2 Corinthians

Um maybe I can start out by adding something to it she said, which is that that word perfect is alternately translated the word holy.

And um, you know, when Jesus says be perfect as I am perfect, another translation, which I would suggest is probably fairer, is be holy as I'm holy.

And holy is not a piety category.

Again, we've sometimes depending on your church background, we've got this sort of piety baggage that sort of means and pray better prayers or sing more worshipfully or whatever, but holiness in the Bible is really just meaning to be set apart or or to say it in a different way, to be sort of extraordinary.

Extraordinary like fine China.

You set that apart for really special things.

So be special like fine China, and not only on Thanksgiving, be special like fine China at snacks, at food distributions.

I mean, imagine serving a homeless person dinner on fine China.

That's what Paul and Jesus have in mind.

To be extraordinary.

I hope that makes a little more sense than being perfect because perfection is this completely unattainable concept.

But being extraordinary is very attainable.

So Paul is made extraordinary in weakness.

That I think is much more important to hear than perfection, because again, the history of the church has focused on perfection, which says suffering is valuable and redemptive by itself.

I'm hoping you don't believe that, but I do think we've been kind of, our faith has been tinged with that.

Think about monks who whip themselves so that they can be perfected by weakness.

But Paul's talking about being extraordinarily weak because in his weakness he's sharing life with other people.

We often, again, depending how you grew up, you expect to suffer for your faith.

The way I grew up with that meant was you were radical hitting people up with Jesus.

So you would knock on the door and tell people about the Lord and hell and salvation, and they may slam the door in your face, and that was suffering.

Or they may not be your friend for that.

Paul does not have that in mind.

What Paul has in mind, I would suggest to you, are people like freedom riders who were killed because they dared ride in a desegregated bus around the country.

That was weakness and it was extraordinary.

They were not persecuted because of some thought category and box checking.

They were persecuted because they were trying to live into bigger life.

And that's really controversial.

I you know, we sometimes we know things cognitively and then it'll hit us.

And I would just tell you, I just watched the movie Harriet, and um I don't know that it was a great movie.

I'm just gonna be honest with you.

But it did do something really interesting for me, which is, you know, reveal that for um we read the scriptures like, oh, Moses took people out of bondage, and that's great, and we need to escape figurative bondage, and that's true, but but this was a totally different way of reading the scriptures where people were literally enslaved, and Harriet was Moses, and she was going to pull people out.

And she got out herself, but she couldn't live that way.

So she was perfected in weakness because she kept going back to draw other people out.

I think that's exactly what Paul has in mind.

Now that doesn't mean I think going to Venezuela and smuggling Bibles.

I think what that means is laying down privileges so that other people can have them.

I hope that makes sense what I'm saying.

Um I don't know how to tell you how you should do that.

As if I know.

But I do know that there are moments in which uh we're able to say no more.

And that might bother folk, and it might be extraordinary.

Or there's moments in which we can say, Yeah, I just choose to be vulnerable, and that's gonna give you access to hurting me, but I'm gonna be extraordinary in that weakness.

I'm going to choose to be vulnerable.

I don't know if that makes sense or if that does anything for you, but I just kept thinking about that in the video.

Yes, ma'am.

I'm not quite sure how to interpret what you say.

When you say no more, does that mean I I no longer will sit here and let the suffering occur around me without really anything like I've done enough, that's it.

That's what I'm asking.

I think it's more like the first.

And so, like, I think this is a really interesting thing to think through.

We're I think we've got a lot of things in our life that are very normalized, and some of them are life-giving, and some of them aren't.

And oddly enough, like we kind of know, hey, that's probably not very life-giving.

We know that, but we keep on with it.

So I I think Paul's got in mind no more.

That could be really, really simple.

How many people do you know that complain about their weight or about their eating patterns, and then they don't do anything about it?

Uh by the way, I like I know myself, because I complain about things like, well, I really could give up sugar, but I don't.

I mean, again, like there's a moment where we can do that over and over and again, but then there can be this moment where we say, and now no more.

Or I complain about my phone all the time and how it's distracting, and I haven't done anything about it.

So there's a moment where we can say, I've complained, I know better, but now no more.

And and I think Paul's oh my god, I'm gonna I think Paul's trying to get his people to think, when is that moment gonna be for you?

You know?

Sorry about this.

Maggie.

Maggie likes to get rested from the little dog and she doesn't have a little sour.

Because I turned the lock.

There we go.

Okay.

By the way, in a fire drill, just unlock it before you push.

You quit it.

Okay.

Um, I don't know if that made any sense, but I hope that's a helpful way to listen to what he's talking about with suffering.

Again, he's not suffering for the sake of an idea, he's suffering to make things equitable.

He gets into a little bit about like, hey, look, I've actually suffered.

Here's a list of what I've done, and we could read that.

We could read that dramatic, but I don't think we should.

I think we should read that as hey, um, it's very unlikely that anybody in the room is going to be stoned because they live out their Christian life.

Although I would tell you 50 years ago, it's very possible you could have been lynched.

And I think that's where we have to think, this can apply differently according to when and where we live and what kind of stands we choose to take.

Does that make sense?

In general, I think the greater risk we run is that our business might suffer.

I think in general, few of us run the risk of losing friends.

In general, I think that's right.

Depending on how we go about doing this stuff.

Okay.

And depending on what setting are.

I mean, there are some settings that it would be very uncomfortable to take a stand, no matter how diplomatically you do so.

And I think one way to hear this two Corinthians is be extremely faith, uh, be have extreme faith and take these stands in the most ridiculous of moments.

But I think that would be doing Paul uh an injustice.

I don't think Paul wants us to have extreme faith.

I think he wants us to be extremely faithful.

So if you were, for example, to cause a really big scene in church with your family at Thanksgiving, the question is, would that be more polarizing than it would ridge building?

And I think we've got to really think through that carefully.

