Disciple Bible Study, 1-22-20, 1st Thessalonians

Yeah.

That's right.

Please, um please say what say what your take your takes on on Thessalonians.

I never read it.

Gosh, he loves those people.

And he was very direct with his positive.

He's very direct in what he saw them do.

He was also very direct in what he wanted them to do.

I wonder what you thought about him saying in the video that in some ways he um Paul's giving thanks for who they are, and at the same time he's appealing for them to live into that even more.

And I wonder if that's what compliments are really meant to do.

Whether they're just voicing gratitude or they're also forecasting hope for the future.

It's an interesting way to think about compliments.

Anyone else on one Thessalonians?

Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting question.

Um so let's think through the timeline a little bit.

Paul is an adult of some sort when he persecutes Stephen.

Right?

So how old is he?

He's gotta be older than 13.

You'd have to be 13 to go into a formal study with a rabbi.

So he's done that already.

So he's older than 13.

Don't know how old he is when Stephen gets killed.

20?

25?

Then he's gonna spend eight years in Antioch after he converts, before he starts the missionary journeys.

So I think it's pretty reasonable to assume he's at least in his 30s.

Now that seems young to us, but remember the average adult lived to be about 33.

So how old he is, we don't know, but he is certainly young in his letter writing career on behalf of congregations.

Um when did people date this letter?

Um, maybe 50.

And he dies in 64, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

It could be the other thing that's really interesting, again, when we compare it to Galatians, which is also early in his ministry, people think it's an early letter.

He just flies off the handle at those people also early.

And you could say, aha, that's the gift of youth.

But remember, he's an old, he's considered a fully old guy, you know.

And I just think part of it has to do the context is so different.

But but maybe this was a place where he felt like they really received his ministry well, so he's really tied up with them.

And in first and second, this is he begins with eye hall, but in the other letters he begins with eye hall, the servant of Christ.

That's right.

Um and and and I found that kind of so and that's probably the context, is he's not having to wave his positional authority over them.

This is a relational authority letter.

And also, um he seems to jump in ahead a little bit.

He seems to place Jesus on the Jews and he introduces, I think, the rapture.

We're gonna talk about that in a second.

There's no rapture here.

Okay.

But I'm gonna we'll get to that.

But isn't the people going to go in the air on the other?

Yeah, yeah.

We're gonna get there.

Okay.

And then in the end of the second chapter and at the beginning of the third, he uses the words treating, and then in the beginning of the beginning of the third chapter, he uses the word tempter.

I don't quite understand that.

They're the same word.

Okay.

So why our translators choose to do this, I don't know, but this is a helpful moment to say that um the idea that the tempter is a persona comes later than the Bible.

So you need to know that the word Satan, either in Greek or in Hebrew, means accuser.

Accusation.

Nowhere.

And you're thinking, oh, in Job, like Satan goes to God.

No, no, no.

The accuser goes to God.

Satan, small s, it's just a Hebrew word that means accuser.

Now in Greek we have the word diabolos, from which we get the word devil, but diabolos means slanderer.

It's not a capital D, it's a lowercase D.

So we often we take our own theology, which frankly has more to do with Dante Alghari and John Milton than it does with the Bible, and retroject it onto the text.

So I think what's interesting to hear is that the forces of accusation and slander are at the root of the epitome of evil.

And I think that's an interesting idea to return to.

Because the thing that makes us, frankly, resort to tribalism is slander and accusation.

Some might say that the root of all evil is slander and accusation.

G.K.

Chesterton says it's impatience, by the way.

We're too much in a hurry for action.

That'll be in our liturgy of the ordinary book we're reading on Sundays.

Um, but the evolution of this idea, Tim, that we've bought hook, line, and sinker, so much so that I mean, if if we think objectively about this, the church that raised me says Satan is this epitome of evil and has a plan to destroy your life.

How did he get so powerful?

Well, Satan captured the world, the world belongs to the devil.

That's crazy.

If there's a devil, it's a created being.

The created being is not infinite.

So how on earth could there ever be this war in heaven like we usually think of?

Revelation goes on to say, listen, that's apparent.

That's apparent, but it isn't real.

We feel like that, but in real.

There's no contest here.

So I think what Paul is going to push us to is, hey, listen, I'm going to encourage you, meaning I'm going to appeal to you.

Do not give in to accusation and slander.

What's the accusation in this book?

If you die before Jesus comes back, you don't get anything.

Don't give in to that.

It matters even if you don't see the Lord come back.

Right?

That's certainly what chapter 4 and 5 are all about.

It matters what you do with your bodies and with your worship.

So don't be fornicators.

That's what chapter 2 and 3 mention.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Oh, I was just gonna say, did it seem that they expected the return of Jesus imminently?

Imminently.

Absolutely.

So what this is referring to that you'd hear in a Bible class, like if you went to college and you took a survey of the New Testament, one of the first words you'd hear is delayed parousia.

The parousia is the coming of Jesus, and people thought it was going to be any minute, literally, but certainly within their own lifetime, and they kept looking for this thing to happen, and it didn't.

So then they had to make sense.

Hey, there's people who have had the right faith and the right response, and they died.

So what happens when Jesus comes back?

I mean he raises the dead first.

Well, that's what Paul says.

But people didn't know.

They thought Jesus was coming back any second, literally coming back.

We've had a lot of time, but I'll tell you again, a church that raised me, there was a really important book that came out in 1988 called 88 Reasons.

Jesus is coming back in 1988.

And there were churches that year who literally had a prayer meeting expecting Jesus was coming back before the meeting was over.

And can you imagine sitting there?

Uh maybe he's on central time.

I mean, eventually you had to go home.

Well, you know, there was a book that came out in 1989 called 89 Reasons Jesus is coming back in 1989.

And reason 89 was he didn't come back in 1988.

I'm not kidding you.

The man published that book, and people bought it.

So, in some ways, every generation there's been this thread weird, this it's happening in our lifetime.

And I guess eventually somebody will be right.

But people at Y2K, that was wrapped up at the first millennium.

You start putting zeros at the end of years and people go crazy.

I mean, there's just something in our thinking about this.

But again, I would tell you the Episcopal Church, very rarely are people like, yes, Jesus is coming back, literally in our lifetime descending from the sky.

Although that that that thread is there a little bit.

We've gone on to take this to mean something more figurative, I think.

Which I would tell you, I think is fully appropriate.

