[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.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Hi.
A couple of things. Number one, Jen, who was just up here leading us in communion, recently, pointed out to me, it's been a couple months now that I bring my coffee cup up here but never drink from it. So I just want to acknowledge that this is, like, my comfort blanket or something. I'm not sure what that's about, but it looks nice, doesn't it? Also, I'm super uncomfortable with this, like, very authoritative podium.
I don't know if you've noticed, but normally I have, like, an old janky music stand up here that just feels much more comfortable to me, like, much less like I'm trying to, like, be in charge.
But we. We had this because we did last week's, like, special, like, epiphany, like, you know, fun story reading. And this was really, really helpful for that. And now I'm, like, wishing that I had changed that out sometime this week. And I didn't. So that's okay. Here I am with the podium that I struggle with. I'm sure, sure everything's going to be fine. I have my coffee that I'm not going to take a drink of.
For those of you who don't know, I'm Jason Coker. I'm one of the co ministers here, one of the lead ministers here at Oceanside Sanctuary. And mostly my job is to do this. It's to get up here and share with you some of what I'm learning from the passages that we're visiting together now. This week, we are starting sort of a new series, a new teaching series that we're calling Prophetic Imagination. As we lead into the new year, our desire was to visit some of the Hebrew prophets, some of the passages from the great Hebrew prophets, and ask ourselves, what can we learn from these sort of prophetic imaginations that we see represented in those passages? And this seemed appropriate to me because as we lead into a new year, we're of course, naturally thinking about new possibilities in this church. We're thinking about new possibilities for the future. 2025, I'm sure you're tired of hearing it is the last year of our current mission commitment, that sort of statement of our mission and our values and priorities. So we're asking you to participate in surveys about how we're re envisioning our future for the next five years. By the way, if you haven't done that survey yet, hopefully you've heard this already. Today, immediately after church, there's a lunch in the community space downstairs and Brenda Van Vrieswyck will lead you in person through that survey. If you have not done it yet, you're totally welcome to go down there after church, not now, after church, and we'll feed you and you'll do the survey together. So we're thinking about new possibilities for the future of this church. It also feels like an important time to acknowledge that there's a lot of anxiety about the future of our communities, our nation, as we enter into new political realities with the new administration. Administration taking over. January 6th this year was just delightfully peaceful, wasn't it?
So that that doesn't necessarily mean, though that there aren't people who aren't feeling at peace about what's to come. And so it seemed like a good time for us to sort of visit how the Hebrew prophets imagined a good world, how the Hebrew prophets imagined good communities, how they imagined what it meant to be the people of God. So we're going to do that and enter into that series. It's going to take us about eight weeks. Next week, our second installment in this sort of prophetic imagination series is going to be really different and really special. It will be our very first MLK Sunday here at Oceanside Sanctuary. It'll be the first time that we dedicate a Sunday to Martin Luther King's memory and his legacy. And we have a special guest coming, Kendrick Dial, who's going to lead us through some practices and exercises on what it might mean for us to become a more anti racist church. And doing that is a high priority for us. It's one of the things we've said that is important. And so I want to encourage you guys to come next week if you are able. I think it's going to be good. But today we're going to start this series with a reading of Isaiah, chapter 43, verses 1 and 2. So if you have your Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, as always, we will put it up on the screen. And as we read this, I know what's happening in Los Angeles. I promise you I did not choose this passage today. This is actually one of the readings from our lectionary and it seemed appropriate. So we're going to go ahead and read that It's Isaiah, chapter 43, verses 1 and 2 says this. But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel, do not fear, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by my name. You are mine. And when you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.
And when you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
All right, this is a heavy passage, dropped right in the middle of a lot of heavy passages in Isaiah. And I want to unpack what I'm noticing about this, but first just ask that you would say a prayer with me. God, we thank you again for today, for this opportunity for us to gather, to worship together, to lift up our voices, to sing and to pray, to dedicate our hearts and our minds.
So learning to focus on you, what is good and right and true, and the sense of righteousness and justice and peace that you've called us to as people who are called by your name.
We ask that as we read these words and reflect on them and visit their context, that you would sharpen our minds and embolden our hearts to be and to do what is right.
Pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. Okay, so I think first of all, there are some very bad ways to read this passage. And I. And one of the reasons why I thought this was a good opportunity to go ahead and use this passage was while Los Angeles is really burning is because it's already happening.
And when I say it's already happening, what I mean is people who look and sound and talk a lot like me are saying that Los Angeles is burning because it's God's judgment that Los Angeles represents a certain wickedness, a certain sinfulness. And that because Los Angeles represents all that is wrong in their view with the world, that God's judgment has come to that city. It's already being said.
I just, like many of you, I'm sure, have a bad habit early in the morning and late at night of like, doom. Scrolling through my Instagram feed and just last night saw a clipping from some news channel that, you know, plastered the picture of the three highest ranking LA Fire Department officers. You probably saw this too, and how those three women were questioned for their credentials and speculation was made about their sexuality. And it was supposed that the fires in Los Angeles were happening because of that.
And I'm sorry to like repeat that ridiculousness here, but that is the sort of thing that's already being said and from the pulpits of countless churches today, no doubt people are saying that because Los Angeles represents, you know, an embrace of the queer community, that God is judging it, because Los Angeles represents DEI initiatives, that God is judging it, because Los Angeles represents the entertainment industry and the sins of Hollywood, that God is judging it.
And so I want us to wrestle with that a little bit today and hopefully take away from this something a little bit more constructive. The first thing that I think we tend to do with passages like this is read them literally.
This is the first thing that I think can be quite harmful. So when we read, for example, you will pass through the waters and I will be with you and through the rivers, and they won't overwhelm you, and you will walk through fire and not be consumed, and the flame shall not consume you. I think sometimes Christians have a tendency to read these kinds of passages very literally or simplistically or naively and say, well, if I'm with God, if I believe the right things, then God is on my side and no harm can come to me. And that's sort of the obviously, like, simplistic way of taking passages in isolation, out of context, and making them a kind of magical charm.
And then if something bad happens, then, you know, the obvious conclusion is that you're not with God, or God does not approve of you. And this really isn't faith of any kind. It's really just a kind of magic or superstition.
I think we do this because we desire, as human animals, as human creatures, we desire simplistic answers.
The world is complex and difficult to understand and frustrating and confounding. And I think really simple answers are terribly appealing to us.
They give us a sense of power and control where we don't have it.
But as we embark on this series on prophetic imagination, I want to encourage you to remember that the prophets don't speak literally or simplistically. They speak poetically.
And by poetically, what I mean is that they use evocative symbols and language and metaphors in order to drive home a much bigger and more important point.
It's not to say that because it's poetic that it doesn't have, like, real meaning or material consequences. On the contrary, the poets are always, in my opinion, speaking about material needs, material realities.
But they use this powerful, evocative, poetic language to make a really strong impact on us.
So we can't just read this passage simplistically or naively and believe that if. If we think what's right and if we join the right religious team, that God is on our side.
The second thing I think we tend to do is I think it's easy also to read this passage dualistically.
And by dualistically, here's what I mean when it says that, you know, we will pass through the waters. And then later when it says that the fire won't consume us or destroy us, I think we have a real tendency to read a kind of dualism in the Bible. Right? Whereas one thing is good, then the other thing is bad. And I think it's easy to take away from this passage. Well, water is good and fire is bad.
For the most part. We tend to think of water as good. We need water to survive. You literally can't survive three days without water, even if it's water filtered through the appropriate vegetation.
Just saying it counts.
We tend to think of water as something that we enjoy. You know, some of us have Jacuzzis or pools. We go to the beach in order to recreate, in order to have fun. We, you know, take boats out onto the water. Water is a good thing. And we tend to think of fire, especially in a context like this, when it talks about consuming us as bad.
And so we might think, oh, well, what Isaiah is trying to say here is that if we experience water in a spiritual way, maybe like in the form of baptism, then that will then protect us from the fire, the bad thing, the thing that destroys and consumes.
But I would also like to encourage you today and in the coming weeks to remember that the prophets don't speak dualistically.
They speak holistically.
This is not as simple as water is good and fire is bad. In fact, the truth is, is that water is often very bad.
Floods are terribly deadly and destructive, and even drinking too much water can kill you.
And of course, fire is incredibly helpful for our health and our well being, our survival.
