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welcome to the commons cast we're glad
to have you here we hope you find
something meaningful in our teaching
this week head to commons dot church for
more information
good morning thanks for being here come
on back in and have a seat
today we're going to start a new
conversation we've got four weeks to
talk about trinity and holy spirit and
the nature of god so look out lots to
cover here
first though let's recap where we've
been to start the year
we just finished a series called
relearning friendship
and that was fun because scott and bobby
and i all had a chance to add our voices
into that conversation that was
intentional we figured if we were going
to talk about friendship we needed to
hear from each other in that but we
covered a number of different ideas in
that series
the idea that friendship is a unique
category in our lives
one that we need to guard and protect
and celebrate the rarity of
we talked about loneliness and
expectation we talked about suffering
and the way that we can join each other
in those difficult experiences
and then last week we talked about
conflict in friendship
in particular how difficult it can be to
balance healthy good boundaries with
also making space for disagreement with
those who care about us
and sometimes we need to make hard
decisions about relationships and even
friendships those that are not healthy
for us but at the same time we don't
want hard decisions to make us hard
people in fact the reason for good
boundaries in your life
is that you want to be able to stay soft
and vulnerable and open to intimacy with
the relationships that earn that from
you
you're actually protecting your open
heart by keeping good boundaries
i actually posted a follow-up to our
youtube channel this week
looking at some of the conflict
strategies that can be helpful in
relationships some of the ones that
rachel and i infused in our marriage
if you're interested in that it's
available as a resource for you on
youtube of course that whole series is
available in the archives if you missed
any of it so check that out
today though we begin the forgotten god
no my name is jeremy i'm part of the
team here at commons and thanks for
being here uh whether you are in the
room or online today we really
appreciate your presence with us
we know we couldn't do any of this
without you
but in this new series we want to take
some time to talk about the presence of
a spirit in all of our lives
now obviously we haven't forgotten about
god right this is a church after all and
all of us got up and prepared ourselves
to be part of this worship gathering i
mean we are here specifically because we
remember god at some level
and yet
particularly in a church like commons
i think where we have intentionally
created space for an intellectual
pursuit when it comes to our faith
it can feel at times like spirit is
secondary
maybe not forgotten but perhaps asked to
stand just to the side a little bit
and i'll admit some of that is my own
story in my own baggage
i made my way to the jesus story through
the pentecostal tradition
in fact i did my undergrad at a
pentecostal bible college and before
starting comments i worked in and i was
ordained in pentecostal churches
and that charismatic spirit-filled
experience was a big part of my
formative christian journey
now over time
some of the gaps in my experience became
more evident to me
i went to grad school and i read more
widely
i started to understand that the
christianity was this long and wide
river with a lot of different streams
flowing into it
and hear me here it's okay to understand
your stream and where you feel most at
home actually that's an important part
of all of our stories
but for me
making christianity mine was also
learning to value and embrace these
traditions that i had not been exposed
to
i hear a commons we work hard to
incorporate prayers and imagery from
across the christian perspective to
remind us of just how big god is
but then
i also began to see
how at times those ecstatic experiences
of worship that i had been a part of had
been used to manipulate my emotions and
perspectives
and certainly not always intentionally
but even unintentionally
there's incredible power in communal
experience
and sometimes it can be very hard to
figure out what is spirit and what is
group think in some of those moments
i still remember being in camp meetings
at 18 years old when i was new to
christianity and everybody there was
speaking in tongues and there was a lot
of pressure about participating in that
and i did
only to be left wondering the next day
whether any of that was real
so i remember
resolving very early in my career as a
minister that pressure and coercion were
never going to be part of my repertoire
as a pastor
and that goes for spirit but it goes for
money it goes for salvation
i firmly believe that god is gentle with
all of us and yet still
i recognize that i was deeply shaped by
encounters with spirit profound
experiences of prayer and worship that i
didn't want to shake
and so when we were formulating our
values at commons jesus at the center
that's what we started with
we always had the conviction that jesus
would be the lens through which we
interpreted scripture together
but the language that we added of
intellectually honest and spiritually
passionate that was an attempt however
clumsy
for us to marry a critical academic
investigation of faith with the trust
that god still does show up in
unexpected ways for all of us and so as
a community we've tried to balance those
ideas but i think it's fair to admit
that oftentimes the power and the
presence of spirit in our lives can
sometimes be relegated behind our
intellectual pursuit at least it can for
me
and i'll admit one series of
conversations is not going to fix all of
that and awareness of divine presence is
something that each of us has to
cultivate daily
but one series of conversations
certainly isn't going to hurt so let's
start there
so today we're going to talk about
trinity
what is the nature of god and what do we
mean when we talk about god's threeness