Sometimes is helpful, but I think it only really works when it's pastoral.

I don't know if that makes sense what I'm saying.

And that's where discernment comes in.

Remember, Paul knows these people.

He's not going door to door.

These are people he spent more than a year of his life living with.

So this is the thing that my church forgot to mention, is the context.

This is not Paul smuggling Bibles into communist Russia or going to Saudi Arabia and telling Muslims that they're going to hell if they don't know Jesus.

That means you're going to get your head cut off for that.

And Paul is not an advocate of you losing your head over something silly.

I don't think so anyway.

Okay.

What else did two Corinthians do for you guys?

Or did that touch a nerve one way or the other?

It seems to heal everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a tough point.

I mean, really, how do you have a conversation with somebody who's not willing to listen?

Yeah.

And and it seems like, by the way, Paul is up against that here.

A little bit.

Dialogue is broken down.

Yeah.

So I I think he's trying to say you enter into this vulnerability lifestyle knowing you might get hurt.

And that you probably will.

And you have to decide how far you can go with that.

But it's not about beating down the opposition.

It's about growing together and what are the goals we're trying to grow toward.

What's really, really hard is to see people who grew up extremely faithful, and something challenging happens, and then they lose everything because their prayers didn't work.

Or why would God do this to them?

And sometimes maybe we're just there to help them pick up the pieces and say, hey, like the faithfulness is great, but maybe we need to be faithful to something different.

And you were, you know, like there's a different way of being faithful that can raise up new life in you.

And it's an interesting thought that sometimes in scriptures, resurrection isn't just about bodies, it's about our faith.

Sometimes our faith has to die.

So that God can raise up something new.

I don't know what I'm gonna do with this.

Okay, but this is me talking over functioning.

So what else did this do for you guys?

Yeah.

So you've got these people, Paul, and and like um the other apostles, he was kind of an apostle because he was like Jesus and after him.

And to think of yourself as like we've got this wonderful information.

We found this great thing, you know, and and we're so filled with with love.

We want everybody to know about it.

And it's like up to us, these twelve people and their friends, and these other people.

And we've got to tell everybody because if we don't, I mean, there's just us, and we've got to get the word out, you know.

This is what I see this.

This is what he's trying so hard to do.

I mean, the whole world doesn't know about Jesus.

And he, if we don't tell him, they'll never find out.

This is what our understandings.

I definitely get that, but I I wonder, I wonder if Gandhi wasn't a better evangelist than Pat Robertson.

Um maybe.

I'm not putting Pat down.

I'm not.

But I wonder if Gandhi didn't do more to advance the kingdom of God than Jimmy Swaggard.

He may very well have.

Or Franklin Graham.

I'm sorry, I'm not picking on anybody, right?

But but part of the message was about turning away from violence.

Yeah.

And and when we use faith to increase violence, folks, I'm afraid that's not the I just don't, I can't believe that's the gospel.

Can't you?

It's not just physical violence, it's violence to that person's character by calling them sinners and by by condemning them.

Yeah.

Because that that's violence to the person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The interesting thing is that Gandhi wasn't Christian, he was Hindu.

Although his approach to nonviolence came from the Gospels.

And he was very clear about that.

He also said, apocryphally, we don't know if he really said this, that if it weren't for Christians, he would have been one.

Which is an interesting, it's an interesting turn of phrase.

Gandhi met the real Jesus at Oxford and was very compelled with the Jesus of the Bible.

He just had a real problem with the Jesus being proclaimed and preached in churches, and frankly, by the Church of England subduing Indians from India with Jesus.

I mean, so I have no doubt that had forces of.

I don't even choose the word, but the word I'm using is that certain elements wanted to have control of everything.

And then so they kind of did a very good job of funneling everybody into their way of doing things.

And this I think becomes the balance between proclaiming and what do we proclaim.

And belief and lifestyle or way of life.

I don't mean to be.

You're good, you're right.

Indians uh to this day kind of accept a pantheon, what are the pantheon of deities and being so for him?

He's a great guy.

They could do that more easily than people would say, oh no, you can go to hell if you think that Buddhist is somebody who should say easier for people to do.

Even in the movie, they pointed out that Gandhi was from a place where Christianity, Muslims, and Jews all intermingled.

Yeah.

So I think if we read, so again, I'm gonna say the way I read this was that the gospel was where sinners were going to hell, Jesus died in your place, accept him as your Lord and Savior.

If that's the gospel and we read the book that way, I think it's a misread.

Surely the gospel is bigger than that.

Surely it's bigger than I say I believe something, or I pray I believe something.

Because here's, I think, the thing that Martin Luther, today is Martin Luther's Saint Day, by the way.

I think that Martin Luther is that he died, not the day he was born.

Um Martin Luther really put his hand on how do you know you believe it enough for it to work?

And as a Southern Baptist boy, I was really worried whether I believed it enough.

Because we had to rededicate our lives.

Maybe we were backsliding.

How do you know you mean it enough?

And that can become a way of reading the whole Bible, and we can be afraid of that.

And then I want to say I think we're suffering from the ro from the wrong thing.

There's nothing really extraordinary about that.

In fact, I would tell you the thing about suffering and vulnerability is you can never ever prove that your spouse loves you.

You can never prove that.

Because mathematically, you know, it takes one counterexample to disprove a rule.

And you can never prove a rule.

You can never prove it because it takes infinite playing out.

So at a certain point, to be in love with somebody for real means you choose to believe they love you.

And that's called faith.

And I think that's what Paul's talking about.

Again, you could never pray the sinner's prayer enough because if you do one thing wrong, it calls it into question.

I mean, Martin Luther really put his finger on that very well.

I hope I haven't gotten too off the letter.

Again, what do we what are we suffering from?

Are we suffering to be vulnerable in our relationships?

Are we suffering because we choose to trust God?

Are we suffering because we choose to pour our life into raising up lives of other people?

