Disciple Bible Study 16, Gospel of John Part I

Okay, same terrible question.

It's new material.

And it's interesting that they had us read over and over and over again this same particular passage indeed to try to to memorize it.

So just curious, obviously this is very different.

What what what was this week or this material was it doing for you?

Did it give you questions or confirmation?

Do you feel like it's connected or disconnected from what we've been doing?

Um any takers on my bad question?

It's not a good question.

It's really how what what's the material doing for you?

Are you feeling it's connected to what we've spent the last 16 weeks on, and if so, how?

Um meditating over these 18 verses, which again they've asked us to do every single day.

Um maybe those in particular.

Um I guess what came up to me was wisdom.

I hadn't really thought much about wisdom, and that was something that was important in the in the lesson.

Would you say more about that?

That's a feminine part of that, and I love that.

I've always loved that version of Java.

I can't say that to memorize that certainly so familiar to me that kind of poetic and poetry speech.

Did you find, um, you know, you mentioned the the wisdom part from the teaching.

Did you find specific um resonance of that in those first 18 verses?

I mean, how how did you connect wisdom to that?

No, I don't think that I think I think yeah, maybe wisdom was a god was a god at creation.

Right in the in the very beginning.

It's never been a part.

It's never something that we really have to add.

Honestly, it never particularly bothered me.

But I have to say, I love hearing about the mask, and it's always been there, but I haven't been there, you know.

It's interesting in wisdom is also we spent a lot of time in Proverbs, right?

Wisdom is female, but so is folly.

Right?

So yeah, and I like um in the I in I in among the readings of today, I like the um an in there because that kind of uh emphasized it now.

I never had thought of that.

Walking with God is a very serious matter.

And the choices that we make determined whether or not we will do anything.

Was that things are going to be different?

I desire this is romantic, I desire mercy mercy, not sacrifice, new wine, and wine again.

Things are different.

And Jesus become the person that they create that we were created to be then we do we we know that as we age we like the door.

But we also adore and the thing about uh during God is that we have that constant thought that love is always coming to us, whether or not we are thinking about it or not.

So if we want to grow more, can we think about that and what we used to talk about?

Just a little maybe a little short prayer during the day.

The origin of our being and our destination.

Um well for me it was um it was a confirmation, a kind of um for me the the most beautiful part is um thinking about uh the word being got for creation.

Um and this might be a total tangent, but um when you think about music um and a musician creating music, um very often they'll start with like a musical sketch.

And I'm not a musician, so I might say something.

Um they'll start with like a musical idea, like a statement, and they can from that they can kind of create you know a symphony, and if you look at like Box musical offering, um and that that six-voice feud is you know, it you start with the exposition, the statement, and then it goes through these different repeating imitations of similar musical statements and phrases, and then it comes back at the very end to that very that original uh idea.

And so for me, just kind of the whole unraveling, the revelation um creation and and Jesus is it's like it's just beautiful symphony for me.

And so for me, that's really continue to work with that's really good.

So we always learn museums, we add museums, we get different insights, different churches, and different ideas of how I use it.

So it's like a you know, so when you're being created, everything happens.

And just very similar, like an artist can create a piece and the observer may see something different than what the art of the artist intended.

I was a principal educator, and the first time I really I was given a charge of a huge school kind of diversity and problems and things that needed to be and that was a work of our to me.

The heart of it is the students are there and where do you envision what you need in all as um and that can be transported forward into your style.

Yeah, so all of us go to the same process over in many ways, and to look at that at such depth is like power.

But um, yeah, to an honor that you say, my god, my goodness, you know, this this allows me to look at this in my life, and our life seems such uh amazing.

So you've mentioned a few things if it's okay.

Am I allowed to just do a little bit of highlighting on some of the things you've mentioned?

And then let's see if that takes us somewhere.

Is that okay?

At any point you can like withdraw your permission.

I may listen, I may not.

Um you know, uh, it's interesting that we read this thing in Mark about wine scans, and I maybe I want to start with that if I can, and I want to do this really obliquely.

If you if you've done education at all, you probably are aware of this Swiss um psychologist named Jean Piaget.

He um is kind of a clever guy, and he ended up with this funny job grading IQ test.

And when he was doing this, he he realized that um kids essentially were all missing the same question, depending not on how many books they'd read or their education, but how old they were.

And particularly the famous one is that if you have a container that's short and wide, and a container that's tall and skinny, what Piaget noticed is you can take a one cup measuring cup, fill it in front of water, fill it with water in front of a child, they're watching, and pour it in here, and of course the water level will be there, and then you can fill it with water in front of the child and pour it in here.

Now they watched, and you can ask them which one has more water.

And under the age of five, they'll always tell you this one does.

Now they watched.

You put the same amount of water in there, they watch that, but their brain doesn't understand conservation of matter, it looks at relative volume, which by the way, I'm pretty convinced why that's why most bars really like the conical glass, because it actually has like a third of the volume of a sphere, right?

But it looks like more.

And and in general, like our brains are foolish that way.

