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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Our lives are an unfathomable web of relationships bursting with the kind of creativity that will provoke you, surprise you, and maybe even set you free. We need creativity in relationships more now than ever. Let's catch up on the series, How to Be More Creative. By the way, I love how more sits in this title. It insists that no one gets to say, no.
Speaker 1:No. No. No. Not me. I'm not creative.
Speaker 1:The very fact that you are a creature, a person made in the image of God is the starting place of your humanity. God as creator is the first thing we know about God, the very Genesis. And in Genesis, we get this outrageously creative poem that manages to contain some thirteen billion years of the universe's evolution with this first poetic line. When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. And then we are off.
Speaker 1:God speaks creation saying, let there be light. Let there be sky and land. Let there be stars, moon, and sun. Let there be swarms of living creatures. Let there be humans in our image and let them keep creating.
Speaker 1:The first thing we know about God is that God creates. And the first thing we find out about who we are is that we are meant to create to, to name, to partner with, to reproduce creation. Now in this series, we've talked about creativity in technology, creativity in our spirituality, and today, we'll talk about creativity in relationships. But first, allow me to talk about my upcoming sabbatical. Now you're probably familiar with the idea of sabbatical.
Speaker 1:It is a period of paid leave where a professional, in this case a pastor, steps away from their duties to rest and recharge and maybe even create something new. Commons has a fairly new sabbatical policy and that's why no one has taken one yet. I will be the first. But you should get ready for sabbaticals to be a normal thing around here. If they aren't, start asking questions.
Speaker 1:Now Jeremy will speak about that more next week, so I'll just catch you up on my journey toward sabbatical. I have been in pastoral ministry for twenty five years now, and I don't really look it, but I have never taken a sabbatical. Now colleagues and friends of mine are on like their third by now, so you know what? It's time. But I first started to consider a sabbatical.
Speaker 1:I really wanted it to be, like, super sexy. And by that, I just mean I wanted to do something really, really cool, like go to a monastery in a beautiful European setting and sit in silence for three weeks and just face myself anew, I'm actually not doing any of that. And even if that means it is a little less spectacular, it is still good and important, and it will certainly be a gift. As you know, or maybe I'm just telling you this for the first time, I will be leading Marteloop Commons launching later this year. And while I have worked hard to be a senior leader in church ministry, I have never had the opportunity, the privilege even to lead my own parish.
Speaker 1:So this past fall and this winter, I have done all of this work to prepare to lead. I've been building an amazing core team and helping to shape the renovations in Marteloop. I've had so many coffee meetings just two blocks from our new building at our Daily Brett that they know me by name there. All that to say, it is going great. I am having so much fun.
Speaker 1:But now, it is time for me to step away for a few months because honestly stepping away for three months could be the healthiest thing that I do. And here's why. There is an undeniable biblical precedent for Sabbath. Back in that creation poem, God made the world in twenty five ministry years, just kidding, in seven days. And then on that seventh day, God rested.
Speaker 1:You and I, we are right now gathered on the Christian Sabbath to renew our spirits for what the week will hold. Jesus was even Lord of the Sabbath, so there's that. But beyond the precedent, the second reason I'm taking a sabbatical is a little more subversive for the times that we live in. By stepping away, I am stepping toward this new chapter with faith. That is this deeper trust that even as I cease working on this project of a new parish for a stretch, you know what?
Speaker 1:It is still going to happen. In fact, it will happen with forces greater than me, the work of this incredible community, my outstanding colleagues, and the spirit of God. Something strange happens with time when we give ourselves over to rest and play. We allow that which is depleted in us to be restored. And our work on the other side of rest, I really believe this, it is always better.
Speaker 1:Now, I am nowhere close to burnout. That is not the point. The point is that I am not a machine, and neither are you. So in our creaturely rhythms, and maybe even before any of us transition into new responsibilities or relationships or commitments, we just slow down a little bit and pay attention to what we need to tend so that we can enter a next chapter, a new season, a second parish ready for what is ahead. So you will not see me from February to the April.