Fire allows us to cook, it allows us to heat cold spaces. It allows us to create energy.
Fire is an incredible advancement. The ability to use it in its proper proportion is incredibly important to our civilization.
I'm building, Janelle and I are building like an outdoor kitchen, which really sounds way fancier than it actually is. So like, if you came to our house, you would see like a slap dash put together piece of framing with some tile on it and like a barbecue on one end and a sink on the other. And it occurred to me as I was like reading through this passage and thinking about this sermon today, that that outdoor kitchen is basically all about controlling proper proportions of fire and water.
90% of the construction of this outdoor kitchen is about making sure that fire is manageable and that water is manageable. So there's like a barbecue on one end, and I actually put, like, wood in that thing. I light it on fire and I smoke meat, which is also really bad for you, by the way. Don't do that. But we do, right? And we try to control that fire. And the thing exists to control the fire so that we can eat and thrive. And then, of course, we're like running water pipes out there to a sink so that we can, you know, wash our hands and wash our utensils properly so we're not like cross contaminating things. And then yesterday, this is the best part, we ordered a burner, like an outdoor burner to put on the other end because we like to do boils, like low country boil. Anybody know what a low country boil is? Oh, yeah. Okay. So we're all about that. So we bought an outdoor burner off Amazon, which you shouldn't do because apparently this is not regulated at all. And I bought like 100,000 BTU burner.
You can buy 100,000 BTU burner on Amazon. You shouldn't be able to, but you can.
I don't know what a BTU is, but 100,000 is a lot.
And so when I hooked it up to the propane bottle, Janelle and I were like, with the clicker, you know, like, standing like this. And it was like a. It was like a flamethrower when we lit it.
The point, of course, is this.
Too much fire can kill you, but too little fire can keep you from thriving, from surviving.
Too little water will kill you. Too much water will kill you. This is what I mean by holistic.
You could argue, and I would argue that this is literally true of everything.
Every medicine, every therapy that we have on the planet is something that will kill you in person. Proper measure.
Every medicine is a poison.
Every food is a poison.
Every relationship is potentially a poison.
Every civilization, every technology, every religion is a poison.
If you eat it or consume it or participate it in the wrong proportion.
Ecclesiastes says too much religion can kill you. And Janelle and I had an interesting debate yesterday about whether or not there's a difference between religion and God.
She always wins these debates.
But I think that's an interesting conversation because it's not just that too little fire can kill you, and too much fire can kill you, and too little water and too much water can kill you, but it's also True that throughout Scripture, God is depicted as water and fire.
This is why we baptize, because water represents a cleansing.
And it's also why we light candles, because fire represents a power.
And these things in the right proportion are good for us, but too much or too little of it will kill us.
And that leads me to, I think, the third way that we tend to misread this, and I've already alluded to this, but I think we tend to misread this punitively.
And this is where this gets a little bit tricky, because Isaiah is talking about judgment, and that's something that we don't talk about very well in progressive churches.
But when Isaiah says, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you, he is talking about passing through water in a way that was harmful, that was deadly.
And when he says, you shall walk through the fire and not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you, he is talking about quantities of fire that destroy.
And to make things more difficult and more complicated, Isaiah is talking about judgments.
Very specifically, Isaiah is talking about the people of God throughout the entire book of Isaiah being judged for not being the people of God.
And we don't have time for an entire lesson on Isaiah today.
It's long and tedious and complicated and deeply steeped in a culture that we are not a part of.
But at the end of the day, what it really is about is three things.
The first, that the people of God have fallen in love with what is harmful.
Now, the religious word for that is idolatry.
When we devote ourselves, when we give ourselves, when we completely turn ourselves over to something, that is worship.
And in the first several dozen chapters of Isaiah, Isaiah makes it abundantly clear that what the people of God have decided to worship are idols that are harmful and destructive.
And because of that, and this is the second point of Isaiah, because of that, their worship of God has become empty, false, a pretense. In other words, hypocrisy.
There's passage after passage after passage in Isaiah is, I do not care for your worship. I don't care for your festivals. I don't care for your sacrifices. Because this thing that you're doing that is called worship isn't actually worship.
You haven't devoted yourselves to what is good and right and true. You've devoted yourselves to what is bad and wrong and harmful.