It can be figurative and literal, it can have both meanings at the same time, but um until I know the literal meaning, let's be figurative.

Part of what Paul says though is I think it's really soon.

I don't know when, but don't be called sleep.

Be awake.

Were there any people in his group that say, okay, I've waited long enough.

Yes.

This isn't happening.

My mom died, nothing happened, and I give up.

There were other people who were so sure this was happening that they lived like it was their last day on earth.

Like they sold everything they had and gave it away.

Which is great.

Except when tomorrow comes, and then like, oh, I can't buy any food.

So when we read in Acts that Paul was taking a collection for the Jerusalem church, it's because that's what they did.

They thought Jesus was coming back within a month.

They sold everything they had because, hey, like, you don't need future planning.

And then what do you know?

They were all poor and starving, so they had to be bailed down.

Like a lot of people.

Well, I didn't think most people that are financially profligate are so because they believe the return of the Lord.

I think it's social secure.

I think it's I don't know anybody that says that.

So, um but the Jews didn't believe that.

This is really important to remember.

The Jews does not mean what we think it means.

The Jews, the word is the Judeans.

People who live in the region of Judah.

So it's really hard to quantify with precision.

Paul's talking about religiously observant Jews.

Remember, even today, that at least 95% of Jewish people are atheists.

So when we say the Jews, what do we mean?

People who are ethnically Jews, people who are orthodox Jews, people who are observant reformed Jews?

The term is ambiguous today if we're honest about it.

And this is one of those things I can tell you as an American, I I cannot understand the rise of anti-Semitism.

It's mind-boggling to me.

But what does antisemitism even mean?

Does it mean you don't like people who are ethnically Jewish, you don't like people who wear kippahs around, you don't like people who go to synagogues on high holy days?

Because I'll tell you, each group gets smaller and smaller and smaller from what I'm talking about, right?

Way more ethnic Jews than there are practicing Jews.

So then as now the word is uh is is not precise.

To hear that the Judeans killed Jesus is somewhat true, but it's not really true.

The people who killed Jesus were the Romans.

And they were Caucasoids, from the Caucasus, they were maybe they could have been from anywhere.

Well, you could have been a Semitic soldier, you sure could have.

Unlikely, but you could have been.

I mean, Semites served in the army.

You know, they served in the army.

The army was a great career.

Then as now, especially if you didn't have any other prospects.

You join the Roman army, you can make some money.

You get to eat, you get a wage, you get a salary.

Yep.

I hope I haven't gone too all over the place here.

We just have again, the church that raised me, it's almost like we assumed our culture was the culture in the Bible, and it's not.

I mean, not even close.

We use some of the same words in church, but they mean something totally different than what the writers were talking about then.

One of those words is rapture that you mentioned.

I think it's really important to bring this up.

Rapture is a word that didn't show up until the late 1750s by this English guy called Darby, and people thought he was nuts in his own time.

But for some reason, some thread groups have grabbed on to that word and are convinced that there's this rapture.

Again, it's nowhere in the Bible, and to be honest, the whole notion of it is against the rest of the Bible.

God spares the chosen people from suffering.

No, the scriptures are really clear, the chosen people suffer more on behalf of the other folks.

So there's this idea that God wants everything to be wonderful in our lives, and that wasn't the lot of Jesus.

The lot of Jesus was we pour our lives out for other people because that's the root of joy.

So God isn't asking you to suffer for no reason.

God's asking us to love people, which involves suffering.

You cannot love somebody if you're not willing to suffer.

Because the truth is, if you love somebody, you have no control about whether they receive it or whether they give it back or whether they run around on you, or all of that.

And if you can't accept that they can do whatever they want with your love, you don't really love them.

That's the message of the Bible.

When Paul talks about when Jesus comes and come down and the people who start raising up, is that where the Arby got the idea?

He got the idea.

Uh this is one source, but he really got the idea from reading in Revelation that there's these elect people and they'll be taken away in a twinkling of an eye.

Okay.

And then he read this story about Jesus: there's two women grinding grain, and one will be taken and the other won't.

Jesus is talking about who's gonna be killed, not who's gonna be taken away, you know.

I mean, the thing is, when we don't read with context, I mean the words of the Bible can say whatever you want.

Right.

So let's talk a little bit about resurrection.

Is this okay?

And you don't have to take this from me if you don't want to, because the resurrection Paul's talking about is nothing like what we think.

Nothing.

For one thing, please notice it's a physical resurrection.

And and right or wrong, most of us don't want our bodies in heaven.

Which one do you think you're going to get?

Your teen body?

No, Paul's really clear, you get this one.

The one you die with, the one you die with.

And and part of that is because his notion of resurrection is not like ours at all.

So, again, if I asked you to think about heaven, most people say, okay, like it's a place where our spirits ran free and we're joyful and happy.

Maybe we have harps and we sing praises to God.

That's what I heard when I was a teenager, and I thought maybe at least there'd be variety in hell.

Because I don't know that I want to do the same thing every day, all the time.

I just I was scared about that.

My personality is not one that I can just do one thing forever.

So I was just super worried about that.

And there's churches that'll put on seminars, what heaven's gonna be like, and I don't know how they know that because the scriptures don't say much about it, to be honest with you.

They use symbols speak about gates that are gonna be wide open, but all this business about us looking like angels, do you want to have four heads?

Do you want to be a burning snake with six wings?

I mean, that's what angels look like.

Um, no.

So here's the deal that's going on with resurrection.

It's still a new idea.

Remember, it's new enough that when Paul goes to Athens and says resurrection, the Greek people scoff at him.

Like that's poppycock.

There's no resurrection.

There's a couple things at play.

If you're Jewish, you don't have a soul, you are a soul.

So the root of Christianity is not you have a corruptible, bad body with a beautiful, wonderful soul.

That's a Greek idea.

It's not Jewish.

The Jewish idea is you are a soul, and the soul is the amalgam of all of you.

Your body, your mind, your emotions, your will, your spirit.

You put all that up, and that equals a soul.

It is not independent from you, it is you.

It's the sum total of all your parts.

Reminder, your soul lives here in your throat.

It's not in your heart.

This is where the center of your will was located in the Hebrew Bible.

The center of your will is here.

We still say that athletically, if you say, hey, that team has heart or that competitor has heart, what we really mean is the will is strong.

But the will, none of us would put it here.

The will is here, right?

In the Hebrew Bible, your feelings are in your guts, not your heart.