Speaker 1:I will be laying low and finishing a writing project and taking a couple little trips and honestly, having an extra glass of wine on a Saturday night when I am at dinner with friends. But when I'm back, I'll tell you more about it. And I trust that you'll be even more ready to support Marteloop when I return. We all need to bring our tended hearts and bodies into what is ahead this year, and that takes real time. Sabbath rest is, as Abraham Heschel says, a sanctuary in time.
Speaker 1:If you wanna catch me before I go, I'm still around next Sunday. But today, let's get to creativity in relationships. So let us pray. Loving God, to whom all hearts are open and all desires known, we pause in this little sanctuary of time, aware of our need for rest and play. Thank you for the rhythms of life that invite us to do good work and then settle down with good rest As we consider the creativity of life lived in relationships, we remember that you are at work in the spaces between us.
Speaker 1:You knit us together and fold us in family, bind us in friendship so that we can be made more whole. We know that the world right now near and far can feel so full of conflict and uncertainty. So spirit, we simply ask that you renew us with your love. And as we breathe in together, we breathe in your peace. And as we exhale together, we breathe out just any jumpiness we feel.
Speaker 1:Amen. Alright. Today is the finale in our how to be more creative series. We're gonna talk about five guys on a roof, creative damage, uncontainable, and more in relationships. But first a question, what is the most extreme thing you've ever done for a friend?
Speaker 1:I had a friend surprise me in Europe for my birthday years ago, as in I was already going to Europe with my husband and she surprise showed up. And I maybe wouldn't recommend that, but it was really an extreme act of friendship. Whatever extreme thing you have done for a friend, I don't know if it comes close to what four guys do for a fifth in Mark chapter two. So Jesus has gone back to Capernaum and people hear that he's home. And throughout Mark these pressing crowds are this constant backdrop in Jesus's ministry.
Speaker 1:And in the scene there are so many people crowded into a house that no one else can get in. But along comes some men and four of them are carrying a paralyzed guy to Jesus. So since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was laying on. When Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralyzed man, son your sins are forgiven. So let's start with the faith that Jesus saw.
Speaker 1:Notice it is not the poor paralyzed man's faith but the faith of these four men Jesus points to. Jesus saw their faith. Third person plural. And I can't help but wonder if it's friendship that does bind their faith. Like maybe they all had a crush on the same girl, maybe they memorized the Torah together as teenagers, Maybe they were on the job site the day this man's life changed forever.
Speaker 1:And whatever their story, these men have had enough of the status quo. So from the edges of the crowd, they imagine a different future for this guy immobilized on a poor man's mat, so they get to work. Maybe one guy, he's the brains, another gets the paralytic man to trust them. Maybe two more are just doing what they're told. They climb up and they just start to dig.
Speaker 1:And interestingly, the disabled man is silent and passive until verse 12, the end of this pericope. It's the faith of four men old friends or new that brings this guy to the feet of healing. But if it's healing that's desired, why does Jesus start with forgiveness? Well, in the ancient world sin is always linked to sickness. You'll find this causal thread throughout the old testament like here in Psalm one zero seven which reads, some became fools because of their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities.
Speaker 1:You're sick? The ancient world would say it's your fault or maybe it's even your parents fault you dirty sinners. There's even a rabbinic reference that said a sick person does not arise from his sickness until all his sins are forgiven. So like no pressure. Remember, you can't expect the bible to operate in a world of modern biomedical science that determines the mechanism of disease.
Speaker 1:This is a world that finds explanation in morality and purity. So I'll say more about who controls that world in a moment, but back to our five guys on a roof. I want you to imagine yourself not as the man on the mat lowered in the middle of a sermon, but I want you to imagine that you are one of the other guys. That's more likely the case as it's four to one. And what these guys do is they take their friend who has been marginalized, and they hatch this creative through the roof solution that brings him from the edges to the very center of the story.