Uh and they're hardwired to be foolish.

Uh more on that later, if you want.

But what what Piaget says is, you know, the way this is overcome is that our brain grows in layers, and we know that's right, our brain starts out tiny, and then we grow a layer over that, and then one over that, and and particularly when you're a boy, that takes you to about 26 before that finishes.

But along the way, you end up um sort of going from one worldview to another.

And his word for worldview is this word equilibrium.

So whether it's right or wrong, everybody has an equilibrium point at which they kind of make sense of the world.

You know, the sun's going to rise, it's raining, whatever.

You know, we just sort of have things that we sort of inherently trust the world works this way.

And then um inevitably we run into new information that doesn't fit with our equilibrium.

So it's possible, uh, I mean, just to throw out one of my own uh journeys into wineskins, that you believe women cannot be ministers.

And then you encounter a woman in ministry whose ministry seems very real.

This brings you to a crisis.

Because you categorically rejected that, but now your experience is in conflict with your category.

What will you do?

Well, you you sort of are going to do one of two things, is what Piaget says.

You are either going to accommodate your worldview to the new information, which means you will change your worldview.

You're either going to change the way you look at the world, or you're going to assimilate the data into your old worldview.

You're either going to change the data, or you're going to change your worldview.

Now, either way, you're going to arrive at a new equilibrium.

So just to think through the women in ministry example, you experience this woman in ministry, and you're either going to say, Wow, that was real, and my category was wrong.

I'm going to have to say, some women can be in ministry, or or um, maybe all can.

Or you're going to say, that was a fluke.

That was an outlier.

I was in a strange emotional state.

Oh, she wasn't ministering, she was teaching, and women can do that, but they can't pre- I mean you you you sort of massage the information to sort of fit into your category.

By the way, we do this stuff all of the time.

And there's a reason why people are very prone to stereotyping and prejudice because there's often some truth to it in our experience.

Often some truth to it.

The problem is that we we we we our brain really likes hard categories, not fluid ones.

So what we do is we we take these experiences that seem to repeat themselves and we make them hard categories, and we we make round pegs fit into square holes because our brain would rather do that.

Like I said, either way, you end up at new equilibrium.

Now, perhaps Jesus is talking about following the gospel in this way when he says, look, you can't take new wine and fit it into your old wineskins.

If you do, you'll ruin both the new wine and essentially you'll ruin your way of living.

Now, I don't want to be so radical.

I mean, I do come from this evangelical background, but I think one way to hear this is that the gospel is new information, and my experience of Christianity or any other religion is that we would much rather assimilate it into our worldview than change our worldview to accommodate the gospel.

So, what we'd like to do is take our normal structures of thinking and slip Jesus in there wherever he might fit and back up what we already enjoy doing.

God is a Republican.

God believes in the United States being the best country in the world.

It's okay if poor people don't have health care, they didn't work hard enough.

Sorry, this is all very like liberal sounding democratic beliefs.

We can do it on the other side as well, but see, essentially what I'm doing is just backing up what I believe in God's name.

Instead of thinking, how do I have to accommodate my thinking to fit the gospel?

And I think one way to think about this new wine, new wineskins, is that if we don't accommodate our lives to the gospel, we ruin it.

And so gospel means good news, and when we assimilate it, it's not good news anymore.

Good news, you're going to hell when you die, but you might not have to.

Is that good news?

Well, I think that's mixed news at best.

God loves you, but you might send you to hell.

Is that good news?

None of you are answering.

No, I think it's like a very schizophrenic type of thing.

But are we somehow in the Judeo, and not in the Jewish people don't even think like that.

In general, in the Christian tradition, that's what we become comfortable with.

God loves you, but you've got a good chance of getting sent to hell forever.

If you mess this up, you're hell to pay.

And I want to tell you, I think that's assimilating the gospel.

I don't know that we've accommodated to it.

And what sense uh but how did it look like if we accommodated to it?

Well, it could introduce you to purgatory, um, but I I I think I think the thing is what we're struggling to do, in my own thinking, Meg, is to not think outside the box as a funny thing, but to take things like grace so seriously that we have to reimagine everything else.

What we'd like to do is say, well, God will forgive you if you're sorry or if you ask for it.

But that's how people are.

People are that way.

So is God like a person, or are we invited to be like God who is greater than people?

I mean, I, you know, if you this is an interesting thing to think about, just how we develop as human beings.

Um this is a different thinker.

This guy, uh Larry Kohlberg, and his student uh Carol Gilligan rewrote this uh moral development theory, is that the first stage is essentially um black and white thinking.

The second stage is mommy says no.

And really what that means is there's a fear of punishment.

So I better do what mommy says or I'll be punished.

Um the third stage is you start to think about like what's good for your family, and then you think about what's good for your neighborhood and what's good for your country and then humanity.

So you sort of grow into these.

Actually, I did that wrong.

The first stage is not black and white, the first stage is I thinking, what's good for me?

What do I want to do?

I'm getting this back.

It's something like that.

You get the gist of it.