Or is our suffering because we don't trust God?

And we don't trust that God is gonna be able to catch everybody around us who believes slightly differently than we do.

God is not a good fielder.

So we gotta do all the catching.

It depends on whether you're a man or a woman or whether you're a young woman.

I mean, I think the biggest variable is actually it depends on the way you were raised.

Man or woman, young or old.

Educated or not.

I don't think those are the factors.

I think the the real factor is what way of life were you shown?

Were you offered?

And the church that raised me told me everything I'm telling you is blasphemy.

Because it's all about knowing Jesus.

Jesus died for your sins and praying the sinner's prayer.

But I just that didn't make my life big it didn't make my life bigger.

It actually made my life smaller.

Yeah.

Because I was afraid all the time for myself, for my brother.

And I was raised in a church where you couldn't, you had to earn your way, and you couldn't do enough to earn your way.

Yeah.

So I want to tell you the interesting thing is the church I grew up in said you can't earn your way, and all that Catholic works is nuts.

But we were guilty of the same thing.

Because if you didn't really mean it, it didn't work.

And how did you know if you really meant it?

I mean, again, this is this is the trist the sticky wicket.

And here's the ugly bit.

Even the church I grew up in, which has done really wonderful things.

I'm not saying anything bad about it.

I just think with all churches, all human things, we miss a little bit, right?

Paul says we were consoled in order to console.

God didn't console us because, you know, God loves Christians more and wants us to live comfortably.

It's almost like the same thing with Abraham, that people who listen to God are sort of like satellite dishes.

Because we're tuned, we get the signal, but then we're supposed to broadcast it.

The dish doesn't soak it up.

The dish is really just a mirror.

So that other people can start to tune in.

I think there are people that I see in this church who don't have to say anything because you can see in their presence the God within the light that they have.

That's an angel.

I'm wondering if the suffering might come from living out in that faith.

It might come from the way.

Because to truly broadcast doesn't mean just verbally, it means living with others in that compassion and that justice that Jesus lived and taught.

And that can be very painful.

I mean, that is painful.

Relationships are painful.

So for me, that's another kind of because we're vulnerable, like you talked earlier.

That we in relationships we have to be vulnerable.

Yeah.

And so it hurts when people don't hear.

It hurts when when we want to share and they don't receive.

Absolutely.

I think that's right.

I also think that Paul talks about this, I think he's addressing what we perceive to be pain and what is real pain.

So, for example, if I were to cut sugar out of my diet or caffeine out of my diet, I would go through withdrawal.

All of us would go through withdrawal.

If you've ever gone with that coffee, having drank it every day, you go through withdrawal.

Like you'll have a headache.

And we might perceive that as suffering, although if you don't mind me, I'm not a physician.

Like that's actually better for you.

And this is part of what Paul says is I think we've become a little bit habituated with junk, and when we pull the junk out, it's going to hurt.

But that's like the good kind of pain because we're withdrawing from things that are ultimately killing us.

It might be gossip.

Yes.

It might be again speaking poorly of others.

It might be checking out my phone all the time.

I mean, oh, that's so hard.

Because we've habituated ourselves into living unhealthily.

Right?

And actually, it's just the withdrawal.

It's the withdrawal that's hard.

And then the life is bigger after that.

And that's part of, I think, actually a really good analogy for what Paul is trying to say about suffering.

It feels like the end of the world, and it is, in the best possible way.

It's the end of your world so that you can inhabit God's world.

There's a concept that I often try to teach, like with addicts.

There's a phrase like going through withdrawal.

There's a phrase I use stand and the program use stand still and hurt.

And I teach the wave.

Pain comes, starts here, it comes up, it peaks, and then it goes down.

And you stand still if you have to hold on to a door frame.

Don't do anything during the middle of the pain because if you stand still and endure the pain, then you get on the other side of that bell curve, and there is peace and acceptance and sobriety.

So the pain is good because you're moving through into sobriety.

That's redefining, like you just did, what pain is and can be good.

I think that's right.

And one way we could think about it is that they're death nails, but I think Paul would say they're birth pangs.

Ah, yes.

Right?

So it can feel like you're dying, but actually you're God is birthing something new in your life.

I don't know if we overtalked this.

I know I did, I'm sorry.

You know that's my my my way of being, is to overtalk this stuff.

What else did two Corinthians raise for you all?

I didn't go down the pain route at all.

What I took away from it is I appreciated that Paul is not afraid to use to exercise his authority, and that churches would do well if they have a Paul.

And I wish churches had Paul.

So you know that he's he's not afraid to use his authority.

Um his desire is for the church to hold together.

So I like that.

Would you say more about how that might look in your imagination today?

Well, um, I can say while Mercy Tree is not at church, we are, you know, we we come together every day.

And um sometimes you have to deal with people that are trying to divide, and you have to be willing to confront that behavior, and some pastors are not, and it is very destructive to the body, like you were talking about earlier.

Um I guess you know you have to in terms of the church, if you agree that it is important for the church to survive, then you have to be willing to confront the things that might that are dangerous to its survival.

And I'm just saying in terms of um when there are individuals that that is their objective is to divide and uh to um question credentials.

Yeah, you know, he was not afraid to confront that.

So I appreciated that.

That's what I got out of it.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

I don't know if it's okay to add on that the way he ultimately tries to confront his in weakness.

I mean he kind of talks out of both sides of his mouth a little bit.

It's interesting, I you know, and I I you just heard that the Bishop of Texas has kind of convinced the foundations to give$13 million toward racial justice.

And in some ways, I think that's a confrontation.

Because it's dedicating money, which is the way we show value towards a problem.

And I can guarantee you that not everybody would be really happy with that move, especially if it was their church's money.

It wasn't.

It was foundation money.

So maybe that's a little more helpful.

But those are the kinds of things that are really, really tough.

And maybe I can throw one at you that happened here about a year and a half ago.