Your soul is here because when you stop doing this, you die.

Spirit is breath in the Bible.

When your breath doesn't work anymore, you're dead.

Now you were raised Roman Catholic which I was.

I'm listening to you and thinking, I I don't remember any of this.

And maybe no one else.

Was anybody raised Catholic in this room?

I didn't care what you were raised, you didn't learn any of this.

Because we've done their we've done our people a horrible disservice in not telling them this.

I mean, the the colleagues, I mean, my teachers went to seminary like I did.

Why they chose not to share this, I have no idea.

Maybe they decided people wouldn't believe it.

Or maybe they didn't believe it themselves and they were just getting their preaching certificate.

I have no idea.

But I'm not telling you anything weird.

I mean, this is in your introduction to the Old Testament class.

It's not that it's weird, it's just, you know, there was heaven, hell, and purgatory.

I mean, and that's that's what I knew.

Absolutely.

And and you'll you get out of purgatory.

It just depends on what you did that was bad.

Yeah.

See, so this is really good that we're gonna take all this on.

Okay, so um, in the Greek world, and this was from the Greek.

The idea that you have a spirit different from your body?

No, the this whole concept.

No, that's Hebrew.

That's old Hebrew from the super old.

Okay, I just want to clarify in my mind this is a Hebraic teaching that sounds Indian, like uh that's very fine to think of it that way.

That's right.

Eastern.

Yes, like like India through the country.

Yeah, the uh we would use the dated word oriental now, which is not really a good word, but that's right.

It's eastern.

It looks like, you know, the pictures of the uh, you know, the chakras.

That's that's Kabbalistic Judaism is all about the chakras.

That's right.

Um remember in the Hebrew Bible, there's no hell or heaven.

There's not.

There's Sheol, also called the pit.

It's the place of the dead.

Job makes it really clear.

If you're rich or you're poor, if you're good or you're bad, you all go to the place of the dead when you die.

Where is it?

Under the ground.

It's really dark there.

No.

It's underground.

It's under the ground.

We live in a three-tiered universe.

Heaven is up, the place of the dead is down, we live in the middle.

And we don't really know what's down there.

When Jesus descends and uscend, that's a three-tiered universe.

We don't believe in that universe anymore.

If you did, you'd have to agree with the Russians when you get up to outer space, God's not there.

That's what the cosmonauts said.

Because they took it literally.

But see, we don't live in that mental map anymore.

We live in a round world, not a flat one.

Okay, Greeks.

Most Greek religious people were polytheists and they worshiped gods that were no better than human beings.

In fact, that's what Plato says.

Why would we worship these Greek gods?

Like they're capricious, they're adultering, they're cruel.

So what Paul's going to tie into a little bit is not that Greek religion.

He's going to tie into philosophical ideas like Neoplatonism.

So we start to hear a little bit of development away from this Hebrew idea that we have body and we have spirit.

Now you still put those together in that soul, but Paul isn't packaging that for us.

So much so that Christians have kind of bought in as we go over time, and Augustine helped us with that.

We have a bad body.

Augustine belonged to a cult called the Manichaeans before he converted to Christianity that decided our bodies were prisons for our soul.

And that the way that we could free our soul is by suffering in the body.

When you indulge in the body, you're feeding your prison.

So make your body suffer.

This is why monks whip themselves.

To hurt the body is to liberate the soul.

It is the opposite of Judaism.

Bodies were made good, they were created for pleasure.

Pleasing the body pleases the soul.

I'm wondering then.

I'm thinking that's how with this kind of idea, and then if you get a group of these people together and somebody's the boss, that guy's probably a psychopath.

So we we have to remember that even though we're the Judeo-Christian heritage, we've lost the Jewish idea about us being souls instead of having them.

Part of our puritanical heritage is that we are very worried about pleasure in the body.

Very worried about that.

We talk about guilty pleasures.

The truth is, if you indulge in something, if you overindulge in something, it's not pleasing.

Like, that's very clear.

Passing out from alcohol or wretching or throwing up, that's not over-indulging in pleasure, it's vice because your body doesn't enjoy it.

I hope this makes sense.

So we have this idea, oh, you can drink too much, that's overindulging.

And no, when the body starts to throw up, that's a clue that you are not pleasing your body.

When you lose memory and consciousness because you're using illicit substances, that's not pleasing to the body.

When you acquire venereal diseases, that is not pleasing to the body.

I hope you understand what I'm saying, right?

So we have this unfortunate idea that when you really enjoy something, it might be sinful.

When you really enjoy something, it might be soulful.

That would be the Hebrew idea.

But false enjoyment, false enjoyment, overindulgent, losing your mind, eating too much.

Your body doesn't enjoy those things.

I hope this makes sense.

Our bodies are actually hardwired to enjoy moderation, not excess.

When we indulge in excess, that's us trying to fill some kind of hole that we have in ourselves.

Okay, coming back to resurrection now.

So Greeks had this idea: immortal soul, inside, perishable, bad body.

And you'll really find that when you read the Gospel of Thomas, which is part of how we know it was written later than our New Testament.

This is the idea of Gnostics.

The world is basically bad.

Try to transcend the world.

Genesis chapter 1 says the world is very good.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

What about resurrection and heaven and hell?

Well, as I said, the longest time ago, throughout the whole Hebrew Bible, there's no hell, there's no heaven, there's Sheol.

But sometime around 167, there was this event, you can read about it in the Maccabees, in which this Greek king called Antiochus Epiphanes, or Epamenes, depending on uh who's calling him what, it either means God made manifest, or if you're Jewish, it means madness made manifest.

That was how they called him Epamanes.

Um he decided that if you uh that being Greek was the best thing there was to be in the whole world.

So he's one of the most strident evangelists we've ever seen.

More so than Alexander the Great.

Alexander required everybody to learn and speak Greek.

Umtiochus, though, said, not only do you have to learn to speak Greek, but you can't practice any of your indigenous religion.

So if you're Hebrew, what that means is uh you can't read the Bible anymore.

And if you have a piece of it, we'll burn it with you.

You can't circumcise children anymore because that's, as I told you last week, like that's terrible if you're Greek.

That's mutilating the male body.

So if a mother had her child circumcised, she would have to wear the dead baby around her neck for two or three days before being killed herself.

This is extreme.

Right?

Uh Antiochus went into the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem and sacrificed a pig to Jupiter, to Zeus, and so defiled the holy space.

