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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Because eternal life, the good life isn't a destination or an object to acquire. It's about involving yourself in the life that comes from God, not later, but right now. We are wrapping up at the summer series today. We've been reflecting on summer spaces. I kicked off the series talking about play.
Speaker 1:I talked about how other people's kids have changed my life and how other people's kids show us Jesus. Then Scott spoke about awe and in particular the fleeting awe that we know in the season of summer. We are transfigured even in these brief encounters with wonder. Then Yelena did such a cool job last week talking about sustainability. It's a word that we're used to hearing outside of the church.
Speaker 1:But through a theological treatment, Yelena said sustainability is rooted in the affirmation of goodness in all created things. I like that. Today, we are talking about change. The change that we seek, the change that overwhelms us, and its ability to expand us outside of ourselves. But before we dive in, let's take a moment to pray together.
Speaker 1:Loving God, we take this moment to catch up to ourselves a little bit, to be present, trusting that you, Holy Spirit, are near. We are mindful of the expended energy of the week, in school returning, in neighborhoods filling up after summer vacation, getting the most out of this last stretch of summer, busy errands, our efforts to conserve water. And as we sit with all of that energy that this week required, we let a little bit of it go. This week is over. What's done is done.
Speaker 1:So as we breathe in and out, we feel our feet on the floor and we are aware that they ground us here. Our hearts are open, our minds are ready to encounter Christ, and our meditation about change. Amen. So a couple of months ago, I was listening to the comedians Neil Brennan and Patton Oswald on the podcast Blocks, and Neil asked Patton, how do you like parenting? And Patton said, I love parenting.
Speaker 1:And Neil said, it changes you. Right? And then Patton gave an answer I wasn't expecting. He said, every single thing in life changes you. Even trying to resist change changes you.
Speaker 1:And I thought, yes, comedian. Speak the truth to me. Everything in life changes you. Today, we'll look at a story in Matthew 19 where a young man approaches Jesus seeking change. But when he's invited toward even more change, he turns and he walks away.
Speaker 1:So here's what happens. A man comes up to Jesus and asks, teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life? Jesus replied, why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wanna enter life, keep the commandments.
Speaker 1:Which ones? The man inquired. Jesus replied, you shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.
Speaker 1:You shall not give false witness. Honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself. Now you can find this same story in both Mark and Luke, but Matthew actually makes a change. Where Mark and Luke have Jesus say, why do you call me good? Only God is good.
Speaker 1:Matthew alters that. He has Jesus say, why do you ask me about what is good? Matthew, written later, doesn't want his audience to think Jesus doubts his own goodness. So Matthew emphasizes a high Christology. Of course Jesus is good, so the author nudges the language to retain reverence.
Speaker 1:So let that serve as a permission slip to your own sacred change. When you need to get rid of, let's say, toxic ideas about God, start with language. Shift your pronouns for God. Get rid of violent metaphors. Question hierarchy.
Speaker 1:Trust your gut. I love that the gospels change right under our nose. Mark and Luke thought the question was fine, but it seemed to bug the writer of Matthew enough to make a change, and somehow both versions, they belong. So this man asks Jesus what good deed he needs to do to get eternal life. And right away, we should wonder about that.
Speaker 1:Jesus wasn't going around the countryside just handing out get out of hell for free cards to a person so they could pocket it and pull it out later. That's what this guy was looking for though. I imagine his to do list for the day. To do. Let's see.
Speaker 1:Pick up milk from the store, zero out inbox, and acquire eternal life. Like, check, check. Now the word for good here carries connotations of what is beautiful and kind. So we're moving toward descriptions of the divine, and that's the point. The good is defined by God.
Speaker 1:But the man with the question phrases it in a way that means he is looking for just one good thing he can do to lock down eternal life. He wants to own it, not become it. And that's a problem because eternal life, the good life isn't a destination or an object to acquire. It's about involving yourself in the life that comes from God, not later but right now. So Jesus steers the conversation toward what eternal life looks like and he cites commandments.