But you're going through the motions with your feasts and your sacrifices.
See, the whole point of worship, the whole point of falling in love with what is good and right and true, is that it would make you into somebody who is good and right and true.
And the third thing that we see in Isaiah that's very helpful is that the false worship that the people of God have engaged in, the worship of what is wrong and harmful and false, the evidence of that, the indication of that, the qualitative proof that that's what's happened, is that they no longer care for the poor and the oppressed.
So there's a very helpful, concrete, material way to know whether or not you are devoted to what is good and right and true. And that is you care about divine justice.
I feel like we sung about that just a few moments ago.
You care that the goods and the rights and the resources of the universe are fairly and equitably distributed, starting with the people who don't have them.
And so Isaiah knows that the people of God have ceased to be the people of God because they just do not care about whether or not the goods and the rights and the resources of the universe are being fairly and equally distributed.
These are the three major complaints of the book of Isaiah. And as a result of that, the people of God experience destruction, or as we see it here, water and fire.
Now, what I take away from that, and you can disagree with me, there are at least 100,000 fundamentalist preachers this morning disagreeing with me. So you'd be in good company if you disagreed with me.
My takeaway from this is that when a people, a church, a city, a corporation, a government, when a people have ceased to do what is right for the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed, they will eventually be destroyed if we do not pay attention to the needs of the community, the deep injustices of the community, eventually that community will disintegrate. Eventually it will rot.
Eventually it will crumble. Eventually it will fall.
And so to be the people of God means to pay attention to those things.
To worship what is good and right and true means to be devoted, to fall in love with the idea of divine justice.
To worship means to attend to that divine justice so often and so powerfully and so effectively in the presence of God that we become people who care about divine justice.
And then when justice is not done, destruction comes.
We can rightly judge it.
There will be a time, and that time is already coming, when people will ask right and good and appropriate questions about why Los Angeles is burning to the ground.
And my guess is there will be all kinds of injustices.
Because we are human beings and we Screw everything up eventually.
So, you know, maybe the fire hydrants ran dry in Los Angeles because somebody made a mistake.
Maybe fires were ignited because power lines were improperly placed and managed.
Maybe communities that are poor and lack resources will have been shown to suffer more disproportionately than others.
Maybe.
Maybe we're dealing with the immediate short term effects of climate change, which itself is a result of us not paying attention to divine justice.
All of these are injustices. All of these are judgments that we might make.
And we shouldn't be afraid to do that.
Because if we devote ourselves to what is good and right and true, then we don't have to be afraid of the flood when it comes.
We don't have to be afraid of the fire when it comes.
The natural consequence of failing to do what is right and true for people leads inevitably to destruction. But for those who are devoted to doing what is good and right and true, hear me out, because I know this might be hard to believe, right? But for those who are devoted to what is good and right and true, no flood or fire can destroy us.
Because every flood and every fire is a fresh opportunity to figure out what went wrong and to make it right.
That doesn't mean that the destruction was good, that the suffering is good, that the displacement of people is good, that the burning of their homes is good.
All of that is horrific and terrible and we should do everything we can to relieve their suffering.
But for people who are committed to justice, there is an opportunity here for us to become even more just on the other side of it.
And I think that's what Isaiah is trying to say here, that for those who are committed to worshiping what is genuinely righteous, no hardship, no suffering, no pain can crush us, can destroy us, because there's an opportunity in it to do better.
Amen. Would you pray with me? God, we thank you so much for today, for this opportunity for us to gather, for a chance to not only worship and pray and sing and reflect, but also to learn as a community how to be here with each other and for each other to be a community who exists to bring divine justice to those who are in need.
It's our prayer this morning, God, that you would be with all of those who are suffering in Los Angeles, who have had their homes burned, who've been displaced. It's our prayer that you would be God with the firefighters who are risking their lives.
It's our prayer that you would be with the relief workers who are bringing water and food and tents.
So I pray that you would comfort everybody, that you would strengthen, that you would bring compassion.
God. It's our prayer here in San Diego that you would show us how we can be of help to our neighbors in the north, even if it's in some small way.
Pray that you would help us to persevere through difficult things and emerge cleansed and purified and stronger, healthier on the other side.
Jesus name Amen.
[00:30:42] 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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