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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
everybody hey everyone has a picture of God when I say the word God you imagine something you may picture something right bring that up in your own imaginations in your like that visual whatever that is a face maybe it's sort of a an old man in heaven white beard maybe it's why this hair is mine I don't know a light maybe it's a feeling maybe God brings up old memories from your family or your past or your tradition or maybe it's more painful maybe it's a silent these pictures are really powerful more I would say than maybe anything else in our relationship with God these pictures inform who we think God is how we think God is and who God associates with y'all tracking with me it's theology actually that comes from our imaginations our picture of God the problem is our pictures these images in our head they can be too small and honestly oftentimes they are too small and when those pictures are too small those pictures of God it always produces a problem a table that is also too small for God and for other people the Pharisees in today's Gospels they're not villains I know oftentimes we make the Sadducees and the scribes and the Pharisees the bad guys in these stories they're actually not and I would hope that we would give a little grace and identify that actually we are those Pharisees oftentimes in the story they have a coherence and very reasonable picture of God God is holy God is set apart God is pure right we would all agree with this God is untouched by what defiles now if that's our belief of God if that's our picture if you will of God then proximity to sinners means contamination means something less holy right not holy you protect holiness by maintaining distance set apartness the logic holds together it's actually quite reasonable the problem is it starts with a picture of God that's just too small there's a tax booth on the road Jesus is traveling we're reading in the Gospels and he stops not to pay a toll but he stops to talk to a man that everyone knows is collaborating with the Empire and skimming money off the top a man who's stealing from his own people Jesus stops to talk to and Jesus offers two words follow me follow me Matthew gets up follows there's no trial period there's no background checks there's no pre-interview for the life that they're going to have together it's just follow me Jesus says and then this is where it gets a little dicey and interesting Jesus goes and has dinner with this guy in his house but the problem is his house is full of tax collectors and sinners Matthew's whole world his community his people right having dinner right there with Jesus at the center of it in the middle of that feast and the Pharisees pull the disciples aside and say why does your rabbi eat with these sinners and tax collectors these people how could Jesus eat with these people and when Jesus hears of this he quotes back to them the prophet Hosea that Max just read to us saying I desire mercy or in this translation it was loving kindness hesed desire mercy not sacrifice now Jesus isn't correcting a policy he's not undoing a picture of God he's saying no your picture of God is incomplete it's not well-rounded it's not full and in fact Jesus standing in the flesh is the full picture of God and their incompleteness in their minds and in their imaginations it's it's not just a whoops we should learn more there's actually moral impact to their neighbors because of this incomplete partial view of God not morally neutral it's produced a table with too few chairs it has produced a table that looks and feels like them right you have read the scriptures faithfully you could say to the Pharisees your whole life and you still cannot imagine God sitting down with these people not a failure of effort these are some of the most well read studied people in the Jewish faith not a failure of study or effort the failure of imagination and theology or the way we talk about God and how we understand God it always is downstream from imagination if for instance you imagine the God is mad at you you will have a theology of a God who's always mad at you right you will have trouble therefore believing that God actually delights me and loves you that'll be sort of an uphill thing but friends it's actually really good news like the God that we need to try to imagine to see more clearly is everything like Jesus of Nazareth is a God that loves and delights and rejoices of you and so therefore your theology can flow from that view of God this is how this kind of works I was thinking of other examples Augustine he didn't work out a doctrine of restless hearts before he felt restless right he had experienced restlessness in his own heart first and then use theology to name that experience that make sense children imagine God before they can do theology proper right as we would say they have plenty even imagination of God sometimes it's actually pretty cool sometimes it's a little bit like hold on bring that in a little bit cool and that mystics report that experience outruns their category their experience of God is their language fails so they have to use poetry and art and music the biblical writers we see this all the time always reaching for better language but that language has its limits and its ends the experience of God always arrives before we're ready to describe it the experience the reality of God is always there we're always trying to grapple to describe it in adequate words but it always fails this is what this means besides sort of a philosophy of words and reality it means sometimes the picture has to change and then belief can follow that make sense sometimes we have to be open to a brand new or expanded view of God so that we can actually understand and know God deeper most of us know what it feels like to either be excluded from a community or to be judged by someone someone who looks at you and says I think I can put you in a box and I understand and then when you get to know that person you go oh I totally misread them I need a different picture there's more to them than I thought we all know how this feels there's someone in your neighborhood your family maybe even in this room and your first instinct is that they're just outside your circle they're not like you in some way and it's not like dramatic often times it's more like they're just not quite one of us right and then we develop this sense of community our people around really a self-centered view of ourselves and who we get along with who we like and we gather those people that's natural there's seriously nothing wrong with that but it needs to be challenged often to be open more expansive and oftentimes when we cast judgment or sort of classify people and then we get to know them something shifts the way they show up the way they love someone and you see God somewhere you hadn't thought to look in someone else's life before and that picture of them and maybe even that picture of God just keeps getting bigger and bigger and more developed and deeper that's the gospel doing what the gospel does the good news saying it gets better about God on the other hand and I know this feels like pretty intimately when your long-held view of God is challenged it's a really tough experience how to make sense of that it's really uncomfortable I get defensive I want to argue I want to be like hold on a second have