I have to look this up, it's been a long, long time.

Fear of punishment is like stage two.

And you know, what the scriptures tell us is true love drives out all fear.

So if we're afraid that God's going to punish us forever, that's lower level thinking.

If we come to God in fear, we have not remained with God in love.

Now I know lots of very bright people.

I mean, exceptional surgeons, attorneys, who in their career field are extremely advanced, and their relationship with God is based on a get out of hell card.

I I I wonder about that, and I wonder if that isn't some kind of assimilation, because isn't that, after all, how our criminal system works?

Consider, if something happens in a community, and you know there's this great play, Les Miserables, and Jean Beljean goes to prison as a slave for five years for stealing a loaf of bread.

He stole it because his sister's child was starving and he had no job.

He was willing to work but couldn't find one.

So the question is, it's the easiest thing to do is to punish the thief instead of questioning how can we rehabilitate the system.

So I think the gospel actually asks us to think about the bigger sense of justice, not punishment.

And what the concept.

And then they see what wonder if they have this hour.

Is there not a period of time in which they will maybe go to a straight place or something and their hair will be their grief and not listening and oh my god, or they're disappointed or they're anger at their shout or whatever.

I don't want to just tell a little short story about anything.

And it took me over three years to get to where I could forget my father and my mother.

And uh anyway, uh but gradually I began to be able to pray with it.

And um kind of trying to but uh that's exactly that.

So anyway, uh gradually uh kind of went on and I was able to pray with them a little bit more.

Um that at the end you prayed for the toilet.

And so I wasn't all and then gradually I could learn a little bit more, a little bit more.

And one day when I was in prayer, uh they came to mind.

And I felt so um by the way, since I did think about that president, and they're letting me know that they have done whatever I told me that they needed to do, and now they are with God and there was so much fame that came in there, that it was I mean it was such a happy experience.

I mean I would you know but so that has led me to wonder that maybe I don't believe in health unless unless you have a burning sensation inside yourself or something.

Well there is a theologian by John here, and here's the problem that we will all we will all continue to be tested, but eventually we will all arrive at heaven.

Eventually, yeah.

So yeah, I but the point is at some point in there we have to come to triumph with what what we have not done.

Yes.

I think I think what I want us to think about though, that we're still trying to work out because we're so tied to a worldview in which we get even with people when they're wrong that we have a hard time imagining God as any different from that.

And what we often do is say, oh, God must just be just like that and even better at it than we are.

So, you know, sometimes I do things that are good for other people, but I didn't do it for like the rightest reasons, so it doesn't count for God.

And what we again, God is better at the game than we are, and I wonder if that's accurate or if we are just playing it completely wrong.

And this is why I put this thing up here about wine and wineskins.

What we really want to do is fit the gospel and following God into the worldview we already have, because that's what we know how to do well.

And I think the question is maybe we have to try to fit ourselves into God's household, which would require things like change and discipleship, and would give us a new kind of life that honestly the writer John is going to call eternal life.

That doesn't mean after we die.

I promise you, track this as we read John.

Eternal life is about right now.

Yes.

I don't know about hell forever.

I don't know about that.

That that concept is not around at this time.

Eternal punishment, not around.

That comes much, much later and really gets developed through Dante and some of like the desert fathers in the five, six, seven, eight hundreds, but not now.

Hell is a place in the Bible, and I can you can see it on the map, I told this to you.

It's a place where you burn trash.

So hell is an image about annihilation of garbage.

So do I hope that God will annihilate the garbage from me?

Absolutely, I do.

What's funny is I think this this model up here shows I'm often very interested in holding on to my garbage, and I'm surprised when its annihilation hurts me because I'm holding it.

Instead, it would be a lot better if I could say, This is garbage.

Please burn it over there.

Uh C.S.

Lewis writes this book called The Great Divorce, in which he sort of says hell is only eternal if we make it.

But I want to back down to that because I'll tell you, um, hell is a very real experience in my life.

I have lived in hell.

If you know an alcoholic or drug addict, they have lived in hell.

And if you love them, you you probably lived there with them.

It's not that one hell is worse than the other.

Um, but I am positive that God is not trying to put us there and hurt us, God is trying to call us out of there.

And I don't always know what that means for accountability and justice, but I know that if we assimilate the gospel into what we do, the wineskins will burst and all the wine is ruined.

Instead of it stretches us, we stretch with it and we enjoy this wine.

Yeah, because Jesus gives us a new life.

Yeah, and I think I just even think the way we approach Jesus in general is in general, we say Adam and Eve just messed everything up, and then God had to think, how do I fix it?

And then God got this idea of Jesus.

Instead of, what if God's plan was always, always to become a human being so that God could enjoy being human?

Well, Mike, that's just really positive and new agey, is it?

Well, but the thing is this, you didn't get to enjoy it.

I think you got to enjoy 33 years of it.

But 33 years and then after that.

I think we normally think so much about poor Jesus, he had to suffer because that's our experience of working hard and giving up things for other people, and maybe it's because we get it wrong.

