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Part 2
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:Hello. Welcome to church in the livestream. We are so glad for technology that connects us. But my goodness, do we ever miss your face? Speaking of things that we miss, during the spring lockdown, I started doing community challenge conversations in the common area on Facebook.
Speaker 2:And one of the first challenges was to journal a list of things that we miss. On 04/03/2020, I wrote that I miss, and this is a top five list. Five. Looking forward to a trip. Four.
Speaker 2:Plans to see my nieces and nephews. Three. Books and beers with Bateman. That's my husband. Two.
Speaker 2:Cappuccinos out at coffee shops. And one. Sunday services with all the people. I've also been thinking about this other thing I miss lately, stories. Like everyday stories with real life drama pulled from getting amongst it.
Speaker 2:You know, those stories you used to share when someone would ask, what's new? And you actually had a fun response from a party or a trip or a concert. Well lately, when I tell a story, I preface it by saying, This is boring, but it's the only story I've got. So heads up: there is a story about sourdough in this sermon, and there is very little drama, but stories are what this pandemic has left us with. And by the way, I am Bobbi.
Speaker 2:I am one of the pastors here at Commons. And today we dig into the second sermon in the Reframing Ritual series. We're going to talk about study as ritual. I'm so curious, though. When you hear that word ritual, are you like, Yes.
Speaker 2:Like, I love me some ritual, from lighting a candle at dinner to pancakes before the livestream every Sunday morning to a chant before a sports game? Or are you like, like rituals? Aren't they kinda hollow and boring? Like, what's the point of repeating an action over and over when it doesn't have a lot to do with my life? Well, I love the breadth of awareness Sasha Sagan brings in her book about rituals.
Speaker 2:She writes, In every inhabited corner of the earth, human beings have created rituals to give order and meaning to existence. Adding to this breadth, academic and scientific communities have done a lot of research of late around the power of rituals. And one interesting story, study from 2018 is from Nicholas Hobson at the University of Toronto who, with co authors, says ritual helps to regulate emotions by blocking anxiety and buffering against negativity. It helps to regulate work and performance by honing attention and boosting confidence. And it helps to regulate connection to others by coordinating cohesiveness and promoting trust.
Speaker 2:And I'm hardly skimming the surface of the research, my point being that rituals go deep and wide and that's science. In our context of church and faith, ritual is the conscious participation in our own transformation. It's involvement with the spirit by way of your body. And today we examine the ritual of study in Hebrews five, verse 11 to six, verse 12 is our text. And if you like an outline like I like an outline, here is yours to follow: Moving Past ABCs Too Far Gone Blessed to grow.
Speaker 2:Four: Study as faith in action. Before we jump in, I invite you to pray with me. And today, I invite you to put your hand on a part of your body where you sense ache or want to stay open, maybe your head or your heart or even your arms you choose. So let us pray. Loving God, we take a moment to be still and to turn inward and to notice what is going on inside.
Speaker 2:Where there is hurt will you expand our imagination of healing? Where there is anxiety will you settle us in a place of stillness? Where there is fear open us up to love. Christ of creation you know us and you love us and you do not shame us. There is so much ahead for us to learn so spirit as we focus on the work of our minds in study will you renew us in all things.
Speaker 2:Amen. So Hebrews five verses 11 to 14. We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. It's a bit of a sick burn.
Speaker 2:You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. So this passage, it has some attitude. Let's start at the top.
Speaker 2:The writer says, We have so much to say about this. Like, what's the this? Backing up a bit, the writer makes a case for these second generation Christians to not give up on faith. Sure, they are having a tough time, but Jesus is their best bet. In fact, Jesus as their best bet is the argument of Hebrews.
Speaker 2:It sounds like this: You used to think that you needed angels to bring you the word of God. That's the past. Now you have Jesus. And you used to think you needed patriarchs to lead you to freedom. That's the past.
Speaker 2:Now you have Jesus. You used to think you needed priests to wipe away your sin. That's the past. Now you have Jesus. And the writer loves this idea of Jesus being a high priest.
Speaker 2:And high priest is the point of the that at the start of verse 11. Priests used to provide a way to relieve sin but priests didn't solve sin. And Jesus' solution lasts forever, bringing together humanity and divinity so that we can live that perfected life too. And the story of God has changed, and still Hebrews addresses the fact that it is hard to change our minds. Growth is work.