Um, our vestry decided that we were going to be open and inclusive.

And really, what that meant is we were going to allow gay marriage to happen in our sanctuary.

It's a funny rule in this church.

I could do it in the narthex without anybody's permission.

But if I wanted to do it in the sanctuary, the vestry had to consent.

Ultimately, hearing that, a lot of people said, who were opposed to the idea, said, well, shoot, you may as well.

You know, because again, what's the what's the difference?

You know, two doors is the difference.

Um not everybody was so convinced, and ultimately two families left.

They left because of that decision, even though they would never be invited to those weddings.

That's an interesting thing, right?

Yeah.

Um, and you know, I I actually love those families, and I still do.

I mean, one family I'd I'd married one child, and I'd baptized grandkids, and the other family had literally grown up in this church, had been born in this church and grown up.

In that division, you know, I mean it's it's it's real.

And one way to say is we took a stand for the Lord and we suffered.

I'm a little afraid of that.

You you know, because at the end of the day, there's I believe the stand was right, but there's the grief of the loss.

And and that I think is part of the suffering that he gets at.

How do we manage that change and when and when do we know?

You know, I think we mentioned this a little bit last time.

Sometimes we can take such a bold stand that we lose everybody.

And it's it's part of how do we figure out how to bring people along, knowing not everybody's gonna come along.

I agree with you that he confronted it in weakness, but he didn't ignore it entirely.

Fair.

Yeah.

Fair.

Didn't pretend like it wasn't happening.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I agree that he confronted it in love and weakness.

And that's one of those things, honestly, like as a church member that I've played at before, and even as a as a clergy person, you know, sometimes you can say, we shouldn't have parking lot meetings after church.

And I believe we should, but they should be positive.

And one of those things is, can you believe so-and-so did no, but let's be patient with it and see how it goes.

You know what I mean?

I you know, sometimes the best we can do is be silent, but maybe maybe it's to be a little more vulnerable and say, you know, I don't know, either let's try, or or you know, if you feel that way, let's go together and talk to the priest, or let's go together and talk to the ministry chip.

You know, those are the kinds of things that are just small level.

I mean, they're not marching from Birmingham to Selma.

Sometimes we can be so in all those big things we forget we could do this at the small level too, which is when somebody says something awful, we can say, hey, let's not talk that way.

I'm concerned that's going to be destructive to our church.

You know, I mean, and and in that sense, that's the priesthood of every believer.

And I'm supposed to live like that too, and I don't always do it.

I don't know if that's akin to what you're what you're talking about.

Yeah.

I just like the way he responded to the issues that were addressing the attention, and he he was not afraid.

Yeah.

To to weigh in on them.

Yeah.

He might have been dreadfully afraid.

He might have been.

But he but he chose to set a boundary instead of suffering resentment.

I saw this happen just the other day in an office conversation with two people who worked together.

One of the people said, I'll get with you and I'll tell you how we should do this.

Now they're equal in the in the you know, the what if you call that organizational diagram, one sign above the other.

And it happened a few times and the other person blew up and was like, you are not gonna tell me what to do.

And you could say, how silly, but you know, it's this interesting thing to say, hey, the phrasing really matters.

We need to get together and figure out how we can handle this issue.

That's very different from I'm gonna talk to you about how you're gonna do this.

Small little moments, you know, might be as much as what Paul has in mind, just big, big, huge things.

We want to talk about money.

It shows up.

No.

Paul says, if you sow sparingly, you're gonna reap sparingly, and I wonder what you make of that.

That's what it sows.

But I wonder what you make of that.

I felt his wording was a bit manipulative.

Say more, please.

Say more.

That's just what I wrote.

His words about giving sound manipulative to me.

I wonder how they were received.

There's a lot of words here about giving.

Yeah, I think they're really, really important.

Because again, that's what pastors often do is we try to say, here are the things we should value with our time.

And time might even be more or as important as money, but with our time and with our resources.

Again, money is a way we show value.

So we name that stuff, which is scary.

Um, but Paul does too.

He says, here's something you should show value with, with your money.

And if you sow sparingly, you'll reap sparingly.

So I appreciate you saying that could be very manipulative.

I think you could turn on a TV and hear Creflow Dollar say.

Sorry to mention names, but Kreflow Dollars says the more you give, the more God will return to you.

So he takes this literally that the more you give, the more God will return, as in dollar for dollar.

That's one way we could take it.

I wonder if that's how you took it.

The way I look at it is, you know, you it's like, I have this, this is what I have control over.

And I can I can share this in this direction.

Because the things I do not have control over, God can provide.

And he knows that I have weakened my control over my life by sharing this much of this with somebody else.

Therefore, he's going to step in and take care of the things.

So you took it beyond like cash money, you you took it to Yeah, because I mean, like, what can you do in your life that you can't do?

Bring that person that you need to hear from, or save that child's life, or whatever, the things that you can't control.

It it may be a bargain, it may be a trade, but it creates a get an opening for him to step in.

Anybody else.

And then going back to the authority discussion.

I think authority can be good at times because we have to set boundaries, appropriate boundaries, but I think authority can be misused at times in a negative way or in a dictatorial way that it's not good for the whole.

So there's the use versus the misuse of authority.

And I see that in churches.

All kinds of things.

Yes.

Any systems.

It's really hard to know as a clergy person what I'm supposed to put my weight behind.

Is it okay if I tell you that?

And I'm just gonna name something that we're doing here right now.

So we were given this pipe organ, and it's a lovely instrument, it's historic, it'll be great.

But it's really expensive.

And we also have an outstanding good on the hallway, and there's been some contention here at St.

Thomas about which should be our top priority.

We just did this capital funds drive, and some people said, hey, listen, the organ will attract new people, the hallway won't.

Beyond that, those aren't just the only two things.

You know, I mean, we we've done a good job bringing our facilities a little bit up to speed.

