual practice that you should engage in, that God would especially like you if you gave 11 or 12%, right? But that tithing is something that you should do. And this is not a sermon about tithing. So I don't want to get into like, you know, what we think of tithing here at the church. If you want to give us money, you're more than welcome to.
[00:02:46] We could use it. There's an offering box there at the back, but that's not what today is about. The word tithe just means a tenth, right? It isn't a reference to a kind of religious practice of giving to the church so that God will bless you or like you more. It's just a tenth.
[00:03:03] So this is a passage about a tenth. It is a passage about money, but it's not about the kind of tithe that you normally are accustomed to hearing about. So let's continue.
[00:03:15] Verse 23. In the presence of the Lord your God, in the place that he will choose as a dwelling for his name, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, your wine and your oil, as well as the firstlings of your herd and flock, so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always.
[00:03:39] But if when the Lord your God has blessed you, the distance is so great, that's the place that God has appointed for this eating to take place. If the distance is too great for you to transport it, then the Lord your God will choose to set his name. And it's too far from you. Then you may turn it. That is the tithe of grain and oil and wine and all that. You may turn that into money.
[00:04:03] And with the money secure in hand, go to the place that the Lord your God will choose and spend the money for whatever you wish. This is worth repeating.
[00:04:15] Spend the money for whatever you wish.
[00:04:22] Oxen, sheep. Some of you are like, thank God I can buy oxen. I been waiting for the opportunity to buy a large mammal that occupies half my backyard.
[00:04:35] Spend the money for whatever you wish. Oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink. Yes, I didn't put that in there.
[00:04:47] Or whatever you desire.
[00:04:49] And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, and you and your household rejoicing together. And as for the Levites resident in your towns, do not neglect them because they have no allotment and inheritance with you. Would you just say a prayer with me real quick? God, we thank you for today and for this opportunity for us to come again to this place. To gather together, to greet each other, to lift our voices, to sing, to pray, to remind each other of what goodness and grace looks like.
[00:05:25] To practice goodness and grace and the presence of holiness.
[00:05:33] Because we've set aside this place for gathering and celebration, we ask that that would become more and more true for us, that as we gather to celebrate, that we would be truly full of joy and peace.
[00:05:48] We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:05:52] I don't know if this is true for you, but for Janelle and I, it's sort of party season. It's May, right? So May is when there are lots of parties, right? I don't know if that's also the case for you, but we just go to lots of people's houses in order to celebrate. Right? Now, last night, we were at the house some very good friends of ours, whose daughter Lily, who is in one of the classrooms right now with some of your kids. We're celebrating Lily's graduation from college. That is a really big deal, right?
[00:06:22] So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, thank you for the applause, but I'm not the one that graduated. If you get a chance to see Lily later today, congratulate her.
[00:06:31] And in Lily's honor, a bunch of her family and friends came together last night at their house, which is just right around the corner from our house. We've known the Thomases for, I don't know, like, 15 years now at this point. So we saw Lily when she was in elementary school, so it was really meaningful and amazing to be able to celebrate her graduation from college. And for her graduation from college, she got to invite the people that she wanted. And so we're really fortunate that we made that list. That's awesome.
[00:06:59] And also, she got to have whatever food she wanted. Now, I don't know what food you would choose if somebody threw a party in your honor and they said, you can have whatever you want, but she had trays of Taco Bell, which I was not upset about because, like, a taco supreme sometimes is, like, the height of great cuisine, right? Like, in the right time and place.
[00:07:25] I mean, there's a little shame afterwards, right? But, like, three or four taco supremes is not a bad thing.
[00:07:34] Maybe a pizza, like, Mexican pizza thing, too. Anyway, so that was Lily's party last night. There were, you know, taco supremes and friends and family and maybe just maybe a little bit of, you know, aged tequila, which I also recommend in moderation for those of you who can do that sort of thing. If you can't, that's okay. It's okay. Just want you to know that your pastor might have had a little bit of sipping tequila last night, because it's a party.
[00:08:03] It's a celebration.
[00:08:05] The whole point of it is to concentrate our joy into one particular moment of time so that we can remember what this is all about. Now, earlier in the day, Janelle and I had gone to another party. Like I said, it's party season.