next week we'll talk about god's spirit
in and through us in the world
we'll talk about conviction and
conscience as spirit guides us in
community and finally we'll look at
spirit as a feminine image and metaphor
for god
sometimes when we take biblical
metaphors for god and to tightly
anthropomorphize them
we can squeeze out other important vital
images to the edges and we want to do
some work in this series to reclaim some
of that territory in our imagination
so that's lots to cover but hopefully
this will be fun and let's start
together with a prayer
god
we come today confident in the presence
of your spirit here with us
and even when we lack the language or
understanding of exactly how we trust
that you are near
and so this day
as we speak together of spirit as we
remind each other of your being in and
with us we ask that you would move that
conversation not just through our
intellect but somehow deep into our
being
we long to be
fully present to you
our minds and our hearts and our bodies
but also somehow our spirits entwined
with the divine
and so for those of us who tend to live
in the world of the mind we thank you
for that unique expression of who we are
how it brings us closer to knowing you
we celebrate intellect and
thoughtfulness and how you've wired us
but we ask that in these moments you
would expand our imagination of grace
if we have heard your voice before
sensed your nearness with us and yet
struggled sometimes to offer ourselves
and healthy life-giving ways
we ask for peace to come
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flood our minds and calm anxieties to
invite us to discover you in surprising
moments
help us discern
between excitement and emotion and you
but also to embrace this full spectrum
of what it means to be human in our
ecstatic joy and crushing pain
in whatever way we need your spirit
today
we trust that you will meet us
and heal us
and enliven us with spirit's breath
in the strong name
of the risen christ we pray
amen
okay
the agenda today is trinity
and it's going to look like this we're
going to talk about communal experience
and the point of doctrine dancing around
and what is it that is underneath our
language but even to try to talk about
trinity is kind of absurd
one of my
favorite sayings of the church from an
author that is long since forgotten
is that we must speak of god is three in
one but to speak of trinity for more
than a minute means we will inevitably
slip into heresy because we probe too
deeply the mysteries of god
now that does not bode well at the start
of a 30-minute sermon but i still i like
that quote
because some things are simply
mysterious
and so today we're not going to try to
parse the doctrine of trinity
i'm really not interested in gatekeeping
theological spats
but i do want to talk about why trinity
is so important to my concept of the
divine
and i think from there that can give us
a starting point for the rest of the
series to focus in on the person of
spirit within that same triune god
first though as an entry point i want to
talk about buzzfeed
in particular an article that they
posted last week about a collection of
different prayer websites
two in particular that they listed
pray.com and hallow.com
these are sites that are set up so you
can go and post your prayers and
theoretically someone will then pray for
you
and that's not bad
we have a prayer tab on commons.life and
we do collect those prayers and we do
pass them to a prayer team so that's
cool
but
this article was about the incredible
amount of venture capital that was
flowing into these sites
40 million dollars in one investment
and that is not because venture
capitalists love prayer it's because
they love
data
you see these sites have a large user
base they are free after all
but prayer represents some uniquely
valuable information about you
i mean it might be nice to know what you
ate for lunch but imagine if advertisers
knew what you were praying for and
that's what these sites are selling
now to be clear
the investigation showed that these
sites have privacy policies that say the
contents of your prayer will not be sold
to third parties but the way they get
around that is by creating different
categories and forums to post your
prayers in
and then by combining that with your age
and location data they can mine a lot of
information about you
so
say you post a prayer in the marriage
category
and then all of a sudden you see an ad
for a divorce lawyer on facebook
or a new marriage book from an author
whose instagram post you liked once
that's where it's coming from
so first
super shady
the second i think it also kind of
reveals what's broken in our
conceptualization of prayer to begin
with
now obviously
i don't know everyone's motivation here
i don't have the data mining capability
to understand all that but
i would guess
that at least part of the appeal behind
these sites is the idea that to get your
prayers answered the best way to do it
is to get
as many people as possible praying for
you
and that's a very subtle but also a very
capitalist perspective that has worked
its way into our imagination of god and
it's something that you see a lot of
if i want god to do what i want god to
do the way to twist god's arm is to get
a lot of prayer capital behind me
and that is fundamentally a misshapen
imagination
a prayer is not a tool for us to shape
god's work in the world as much as it is
a tool that works reflexively on us
now when jesus teaches us to pray in the
lord's prayer which we've recited today
it's all about how our reflection and
our intention can align our desire and
our action with god's heart
prayer is not to change god it is meant
to change
you
okay
but then what about something like
healing should we pray for that
well absolutely we should right
in james we read is anyone among you
sick let them call the elders of the
church to pray over them anoint them
with oil in the name of the lord
the prayer offered in faith will make
the person well
the lord will raise them up and if they
have sinned they will be forgiven
therefore confess your sins to each