They kind of were derelict and ignored for a long time.

Um and people use words like outreach and inreach.

Oh, we don't do inreach, we believe in outreach.

Well, actually, we don't believe in either thing.

We believe in embodying the gospel of Jesus Christ, right?

Which which means, right, everything we do should be service to the community.

So that if we had a really nice building and we gave no access to it, that wouldn't be service.

It wouldn't be outreach or inreach, it would just be wrong.

But we have a lot of people come use our building, and that's called community service.

So improving our facility is one of those things.

But how do you specifically throw weight behind things?

Because you know the gospel of Jesus is not dependent upon having a pipe organ.

I mean it's not also dependent upon being necessarily completely debt-free if we're living into our means.

You know, I mean, this is an interesting sort of thing.

And um, so I haven't really said here's what I think we ought to do.

Instead, here's opportunities.

Uh another weird thing is I do believe really strongly that we, more than any other way, show what we value with our money.

I believe that.

And we like to value generosity, but it is an interesting thing.

Like, how are we showing what we really value, not just at church, but with our family members and our friends and our community?

Do we put our money where our mouth is?

Um, not just in a symbolic way, but in a real way.

I've never met somebody who on their deathbed said, you know, I wish I'd shown less love to my children than I did.

I wish I'd spent less time serving the community.

I've never heard people say that at the end of their life.

I've never heard somebody say, I wish I'd given less money to my church, or I wish I'd given less money to caring for people who can't take care of their own basis.

I've never heard anyone say that.

Maybe you have.

But I wonder if Paul isn't trying to get at that a little more.

How and where do we really show our values?

Because quite honestly, if we give sparingly, we're going to reap sparingly.

Our money sometimes is just the pin.

Our time is a really big pin nowadays.

I mean, a really big pin, especially if you've got a family with small children at home, and you're volunteering, you know, for you to go and volunteer on a regular basis with small children is a really big check you're writing.

You know, and sometimes I think we undervalue that, but I but I do wonder one way we could take Paul seriously instead of literally, is he's sort of saying the way we spend our time, the way we spend our money, the way we spend our relationships is revealing the value that we have.

And if it's very closed, well then this is all you got.

And the bigger it gets, the bigger it gets.

And and I don't want to overdo this because I do think the money bit's important.

I'm not comfortable talking about it because I grew up in a church that where we didn't talk about it.

Um even though I I realize it's really important, um love is unlike commodities.

You know, like in other commodities, you only have so much energy, you only have so many seeds, and when you sow that you're done.

But but love is more like a muscle where the more you use it, the more you're able to use it.

And we usually don't think that way.

We usually think I only have so much love to give, and that's quite wrong.

The reason we only have so much love to give is because we've only given so much.

And that might be an approach to Paul.

I don't I don't know.

I I am always worried about being manipulative, and what's the difference between showing somebody a way that's been life-giving for you and manipulating somebody into a way that will only be life-giving for you?

It's tough.

It's tough.

I don't know how you guys handle that tension.

I don't even just mean a church.

I mean like and you're a professional and you're volunteering in your family life.

How do you guys manage that?

That may be a bad question, I don't know.

I think I was thinking, right?

I think we're perfectly on it.

So, say for example, when my kids were young and and we wouldn't take time to volunteer, um I'm of the sort that um volunteer appreciation events mean nothing to me because I've already given you the time by volunteering.

For me to come back for a volunteer appreciation event is more time.

You know, and I just I want to spend that time with my family.

But other people feel very differently, and they really value that time of volunteer appreciation.

So I think you know, different things that we value or needs.

And of course, the benefit of going to those events is so you can receive somebody else's Thanksgiving, which might be the only gift they've ought to offer.

I don't like going either.

I don't.

That's not why I did it.

I didn't why I did it.

Diligent, but you know, you have to be really careful with your time and how to I was thinking about the organ in the hallway.

Um can people like designate?

Absolutely, and they do.

They do.

So then you just say, well, here's how much we have designated for the organ.

Right?

And we let it be known actually that the hallway was the first priority.

So if you undesignated a gift, once that was taken care of, it would go to other projects.

We did have a third family designate, only one family did this.

They designated a gift to flooring in the church.

Because that carpet's 27 years old.

Remarkably good shape for 27 years.

But their gift is materialized such that we're able to do the chancel, you know.

I mean, we're not going to do the whole floor, we're gonna do the chancel, and we've got it, and there it is.

And that's lovely, you know.

I mean, again, they they chose what to do in their own mind.

They gave, and we all get to enjoy their gift.

And does gospel need a new floor?

No.

Can it enhance what we do?

I hope so.

Nastiest fights I've ever seen in my life for PTA over money.

Over how to spend PTA.

Honestly.

And I say the reason we do it is because it represents our value.

And perhaps our values could be a decided point going back to that, how do we spend our time?

Um I've recently been reevaluating how I spend uh volunteer time.

And does this effort, does this endeavor line up with my values?

And and it's an intellectual thing, but it's also a hard thing.

How do I feel after I have done this, after I've said this time?

Do I feel enriched?

Do I feel encouraged?

Do I see growth out here?

So that helps me evaluate, was it time well spent?

And so it's it's been difficult.

But I think I'm there.

And it's free to not have to, and also do I do I do I resent having to go in?

Or do I come out and think, glad that's over?

Glad that's over.

And so so feelings and thinking have helped me re-evaluate what's important to spend my time on.

And you know you said a really interesting thing that I find myself in the middle of sometimes.

Sometimes I think something's really important, and I complain about it the whole time I'm doing it.

And that's a real opportunity to back up from that and say, you know, look, this is more time than I wanted, but it is important to me.

And so I have to change my complaining.

So I need to change my complaining about it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Who do you contact to find out if you've gone ahead and and how how much you've already contributed to that?

Yeah, Ellen in the church office.

She keeps the record as well.

Are you reconsidering no?