Right?

What happened is there was a rebellion led by a guy called Judas Macabius.

So Judas was a freedom fighter to win this back.

And you know, during this fight, young people lost their lives, and they lost it so that they could be faithful to the Torah, so that their children could be circumcised.

Babies lost their lives by being circumcised.

Women lost their lives for doing this.

And so this notion of resurrection came up.

It probably came initially from meeting the Persians, but it starts to become more mainstream, and it goes like this.

If you lose your life early, unjustly, particularly because you are fighting for the Torah, if somebody kills you because you've been cut into covenant with God, you will get your life back.

Now, we have a different word in English for resurrection.

It's called resuscitation.

Right?

So as part of your SEAL training, you're drowned and resuscitated.

To be a navy seal, you're going to be waterboarded.

Possibly to death.

And then they'll pump that out and you'll be alive again.

Right?

So you die and you come back.

You will die again.

You're not going to live forever.

That's what resuscitation means, right?

There's only one resurrected person in the Bible, that's Jesus.

Everybody else who dies, Lazarus, the widow's son, they're going to die again.

Right?

Really, the earliest understanding of resurrection is a resuscitation.

Okay?

So these Jewish people are having this idea, look, if you lose your life at 15 because you're fighting this corrupt Greek guy, I mean, that's just not fair.

God will give you your life back.

Your life back.

They weren't expecting to go to heaven eternally when they died.

They were not expecting that.

In fact, you can read Revelation, which we read last year very carefully.

The New Jerusalem is not in the sky.

The New Jerusalem is here on earth where God dwells among human beings.

That's a much earlier idea than being up in the clouds with harps.

So we've taken that to some different.

I don't mean that we've done it wrong.

I just want to say we've evolved the thought to not be biblical.

So people are expecting this parousia, and shoot, faithful people have died before it happened.

So they're not going to get to enjoy the new kingdom that Jesus is bringing to earth because they're dead.

So Paul says, listen, they're going to get their life back.

In fact, they're going to be the first ones to get their life back and enter into Jesus' new kingdom.

Is that it, you know, when you read it, it's going to happen in the sky, right?

Hard to know.

Are they going to go in the sky and then float away?

Probably not.

Probably it's going to happen in the sky so you can all see.

Aha, God can do this especially for the dead.

How much more for us who haven't died yet?

So this is a public display of God's power.

Is eternity there or just hard to know.

Hard to know.

Or is it just resuscitation?

Probably it's resuscitation.

Which is why it's tied to your body.

Right.

You get your body back with life in it.

So where where do we get the how do we progress to the Greek philosophy starts to change our Hebrew origins?

We start to hear these ideas like immortality of the soul.

Well, look, again, Greek people understand your body can't live forever because it ages and it decomposes, right?

So immortality of the soul must be something in you, not all of you.

And that's really where it starts to kind of play out.

But infinity is a Greek philosophical idea, not a Hebrew indigenous idea.

And infinity is this really interesting thing in the Greek mind.

It really comes, you can see it in Euclid, it's like a geometric idea, like a line goes on forever, right?

Is anywhere during the Paul Letters, does he begin to introduce this concept?

It seems that way to us, but I didn't I've never seen that case made.

Again, I think part of it is what are we leading into the text?

Okay.

We tell you all of this is very new and not even mainstream.

Remember, in in um Paul is a Pharisee, they believe in a resurrection, the Sadducees don't, and that's real controversial.

Even in Paul's own lifetime.

And that's important to remember.

It's not like everybody accepted this.

This was really controversial.

The Greeks don't like it in Athens, right?

In Jerusalem, there's like a fight.

People are fisticuffs over this idea.

So we think, ah, yeah, heaven when you die forever, you know, hell when you die.

It's not, we're not there yet.

We just really aren't.

This idea is still being formed.

So how were they influenced by the ascension?

Well, don't you see we live in a three-tiered universe, so Jesus goes back up.

Now, what the ascension means now, right, is God came down to earth, God went down to death, God came back up to the earth and takes our wounds and all up into heaven and completes the journey.

But Jesus isn't up in heaven anymore than he's here on earth.

When you're infinitely present, you're infinitely everywhere.

You know?

So therefore they would think that maybe they're going to get to a soon.

Maybe.

It's really possible.

And here I think is this the question so what does all this mean for us?

And my hope is that we're not missing the resurrected Jesus and one another right now.

And sometimes we don't see it because we're not looking for it.

And that would be really sad, don't you think?

Now, I'm sure eventually, time as we know it's going to end.

I'm going to die eventually.

If Jesus comes back bodily ahead of them, that's great.

I'll probably be really surprised because I'm not like counting down on my watts for that to happen.

So, as to the specificity, I'll be surprised.

I'm very open to the concept, but I but I want to suggest if we're waiting for this thing to happen in the sky, we might be missing what God's doing already on earth.

That's pretty that's that's a magnificent thought.

I mean, it's pretty amazing, it seems to me to think that.

Because sometimes, I don't know about the rest of you, but this may sound hoping, but sometimes something happens to you and you say that was a pain.

I don't know.

I didn't say that, right?

I didn't do that.

I mean I don't think yeah, yeah.

And and then you just walk away and well, and somebody will say, that was really great.

Okay, okay, thanks.

Thanks.

Yeah.

So I think like one way you could hear this, there's gonna be this angel's trumpet, is that there's gonna be a winged thing that like blows this trumpet.

But I think another way to hear it symbolically right is that an angel means messenger, and it doesn't have to be a four-headed thing or a flying thing.

You can be an angel, and that a trumpet is what you start the Shabbat with.

It's a ram's horn.

So we have this opportunity to hear God's messengers blow that wake-up horn all the time.

By the way, if what I'm saying is not the way you want to take it, it still is true.

Do you know what I mean?

We don't have to say it's one or the other, it can be both, but and I sure hope we'll make room that messengers of God are all around us sounding wake-up calls if we'll heed them, right?

I mean, I'll tell you, even, I laid down in my grass the other day, it was like 75 degrees, and um my dogs both came up and laid next to me, and I thought, here is the resurrected Jesus right here.

And there were no people involved.

It was this moment of connection with the earth and with the weather, and I had these two things, living things, who for whatever reason, maybe because I trained them or because they have their own personalities, whatever, they came up, and here we were all one, you know?

And um boy, I'd hate to miss out on that because it wasn't a guy in a robe flying down from the sky, you know?