Speaker 2:We're scared to change. Sometimes we even work against our evolution by just kind of giving up. And there's a Greek word in verse 11, nothros, which the writer uses to state the problem. And the NIV translates nothros as you no longer try. Nothros also describes the numbed limbs of an animal which is sick or a person who has the nature of a rock lifeless.
Speaker 2:And while we're on the metaphor train, verse 12 uses metaphors of milk and meat to refer to continuous learning. Whether it's fear, laziness, or dullness, the writer says the ball is in your court. You can grow. You have the basics of belief, the fundamentals of faith, the ABCs of Jesus. And let's be real here.
Speaker 2:These metaphors are meant to shame. This is Greco Roman discourse, and it is perfectly fine for a teacher to pile on insults to wake up the audience. It's like, hey. You you are lazy. You are stunted.
Speaker 2:Those limits to growth, they are on you. You limit yourself. Now we might call this teaching mean or manipulative. It worked for a time, but if you're like me, it's not really your jam. So what if we take a more compassionate approach?
Speaker 2:Like, what makes you stop learning, stop growing, stop changing? What makes you hold onto the ABCs of belief and not form new vocabulary for your faith? Or what makes a person want the past instead of the future? What makes someone you know choose an easy answer when the truth is way more complicated? Fear?
Speaker 2:Insecurity? Lack of resources? Not enough practice, maybe some trauma, shady teachers, isolation, manipulation. I mean that list goes on. The point is that we limit our growth when we get stuck behind obstacles.
Speaker 2:So this writer of Hebrews pens a letter to say that you've put limits on your love your love your love your love just kidding that's a that's a great vice song but the limits the limits are no joke When you stop learning, stop growing, stop changing, you have left the path of Jesus and can no longer distinguish good from harm. That's verse 14. So the question comes, is it too late to learn new things? Are you ever too far gone? In chapter six, the writer says, move past elementary teaching and on to maturity.
Speaker 2:You have a foundation. Build on it. Then there's a link to how you build for maturity. You use rituals and verse one and two are a window into the rituals of these early Christians. Change your mind about what drains your life, it's repentance.
Speaker 2:Look to God for everything, it's faith. Invite converts into the sacred waters to mark their new beginning, it's baptism. Get near enough to the pain of another so that you can pray for them. That's the laying on of hands. Through ritual the writer makes a case for maturity and maturity has a technical meaning here.
Speaker 2:In Greek it's teleotes and it literally means completion or perfection. But don't freak out. This is not about being a perfect Christian. And I'm going to say that again. Maturity is not about being a perfect Christian.
Speaker 2:In the philosophical schools of the time students mature through categories. Pythagoras had the learners and then the mature and Philo had those just beginning then those making progress and finally those beginning beginning to reach maturity. Maturity is progress. The church's rituals are here to help you grow not limit you. Basics are great but you get to move past them.
Speaker 2:Versus four to six. It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, and who have fallen away to be brought back to repentance. To their loss. They are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Jesus to public disgrace. Now if you feel the heat there, that is the point.
Speaker 2:And honestly, these verses have some baggage. Over the centuries, they have been used to tell people that if their sin is too big after baptism, there will be no forgiveness. It's alarming to us, right? And now we'd say it's spiritually abusive to think that you can say where forgiveness runs out. But keep in mind though that the writer is using rhetoric laying out what's known as an argument from the contrary to pull people back from the edge of falling away from faith.
Speaker 2:The letter of Hebrews means business but the writer also means love. Life has pressure and life has pain but you do not serve anyone not least yourself or Christ on that cross if you refuse to use all that pressure and pain to grow. We all run the risk of leaving behind lessons from this pandemic and I get the need to numb out and to just put your head down and to let one day blur into the next but this will not be the last hard time we face. In total rubbish times we are invited to learn to open up our senses to expand our understanding of the world And let this be your warning. Resist stagnation.
Speaker 2:Don't you dare go backwards. There are a pile of lessons before you. And if you aren't careful, you will miss out. So take with you all that you've learned and are still learning. Write that stuff down.