[00:08:21] Earlier in the day, we showed up over here on the corner of Mission and Coast highway with, I don't know, a couple hundred other people.
[00:08:29] And celebrated the fact that LGBTQ people are good no matter what this administration wants to say. To the contrary, there were people there.
[00:08:44] The best part is we had nothing to do with planning that party, right? But we showed up. Janelle and I showed up at that party, and we celebrated with those who were there on the corner of Mission and Coast highway and lifted up signs, some of which might have been a little bit snarky.
[00:08:59] And we celebrated the people who drove by and honked their horns in support. And we even, to a certain extent, celebrated those who drove by and yelled things that were not so much in support, because celebrating in the face of that kind of hatred is the best form of resistance.
[00:09:19] And this, by the way, is something that I have learned from the queer community, Right? Something that I've learned from communities who are marginalized and oppressed is they throw the best parties because they know that it's the best form of resistance. You might not know it, but that's what's happening here in Deuteronomy chapter 14. Deuteronomy chapter 14 is Moses telling his people that every single year they need to throw a party.
[00:09:49] That is what the purpose of the tithe In Deuteronomy chapter 14 is. This is not the tithe that you give to your church to make your pastor happy or to make God happy or whatever. No, this is you setting aside 10% of everything that you earn, all the crops that you grow, all the wine and the oil that you produce and saving it, setting it aside so that once a year, you can take all of that extra and just consume it.
[00:10:17] Like, throw the biggest party ever once a year, as an act of worship.
[00:10:24] Imagine belonging to a religion that said, hey, listen, I'm sorry, but if you sign up, you have to save all year long, 10% of everything that you make. And at the end of the year, throw a party that religion might grow every year.
[00:10:46] Take that and fulfill the desires of your heart.
[00:10:52] Do you do that? Do you, like, set aside money to throw a big party every year just to celebrate? When I was in seminary, I had a professor. His name was Will. Right. Will was a professor who came from a denomination that was part of the Oneness Pentecostal movement. For those of you who don't know about the oneness Pentecostal movement is widely regarded in Christianity to be a heretical movement because they believe in the Trinity. But bear with me. During one of his classes, he told me that his denomination, which was part of the oneness Pentecostal movement, required every member in their denomination to save 10% all year long. And then every year, I can't remember when, maybe in the spring or something like that, the entire denomination went on a cruise.
[00:11:37] And I was like, maybe I'm a heretic. I don't know. Like, maybe this is what I'm called to be like, to be a part of the denomination that goes on a cruise every year.
[00:11:51] Like, just to put this into context, the median household income for a family of four in North San Diego county is $130,000 a year. Now, I don't know if that sounds like a lot to you or if that sounds like very small amount to you, but it's the median, right? So you pick the top and the bottom, and exactly in the middle is $130,000 a year for a family of four. Let's just say that your family earns $130,000 a year. So saving 10% of that. Let's just say it's after taxes, not before taxes. Because, like, I'm not a jerk, right? So let's say after taxes, that's $10,000 a year. What kind of party could you throw for $10,000?
[00:12:27] The kind of party I would come to if you threw a party that cost you $10,000. Janelle and I would be there if you want your pastor's attention. I'm just saying.
[00:12:49] Okay, so serious question though. Like, does this make sense? Does this make sense for us?
[00:12:56] We live in a world where, like, what would it look like? Like, what would be the optics for a church who threw a big fat party while queer people are losing their rights, where people are literally being abducted off the streets and deported.
[00:13:16] We're not talking about, like, you know, quote unquote illegal aliens. We're talking about people with legal status. We're talking about people who came here following the processes of asylum seeking and immigration. We're talking about people who have green cards. We're talking about American citizens, a four year old child with cancer being ripped off the streets and deported. I mean, that's just what's happening here in North America.
[00:13:45] Hell on earth is literally occurring right now in Gaza.
[00:13:53] Hell on earth.
[00:13:58] Is it responsible for us to celebrate?
[00:14:04] Is it ethical for us to drink wine and indulge ourselves or sip tequila at a friend's house who's graduating from college when the world is literally burning to the ground?