And some people could say, oh, that's a delusional experience that you're having, because when Jesus comes, it'll be all this better.

Great.

But why can't it be both?

And I would pose to you it should be both.

And I think we have this other opportunity when we hear about the dead rising, we could choose to take that strictly literally, but isn't the hope of our faith that there is, in fact, a figurative resurrection of the dead?

I mean, where people who are, sorry, depressed, because that's living and death, yeah, find a way out of the tomb.

Or where people who are on Megan's list because of something they did 30 years ago are treated like human beings with dignity again because that isn't really who they are.

Or when relationships appear to be dead for any number of reasons and reconciliation happens.

Isn't that resurrection from the dead?

Oh Mike, that's a weak resurrection.

Actually, I think that's the more powerful one.

You know?

I think that's more powerful.

And again, it depends what we're looking for.

Sometimes we choose to read this as some pie in the sky magical text without remembering what real magic is all about.

Outward signs of inward and spiritual graces.

That's a sacrament, according to the prayer book, by the way.

That was my sermon on Mon Thessalonians and the Parisia.

But please do notice that the parocia is really what we read about in the prophets.

It's the day of the Lord.

And part of what we get to decide is, as he said in the video, there's a promise of wrath.

Wrath.

So I had a professor, I told you this before, he was so proper, he spoke an iambic pentameter.

He really did.

Like he was a brilliant guy.

He's now the dean of the seminary in Waco.

But I remember I remember distinctly, he said, you know, the day of the Lord is not a good thing.

The day of the Lord is when God opens up a can of whoopass on the world.

And some people think, yay, God's judgment.

Yay, I'll be vindicated.

Remember what the prophet said.

You don't want that.

You think it's gonna be on your enemies, and you don't realize the enemies of God that live within you.

So we should never want God's wrath on the world as if we'll be spared from it.

It's just so important to hear, right?

And what God's trampling underfoot is going to be, I think, as we read Revelation, is not, oh, Jane's awful, but Mike's bad, I'm just gonna squash them.

It's going to be the parts of us that live and give in to accusation and slander.

God's gonna squash those parts so that the rest of us can truly live.

And that's what hope's about.

That's what he said, right?

Hope is that God's going to have the last word.

And the last word is not I decide who gets in and who doesn't.

God has already decided.

Good news it's you.

And it's me.

God's already picked that.

So everything I do matters, even if it doesn't seem, because God's already decided it matters.

I was really, really extra preachy.

Sorry.

But that's why we want to stay awake, you see.

Uh many things seem like sometimes you just get tired of doing good.

It can become really bland.

I'm not getting any reaction, I thought.

I was really nice to this person and they didn't accept it.

Stay awake, don't go to sleep.

Stay awake.

Continue to be kind.

That's another way to hear what Paul's saying.

It seems like your reward is dallying.

Don't worry, it'll come like a thief in the night.

Be ready.

I'll be quieter now.

Did I gloss over something for you there?

They've done a study that people die.

I think it was harder, but I'm not sure.

They weighed the bodies and they lose.

Eight grams.

Eight grams.

Eight grams.

There's a movie called Eight Grams, yeah.

Three pounds.

That's too much.

It's eight grams.

That's a lot.

It's eight grams.

Dr.

Moody did an extensive study on near death sorts of experiences.

And I think they said that in a lot of cases, if somebody died and there were people in the room with them, they could see the reason.

I remember that.

My mother was dying.

She was talking to her.

She would talk to her mother.

I mean that she was asking her mother to come and get her or take her.

And she was she just died within minutes after that.

And my dad did the same thing for some reason.

It was only for their for their mothers.

I just repeated what you said, only for their mothers.

I would tell you this, very few people are Afraid of death.

Most people are just afraid of dying.

And usually when we're around the dying, we're reactive because that's what we're afraid of.

So the number one thing people talk about is whether it hurt.

At least we didn't seem he died peacefully.

We didn't seem to suffer much as if we even know how that feels.

And I think that's better.

Because we're afraid.

We're afraid.

But very few people actually are afraid of being dead.

Very few.

This is a good letter for us to read.

Again, when does Paul introduce justification by faith?

Great question.

I'm trying to remember if it came into this letter or not.

No, I didn't see it.

Maybe you can.

You really get it strong in the letter of James, but remember that to be justified, justified, to be made just by faith, it can mean a couple of different things.

It could mean your faith is what makes you just.

Or it could be, as Carl Barth said, it's God's faith that makes you just.

It's God's faith in you.

Karl Marx?

No, Karl Barth.

Oh.

I will tell you that frankly, a lot of the crap we've settled for theologically is the opiate of the masses.

And it would, I mean, Karl Marx would call it exactly that.

This idea that we jockey on earth for heaven and hell when we die, that's the opiate of the masses.

I can't imagine God intends for us to jockey with one another for limited spiritual resources in heaven.

I can't imagine that.

So far from grace and beauty and love, it's gotta be the opiate of the masses.

Scare tactics, like, oh, listen, all that stuff you're saying, all that liberal stuff you're saying, you're leading people to hell.

Really?

I mean, I have these thoughts in my head because I grew up like, hey, you know, heaven and hell are real and it's eternal.

Good lord.

I mean, again, like, is God worse than we are?

I mean, we don't punish people cruelly and unusually.

Like, we believe in not doing that.

So, okay, you told a lie when you were five and you didn't accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and God's gonna send you to hell for that forever?

Really?

I mean, that's like the definition of crazy, don't you think?

Yes.

How is that loving?

That's just nothing loving about that.

My own mother wouldn't do that to me.

You know, surely God loves me more than my mother does.

Nobody loves you more than your mother.

God's love was revealed to me through my mother, but I will tell you categorically, God must love me more than my mother.

But it's the same thing.

Some people's mothers didn't love them.

Some people's mothers didn't.

The love that you practice for your child is what matters.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the I say that because I adopted a kid whose mother didn't love him.

She might have felt great about him.

But there are society who are who are not nice.

And they're not like us.

They're exactly like us.

The resurrected Jesus was born in their bodies.

This is the scary thing.

When we set into accusation, they're not like us, that's exactly what the Nazis did.

They're not like us.

We're better than they are.

And the truth is, or we say we're better than them.

And listen, that little boy's mother, who was addicted to drugs and stealing and writing checks, I mean, in my mind, I'm much better than she is.