Speaker 2:Take with you observations on how you handle stress. Take with you your new coping skills. You have them. Take with you resilience. Take with you good grieving practices.
Speaker 2:Take with you rituals that ground you in your best self. Take with you less junk because in this season, you decluttered. Am I right? Take with you the friendships that have stuck. Take with you church in the livestream.
Speaker 2:Take with you your ability to pivot and adapt. Take with you your capacity for change. Don't just curse this moment create from it because believe it or not you are blessed to grow. Now the writer uses an organic metaphor. Locallygrown, doyourpart, farmlife.
Speaker 2:K I'll stop. Farm to table, livingsoil, farmer tan. K I'm stopping for real. In verse seven and eight, the writer maps out good fruit and bad thistles as encouragement and warning. Land that soaks up the rain and produces a crop for those who farm it receives the blessing of God.
Speaker 2:Land that produces thorns and thistles is unacceptable and is in danger of being cursed. That land is not harvested. That land is burned. Now keep in mind the metaphor is planted in love. The writer urges, Do not curse the land of your faith with neglect.
Speaker 2:Bless the land with learning. And the word for blessing is eulogia and in context it means the ongoing fertility of soil. The picture is one of bounty. And here's the thing with bounty. We control it.
Speaker 2:The metaphor is meant to empower. And all the way back in Deuteronomy, the people are told they have blessings and curses before them. The choice is theirs. And even after they wander off, they can return. Deuteronomy says restoration will be like a great big gathering up of all that was scattered, where God welcomes you from wherever you've been, not with judgment, but with compassion.
Speaker 2:There are certainly things that you do not control, But don't forget the things that you do. And here's the thing with a thriving, blessed, bountiful faith. It doesn't look the same for everyone. I mean, let's take a gander through the history of Christianity, shall we? Because it is a constant and never perfect trajectory of learning and growing, stretching and changing, responding and pioneering.
Speaker 2:Mary Magdalene was blessed to grow faith as the first witness to the resurrection. The apostle Paul was blessed to grow faith in writing epistles to persecuted Christians. Justin, Origen, and Tertullian were blessed to grow faith in the articulation of doctrine. Anthony of the of Egypt was blessed to grow faith in fleeing to the desert to shape monasticism. Gregory of Nyssa was blessed to grow faith with mystical contemplation.
Speaker 2:Augustine was blessed to grow faith through the genre changing autobiography. Catherine of Siena was blessed to grow faith in pleading with the pope to return to Rome after brutal exile in Avignon. Martin Luther was blessed to grow faith in demanding justice from the church. Anabaptists were blessed to grow faith in their devotion to pacifism, the kind that they read in the Sermon on the Mount. I mean, I could keep going but I think I've made my point.
Speaker 2:Through persecution, conflict, wildly different ideas about God, through crusades, reform, schism, plague, wars, renaissance, through art and literary masterpieces, life changing friendships, every movement in every time is blessed to grow. And we will not get it 100% right. We will mess up a lot along the way. God knows those jokers did. But we are capable of so much newness, so much creative thought, so much humility and justice.
Speaker 2:The answer to the question, Am I doing this right? This loving God and following Jesus, this raising kids in faith, this figuring out what to do with my life, the answer to those questions takes us back to that organic metaphor. Is your life bountiful with kindness and friendship and awe with connection and trust and some calm? If the answer is mostly then you are doing this right. You are blessed to grow your faith.
Speaker 2:And it is not your mom's, it is not your pastor's, it's not your partner's, it's yours. So keep growing. And one way to do this is to see study as ritual. Study as faith in action. The final section of the passage turns towards affection.
Speaker 2:The writer says, We speak this truth and we know it's hard for you to hear dear friends. And the word for friends is beloved. Beloved is the most affectionate address in the letter. And going on, the writer says, You may have been close to falling away, but I can see you'll choose well. It is so clear to me that God is aware of the ways that you work, the ways that you love, the ways that you help people.
Speaker 2:So show diligence to the end. It is worth it. And in faith and patience, you will have everything you need. Now I want to take a moment to open up the noun diligence It's spude in Greek and it also translates pursuit exertion and study Then if I can say one thing about my Christian faith, it's that I have worked harder on it than anything else in my life And granted, it's my profession, but honestly, I think that's just a ruse to pour so much of my energy, my intelligence, my money so much money for grad school into the work of faith that frames my life. Reading and understanding the scriptures, renewing and deepening the sacraments, learning theology and the ways it keeps changing but also learning about physics and climate change, the history of race and colonialism, science and sexuality all that learning extends from my faith.