other and pray for each other so that
you may be healed
the prayer of a righteous person is
powerful and effective so should we pray
for each other yes shall we pray for
healing yes should we trust that god's
spirit is at work in the world of course
absolutely
but there is a lot more going on here
than just getting what we want from god
first of all
this idea james has of being made well
that's literally the word for salvation
that he uses
and he makes that clear by tying it into
the idea of being forgiven when we pray
for each other
so this is actually isn't just about
healing this isn't just about having our
prayers answered the way that we want
this is actually rooted in the hebrew
idea of shalom
being made well
and at peace the embodiment of human
flourishing in the world
now absolutely our physical health is
part of that
and james is acknowledging that but he's
also expanding it at the same time
this last phrase in the niv it says the
prayer of a righteous person is powerful
and effective but i mean that's just
wrong
the word powerful is ironically
something more like effective
it actually means it accomplishes a
great deal
and then the word effective is the word
inergo
except that's an adjectival participle
that modifies the word prayer
all that means is that the sentence
should read something more like the
working prayers of the righteous
accomplish much
in other words
james is saying if you are sick come to
the community for prayer because yeah we
believe that god is active in the world
and you might be healed but actually
the prayers of the community will do
more for you than you expect
and so when you post your prayers online
you end up with your data monetized by
capital investment firms and when you go
to community
to those who know and care about you and
you open yourself up to them not just
with your needs but with your hurts and
your failings and you trust that you
will be loved and cared for known in the
midst of that vulnerable moment you
might be healed but you will
be made well
and again
the point of prayer isn't to manipulate
god it's that we might be transformed by
god's imagination for
us
and part of what james is arguing here
is that healing is a gift but it's the
very experience of beloved community
that we fall into when we open ourselves
up to each other for prayer that's what
we need because that is shalom
which means that this is being made well
because we are experiencing the kind of
generative community that god has always
known
within god's self
so yeah we pray to be healed
but more than that what we trust is that
in shared community we are invited into
the healing wellness the presence of the
divine
and in that we are made well because we
experience the love that god
is
you see
when we say that god is love
we mean a lot more than god is loving or
even that god loves us
what we mean
is that god is an endless dance of gift
and reception give and take love alive
from before there was time
and that means
that god has never been alone
god has never felt on their own and so
of course god's love for us would
primarily take shape in the world in the
ways that we embrace each other with
that kind of community
human flourishing healing wellness at
the end of the day it is modeled on the
shape of god
and this
right here is actually why discussions
of trinity are so important to
christianity
that's why we wrestle with our language
and our dogma so intently but it's not
about gatekeeping or at least it
shouldn't be
because at the end of the day
trinitarian theology is not about
getting god right it's more about making
sure we don't miss out on any of the
beauty of god
so
here's an example of how that plays out
theologically there's an old heresy
called modalism
and the best metaphor for this might be
to say that god is like water
water can be a liquid and if you freeze
it god can be a solid and if you boil it
it can be a vapor so that's three
molecules in three different realities
just like the triune god
and that works except technically it's
heresy because it assumes that god only
acts or seems or appears in three
different ways but isn't really triune
now
is anyone ever going to be less loved by
god for finding the metaphor of water
helpful or even using it in a sermon no
absolutely not that's not the point of
our doctrine
what we're trying to protect with
doctrine
is the idea that god actually
is somehow a divine community of gift
and reception
persons in relationship not just in
appearance and that the nature of
everything what the universe is composed
of is shared communal love
now hear me
the point of doctrine is not to decide
who is right and who is wrong who's in
and who's out and i know it gets used as
a weapon for that a lot and i'm sorry
but the point of our theology our
language and our doctrine is always
simply to guide us steadily and gently
back toward the beauty of god that
welcomes all
and yeah sometimes we need to be pulled
back in
and sometimes we need to let go of
overly simplistic images and narratives
about god that's what theology does for
us
but particularly when it comes to
trinity
doctrine should do anything but close
down our imagination it should only ever
open us up to the expansive grace of the
one god that is loving community
god is the singular source of all that
is good
and god is an eternal dance of gift and
reception from before there was time
that's what we mean when we say trinity
in fact that's where the genesis of the
idea of trinity comes from
that trinity is not an explicitly
biblical idea
it's the product of biblical reflection
so tertullian was an african theologian
that lived in the late second century he
was the first christian to use the latin
term trinity to describe god
and then a couple centuries later
gregory of nazianzis one of the
cappadocian fathers
an eastern theologian from what today is
known as turkey gave us the first
orthodox image of the trinity
he coined the term perichoresis
now he's using the greek language here
but the prefix peri means around as in
perimeter or the measure around a circle
and choreo is the verb to dance as in
choreography