Well, but she's a human being created and loved by God, and the things she did that took her there honestly were the gift of her own parents.

If she was doing the best she could.

With what she had, and it wasn't great.

But when you have an addict, that's that substance is your God.

That's the thing that's the most important in your life.

Yep.

And so you can't, you don't have anything left to give to the rest of your family.

That's uh and it doesn't matter whether your addiction.

And you might say, okay, well, underneath that, yeah, she loved him.

But but for many of us, our addiction has been workaholism and perfectionism, and those just happen to be socially acceptable.

But they take us the same place.

Yeah, take you away from from uh from knowing that God loves you just like you are, and there's nothing you can do for God to love you more or less.

We don't actually believe that.

Even though I'm convinced it's true.

I don't believe that myself, because I always find myself thinking, I should, I should blank, I should give more, I should blah blah, because then I'll be more acceptable.

And there's no being more acceptable.

Again, it depends what we look at sanctification and justification.

Is it our faith that does it or God's faith that does it?

It would be God's faith.

And so if it is God's faith, right, then this is both an encouragement and an appeal.

And I've said this before, but as a parent, the worst thing is I don't know if my parenting's gonna work.

If I knew that getting up early every day and taking my kid to the school all the way on the other side of town and making them this special lunch, whatever it is you need to do that's burdensome.

If you knew it was gonna work, you'd do it like that.

It's hard because we don't know it's gonna work.

So here's Paul appealing.

It's gonna work.

Loving people is gonna work.

Don't doubt it.

Trust, it's gonna work.

You may not see it in your lifetime.

That's what he's talking about with this parocia, but it's gonna work.

Yeah, it's just it's I was principal of all my principalships were inner cities, hardcore inner cities kids, that people would say, How can you do that?

Well, because first of all, they were kids, they needed to be loved, and you know what they appreciated it.

There were there are many times that I've, you know, one time I was, I was, where were some waitress came up and said, Miss Kahula, you are my principal.

You're my principal.

Oh, I've had that happen to me several times in odd places, but but uh but what I was doing is I just knew it was gonna work, and I'm still convinced that it it worked.

Yeah, and so this is another way to hear some of these words.

If if I I know I'm spending a lot of time on a concept, it depends on what our fundamental concept is as to how we hear this letter.

So I want to throw out a couple of choices here.

God tests your heart.

Okay.

The way I grew up hearing that is God's giving us a test.

You're gonna put true or false.

And if you miss it, see you in hell.

Don't fail the test.

But remember that there's another way to hear the word test.

You test a metal by removing the draws.

So God is going to test the centers of your will.

Not pass or fail, but God is going to purify your will for your sake.

Which meaning is more life-giving for you?

Well, Mike, that's that's just picking the scriptures according to what we want.

No, no, which one gives you more life?

We can hear it that way, right?

We can hear God's coming as a thief in the night, so to be ready.

Because people who are sleeping, when the thief comes, the thief will kill them or send them to hell.

We could hear it that way.

Or we could hear, listen.

It seems like God's taking God's good old time and maybe never coming back.

It's easy to just give up or consign ourselves that this life is just something we settle for.

Or even though it seems like God is tarrying, we're not getting what we want, God's ultimate yes is gonna win out, so stay away.

Which one is more life-giving for you?

I don't mean which one is more manipulating of you.

We know the answer to that.

This is all through the letter.

And remember in 1 Thessalonians, Paul says, God chose you.

God chose you.

God didn't say, I'm so Paul didn't say I'm glad you chose God.

God, he says, God chose you.

And you turn to God from your idols.

And I would say, listen, isn't God calling us to turn away from our Christian idols?

I think so.

What do you mean by that?

Yeah, what do you mean by that?

Oh man, there's lots of idols in the Christian world.

Like God just wants us to be set apart from the world.

So we're gonna buy this Christian music and wear these Christian t-shirts and live in Christian conclaves.

Because the whole world is just kind of basically bad and it's gonna corrupt us.

It's idolatry.

Hey, you know, um, I love the world uh and all.

I mean, it's going to hell, so um I'm just gonna save as many people as I can.

Idolatry.

Sorry, it is idolatry.

Anytime we come out at someone else's expense, it's idolatry.

But I would tell you a lot of what we said before with commercial Christianity is that.

The tribalism that we are better than other people.

We love some tribalism, we do, and we love sectarianism, and we love living in Christian conclaves.

And I I told you, there's this church in Lake Lanier in Georgia, very small town.

There's three within two miles.

There's Hope Baptist Church, and then there's New Hope Baptist Church, and then there's Real Hope Baptist Church.

The progression is really clear, you know?

Idolatry.

Giving money to the church earns spiritual favor, idolatry.

Doing good works earns us a better resurrection, idolatry.

That's only if you think or really believe that way, right?

I mean we all believe that way.

We all believe that.

I think part of our disciple journey is to change where we really put the core of our trust.

Because the thing is, our whole society works that way.

You get what you pay for, right?

You get what you pay for, and if you go bankrupt or lose your children or get in a speeding ticket, it's because you earned and served it.

And we map that unto God.

We're all about transactions.

You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

We pray like that.

And I don't mean it's idolatry, like if you do it, God's gonna send you to hell.

What I mean is it's it's putting an image on God that doesn't fit.

And so what we're doing is taking something that would like to be so much closer to us and saying, let's just keep you out there.

I actually think that would be a really great update for fundamentalism.

Fundamentalists are all about proximity to the Lord.

But because of some of the principles, they push God away like that.

If I can't find it in the Bible, I can't do it.

Well, there's a lot of things you can't find in the Bible.

You know?

Like VCRs.

You can't find them in the homes anymore either.

Thank God for that.

Thank God for CD players.

Yeah.

I mean, and then and so and so again, like you can hear Paul writing, Satan blocked our way to return to you.

And you could think, oh, the red guy, you know, set up a roadblock.

Or you could think, like, there were lots of accusations going around that made us so like we couldn't come.

Okay, I'm talking way too much.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Let me ask you this.

He the book asks us to think about sexual purity, which is, I would tell you, a minor theme in this book, right?

It shows up in conjunction with idolatry and fornication, like I mentioned.

But it does ask us this, and I wonder if you if you if you thought about this at all, um, in what ways have sexuality and sex become false gods in our society, and how can we encourage sexual purity in our Christian fellowship?

I wonder if those questions appealed to you in any way.