Maybe Jesus actually really enjoyed all of that stuff.

And and maybe we can do that too.

Well, how could he enjoy being nailed on a cross?

Well, of course, that wasn't physically pleasurable, but he clearly was committed to doing it, or he wouldn't have done it.

If we uh I mean, I think this is the truth, you know.

We we sort of know or or we figure out that loving somebody else is going to be painful because it means we don't get our way.

Whether it's our parents or our spouse, especially our kids.

But boy, you know, um there's sure even in those moments of hurt, there's a lot of joy to be had.

Well, I think that's right.

I don't know.

And I wonder if that isn't in our invitation to sort of rethink, rethink this.

Did Jesus really dread being a human being?

Or did he enjoy humanity?

Do we have to dread things like having gas and pimples and you know being tired?

Or is that just part of our humanity?

Is it bad that stuff hurts?

Or really is it alright?

I mean, you know, I think I think these are questions about what does it really mean to be human and what does it mean for God to be human?

I mean, that's sort of what this reading is sort of asking us at the last questions, you know.

Um, how is it that God becomes human?

You know, the early Christians had a really hard time with this.

They thought actually the body is a bad thing.

It's sensual and it's earthly, and the spirit is this beautiful effervescent thing.

So the way to handle it is punish the body and free the spirit.

And we still want to do that sometimes.

We we we do it in in strange ways, um and we we actually sort of worship those things.

I I mean I just give you an example.

There's something called exercise bulimia, where we say, look, I worked out really hard, I can eat whatever I want.

And and that's just so tied to a negative view of the body and to food and to enjoyment that there's there's no health in that.

I was at a cycling class yesterday or Monday.

I don't know if I'll go back to it because it was really hard.

But the instructor was like, working out really hard so you can have that June body at the beautiful pool.

And and I'm like, I'm too old for that to be my goal, you know, because I've had that June body and my life is not any more fun with that.

It's not.

Like, I'm not here to have a June body.

I'm here because, like, actually, I want to enjoy my body and like a healthy, healthy lifestyle.

That's what I want to do.

Um, so I think there's gotta be some accommodation.

That's really what I want to say.

And again, if we imagine Jesus hated being human, then of course humanity is to be afraid of, to be ashamed of.

But what if that's not how it was?

But are you saying that there is no accountability before God for the way we have lived or not lived?

No, I'm saying it has to be totally different from human accountability, otherwise we'd just be worshiping ourselves.

I mean, I just think that's the hard thing.

Because, you know, we don't know the circumstances of people's lives, so that's why God says that we don't judge other people.

And so there always maybe things that God will take into account about that person's life.

So um but I think that uh we really have some done some wrong things in our lives, and we we're you know we give them a purpose.

There's gotta be some kind of accountability because I had it.

Why?

But you've got to be.

I think that's an interesting thing to pay attention to, and I and I would I would challenge you to think about the things you know you've done wrong in your life.

Did you do them really to be demonic?

Was your intent to be Satan in the world?

Or at a certain point were you acting out of anger or exhaustion or frustration, or because your parents had shown you that was the way to parent, or your brother had betrayed you and you were getting revenge.

I mean, were you doing it to destroy them, or were you doing it because that was the best thinking you had at the time?

Yeah, God takes all that into consideration.

I think that's interesting what you're looking at.

I mean, I I read this book and I'm really struggling to live into this.

Um, that the difference between joyful people and unjoyful people is whether or not we believe the following phrase.

People are pretty much doing the best they can with what they have.

And I will tell you, being a J on the Myers Briggs, it is very hard for me to look at someone who chooses to be homeless and say they're doing the best they can.

However, I'm I'm trying to get some perspective on this because homelessness isn't really a moral decision.

It's just a choice you make.

There are a lot of things wrapped up in it, but who's to say sleeping on the street is morally wrong?

If that's what you want to do, that's what you do.

Obviously, abusing children is morally wrong, but you know that uh something like more than 95% of child abusers were abused as children.

Now, I'm not saying that justifies it, but the truth is, you know, if you've ever parented at all, 90% of your parenting came instinctually from the way you were parented.

You know that if you were a teacher in a classroom, whether or not you had kids, it came from the way you were taught.

And from the way you're not from the way you were taught.

Or a reaction.

Or a reaction, that's right.

And so, you know, again, I'm not trying to say, well, that means nothing really matters, but but in general, I think, again, if people are doing the best they can with what they have, even if we think they could do better, that just becomes an interesting way to have to think about our lens of justice and what our response should be.

I believe in accountability.

This what bothered me first is you have a crisis and you have an accommodation of similarity.

Because to me, that in both cases, what was there came to stay with you.

I was trying to think in a wine skin's thing, too.

I was just trying to think of wine scene and I thought to me it's more like a crisis.

Sometimes bring you to the point of like a caterpillar to a butterfly.

Your whole skin size will reshape, and then you were a new person at the end.

That's this one.

That's this one.

This is the one where you call crawl out of the chrysalis and you're still a caterpillar.

I I mean I really think that's right.