I just don't have not a good record keeper.

Yeah, we do we keep all that.

So I decided where I stand in my uh the whole designated funds thing can get messy too, though, because people can use that as manipulation or a weapon or a way to get what they want.

That can get really messy too.

So let me tell you an interesting story that I'm struggling with, if you didn't mind, and it's not about church at all.

I went to a little tiny Baptist college in North Carolina, and in my graduating year there were two math majors, myself and somebody I went to high school with in Florida.

This is really strange.

And I learned differential equations on a chalkboard, and I learned the programming language Fortran because that's what my teacher learned in the late 70s.

Now, by the time we got to the 90s, Fortran was completely obsolete.

And learning calculus on a chalkboard is really, I shouldn't say interesting, I should tell you it's antiquated.

But that's what we did because our math science building was just that old.

Meanwhile, parents of an alum, when their child died, gave this huge gift to the school so that we could build the most technologically advanced bell tower in the entire world.

And I learned calculus on a chalkboard.

Now, you know how this giving goes sometimes.

The way it works is we'd like to make a gift in honor of our son.

He loved bells.

We want to build this lake and we want to build this bell tower, and we want you to play it remotely from a keyboard, which is what we got.

Hey, you know, but we could really use a new math building.

Look, do you want the bell tower or do you want nothing?

And I could be really judgmental about those people, but there is this wiggle room about whether or not we're harsh about the generosity other people give.

And if you don't mind me tying it to the gospel, if you read Mark, one day Jesus is sitting there and a woman pours a hundred thousand dollars of perfume on his head.

And in that moment it is now worth nothing.

It went worth, it was worth a year's wages, so whatever that means to you, on his head, and now it's worth zero.

And Judas says, I mean, Jesus, we could have sold that and fed a lot of people.

And Jesus says, the poor you'll always have with you, but you won't always have me, which seems really selfish.

But but when you read the reference, Deuteronomy says, the poor you'll always have with you because you're tight-fisted.

And it's really interesting to think whether Jesus is saying, I'm so important I deserve perfume, or Jesus is saying, your objection at her absolutely offensive generosity is the reason there will always be poverty.

Which is an interesting thing to contemplate.

I mean, it'd be giving like Jimmy Choo shoes to the lady who lives under the bridge.

It's impractical.

You could have sold those shoes for money that would have gone a lot further in her life than some high heels for a homeless person.

I mean, that's the kind of contradict that we're we're talking about.

And do we stand in judgment over extravagance?

And how do we channel and work with each other?

I mean, I think that's what Paul's got in mind here a little bit.

I don't know that there's a right answer.

I've gone to churches where everybody's bulletin costs$2 to print.

Like I know how much printing costs.

And they're these every Sunday they've got these laminated-looking kind of glossy covers with cardstock with this color printing, and they're beautiful, and it costs a lot of money.

And it gets recycled.

You hope it gets recycled, it might get thrown away.

But you knew people could go after us for having stained glass windows.

Instead of that stained glass window that we got in the chapel, I mean, we could have kept somebody at the poverty level for a year.

But I like after the offering, we always say, or we used to say the no one had to give them.

We say that still.

So I'll I know.

All things come of you, O Lord, is what we said here.

So that's fine.

So if she puts$100,000 worth of oil on his head, that's okay.

Because really, it makes me mad.

It made Judas betray him.

I mean, Judas betrayed, you read Mark, Judas betrays him because of that.

You don't hear anything about Judas until that in Mark.

And Judas is so disenfranchised with Jesus' acceptance of a profligate gift that he betrays him.

So that's a that's a difference in when we're looking at things and I can see.

I can see we're saying, but all things come of God.

Well, therefore, you know, this is okay.

And Creflo Drawler drives abentment.

And that's a really interesting thing, right?

Because you could go too far with that.

A lot of people don't like that.

I don't like it.

I don't like it.

Mainly because there's a little manipulation in that ministry.

Sorry, I mean I'm Creflo is probably a nice guy.

I I mean I don't know the answer.

Okay, so I'm totally out of the loop.

I don't know who this guy is.

He's a televangelist in College Park, Georgia.

Okay.

His business cards, those are the channels I go on.

His business cards cost four dollars a piece to many because they have real gold leaf on them.

And then that's gonna be all.

I should start doing that.

I should start.

I mean, if somebody donated a vending machine to me, and then I thought about putting like consecrated hosts in the putting it right outside St.

Paul's, but I've got the key to it, you know, because you've got to have that once a week if you're Catholic, you know.

I I hope I'm not overcomplicating it.

I just think it's real complicated.

It is and other people's generosity can offend us, and it can be offensive.

And those can be different categories.

It offends me, and it is offensive.

Those are different.

I think that's what happens when we put all the emphasis on the rules, and not on the heart and but you know, in in our in our positive, and I grew up hearing that too, it's not about rules, it's about a relationship.

But you know, our brains are hardwired for rules.

Like we've evolved to need and seek out rules because we want consistency.

And and Paul is really talking about, I think, things that are inconsistent.

But don't you think as we get older we learn to maybe transcend that a little bit?

I think we can, but I don't know that we naturally do.

Right.

But you have to work at it.

Or we're learning how to live with essentially.

And and I think the real hard thing for me is to say, okay, I've transcended that and you haven't, and I'm in a better stage than you are.

That's the hardest part.

Rules are comforting.

Yeah.

I mean, as long as security.

I know sense of security.

I do think the rule is right.

If you say sparingly, you'll reap sparingly.

I just think we struggle with the application.

I don't think that means you get more jewels in your heavenly crown.

Because just to be clear, as soon as you get a heavenly crown, you take it off.

They're all laid at the feet of Jesus.

So nobody wears those things, right?

Like it doesn't really matter how many you got, as if, you know, in heaven some people are better than others.

That's the whole point, is nobody's better than anybody else, right?

So all that comes off.