Speaker 1:And before you yawn and say, rules, boring, trust that Jesus is subverting expectations. He rattles off five commandments when the man asks which ones he should keep. And those five commandments are from the last half of the Decalogue, the 10 commandments. So why does Jesus choose those five and not the first ones about loving God and having no idols and never using the divine name in vain. Well, the theme here is love toward others.
Speaker 1:Now this young man, he is wealthy. And some scholars wonder if this guy expected Jesus to say give us a big offering and eternal life will be yours. Easy peasy. But Jesus doesn't do that does he? With these commandments he says you cannot live a life centered on God without loving others.
Speaker 1:The change you seek it seeks you in the relationships that you keep. If you want eternal life start by loving the people that you know. So the young man says, yeah yeah. I've kept those commands. What do I lack?
Speaker 1:And Jesus answered, if you wanna be perfect, go. Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sad because he had great wealth. Now this is absolutely about money.
Speaker 1:It's in a series of texts that speak about household matters. Marriage and divorce earlier in the chapter, little children brought to Jesus and blessed just before this story, and now money takes center stage. And in the ancient world, the household is this microcosm for life in the empire. And here in Matthew, the household is also a microcosm for an alternative kingdom. Jesus has just taught that there is a limit to one man's power at home and kids should always be blessed and wealth is something to reconsider.
Speaker 1:In fact, right after the rich man turns and walks away Jesus says to the disciples, truly it is hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Now I have a theory about the importance of this conversation between Jesus and the rich man. I think it's meant to be embedded in our collective faith nervous system, maybe even read through the lens of stress. And the thing about stress is that there are countless ways that you can resolve some of it.
Speaker 1:You can take a walk. You can tackle it with a to do list. You can have a good cry. You can talk to a friend. You can take a few deep breaths and let the exhale be a little longer.
Speaker 1:All of that can resolve some stress. But there is the kind of stress that doesn't go away. It leaves a mark on your memory so that you recognize it when it comes back around. It's like an alarm meant to get your attention. When Jesus says to the rich man, be perfect, he isn't making the way forward impossible.
Speaker 1:He's saying, become more whole. And what that means for the man and his money is that everything he owns is making him less whole, less himself. And the thought of losing it all stresses the poor guy out. I mean, we can understand that. This is not the key to eternity that he hoped to find.
Speaker 1:Instead, he's confronted with himself, and he's so overwhelmed by what is required of him that he turns from Jesus because he's so sad. It's loss. It's grief. The man knows what he needs to do, but he doesn't want to do it. Now maybe you already know this, but change, it is felt as loss.
Speaker 1:And loss is felt as grief. Change, even the change that's good for you, can still make you really sad. So the story of the rich young man remains unresolved. It's in our collective faith nervous system so that every time we encounter it and we will keep on encountering it we examine what it means for ourselves. What is Jesus inviting you to let go of?
Speaker 1:Not the easy stuff either, the really hard stuff. What feels like a camel through the eye of a needle? Maybe it's your money, but it could also be a part of your story that used to define you. And now, honestly, it's making your life so small. It might be hurt that you honestly aren't ready to heal yet.
Speaker 1:It might be anger that you aren't ready to process or grieve. This young man could have done exactly what Jesus told him to do, but then all we'd have is a happy ending. More than a resolution, I think this story is meant to be ever present in our faith psyche. It is meant to stress us out a little bit so that we can live this story as a question that never goes away. Teacher, what can I do to be more whole?
Speaker 1:So after the disciples hear Jesus tell the man to sell everything and give it to the poor, they ask, who then can be saved? And the question makes sense. If not this guy, this guy who's young and wealthy, then who? And in their own faith tradition, there is this belief that wealth is a blessing from God. Jesus kinda turns that on his head, doesn't he?
Speaker 1:With his simple lifestyle and sermon on the mount, Jesus says that wealth equals blessing is not necessarily true. It's generosity that makes blessing, not the other way around. Then Jesus just looked at them. I don't know. It's the looking for me.
Speaker 1:You know? The Greek word means to observe fixedly. So with fixed observation Jesus says with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. So let's look back for a moment. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus has been teaching that the poor are blessed.