you reckoned with all of these other factors these data points that you should consider carefully and that's not a bad feeling but I think it's good to name that that's what it feels like when your view of God gets expanded or challenged right stretch feels like oh I don't like that it's not comfortable it doesn't mean you're wrong it doesn't mean the other view is wrong just means that and also we don't want to just wholesale adopt new views without careful thought we want to inspect you want to be aware of that it's comfort but think carefully about what is this thing about God and is this true we look at scripture we look at our community we look at tradition and we compare the image of Jesus to these views of God and say does this make sense does this line up discomfort doesn't mean something's wrong is what I'm trying to say it oftentimes can mean something's right means forces are at work in you that needs to be examined there's a difference between two kinds of discomfort I think in this space if someone told you for instance God is vengeful and violent you could turn to the Old Testament and find what you're looking for to prove that point right but it also bothers us because that's actually an incomplete view of God there's something there's more to it we would say and it should bother us because it's unfamiliar not because we know what God is like entirely but we've seen Jesus we know what Jesus is like right and Jesus is our lens through which we can understand how God is and who God is merciful presence pulling up the table more chairs at the table in Matthew's house then maybe the religious tradition might allow but if someone says God is not simply male or only male we might say for I'm just not going to like metal in our actual sort of cultural imagination about this if God says someone says God is male only male we would go well that's familiar but I think there's more to it right that might make some of you bristle and that deserves the same sort of examination Jesus is a man yeah we could say that that is real and we don't need to flatten it but the father the language you use for God the creator and the spirit are not gendered in the same way the scriptures themselves refuse to contain God in a single image this is what the kids are actually talking about in their class right now the bristling is worth sitting with that discomfort that we may have when our view of God is challenged it may be under the surface your theology at work and it's a good thing you should make friends with that it's okay maybe something cultural something inherited something worth naming that expands your view of who God is and therefore who God welcomes at God's table that you may have excluded inadvertently because of that limited view scripture gives us this God is a mother comforts her child huh got his mother so I will comfort you the prophet how many of us and this is me included have an image an image of God his mother comforting that's who that is God gathering her people like a hen gathering chicks and I know even when I say God gathering her people like little but again I know this is big but God is not gendered God is beyond those language in that category it's a hard thing you feel that it's comfort I'm just telling you what scripture says God crying out like a woman in labor pushing toward new creation wisdom Sophia hokma both feminine descriptions of God the voice of God calling humanity home the spirit ruach it's feminine the Hebrew word for the Holy Spirit is feminine moving over the waters of creation this is not a revision this isn't something new this has been available to us all along there are other forces that work in our imagination and in our world that edge these out right they keep these at bay it is the full witness of the text that we're looking for about who got it and when we narrow it we don't get more of God we get less of God and when we get less of God we get less of the image of God that we see in other people we get less of those people at God's table amen y'all track with me right I know we're like meddling in some like philosophical things but this is actually really good under the hood work that we need to do we've made a small change in the doxology you probably have noticed it we've also made a change in blessed be God father son and Holy Spirit and blessed be God's kingdom if you notice that instead of his or him we've just put God there that him in the doxology praise God from whom all blessings flow praise God here below there you are right that him was written in 1674 and it's totally acceptable it's a beautiful him and I grew up with that I sing that to my my daughters every night but in the in the church we thought let's adopt language that's actually a bit more accurate a little bigger picture of who God is not just him but praise God we're speaking of the Holy Trinity this isn't a theological change I need to underscore this it isn't a change to make God something God knows who God is right God is very secure in God's self the change serves us the change serves us for the picture we have who this God is because language shapes imagination and imagination shapes who we see and welcome at God's table you see what I'm saying so even a word change like that actually has this downstream trickle effect of expanding the welcome at God's table it's really important it's really significant and I know that it matters to us because we say life together in the goodness of God who do we mean by that I think we would say Jesus who do you mean by that and we would welcome all that Jesus welcome even sinners like us get to come to the table the table Jesus sets has always been bigger than we are comfortable with accepting Matthew the collaborator the bleeding woman the dead girl the sinners nobody thought belonged Jews Gentiles men and women and children the Pharisees even even though they are offended the Pharisees are welcome we are those Pharisees they pulled the disciples and said this isn't right that discomfort was real and we can identify with it but it was also Indian the wrong thing to protect these traditional views of God that are just a little too limited friends I want to sit with this idea and ask are we willing to let our picture of God get bigger oh really I know I say this with a lot of love it's hard it's hard I have so many people in my life who have come to me and not directly but in their loving actions in their challenge to me said Sean can your view of God get bigger that's not what they said but what they said was and I'm telling you I've had this conversation more times than I would like to admit because it indicates something pretty awful about the church but people say God Sean am I welcome here what must their view of God be so informed by the church that makes them even ask that question of course my response is usually well I'm welcome here anybody's welcome here are you willing to allow your picture of God to just get bigger and not bigger arbitrarily but more true more clear about who God is even if it's uncomfortable a bigger God doesn't threaten us a bigger God makes room a bigger God sets a table we couldn't have imagined setting ourselves and by the way this isn't our table this is God's table and that table has always had a chair with your name on it and always had a chair our neighbors name friends that is good news because it tells us just how big our God is amen let's take a moment of silence and