And and again, these can happen at very small levels.

And I gave you one about women in ministry.

And what's interesting is I will tell you, once you turn a card over like that, there are many, many other cards that you have to start turning.

And that brings me to maybe to the next idea, which is about the word of God.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

The word is not the Bible.

The word is Jesus.

I mean, this is so important.

Because as an evangelical, I was taught that the word of God, that this is the word of God, and it is not.

This is words about God, some words from God, but the word of God is Jesus.

That is so different from my Protestant faith, because I mistook that for the living God, and of course, that's just a snapshot, not the living God.

And if we take this really, really seriously, right, then honestly, as Christian people or Jewish people, this is an anchor for us, but if the resurrected Jesus ever disagrees with this, we follow the resurrected Jesus.

Which, by the way, is why we celebrate gay marriage in the Episcopal Church.

Whether it's in here or not, I'm positive the resurrected Jesus would celebrate it.

I mean, I think that's how we do it.

And the the thing that we often miss here, if it's okay to say, is that John is doing something that we've swallowed only small bits of, which is um he John is using this Neoplatonic idea.

You know, Plato is a student of Socrates, and and you know, he's the one who wrote about Socrates and the Socratic method and all that, and and he was around 350 BCE, and the Gospel of John is 450 years later.

And this word that he uses, uh, the word logos, we we translate it as word.

Like biology is words about life or the study of life.

Sometimes we call it study of.

But in the Platonic category, the the logos is not just words about, the logos is the universal ordering creative principle.

And if you remember your Plato at all, there's these categories that are essentially called the forms.

You know, so a great Dane and a Chihuahua look very different.

But Plato argues they have the form of a dog.

They have the form.

And the same thing would be true about horses.

Really, he talks about horses.

Um, Plato does the Arabian and the quarter horse and the thoroughbred.

They're all different, but they have the form of the horse.

And in scientific categories, I think it's very helpful to say they all have the same genus.

You know, honestly, the wolf and the dog are the same genus.

And and um they have that form.

Well, the forms, says Plato, come uh from the virtues.

Now, now Plato was the one who said Greek mythology is stupid.

He said the Greek gods are base, they're petty, they're worse than human beings.

So why would we worship anything that is like us or lower?

No, Plato says we we we we heed the forms and we pay attention to the virtues from which the forms came.

Now, the virtues for Plato are not things like faith, hope, and love.

They're different virtues.

But ultimately, um, Plato says that the virtues come from the logos.

The universal ordering and creative principle.

So when you hear the word biology, it doesn't mean words about life.

It means the universal ordering creative principle that made everything that is as revealed in life.

And geology, you see, then, is the universal ordering creative principle, the mind of God, if you will, as made manifest in attention to the earth.

It's pretty high theology, you know?

I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty interesting.

And and furthermore, in this category, along tying this together, you may remember that Plato sort of says that we live our lives in general, chained up in a cave, and what we see are two-dimensional reflections, they're not in color, on a cave wall.

And we accept that as life.

And the job of the philosopher is to unshackle themselves, leave the cave, and experience 3D and color, and then help other people become unshackled from a shadow reality.

Our job is to accommodate 3D color instead of assimilating everything to a dark cave shadow.

That's right out of Plato, and that's where I think this becomes a really interesting thing.

So the gospel, the gospel is not about us being satisfied to be chained up, it's about us becoming unchained and helping other people become unchained and get out of the cave and live real life, not shadow life.

And one last thought.

When we talked about creation, you know, there's this really infrar influential book called the Zohar, written by the Balsham Tove.

Do you know about this?

This is the root text.

There's two A's in there somewhere, but I don't remember what it is.

In uh the Jewish mystical sect called Kabbalah.

And in Kabbalah, um, when God goes to create the world, God has to make room in God's self.

So do pregnant women.

It's like a pregnancy.

God gives birth to the world.

That's a sort of really interesting image.

And ultimately, uh, this becomes kind of platonic, is that the sort of the um the spirits of God get kind of broken and scattered throughout the world so that when we do righteousness is when we takuno lam, it's when we heal the world.

The world that God conceived.

Conceived not only in God's mind, but in God's uterus, if that's okay to say, right?

It's really quite a lovely feminine image because again, a pregnant woman makes room in herself for another life.

And of course, they're inextricably connected, and it is the mother who will nourish the child, right?

That makes room for.

I mean, I didn't experience it, but pain level appeared to be off the charts.

And yet, um my wife would take it back for nothing.

And I wonder if that's insight into the incarnation.

What do you mean?

Take it back for nothing.

Well, I mean, I I I think there is something like hardwired biologically into the into birth pangs, you know, and everybody knows that's going to happen if you have a baby.

You you know it's going to happen.

And not just in the moment of delivery.

I mean, even if you have a C-section, right?

I mean, you you this child has behaved like a virus and taken your nutrients from you, you know, irretrievably changed your body, right?

I mean, you you lose your abs, there's skin that will never be tied again.

I think one of my wife's um muscles came unpinned, you know.

See, the thing is, that's not a mystery.