Um, I'm not sure what you mean by sexual purity in our Christian.

Paul talks about sexual purity as being like not fornication.

Now that in your Bible that showed up as immorality, but but again, it would have said fornication.

Okay, right.

Well, you know, I mean Hollywood has done a very good job of this.

Uh you know, making sexuality and sex and become the false gods.

I mean I just you know we spend tons of money on stuff like that.

Well, you know, I guess sometimes if you get real extreme, I think some of the clothes you see young people wear, especially girls.

You know, because the guys wear their jeans and I I I I I don't know if I then I think we're just being judged mental and you're just you're not yeah.

I know, yeah, you know so that I hope it's okay to tell you that at least 90% of women have body shade.

At least 90%.

And in men, it's more like 40%, although it's a growing trend lately, partially because of advertising.

There's sort of studies that talk about this, right?

Yeah, so I would ask you this is the church doing anything in your experience or when you grew up to correct body shame in women and men?

No.

Not in the church.

Did the church provide you any understanding of what mutuality in sexuality looked like?

No.

No, no.

Did the church provide you any understanding of what acceptable sexual fantasies look like?

Nope.

We were afraid to talk about it at all.

The way I grew up is if you had it, it was wrong.

So I wonder about this, right?

Because imagination has been really helpful in my journey with God.

And part of what pornography does is it gives you an image that you can spend your time thinking about, but there's no corrective image to that.

I don't mean that there should be Christian pornographic videos.

But I think it's really interesting that my youth group did not in any way prepare me for married life.

Um, not just sexually, but I mean relationally.

Once you're married, everything's fine.

Once you're married, do whatever you want, just sort of work that out in the bedroom.

There was no understanding about what it means to consider somebody else's pleasure and how that you can love somebody else's body who may not love their own body.

Now, I know most of us wouldn't want our teenagers hearing that because it's not socially traditional.

I wish I had.

I wish the church had been daring enough to say, you can think about these things, but be careful how you think about them because it'll inform how you pursue them.

That's right.

It would have been really great as a young man if a woman had said all that stuff that is being depicted would not be pleasing to me.

Would not be pleasing to me.

But we were not willing to say that because it would offend people.

Or because we didn't believe that women had that agency or that voice.

Think about ways this is portrayed on TV, ads, movies, and pornography.

They're all the same.

Women are objects.

They want to be dominated sexually.

It's all about male pleasure and women accepting that.

I mean, that's what we depict.

And women had no concept of what was pleasurable, or that they even had the right to have pleasure.

Right.

I know this feels like a slippery slope, and by the way, I haven't developed this sexual curriculum for young people, but I would say the church is missing an opportunity to say this is what healthy sexuality and spiritual, this is these are seeds of those.

I wish we'd take that risk.

I mean, I just I wish we would.

We didn't talk about it in big church because people don't want to hear about that private stuff, but boy, our lives are full of that private stuff.

You know, I I was teaching some teenagers once, and I brought at St.

B's, and uh one of the we had a really close relationship, but one day one of the girls said, Ms.

Caroline, I you know, tell us what is wrong, or like what is it we're supposed to say in confession?

Because I don't really know what I'm doing with the guy, is it really sin?

Is it sinful?

You know, well, I think and I said, well, honey, the only thing I can say is you you know inside yourself when you've maybe gone too far, or that that does, you know, and of course she looked at me like, what are you talking about?

She didn't know.

No, she didn't know.

None of our people know because sexuality is a rite of passage.

And we haven't given our kids any other rite of passage.

No, and and they just, and I I just, you know, there are boys and girls in this class, and of course they're all looking at you.

I mean, I really appreciate that, because we we've tapped up that sexuality is the worst sin that there is, but it's a metaphor the whole time for being unfaithful to God.

And it just happened to come through this way.

Consider all the Christian art you've seen, though.

Jesus is a pretty swarthy guy, you know?

You ever seen a fat Jesus on the cross?

Or one with acne?

No.

You know what Jesus is wearing on the cross, he never would have had a loincloth?

Wouldn't have had that.

Oh, we couldn't depict that.

Would that be pornographic or would it be real?

By the way, I'm not j jockeying for naked Jesus.

Oh, absolutely, you were completely naked.

That would have been shameful.

Yeah, that would have been the worst.

I mean, that would be shameful things.

Mary's a pretty lady on the planet board.

Like, she's a nice looking lady.

You know, and she's got a nice blue, like she's got great clothes.

I mean, think about what we depict in church.

Everybody looks great.

They have great muscles.

I mean, you know, Jesus was like, he was probably like, you know, a CrossFit champion looking at that guy.

This I wouldn't put to you, and I don't know how we do it, but this doesn't just affect our young people, this affects each and every one of us.

How many of you would change something about your bodies and then you'd be happier?

And so the answer's gotta be I would change nothing about myself to be happier, but because I love myself, I will work out or I will, whatever.

It has to be, oh, that's the same thing.

It isn't the same thing.

It's the difference in a marriage between, oh, my wife is nagging me when I do what she says she'll love me more, and my wife loves me, which is why she thinks I can become better than I am.

And you know, I I also I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I read on Sunday, I did this reading that really turned out like it was a good reading.

And I had compliments, okay, but but I I people kept set telling me how well I read.

I told him even this morning, I said, you know what, that's just hung over my head like a cloud because I just opened my mouth and it wasn't even me reading, I think, I said, I think, I said I think it was God reading through me.

I guess what I'm trying to say, I can't be that good.

I'm I'm not that good.

I just and this is exactly my next question outside of sexuality, right?

Is how can we encourage and simultaneously make an appeal to our church and to our community?

Remember, it's not about earning brownie points, it's about saying, here's what I see, and you can continue to be.

And so, what does the school teach about having a way of sex education?

We don't teach it.

They're too I mean, they're young.

They're young.

Apparently their kids are some awful things.

You come into public schools?

California schools.

It doesn't matter what schools.

What we decided is that if you tell kids, hey, these are the negative consequences of sexuality, if you give them the stick, they'll stay away.

And what we never taught them was what the carrots are.

I don't know, I know very few people, period, who look forward to sexuality for the carrots.

I'm not talking about an orgasm.

I'm talking about the ability to have real intimacy in which you can be naked and unashamed, and that's both a physical reality and a spiritual one.

We do not teach that.

We don't even teach you when they're the little, you know, cover yourself up, wrap yourself up.

I mean, well, of course you do.