Speaker 1:And I can't help but think that this has something to say about the creativity of our prayers for one another. Like so often we are asking God to fix and change and correct a situation and I wonder if God is in the house waiting for us to find our way in with like this muscle of our collective creativity. If you are the man on the mat, it looks to me like you actually need more than God to get well. Like, you actually need other people. Now, as important as friends may be in the story, Jesus is going further than friendship.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's kind of his deal. Right? Going through the one to the many. So some teachers of the law, they're sitting there thinking to themselves, why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming.
Speaker 1:Who can forgive sins but God alone? And immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts and he said, why are you thinking these things? Which is easier to say to this paralyzed man your sins are forgiven or to say, get up, take your mat, and walk. The antagonists here are scribes, and they represent this hierarchy in religious life which governed this crowd of common Jewish people in ancient Palestine. Now remember we're only in chapter two.
Speaker 1:This is early in Jesus' ministry. So we notice that the scribes, they are inside the house still. They're listening and they're taking him in. And I love Jesus' creative flex here. He follows his intuition, a holy thing, and says the quiet part out loud.
Speaker 1:So far, we're not even talking about a body made better. We're just talking about sin. In the scribes, they actually invoke the Shema, the morning and evening prayer that provides this most basic boundary to their faith. Here, o Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one.
Speaker 1:And so when Jesus starts with forgiveness rather than enacting a simple healing, in their minds, those are confronting words. How blasphemous. What an abuse of our belief. They're sure Jesus steps way outside the prayer that governs their days. What right does he have they think.
Speaker 1:It's our job to tell these people when God has forgiven their sins like it reads in Leviticus four, the priest. The priest shall make atonement on a man's behalf for his sin and he then will be forgiven. Imagine it, needing another person to be a part of forgiveness. I mean, the longer I live, the more I think forgiveness is a process and it involves so much more than just me deciding to forgive. It comes up from relationships and it looks like repair.
Speaker 1:Come to think of it, maybe this story of four guys lowering a fifth through the roof has actually said the same thing. I think what's so offensive to these religious leaders is not so much that Jesus claims the power of a priest for himself, while priest is an appropriate metaphor for Jesus in the gospels. But I think what's so offensive is that Jesus is moving the power of the few to the many. So it is just people, people who love each other, who go to great lengths to help each other, who concoct creative solutions to address life's harsh damage. It is people who can be priests for each other.
Speaker 1:What Jesus says to these religious authorities is that if they were real priests, they'd act like it. They'd push down, dig up, knock over anything constructed to keep people down. These religious authorities, they are inside the house taking up space when the person who needs God the most has to be lowered through the roof to be set free. So as far as I read this text, Jesus is very much God here speaking forgiveness first because that is what God does. And the friends, we the friends, we are the priests carrying the people who have been left out to the very center of what it means to be at home with God and one another.
Speaker 1:We are the creative agents in each other's healing. We have to take that seriously, body, mind, and soul. So Jesus continues to speak truth to power. He says to the religious leaders, but I want you to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the man, I tell you get up, take your mat and go home.
Speaker 1:And with that it would seem like a healing is honestly an afterthought. So let's talk about this reference to the title Jesus gives himself here, son of man. You may remember that it is this callback to the prophetic in Daniel seven. This is the first time Mark uses it. And son of man or as the n r s v u e translates it, one like a human being is thought of as an eschatological name for the Messiah.
Speaker 1:Meaning, at the end of days we will see God like the prophet Daniel described. One like a human being coming down with the clouds of heaven, this descending human goes before the ancient one, that's Yahweh, and presents himself. And as a result he is given dominion and glory and kingship. All peoples and nations and languages serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion.
Speaker 1:It will never pass away. It will never be destroyed. It is such a lofty vision. So when Jesus calls himself son of man the question is this, which is it? Is the son of man meant to show us who we are or is the son of man meant to show us who God is?
Speaker 1:And I would argue the answer is yes to both. What's so offensive to the powerful, the wealthy, the walled in, and secure is that even the holy scriptures inspired by spirit and written by godly prophets could not even contain Jesus. As if God's creativity finally embodied could ever be contained. And when Jesus sets out to tell the world that he is what God looks like, he claims to be the son of man who comes down from the clouds only he shows us that he's not that far away. He's already here, feet on the ground, a twinkle in his eye, a riddle about forgiveness on his lips.