I mean, women know that's going to happen, and and I don't want to speak for my wife as an observer, though.

Um Well, you're basically saying she would do it all again.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I've just I I had both of my girls' natural roots like that, and it is the first I had no idea I was not prepared for I was 21 and I had Tina, and it it was yeah, I was totally, and it was a period of time where you weren't having classes, and I mean it was in a hospital.

Just oh my god, it was 12 hours of what seemed like horror, and when she was born and they put me put her on my belly.

That beauty, that happiness, that joy can never be um located in any way.

Yeah.

Uh it's the next morning.

I I was up and I was showering and a nurse coming and said, What are you doing?

I said, I'm showering because I know these coming soon and I want to see her and I'm gonna go.

I was like full of this weird energy.

It was I never talked about this in front of other people.

It's just like, but anyway, it was like that.

Um I don't know how about your wife or how she felt, but I remember and but talk about violence is just yeah, but I and again I think there's this interesting in like even though that's the case, there is this bizarre connection.

It's not even that bizarre, right?

I mean, you you know that I and I I can tell you I spend more time with my daughter than my wife does during the day, but their connection is so primeval.

I mean, I mean, they were connected for nine months.

I mean, irretrievably.

And um, look, I'm not trying to say, like, oh, okay, like that makes it all okay.

I just mean it's a different way than I think our normal categories of things like pain and connection and suffering because some of that's involved, but that doesn't describe the experience wholly.

If you come back to your image of God, would you think there's pain there?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think there has to be pain.

And I think interference is pain.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think I actually think this is a really interesting thought if I can talk about men just for a second.

I think that um culturally, this could be wrong, it's a very broad brush, but I think culturally men don't carry pain as sorrow, we carry it as anger.

So that's culturally okay for men to be angry when something hurts.

Um, and and I'll tell you, chemically, right, anger releases like adrenaline.

It's that fight thing, it gets us ready.

And um boy, you know, um, I've had relationships that have been really frustrating, and I'll tell you, I get really mad.

And I think it's because as men, culturally, it's not really okay for us to experience sorrow as sadness.

We experience sorrow as anger.

But I also do that.

I don't tolerate being sad.

So I end up being bad.

Yeah.

And what's funny, right, is there's consequences either way, because that adrenaline moves us, it makes us very productive, um, it gets our bodies in gear.

What it does to our heart, obviously very bad.

Which I want to tell you, I think that's probably why heart disease is bigger in men than women.

I think that's part of it, is just that we bear that stress in our hearts, and I think we're afraid of sadness because it could lead to depression, and I think that makes sense.

Obviously, there's gotta be, I don't know, there can't just be these things.

But I do know, and and I I don't think you're an anomaly.

Uh I I think anger for some reason is more physically rewarding than sadness.

I mean, I really think that.

Our brain, our brain does stuff with it, and you know, there's people who are adrenaline junkies and they jump out of airplanes to get the adrenaline, but anger does that for us too.

Anger gets that right out, and and and so does cortisol.

But you know, any good therapist will tell you anger is not even a real emotion.

Anger is like anxiety, yeah, and usually we don't say I'm feeling disrespected or disappointed or frustrated, we say I'm mad, because we we don't know what those other things sort of feel like.

I I I I know I hope I'm not sounding too strange here or too off off topic.

I'm afraid I've gotten really off here.

Um, except to think about how it is that God bears pain.

And and I and I want to suggest that one of our attractions to hell is that's what God does when God gets mad.

But what if God doesn't get mad?

What if God feels disrespected and frustrated and disappointed without turning that to anger?

I mean, I'm just a what if.

It might take hell off the table because you know, like, boy, my word is gold.

I realized this, I was talking to my wife last night.

As a parent, if I say you do this, why will happen?

I'm like 95% of the time.

My kid knows why is happening.

There's been a few times where I've said, you know, I promised why, and I think that would be too severe, so I'm not gonna do that a few times.

Thank God I should have done it a whole lot more, you know.

Um, but I wonder if we don't sometimes put that on God.

I mean, I just I wonder if we don't do that.

So is God angry like us?

Or is God able to feel and carry things like disrespect and frustration and disappointment without mapping it into the anger category?

I hope so.

And then I hope I can learn to do that more too.

Do you I hope you get what I'm I'm saying?

Um He's got to.

Well, and and here you said something really interesting.

I mean, we we we've got some interesting imagery if it's okay to explore a little bit further.

John says it's the glory as of a father's only son.

As.

That's like a simile.

Similes are comparisons using like or as, you know?

So I think it's really important.

John doesn't say the word is the father's only son.

It's like that.

And that's really freeing, isn't it, to know that this is an analogy meant to help us understand, not to force us into dad and son.

But Jesus shows us God.

Yeah, which is the author say, through Jesus, the Father's heart is known.

Heart.

Remember, heart means center of will.

So just interesting thoughts.

Jesus shows the center of God's will, not the center of God's feelings.

The light shines in the dark, and the dark has not overcome it.

It's really interesting.