[00:14:19] It seems I'm finding it harder and harder to sleep at night, because when I wake up in the middle of the night because I'm getting old enough that my bladder wakes Me up multiple times, times in the middle of the night. Now I do that thing, like, I know you guys do it too, where, like, I need to go back to sleep. So I reach over and I do the. Literally the worst thing that you can do if you want to go back to sleep, which is to open my news app and to begin to like, scroll through it. And the next thing you know, like, I can't think about anything.
[00:14:48] Terrible things that are happening all around us.
[00:14:52] Is it moral or ethical to celebrate in the midst of that?
[00:14:58] I think it's necessary for us to celebrate in the midst of that. I think it's critically important for us to celebrate in the midst of that, because celebration in the way that we read about it here In Deuteronomy, chapter 14, the celebration in the way that we see Jesus enacting it when he performs his very first miracle, which is to multiply or to turn the water into wine at a wedding, right? Which was a celebration seven day party. I think doing these things, celebrating in this way, lavishing ourselves and our friends and our neighbors with generosity, I think this is a tangible expression of the gospel.
[00:15:41] It's our job to proclaim the gospel in this world. And I think celebrating especially in the midst of a world burning down, is a tangible expression of.
[00:15:52] Now, maybe not the gospel that you were taught the gospel, by the way, in my opinion, just my humble opinion is not a particular message about the life and the work of Jesus.
[00:16:14] And I know many of you were taught that. Many of you were taught that the gospel is a kind of formulation. It's a very particular message about Jesus. It's a message about how Jesus is God incarnate, that God was born into the body of an ancient Near Eastern Jewish man, and that incarnation is an expression of the gospel. Or maybe you were taught that the gospel is a particular message about Jesus dying on the cross and being crucified for your sins. Or maybe you were taught that the gospel is a message about Jesus resurrection from that death and how that resurrection foretells about the resurrection that you'll experience if you put your faith in that particular Jesus. Or, or maybe it's a message about how that Jesus is coming back again someday. Christianity specializes in creating very specific messages about Jesus and branding it as the gospel. And what's great is every single version of Christianity has its own message about Jesus. There are about 40,000 versions of them.
[00:17:14] And so your job is just to decide which of those 40,000 messages about Jesus is the one that you believe in so you can Wear the right shirt or put on the right hat or read from the right Bible or go to the right church or whatever it might be.
[00:17:27] I don't think that's what the gospel is.
[00:17:31] I don't think that the gospel is a particular message about Jesus. I think Jesus is a particular instance of the gospel.
[00:17:43] I think that the birth, the incarnation of Jesus, the life and teachings of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, the foretelling of Jesus's coming, all of this is a particular expression of good news for a particular time in a particular place, for a particular group of people.
[00:18:02] But the good news is incredibly broad and comprehensive. The good news is any message of relief for those who suffer.
[00:18:17] The good news is any proclamation of resistance in the face of oppression. The good news is any declaration of liberation from oppression.
[00:18:31] And Jesus perfectly embodies all of that.
[00:18:37] And so do we when we party in the face of a world that's burning to the ground.
[00:18:49] Not because we're calloused towards that suffering, not because we ignore it, not because we turn a blind eye to it, but because we are proclaiming the goodness of God as greater and bigger and longer lasting and more eternal than any suffering or affliction or oppression that could come here and now.
[00:19:18] You got to, I think, remember Deuteronomy, chapter 14. This particular passage comes at a tough time for ancient Hebrews. Moses is telling them to save up 10% of everything that they earn and everything that they grow so they can have a big party every year, but their life isn't good.
[00:19:37] There are a bunch of former slaves who just came out of Egypt. They're literally lost in the desert, wandering around the desert with no real sense of identity, no land of their own, no possessions or wealth to see them through to the next day. It's so bad. It's so bad for the ancient Hebrews wandering around in the desert that they beg Moses to take them back to their life of slavery.
[00:20:12] That's how much they're suffering.
[00:20:16] If only we were back in Egypt, where we had hot pots of meat to eat every night in the midst of that suffering.
[00:20:28] Moses does not take them back to their slavery, but he teaches them to celebrate in the midst of their difficulty.
[00:20:39] He teaches them how to begin to embody in a very practical, very tangible way, the liberation that God is leading them towards.
[00:20:51] That way, every party, every celebration is a foretaste. It is a prophetic proclamation of the liberation that we work towards every single day.