Speaker 1:And you can't serve both God and money and your treasure is where your heart is. And even with that road map, we get our shoulders up around our ears about how to live. When life is changing you, the response to all of that discomfort isn't to pad yourself with more stuff from Amazon, though I did get a great lemon juicer on my doorstep last week. But life is so much more than lemon juicers. What Jesus was trying to say to the rich man and the disciples was simply don't get in your own way.
Speaker 1:Trust in something bigger than yourself. With God, All things are possible. Now there's this work that I love by the late priest and theologian Dennis Edwards. And he says that the spirit of God is the imminent source of what is new and an emerging universe. In other words, there are all of these spiritual lessons for us when we trace where we come from on a cosmic scale.
Speaker 1:So in the history of the universe, change is life. From the formation of the planet to the origin of water to single celled organisms to millions of years of photosynthesis to multicellular life to earliest plants and animals to ice ages to apes to our complex human consciousness with every step forward something new occurs. What is new is made of the components of the past, but you know what? You can't even reduce it back to those parts. So the lesson is this, you can't go backwards.
Speaker 1:This can be a comfort Even when we face the kind of change we call crisis, the spirit of God will draw us forward into something new. Think about that. When it comes to the climate, to loneliness, to wars and disease. Stay open to what you don't know yet. Look, I don't know where Jesus was at with the science, but he had to have understood the fundamental nature of our existence.
Speaker 1:And then the last part of the conversation in Matthew 19, Jesus tells Peter and the disciples that there is a glorious future up ahead and he calls it the renewal of all things. And he says that if you have left houses or brothers or sisters or mother or wife or children or fields to follow him, you'll get it all back a hundredfold. You'll get it all back because something greater will be made out of what you leave behind. Being a part of something new, it changes you. Now I have loved the family I married into for a long time.
Speaker 1:I first met one of the Bateman sisters when I was just 18 years old. And I became friends with two more Bateman sisters in two different cities. And then at the age of 37, I married their younger brother. Go older women. Best story of my life.
Speaker 1:But there's so much more to it than that. For one thing, I've always liked how the Batemans are a family, but I didn't always fit into it with ease. For example, every Christmas, the Batemans play board games. They play board games all day and all evening, and sometimes, some of them, they even stay up most of the night to play board games. Guys, I don't like board games.
Speaker 1:Well, I never used to like board games, but I am working to change that. This summer, I looked into a game I thought I might like, and together with Jonathan, we went to Sentrybox to pick up the game Cascadia. I'm calling it Wingspan Light. It's great. It's so great that I've taken not one, not two, but three selfies of Jonathan and I learning to play.
Speaker 1:Everyone, I play board games now. That's a bear reference for you if you get it. And I know board games, they're make believe. Right? But the change, the change isn't.
Speaker 1:I am facing my impatience, which is a force. I'm facing my own insecurities and my fear of not succeeding. And I'm so proud of this change that when my sister and brother-in-law came for their annual Calgary getaway with their kids, I said one evening, have you guys heard about board games? You wanna play one? And they declared with end of the day parent exhaustion, no.
Speaker 1:So take note, not everyone appreciates the changes that you make. Being a part of a family or a Jesus community, it changes you. But you know what? You already know that. In a lot of ways, I've been hearing you preach sermons about change for years with your lives.
Speaker 1:I mean, how did you even land at commons if not for the change you are making in your faith? You've changed your mind about important matters. You've changed relationships so that you can heal. You've changed so you could follow Jesus in bigger and brighter ways. You, Commons Church, have been preaching about change to me for years in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1:I'm just preaching it back to you. So let's start this next season, next week at our tenth anniversary ready for more change. Let us bless the ways we'll face new parts of ourselves this year. Let us bless the ways we'll change our minds and hearts through our struggles. Let us bless the ways that we will stay open to the mystery of God at work in all of our lives with no exception renewing the world without end.
Speaker 1:Let us pray. Loving God, thank you for the way that we are made to always always be changing. That can feel so scary and it can also feel so empowering all at the same time. For those of us who need more wisdom to understand the change we are in, won't you teach us? For those of us who can help others with the change they are in, won't you lead us?
Speaker 1:And for those of us who just need a little respite while we're changing, Won't you show us how to rest? So spirit of the living God present with us now, enter the places of change we are living in and heal us of all that harms us. 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.