And but I do think, you know, again, my my my wife in my moments of craziness with my eldest child was like, hmm, this is really hard.

And five years later, what are you what are you gonna wish you'd you had done?

And that's a really great question.

With my love, with my money, because money's always involved in taking care of kids.

Yeah, with my time, you know, what are you gonna wish you'd done?

And and look, you can go ahead and say sparingly.

But five years down the road, you're gonna reap sparingly.

I don't think what she means is you're going to get return on investments tangibly.

I think the question is about what we choose to give, and whether we give cheerfully or under compulsion.

The difference between giving cheerfully and under compulsion is the difference between a real gift and an investment.

And God isn't in the business of making investments.

God gives gifts.

No strings attached.

Investments means there's a string.

Like I'm sending you to horse riding lessons predicated on you're going to do something with that later.

That's an investment.

Investments are not an appropriate, they're just not gifts.

How do you um label them the gift of the bell tower?

Because I'm thinking about that.

I'm thinking about that bell tower.

Yeah, they gave it.

This probably was spearheaded by the child's mother, is what I'm thinking.

And she's probably thinking, you know, that's going to be so beautiful, and I would enjoy looking at it.

And there'll be a plaque out there reminding me of my child.

But no, so you know that bell tower might have really pruned the campus even more than the Matthew.

So, from a university's perspective, right, why would you say no to a real improvement even if it's not the one you want?

Right, yeah.

And in some ways, that's reconciling the body of Christ.

And I will tell you there's this really interesting bit we get.

I've got colleagues that have a five-year plan for their church.

And it's really detailed, and it's what we're going to do.

And I think it's great to have a general sense, but if you don't allow variance, then it's your will being done, not people working together.

Because I, you know, again, I've got a general sense of where I hope we go.

But if I'm not open to surprises, uh there's something wrong.

You know?

I I mean I think there's something really wrong.

Did they ever get a math building?

Uh maybe.

I think so, but if they had to rope it in under something else.

Some do you like, oh yeah, we gotta do this, we gotta do that, we gotta, I mean, there's there's we're so proud, we're improving uh, but like in one of the universities that I graduated from.

Anyway, we donate money to the food bank for the students.

I'm like, I'm not believing this.

The students are so poor that you have to feed them, and yet we've got all these other improvements going on, big buildings going up, big doors, and it's all wonderful and beautiful, and we can contribute to the food bank for the students.

And I think it's a value conversation.

I mean, it really is.

Um, maybe we should take up just a couple other bits here, because lots of people love this little uh phrase that Satan can appear as an angel of light.

And you know, my um that meant something really different when I was a kid.

I don't know if any of you read that verse or were interested in it.

I think it's very relevant though, that remember Satan means accuser and is not like the red devil opposed to God.

Just accusation.

I would tell you in our current political era that accusation sure can look like an angel of light.

That's what we do.

We accuse each other.

Say again.

I said maybe I was an accusatory questioning the university's use of their words.

Well, I think there's a difference between judgment and condemnation.

Oh yeah.

I think we're meant to be judgmental.

I don't think we're meant to condemn.

And I would tell you, partisan politics is condemnatory, which is diabolic.

Remember, devil means slander, which is related to Satan, which means accusation, and it sure can look like I'm doing the right thing.

And I don't, I guess I'm really preaching here, but I'm really worried about outrage culture because being outraged doesn't do anything, actually.

It just tears things down.

It just increases adrenaline and cortisol in your brain.

It doesn't mend any bridges, it just makes you mad.

And if that's the only place you stay is mad, nothing's changed.

Except now you're even further separated from other people.

So I think it's okay to have that feeling of anger as long as you take that energy and put it toward building bridges, right?

But if you just stay angry and you think you're following the light, you might actually be satanic.

I don't know if that's okay to say.

I also know how to pay.

What do you do?

Well, I had a really good friend who said just because you can't solve a problem, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that.

The truth is it takes a lot of us to solve complicated problems.

So maybe we just hold on to the fact that something's a problem and we try to make connections on how to solve it if we can't do it ourselves.

But if we just sort of say, hey, you know, um, racism's too big of a problem for me, so whatever.

I I think that's a mistake.

Yeah.

Even though I can tell you I don't know how to solve that problem.

But if I'm mindful that it's a problem, I might just hear somebody say something that could make an interesting connection, not towards solving it, but to just getting us a little bit closer to that problem.

And what accusation does, I think, is it it breaks off that network of potential relationships that.

So I I think context is really important and and and I I to be honest I wanted to be a an a Hebrew Bible professor, not a New Testament one, so I spent a lot of time there.

And um I I sort of think a lot of it is that we've been handed this context that wasn't original.

So I you know I just go back to the fact that God made human beings in God's image and likeness and said, good.

So the stuff is good.

And then we can say, hey, well, human beings mess that up.

But but I but I would tell you biblically we don't have that much power.

Human beings cannot take something that God has made good and ruin it.

Otherwise, we'd be like as powerful as God.

Like we can't do that.

We can misuse really good elements, but they're still good.

So I I just sort of wonder if in if if, like teasing it out a little bit, if look, humanity is still made of really good stuff, but this thing called sin that's very real, and it's not just, oh, like I told a lie, it's like the fact that we're enculturated where white skin is better than brown skin.

How are you gonna grow up without that in the world?

It is totally beyond your control.

So maybe what sin does is it draws us into this false self that is not the capital S self that God created or intends.

And in that sense, I would say it's satanic.

But I think this thing that we do, if we say, well, we're basically born bad, it's not biblical.

And I would tell you, I grew up hearing the word that there's the fall, capital F, and that's not a Jewish idea.

It's not even a Greek idea at the time of Paul, that's a Neoplatonic idea in which we say bodies are bad and spirits are good.

The idea originated that this evil God imprisoned really good spirits in bad bodies.

And actually that's played out in Christian history.