You can't be running around naked catch a hole.

You can be inside the house.

Yeah.

And we do it so young that sometimes we teach our kids that their bodies are not fit to be seen.

Instead of it's all about context.

Yeah.

Your body's great, and there's times in which we need to keep it private, and times we need to share it.

And this is the hard thing about teaching young girls about their you know, short shorts or whatever, right?

I mean, look, I can wear whatever I want.

I can go jogging with no shirt.

I can go jogging in three-inch jogging shirts, and hardly anybody's gonna say anything to me.

But if my wife goes jogging in yoga pants, people are gonna say, way to go, girl, nice booty.

And that's wrong.

That's wrong.

I'm not going the way I jog to make a public display.

I'm doing it because it's comfortable and because I'm allowed to.

So why are women not allowed to be comfortable and allowed?

Because we have a double standard and it's wrong.

So if women wearing short shorts is a problem for men, men should wear blackout glasses.

Because the shorts aren't the problem, the man is the problem.

The burqa is backwards, right?

If if if a man can't handle a look at a woman, he should look.

That's that's it, period.

The man should deal with his problem, not the woman with his problem.

Yeah, but they don't think that's a problem.

And we don't either, and that's why we've got to figure this out.

This is still part of it.

And all body image is wrapped up in this whole business about sexuality.

It's about diminishing other people.

And how we teach that is a great question.

In some ways, we're no any different from the burkess.

I mean, the low-cut dress you're gonna be buttoned up, you know, you're gonna have to button up correctly and cover up, cover your arms, or I mean, I don't know.

There's really no difference about the way worldwide women are treated regarding our bodies.

This is the thing that is hard for us.

It's we take our own problems and we see somebody not following the way we would dress, we judge them, right?

Like, I can't believe she's wearing something that low-cut.

Instead of, I hope she feels as free as she dresses.

I no, I mean it.

That's affirmative.

I really hope she feels as free as she dresses.

That would be a refreshing view of things.

Which what I was gonna say in Osai culture and over there, if a woman gets raped, she'll also get stoned because it was her fault.

Read the Gospel of John.

Yeah.

They bring a woman caught in the act of adultery and they want to stone her.

Caught in the act of adultery, they didn't bring the man, they just let him go.

Yeah.

So I mean, they that's why they cover these women up because they're so this I think becomes really important when we preach the gospel.

Sorry, it's a feminist gospel.

Because it's for all human beings, right?

And if we ever hear somebody say in church or at home, she asked for it, boy, the gospel is no.

No.

No, she didn't, and no means no.

And that's just the beginning.

Because again, that still doesn't offer us the positive view of sexuality that we just even don't even talk about because we're scared we'll say the wrong thing.

And I get why we're scared we'll say the wrong thing.

But again, look, the most dangerous thing you can do is drive your car, and none of you think about that.

You think my driving is going to keep me safe.

That's how people think about their sexuality.

Look, I make good choices.

I'm not gonna get an STD, I'm not gonna get pregnant, all that stuff about, you know, you go through driver's ed and you see these crash films, that doesn't make you a better driver because you think it doesn't apply to you.

That's how we teach sex ed.

We don't talk anything about the character or the intimacy or the unity.

We don't talk about that at all.

Because we might encourage kids to pursue it.

I think if we talked about the beauty of those things, then people might pursue it more cautiously and respectfully.

I would hope so.

How do we appeal?

How do we encourage an appeal that's related to this?

Well, I think it is.

Yeah.

Page of it.

I'm off the I'm off the charts here.

I'm off the charts.

So I got myself all wound up.

I'm thinking you think that's where it was.

But it came into my mind is this isn't crazy, because you know, you're thinking, oh, you know, the women they don't ask for it.

I knew this guy was.

He'd never been married.

This woman who had, I think, eleven children came up and crawl, climb, climb up and crawl in his window at night.

And uh then she got pregnant again.

And they got married.

We can always find people in the house that he became an expert walker.

He took to walking on the beach because he had to get away from all those people, all 13 of them, and he and he became a competitive sandwalker.

Listen, this interesting thing about anecdotes is we can always find one that supports whatever we think.

But I just want to share with you, because I've already gone off the rails of the crazy train, one last thing.

I have a daughter who happens to be very striking because she has red hair and because she's around a lot.

And people say, what a pretty dress, what pretty hair.

And if I had a boy, they would never say that to my son.

And that's the root of all of this.

Girls are to be pretty, and boys are supposed to be smart and leaders and athletic, and we buy into that all the time.

Oh, Mike, you're just being crazy.

No, I'm not, because I have a son and I know how people talk to him, and I see how people talk to her.

And whenever somebody says she's pretty, I also I say she's also has a really great work ethic.

Harder to see, but it's there.

You know, I mean, she has to hear those things.

Has to hear those things because it's at the root of those.

That that that is so important.

I'm the oldest of six, I think we're six or seven.

Anyway, six is six.

Anyway, and I want I'm old.

My dad, my dad was was oh, he he was so my mother was like, you're not as pretty as your sister.

And it was just my sister, my sister was eight years younger.

She wasn't very she's very beautiful.

But my dad never treated me like that.

He was like, you know, forever and ever, he said, he one time he said to me, You're gonna come across over, not only are you Hispanic, you're a woman, and uh you're always gonna have trouble.

You're gonna fall on your face and he said, you know what?

Do not worry about it.

You just get up because you're good and you're fine and you're intelligent.

You get up and you just you didn't say dust yourself off, but basically that's what he said.

Yeah, and you keep on going because the next job will be there for you, and the one after that, and you will be successful.

I will and that just That's how you talk to a boy.

Yeah, but but for for I just I just and my mother would sometimes say, you're just like your father.

Thank you very much.

Yes, that yeah, because he he liked me, he treated me like that.

Like I remember when I was a little girl and somebody, a man came up and said, How do you when are you gonna get married?

And so I went to my mom and I said, When am I supposed to get married?

And she said, Not until after you're 21 because you have to finish college first.

Thank goodness.

Yeah, thank goodness.

That was your initial read.

Yeah, when I tell my daughter 30.

Yeah, that's I hope this is helpful.

I mean, I know it seems like I've gone crazy, but I hope you see the roots are here in the letter.

You're crazy.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

We'll read two Thessalonians next week, which is all about work.

You're talking to all women, you know.

Well, folks have a technology.

I'm talking to a sympathetic audience.