I was talking to Lila, who's like a PhD in particle physics, and we're talking about the wonders of light.

You know, and I've mentioned this in church before.

It's interesting to think that you know, when you extinguish a candle, the light didn't go out, really.

It changed into smoke, so light changes.

You know, light's a um a wave and it's a particle, so it doesn't have mass, but it has momentum.

Uh so interestingly, light doesn't just you you know sort of uh produce something we can see, it also actually moves us.

Because that's what light does.

And you know, there's that really great book that came out uh and won the Pulitzer Prize about three years ago, All the Light We Do Not See.

And it talks about scientifically how visible light occupies like that much of the spectrum.

And so frankly, all the light we do not see.

It's sort of interesting to think that we only see some of light.

And all of that sort of richness, the light shines in the darkness, and even if we can't see it, the darkness doesn't overcome it.

And so Lila thought, you know, is really there's no such thing as a dark switch.

There's only light switches.

This is sort of an interesting thing to think about.

And sometimes, you know, we think about God's love in the middle of accountability and brokenness, and we don't see it.

And all the light we do not see.

Doesn't mean it's not there.

It's an interesting claim John might be making.

I don't even know if we always feel it moving us either, but I think the promises light as a particle has momentum and it does push us.

Even if we don't feel it, it is pushing us.

Well, this is sort of I mean I I don't John's not a scientist, but um since I have limited scientific understanding, I think it's interesting.

I think it's interesting you just said light is pushing us.

I I always God is pushing us.

I get off the path, I get pushed back on the path, I get off the path, I get pushbone on the path.

For me, it's a you know it's a it's a road and it's not a straight because I get off it.

But somehow I gotta push this thing back on it.

That's how I like to think about it.

And sometimes perhaps we're more aware of the push or we're more responsive to it.

But what if like light that's why I have to be here?

What if God's always pushing on us and we're just not aware of it because we don't see it?

Yeah, and we're so immune in our own bodies we don't feel it.

But sometimes we are.

You know, I mean that's that's it.

That's usually more interesting.

Isn't that sad?

Yeah, it's sad.

Okay, I talked away a lot.

What what what did we miss from our reading?

We still have some time together.

I don't think we missed anything, but I think you just explained.

I had a I'm trying to figure out how to say this in a short way.

I went into a Bible study, and I had never questioned my faith before that.

And during the Bible study, I went through about a 48-hour dark night of the second.

It was like I was just convinced.

What if what if I'm wrong with me?

What if this doesn't exist?

What if there is no God?

What is it this thing?

And that diagram, when you were doing that, I kept thinking, that's exactly what happened to me.

Was I was in the middle of this Bible study and they were just ready it was Esther, I think.

Yeah, it was Esther.

And I looked in the Oxford Bible where they tell you that Esther is not probably real and that it's a compilation of three different.

And I thought, well, okay, if that didn't happen, how much else did it?

You know, it was one of those domino effect things.

Why all of a sudden I had that happened, I don't know.

But that that diagram really, for the first time, explained to me, because I've always gone back to that time period and thought, how did that happen and why was it so profound?

You know, for that short period of time.

But that really described, you know, the the new information and the crisis, and then what are you gonna do?

You know, and at the end of the 48 hours I thought, I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but I can't live like this.

So which one about so which did you do?

Did you assimilate or did you accommodate?

I don't know here, okay.

You tell me which one I did because what I decided at the end of the 48 hours was that I could not live without God.

And even if I was wrong, it was a better way of living.

And that my God was just larger than I had thought that God was.

That my view of God had been too small.

You know, I I if I can say it differently, but I heard I had a professor tell me this one time.

It doesn't have to be true to be the truth.

That's Julian.

Exactly.

That describes it as arrows.

Yeah, because it's the point that Esther makes, not the words.

Well, they're so very different.

I think you're right.

Very different.

And I think sometimes we squander.

It's interesting we got to read this in Isaiah.

Why do you spend your money on what is not bread?

And we spend our money on facts instead of truth.

And we usually get very distracted by facts instead of by truth.

And I maybe that's a good thing to think about, you know.

I I um thinking about accommodating and assimilating, you know, that passage from Isaiah says, My ways are not your ways, says the Lord.

For just as water falls through the earth and trickles down and brings new growth, so does my word not return to me void, but accomplishes what I speak.

And um to think I haven't found it yet, that God's ways might just be more patient and convoluted, but life-giving than my own is just really interesting to think.

You know?

Um I guess that's hopeful.

You know, it's not basically just nothing wrong with doubting.

Well, you know, there's nothing wrong with doubting, but the thing is this, don't talk to that.

Well, my point is, I mean, it's I think it's okay to do that.

Yeah, well, yeah.

Um It doesn't mean that you are um are a non-believer.

It's it's a kind about free will.

Yeah.

When uh one of my years in college, we had a Jesuit that had been a missionary in Ukraine for 25 years.

So you come in 25 years they come back and say something like that.

And you gave everybody a little button that said, Thank God I like it.

Because it means unless you do that and think, you know, you're not really going to get there.