Speaker 1:Four guys climbing on a roof, they want their friend healed. No problem. Jesus announces forgiveness and then fixes those limbs. Jesus uses the creativity that holds the cosmos together to restore what is broken in body, in social order, in relationships, and we are left with the legacy to do the same. I do wanna warn you though, creativity in relationships is not all sunbeams and roses.
Speaker 1:I mean, you ever tried to change for the good? And the people who knew you for years, maybe even a lifetime, were really threatened by that change. Speaking personally, there was a season in my pastoral career a long long time ago, when I kept hearing particularly from people with more denominational power, oh, Bobby, you're so creative. And I quickly learned that that was not a compliment. It at its most innocuous, it meant like, we don't really know what to do with you.
Speaker 1:But honestly, at its most pernicious, it meant, oh, get back in your place. It all came to a head when I was actually defending my ordination paper, and it just didn't sound like everyone else's. So what do you think? Did I get back in line? Did I change my language to conform?
Speaker 1:Did I apologize profusely to the man who yelled at me about my work? I did not simply because that was not a representation of who I know God to be. God is not looking for us to make God smaller, more predictable, less personal. God is limitless creativity. And when we tap into that, we are doing something so right.
Speaker 1:Don't worry about that ordination story, by the way, because as you know, everything worked out just fine. But big finish today. This man who had been lowered down through the roof, he got up, took his mat, and walked out in full view of them all. And this amazed everyone and they praised God saying, we have never seen anything like this. A creative act before their very eyes.
Speaker 1:Think of all the encounters that led to the one that set this man free. Religious leaders who had walked right past him, even while obstinate, are foils for truth. Because you know what? Sometimes your haters have something to teach you. Think of those four guys who refused to accept the status quo, finding this creative workaround by digging a hole through a roof.
Speaker 1:Think about this special teacher. Like, every sentence sounds somehow familiar and yet so new. When he's around, everyone wants to get closer. Our lives are an unfathomable web of relationships bursting with the kind of creativity that will provoke you, surprise you, and maybe even set you free. We need creativity in relationships more now than ever.
Speaker 1:Creativity in our marriages to find new ways forward together, creativity in our friendships and workplaces and neighborhoods to face what feels impossible together. But creativity, it needs to be kept alive. It needs to be practiced. It sometimes even needs a little bit of conflict and challenge to spark something new. We live in a time of creativity numbing forces.
Speaker 1:Our phones, our rage, our apathy, our loneliness, our addictions, our superficiality. These forces, they deaden our imagination when it comes to the divine or how we can show up for one another. Do not give in to a world that says you can't do anything about what is wrong and broken or that you don't fit because of what is unique about you. Creativity resists conformity. So when you feel yourself losing touch with creativity, remember that Jesus spent all of his time with people on the margins.
Speaker 1:So I would say, run for the wild edges of things. Cast your love farther. Take meaningful risks. Play so hard, you collapse breathless. Try something new.
Speaker 1:Talk to someone new. Create new paths to help anyone. Cross divides, get offline, go outside, say hi to a stranger, put your nose in great novels in a lover's neck and the flowers in the springtime because before you know it your sins will be forgiven and your body will be brought back to life. Let us pray. Loving God, uncontainable one.
Speaker 1:There's no shortage of the infinite layers of creativity available to us in our relational lives. People come together and create beautiful families. Friends bond over the weirdest stuff and are woven into our lives for good. Communities and churches are built from convictions that hold us together in a world that wants us to be so badly divided. Do we follow convictions of love about who you are Jesus, about who we're meant to be?
Speaker 1:Convictions that say no suffering is left unchecked, no sin is past forgiveness, no amount of greed can make for the good life you invite us into. And so we bask in the creativity of our relationships and we know that we are still being formed in them. So spirit of the living God, take the relationships in our lives and point us toward your ever creative community of peace, reconciliation, and joy. Enter the places of our loneliness and remind us that we can reach out, we can dig deeper, and we can find ourselves at home in a loving relationship with one another and with you. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.