Speaker 2:But no, faith is not easy. It takes so much diligence. But isn't the stuff we work for the stuff we care for? Our brains are meant to be involved in the matters of our hearts. And I learned a little more about study as faith in action in this pandemic through sourdough.
Speaker 2:See, I told you that pandemic cliche was coming for you. And honestly, I had no plan to get into sourdough. But then a friend mentioned she loves making sourdough, and before I knew it, I asked her to teach me. And in the months since, I have been truckin' along with my sourdough starter. I've even tried whole wheat sourdough, but that's where things got dodgy.
Speaker 2:I made a failed whole wheat sourdough loaf, and I know it was a failure because it was less loaf, more frisbee. It was dense as all dents can be. It had little to no open crumb. And after this failure, there was a moment where I was like, I don't really need to care about this. Maybe I should just quit.
Speaker 2:I've made some good loaves. Maybe it's time to move on. But I couldn't let go. I kept thinking about it. So I dove into internet sourdough research.
Speaker 2:Be careful out there. It is like a black hole. And I developed a theory of what went wrong. I was pretty sure I overproofed the dough, meaning I exhausted the yeast so it didn't rise in the oven. So I made some notes in my bread journal because now that's a thing in my life, and I tried again.
Speaker 2:I had the basics. I just needed to add to that. Instead of letting the bread rise overnight in the fridge, I did two hours on the counter. Then I popped that pretty little loaf in my Dutch oven for thirty minutes. I took the lid off for the last ten, and ta da.
Speaker 2:It was beautiful. It was a beautiful puffed up sourdough loaf that was mine for the feasting. I mean, I could have given up. I could have thrown in that towel. I could have stopped learning.
Speaker 2:But if I had given up, I would have missed out on the joy of getting better. And I hate to admit it, but I felt that joy in my bones. So let's turn back to faith and what it might feel like to practice study as ritual. Because no matter who you are, you will have times when your faith falls flat. And you can choose to give up, but you can also study to get through.
Speaker 2:So here's what I have for you. I'm calling this, Bobbi's Guide to Study as Ritual in five Steps five things you can do to grow faith as an integrated part of your life. Are you ready? I know you are. Here it is.
Speaker 2:Number one: Choose a community that represents your beliefs. No one's got time for sexism and racism and guilt based preaching. What we need is friendship and a place of trust with our differences underscored always by love. Number two, assemble a chorus of voices. When it comes to ideas, find your people.
Speaker 2:Read. Listen to podcasts. Ask for a book list. Do your homework. Stay open.
Speaker 2:Number three, Send away what no longer serves you. It's okay to let go of things you used to believe in. Theology evolves. It always has. It always will.
Speaker 2:Do not feel bad as you change your mind about God. Number four. Set down ideas that shimmer. So in the contemplative practice of Lectio Divina, you are invited to open your heart to scripture and a word or image will stand out to you. Or as some spiritual directors say, it shimmers.
Speaker 2:When you hear an idea about God that you love that shimmers, take note. Just write it down. Follow it deeper. Okay. Number five.
Speaker 2:Let awe be your guide, not certainty. When faith narrows our perspective, hardens our thinking, restricts our relationships, we have wandered off the path. God's love is always with us and ever before us. Reach for it. Let awe be your guide.
Speaker 2:I have evolved in my faith through these five steps for at least, like, twenty years, and I'm still here practicing Christianity every single day. Study is ritual. It's your faith in action leading you to love. So move forward in new learning. I believe in you.
Speaker 2:Let us pray. Loving God. It's so amazing that we can never exhaust you. Your love is boundless. Your creativity is endless.
Speaker 2:Your ways of meeting us are new every morning. Jesus, will you expand our imagination in matters of faith? Expand grace, expand patience, expand joy, expand hope, our understanding of the scriptures, expand our play with the sacraments. Spirit of the living God present with us now Enter the places of stagnation, of spiritual ideas that make us weary, of pain from our past and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.