See, I and I think coming back to the beginning, what we were talking about with accountability, it's there's this line by the poet Rilka that says, faith and love are always in us.

We are not always in faith and love.

And that's just a really interesting thought about God's presence and accountability.

Rilke also writes, bidden or unbidden, God is ripening.

Really interesting, uh interesting thought, actually.

So and I think then the accommodation is whom does the Holy Spirit indwell?

And this I think it's a really important thing, because I'm just gonna be honest with you.

Um I was recently at a meeting of the clergy in which um there was some direction that people should not be admitted to communion unless they had been baptized.

And I I'm just gonna tell you, I don't understand that.

Yeah, and that's waiting when I was born.

That still is, by the way, the pronouncement of the house of bishops, but I don't understand that.

I don't understand it.

What does baptism do that makes you suitable to be at God's table?

Does God need it?

Do we need it that much?

That you need somebody to put water on you so that you're welcome?

I think it's a really important part of our practice.

Does that mean people aren't good enough to come?

Was that a declaration or was that just a discussion?

Somewhere in the middle, I didn't get a really strong understanding.

Now I understand it's been a tradition.

I understand it's been a tradition.

But I don't understand the reason of it, actually.

I don't understand the reason.

When you're not alone, I was there ever an example of Jesus baptizing anybody?

Well, we'll read about that next week, actually.

Sacraments are outward signs of inward and invisible graces.

And so it's just a uh baptism is just a is a sign that um in this person's life is consecrated to God.

It doesn't mean they're going to be perfect or anything like that.

And uh it's just a sign that it's more than an outward sign that they are permitted to live the Christian working anything.

You can't do that, so that's why we have confirmation.

But if a hope is baptized, um, you know, then that's just an outward sign to people.

That doesn't mean and so a person who hasn't had baptism but leads a good life and you know does the things that a good human being does, they should not be denied the Eucharist.

Should it they be denied if they're a terrible human being and want to come?

I mean, what if they're a serial rapist and killer and they want to come and have communion?

Should they be denied?

I think that's a really critical question.

I do.

Whose table is it?

It's the table of God.

Yeah.

And all should be welcome.

See, I think that's an interesting piece, right?

Is it just that all are welcome or all should be invited?

All should be invited.

You know what I mean?

And then if that's the case, and we really accommodated our lives to that belief, how would we live differently?

What we'd rather do is assimilate that idea so that the people who come here are invited, but they had to come here first.

So how do we be God's inviters?

I mean, I I don't know the answer to that.

What is the justification by the bishops or bishops, yeah.

House of bishops for that requirement?

Um, I don't actually know.

I probably should read should read more about it.

And the reason I asked this is because if let's say there were no religious traditions, period, does that mean that that there would be no um that we would be unloved by God?

I don't think so.

Yeah.

You know, I I've heard this in the so my thought was that what this is, is this is the initiation into a religious tradition, and that's all it is.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting thought.

I've had two other peop two other ways of coming at this same question.

One was that I had a friend who uh was very critical of this joint worship service that was like inner faith, and uh there were like Hindus and Muslims and Christians, and somebody was offering the Eucharist, and she was very upset because these people were taking the body of Jesus.

And um they didn't really believe in that and they were taking it.

And I think what I I think what I got from that is okay, you think if we take it the wrong way, we're somehow disrespecting God because we're not appreciating the gift.

And I don't know if gifts actually work like that.

I I had a test on my um question on my G O E, the general ordination exam, and it said basically the local mosque has gone out of business and they want a place to worship, and you're the rector of the church, will you let them worship in the church?

And at my last church, I I I advertised as Christian, and and and one of my good Roman Catholic friends sort of said, Well, yeah, they could do it anywhere except in the sanctuary, because if they were in the sanctuary, they would be disrespecting the reserve sacrament.

And I think the question is, how can you ever disrespect the reserved sacrament?

How can you do that?

I mean, is God susceptible to disrespect?

Or are we?

Do you know what I mean?

Well, you may remember, I'm sure everybody here does, that there was a mos that was torched down in Angleton or something like that.

And the local, I'm not sure, I think it was Baptist church said, please come and worship in our sand in our in our church because you know we want to respect your religious tradition.

Well, I said I thought that was great.

And the video and we worship this well, we worship God.

It's the same God, but you know, it gets perverted sometimes by some people, but you know, God in Arabic is Allah, and it's the one God.

So how would we refuse anybody because if they're Muslim or whatever?

Because we assimilate the gospel, we don't accommodate to it.

I just want to put that up to you, and these are just small tastes, I think, of what John might actually be inviting us to live into, which is not longer life but everlasting life.

And Catholics, Romans, or even worse, they will not give you communion if you are not a Catholic.

You know what?

I often go anyway.

You don't even say I'm not supposed to have a good one.

I will sort of just go.

I mean, there is anything before me to not do that.

Yeah, I'm not gonna do it.

That I think is for a different day.

Um thank you.

We've had fun.

I hope you've had fun, and we will pick up next week.