Where we have sacred and secular, spirit and flesh, but but the Jewish idea is the soul is all of you put together, including your body.

And that stuff's good.

So I do think while we're born basically good, we're also born in a world that is sort of corrupted by these superhuman things like racism and sexism and ageism.

And how are you going to not be influenced by those things?

But all those things are accusations.

You're too old for that.

You look too young.

Women can't do that.

Being gay is a choice.

You know what I mean?

Those are accusations.

And they're they're satanic.

And sometimes they appear to us as light bearers, but really they're just full of darkness.

I don't know if that's helpful.

Because I think, I mean, we have to take seriously that there's something wrong with the world.

Is it inherently wrong?

Or is it something we just keep passing on?

It's the powers and principalities.

That's what I think Paul has in mind, and so does Walter Wink.

I mean, that's why that book is really helpful.

Right.

I'm curious to find out if you would like to discuss your interpretation of Jesus' conversation with Satan, who Satan offered in the world.

Well, you know, I think sometimes we make the mistake into thinking life is all about right and wrong.

Sometimes the satanic thing can be the good versus the better.

And I'll tell you how most scholars interpret that.

Jesus, take up arms and you can take the whole world.

And Jesus essentially says doing the wrong thing can never be right.

So Jesus being the king would be good.

But it would be better if we were all equal.

And sometimes Satanism is settling for something good when God has something better in mind.

I mean, I think so.

I'm overfunctioning, I'm sorry.

I should not even apologize for it because I keep doing it.

Do you notice that Paul is called up to third heaven?

He starts obliquely describing someone he knows.

And then that turns us to first person.

But did you notice the really interesting thing about that experience?

Paul has a mystical experience where he sees like the glory of God.

He's not the only one.

Isaiah does it, right?

In the year that King Isaiah died.

He has this vision of God's him filling the temple, and he says, Woe am I, for I'm lost.

I'm a man of unclean lips.

Ezekiel does this, he sees the wheel and the wheel and the wheel.

And those experiences of like being caught up in heaven return them to their body in a more loving and meaningful way.

This is really important.

Mysticism is not about, hey, I just got some really good nutrition so that I can become, I can eat the meal and enjoy it.

It's calories to share with the world.

Like the vision of God as God is should make us closer with our neighbor.

That's the criteria between real mysticism and magic, frankly.

If the words aren't too gross, that's the difference between real intimacy and masturbation.

Because mysticism can become that, can become self-aggrandizing and only about me, me, me and my relationship with God, but any real experience with God has to make us closer with other people.

Because all mankind is connected.

And that's what you see when you really see God.

You know, that's the interesting thing.

And you get to see, again, there's a thorn in Paul's flesh, and lots of people have said, did he have bad eyesight?

Um, is he talking about real thorn?

Did he break a nail?

I mean, these kinds of things.

But again, I think what he's trying to say is: look, uh, I'm not gonna take away the suffering that's part of love.

Because then it wouldn't be love anymore, it'd be control.

Who was epileptic in that kind of thing?

I don't know.

I don't know that anybody had epilepsy.

I mean, the Bible doesn't use that word epilepsy for anybody.

No, I would somebody told you that.

Okay.

Harriet Tubman could have been epileptic, but she would say she was having visions of God.

And the real difference is like what happens after the fit.

You know?

Maybe two more thoughts.

Is it okay?

If anyone is in Christ, they're a new creation, behold the old, the old has passed away, behold the new has come.

And we we don't always link this to baptism.

The baptism is where we drown to death that person that is raised in sin.

So that they can come out from the chaos of ageism, sexism, racism, accusation, slander, and be completely new.

And Paul uses death as an analogy, again, because when you go off sugar, it feels like you're dying.

When you go off heroin, you might actually really die.

You might die from cutting heroin off cold turkey.

But they're not supposed to be death males, they're supposed to be birth pangs.

And being a new creation, some people take so radically that there's no difference between Gentile and Jew, slave or free, male or female.

What's really interesting is some people say Adam was made first, so women are subjugated to men, but Paul says, if you're in Christ, everybody's a new creation.

So even if that is how things were, it's not how we gotta live.

These become really, really helpful.

If we live into white and black being separate, we're living as old creations, not new ones.

If we live into able bodies and disabled bodies, that is old living, not new creation.

Some people say who believe in the fall, well, women are subjugated to men because of the fall.

And then the answer needs to be so do we want to live in a fallen state or do we want to live as God intended?

My fundamentalist people, we never thought that way.

But we should.

That's what Paul's thinking.

The last one that is just really lovely is he says, make room in your hearts for us.

Make room in your hearts.

Jesus says that my father's house, there are many rooms.

Different words that I would have told you.

And there's this beautiful Jewish image that comes from the Kabbalah, where when God wanted to make the world, like a pregnant woman, God made space in God's own self for the world to exist.

God made room.

And as with pregnant women, God sent the nutrients.

It's a really lovely image.

Make room in yourselves for us.

One way to look at a baby is as a virus.

A foreign body that takes your nutrients.

You could view it that way.

My wife did for a long time.

She had a conversion, and then we had MRA.

And I had nothing to do with that conversion.

But another way to view it is God loved the world enough to make ram.

For something different, for something that may not love God back.

And that God didn't just theoretically make RAM, God sent nutrients that way.

This is an interesting, interesting image.

We are going to read what is arguably one of the most important pieces of literature in the Western tradition in the next two weeks.

And that's the epistle to the Romans.

Paul doesn't know them.

It's really important.

He's writing people he doesn't know.

So let's see how the tenor of the letter changes.

And Romans is full of really delightful bits.

I will tell you, I like 1 Corinthians better than 2 Corinthians.

I hope that's okay.

Thanks for taking them on together, though, and we'll do Romans the first four chapters.

Actually, we're doing it in three chunks.

Romans is so important, we're doing it in one, two, three weeks in a row.

Thank you all.

And we do meet next week.