[00:21:03] Quaker theologian Richard Foster describes celebration this way. He says the spiritual discipline of celebration leads us to perpetual jubilee of the spirit.
[00:21:15] You might remember a few weeks ago or a few months ago, I have a terrible concept of time. I preached a whole sermon about jubilee. Jubilee was this economic liberation of the Hebrews where all those who were enslaved and indentured were liberated every 40 years.
[00:21:34] Richard Foster says celebration is the culmination of that kind of community.
[00:21:40] In this way, I think celebration is the best kind of resistance.
[00:21:47] Partying is political because in the midst of scarcity, we celebrate abundance.
[00:21:58] In the midst of despair, we celebrate dare to express joy.
[00:22:06] In the midst of death, we celebrate life.
[00:22:10] The paradox of this is that, you know, most of us live our lives accidentally stumbling into these moments of joy.
[00:22:21] Like we don't know when they're going to come, but when they come, we're so happy.
[00:22:26] These fleeting moments of joy when we experience a loved one in an authentic way way, when we connect in a way that we interpret and recognize as love, or when we recognize that our lives have somehow, some way, unpredictably, culminated in a particular moment of happiness or success or freedom. And then we celebrate those moments. But Moses teaches us this incredible paradox that as people of faith, as people of spirituality are moments of joy and grace and liberation have to happen accidentally. We can actually plan for them.
[00:23:09] In the midst of a world falling apart, we can set aside a tenth because we know that if we don't plan for celebration, if we don't plan for joy, if we don't intend on having foretastes of liberation, that it will be way too long before we experience it.
[00:23:35] And so we practice the spiritual discipline of partying.
[00:23:44] It's one of those beautiful paradoxes, I think, of the spiritual life.
[00:23:48] Okay, my favorite part. You ready?
[00:23:51] Verse 27. As for the Levite residents in your town, do not neglect them because they have no allotment or inheritance with you. I don't know if you know this, but the Levites are the priestly class in ancient Hebrew society. Moses is basically saying here it is prophetic resistance for you to party every year to save 10% so that you can indulge in all the things that your heart desires. And by the way, don't forget your pastor.
[00:24:22] It's right there. I didn't put it in there.
[00:24:29] I mean, okay, so there's more to this, I think.
[00:24:33] I think what Moses is saying is this. You know, ancient Hebrew society was highly ordered. This is one of the things we learned from reading like Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Is Moses genius was to highly order ancient Hebrew society and There was one whole class of ancient Hebrew society that was set aside not just to work, but to serve the needs of the people. These were the Levites.
[00:24:58] And so, yeah, of course, you know, the sort of correlation today would be like priests or pastors, rabbis, cantors, you know, the people who serve your religious needs. That's true. But I think it also points to a bigger reality, and that is in every society, including in our society, there are people who don't just go to work every day and try to grow their business or earn a decent living or, you know, do good work. But there are people who go to work every day, and their job every single day is to serve the needs of people.
[00:25:34] And that is a particular kind of work.
[00:25:40] And it just so happens that the people who do that kind of work, and I'm thinking of certainly clergy people, but also doctors and nurses, social workers, teachers.
[00:26:00] These are people who, every single day, they make it their job to bring a little bit of liberation, a little bit of relief, a little bit of restitution to the lives of peoples who are otherwise miserable and suffering.
[00:26:17] And those folks, more often than not, not always, but more often than not, their work is not very highly valued.
[00:26:26] And more often than not, they are the targets of oppression themselves.
[00:26:35] You could see it right now, by the way. You can see it at any given school board meeting for Oceanside Unified School District.
[00:26:46] Every month, at the Oceanside Unified School District meeting, if you showed up, you would see anywhere from 20 to 100 other Christians saying the most vile and hurtful and hateful things about teachers in this school district and about staff members for Oceanside Unified School District.
[00:27:17] Or you could have shown up, for example, last week at the City Council meeting where Janelle went and represented our community and advocated for affordable housing and advocated for the PRIDE flag to be raised on a flagpole here in downtown Oceanside during Pride Month.
[00:27:38] And when Janelle got up to say her piece, rather than address the City Council, she felt the need to turn to the local members of the queer community and apologize because a bunch of Christians were there calling them pedophiles.