so the first orthodox image of the
transcendent god so
we have an imminent god that we see in
history right that's goddess creator and
redeemer and sustainer or father son and
spirit all those images we are very
familiar with the god that we know but
the first image of the orthodox
transcendent god who god is in god's
self
is literally the eternal dancing around
that's it that's what we have
and that right there is why spirit is so
important to keep in mind as we point
our imagination back toward god
because images as father and son are
beautiful they're so important to
christianity they help us imagine god is
close incomprehensible
and jesus has an embodied image of god's
way in the world guides us through our
lives but at the same time if we let
them
very particular images of the divine can
also close down our imagination far too
quickly
god is like a human god is like a man
god is like a particular man that i've
known in my life
and it's at that point that spirit
swoops in to lift our thinking back up
to the transcendent divine that we can
barely
name the eternal dancing that formed the
world in all of its complex and
beautiful diversity
see the point of spirit
in our theology is to bring us back to a
pre-rational
sub-linguistic experience of the
goodness that flows through everything
we encounter
i've been reading oprah's new book
that oprah not the other one
it's called what happened to you
conversations on trauma resilience and
healing
it's fantastic you should check it out
but it's written by oprah winfrey and dr
bruce perry who is a psychiatrist
specializing in childhood trauma and
neuroplasticity
but the book is about helping us to
understand the ways in which our
experiences
particularly traumatic experiences
hardwire themselves into our brains
the central premise is that far too
often we ask what's wrong with us
instead of what happened to us
and for someone who has lived an
incredibly privileged life it's been
eye-opening for me to see just how much
of what i take for granted in the world
has been a profound gift i was given
but what i'm fascinated with today
is the way that dr perry explains how
the first two years of our lives even
our experience in the womb shape our
perceptions of the world
as parents i think we're more aware of
this today
but still sometimes we have this idea
that we can hide things from our kids
until they have language to talk about
it or understand it
like we can argue in front of them or we
can be frustrated near them or we can
even ignore an infant or a toddler for a
time because they don't really
understand what's happening
but dr perry argues that actually
language is what helps us rationalize
our experiences
and it's part of what gives us a defense
to those types of experiences
pre-linguistic children very young
children though they are entirely at the
mercy of those experiences
all they have is emotion all they have
is intuition all they have is touch and
safety and care and concern and tone and
texture and timing to shape their
perception
so he argues that it's those
sub-rational pre-linguistic assumptions
about the world that most deeply shape
who we become in the world
now as a parent with a two-year-old
that's a lot of pressure
and i feel that
but also it's an incredible invitation
to us
both to rachel and i as partners in
raising our kids to see the best in
themselves and assume the good that's in
the world around them but also to learn
to welcome this knowledge as an
invitation to remind myself
that it's actually my pre-rational
experience of the divine
the ways that i learn to give myself
over to worship and welcome the ways i
learned to assume god's love surrounding
me always the moments when i set aside
my intellect and my theology to swim in
divine goodness
that these are actually the most
formative moments of my life not the
work that i do to study and research and
write a lot of sermons
in other words
the experiences of god that i allow
myself to have that will shape my
theology not the other way around
or as frederick buchner once wrote
a common view is that life itself
whatever life is does not care one way
or another any more than the ocean cares
about whether we swim or drown
and in all honesty and has to admit that
a great deal of the evidence supports
such a view but rightly or wrongly the
christian faith flatly contradicts this
to say that god is spirit is to say that
life
does
care that the life-giving power that
life itself comes from is not
indifferent as to whether we sing
it wants us
to swim
and my hope is
that as we begin a series of
conversations about this forgotten god
spirit that exists beneath every moment
of our lives
that we would be able to remember that
the god we grasp at with incomplete
language and theology is always for us
and that the more deeply that conviction
can undergird our thoughts and theology
and doctrine the more effectively that
god can transform our experience of
god's world
may the eternal dance of gift and
reception go with you this week
may you inhale divine love
and then breathe out anything that
happened to so doubt in your embrace
this week
the triune god that sits the center of
our faith
but also at the foundation of our
experience of the world
he shared communal love from before
there was time extended now
to us
and through us
let's pray
three in one god
who has always existed as shared love
a dance of gift and reception give and
take a breath in and out
may we understand that below our
language and theology sits this
realization
that the universe is founded in shared
love
and that our thinking our theology our
scriptures our encounters with jesus are
based on that truth
they are pre-rational experience of you
that we feel somewhere deep in the core
of our being in our bones
and we allow that to become the
experience that shapes everything we
see when we talk with a person
when we imagine ourselves
when we move the world pushing toward
the kingdom and imagination you have for
all of us
may who you are
before language
before time before theology
always guide us into love
in the strong name
of the risen christ we pray
amen