[00:27:59] So people who do advocacy work, people do human helping work, human services work, they tend to sit right at the intersection of tremendous amounts of attack and for that reason, invite them to your parties.
[00:28:19] I mean, throw parties.
[00:28:21] I think we covered that. Right? Throw parties. It's an expression of the gospel.
[00:28:26] But when you throw parties, I just want to agree with Moses when I say, remember the people whose job every single day is to try to relieve the suffering of others and invite them to your party.
[00:28:43] On that note, we have a party today to celebrate again the 150th anniversary of this church. Our big party, the one that we're like, you know, really going to go all out for, will be the weekend of November 21st and 22nd. I hope that you can be here. But along the way, we're having little celebrations. And today after church, we're inviting you to the community space downstairs to eat some sandwiches, enjoy each other, and see some of our historical pictures from the 150 years. And today we have decided to bring special attention to five leaders from the history of this church. And so if you stay and you go downstairs, you'll see their pictures on display. Those leaders are Grace McDonald, who served this church for four years from 1932 to 1936 during the Heart of the Great Depression, was the first woman to pastor this church. It was highly unusual for women to pastor at all in the 1930s. Listen, women who pastor get hate today still.
[00:29:46] But it was extraordinarily unusual in the 1930s. Grace McDonald pastored this church faithfully for four years for no pay because it was the Great Depression and we were too broke to pay a pastor and therefore no man would do it. So a woman stepped up, which, by the way, is the history of the church.
[00:30:06] So Grace MacDonald's picture is on display downstairs because we think she deserves to be celebrated today. Dan Genung pastored this church in the 1950s and 1960s and served for eight years, which was a very long period of time for a pastor in the history of this church. And it was a time of growth and stability. We think he deserves to be celebrated. Pastor Charles Elswick's picture is downstairs. And in 1970, he marched through the streets of Oceanside with Angela Davis in Cesar Chavez to protest the Vietnam War and was promptly fired for that reason from this job. And we think he deserves to be celebrated. If you want to read the sermon that got him fired, it is downstairs.
[00:30:52] The copies are available. You can read it. Please don't steal it.
[00:30:58] John Storm pastored this church in 1974 for three months. John Storm was one of the most influential Catholic priests in San Diego County. He was the founding priest of All Hallows Catholic Church in La Jolla and the founding priest of the University of San Diego. You won't find his name in either of those institutions histories because he left the Catholic church, became a Protestant pastor and pastored this church for three months before he tragically walked into the ocean one night and committed suicide.
[00:31:33] And we think his legacy deserves to be remembered. You'll see his picture downstairs, too. And finally, Pastor Carol Rawlings pastored this church from 1987 to 1990. And during that three year period of time, she walked this church through a process of strategic planning because it was almost dead.
[00:31:55] And for her efforts. After three years of putting together a strategic plan, the church said, no, thanks, we don't want to do any of those things.
[00:32:04] And they refused to pay her what she was worth. And so she resigned.
[00:32:10] And we think she deserves to be celebrated tomorrow. If you listen to our podcast, the Collective Table, tomorrow we're releasing our latest episode. And it's an interview that I got to conduct with Pastor Carol Rawlings about two weeks ago where she talks about her experiences pastoring here, both the hard things and the good things. And I was just incredibly, incredibly moved by her grace and her joy.
[00:32:41] And so her picture is downstairs too. And we think she deserves to be celebrated.
[00:32:46] Amen.
[00:32:48] Would you pray with me? God, we thank you for today, for this opportunity for us to gather again, for a little chance for us to. To celebrate God. We do proclaim today, together, that in spite of all the ways this world appears to be moving in the wrong direction, all the ways our fellow believers, our fellow followers in Christ appear to be given over to oppression and fascism and hatred, in spite of all of that, we persist in celebrating your goodness.
[00:33:33] We proclaim today, God, that by setting aside the time and the resources to celebrate, to truly engage in joy, that we are proclaiming your goodness, your good news.
[00:33:45] We pray that every celebration would somehow be expression of your liberating gospel, not just in our lives, but in the lives of those who are suffering today.
[00:33:58] Pray that you would teach us how to do that. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:34:08] Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in.
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