Divine Interruptions-Interrupting Our Religion

This last week we talked with Jeni about some of her life experiences and talked some about religion. For Christians, I think that religion can be a slippery word. Many of us who have extended experience around church tend to think of the word in a somewhat positive light. For long-time Christians there is usually some desire to be seen as religious, to attend church religiously, to help our kids get religious education, etc. It is easy to conflate our “religion” with our “faith” or our “relationship with God.” But what Jeni helped remind us of is the way that religion can wrap a culture around our faith that isn’t always helpful or healthy. This is particularly true when the religious experience is founded in rule keeping and false veneers of morality.

When we read through the New Testament, there is a tension along these lines. One cannot take the New Testament seriously without seeing some assumption of (if not explicit commands toward) community making. Jesus always saw his disciples living in community. He was aware that doing so would create a need to establish some sort of principles for that community (like those around conflicts in Matthew 18:15-17). As the New Testament continues narratively in Acts and in the letters of Paul and others, the community acknowledges a need for organization, standards, and practices. While some will suggest that Jesus never had any interest in building a religion, he certainly has a mind toward building a church that the gates of Hades could not overcome (Matthew 16:18). The Jesus movement, merely historically speaking, quickly formed into what many of us would call a religion.

On the other hand, Jesus is intensely critical of some of the quickly formed errors of religion. We see this most in his criticism of the Pharisees and the sort of religious structures we would call “Pharisaical” religion. These criticisms are too numerous to explain fully here, but generally include things like hypocritical outward piety devoid of inner transformation, keeping religious traditions but ignoring issues of justice, exclusionary practices, and more. Most stinging is when Jesus suggests that some of the religious people of his day go over land and sea to make a disciple and the result is a man “twice the son of Gehenna” that the Pharisees are (Matthew 23:15).

This tension encourages us to be considerate of what we are doing as we try to live in community. Religion and religious communities are not simply “good” because they try to teach the Scriptures. They can cause a lot of pain and turn into a factory for hellions! There are many forms of religion, even Christian religion, that devolve into places that harm people, repeat lies, and make the world a worse place. Conversely, I still doubt the helpfulness of deconstructing all religious institutions. I’ve just seen too much beauty and healing happen in good, healthy, religious communities. The alternative I fear would lead to loneliness and a lack of resources. In many ways, churches are like families. There are destructive, abusive families who do horrible things. I do not think that means we shouldn’t have families at all. I’m not sure it would even be possible. Communities are going to naturally form around shared values and beliefs. It is our job to make sure that we allow God to step in and correct them when they lose their way.

Naboth's Vineyard Bible Study

This is not strictly speaking a “Weekly Thought” but with our Feast Groups on break this week I have recorded a little teaching on the story of Naboth’s Vineyard in the book of 1 Kings. Hope you enjoy!

Divine Interruptions-Changes that Become Part of Us

This Sunday I had the privilege to chat with my wife about her story (and our story) in ministry. It was an unusual lesson to prepare in several ways. It was easy enough to know the points to hit. We have told that story a million times as we raised funds to plant The Feast Church over the years. Sharing God’s call on our lives sort of feels rote at this point. I could anticipate what Fran was going to say before she even said it. In other ways it was emotional. The weight of God’s blessings hit heavy at several points in ways that I did not anticipate. (Thankfully she was talking so I had a chance to recover!) One of the things that struck me is how thoroughgoing the changes of my life have been.

At this point major changes that we have made as a family hardly register. Moving across the country as the parents of a newborn baby? No big deal. Fran shifting from her work in grocery stores to stay at home mom to massage therapist? Been there done that. Adding four kids to the mix? Easy breezy. At this point living as a large family in an urban context on the east coast of the USA while working at a church that was planted to reach unreached people is just who we are. None of that feels like a heavy or unusual task.

I know that is not how a younger version of us would think if we could travel back in time. We have had a ton of transitions in our married lives. Geographic moves, having kids, professional growth, relationship building…it can all be heavy in the midst of time. But God has an amazing way of turning challenges into old hat. I think very simply about how very few women who have a child immediately think “Let’s do that again!” But often after some time they do come around to considering a second child. Problems always shrink in the rearview mirror.

This is an important lesson for spiritual growth. Things that seem insurmountable in the “before” are often not so “after.” Uncertainty may actually be the dragon we most need to slay. It feels trite, but I believe it is true. Attack the future with the confidence that it is likely not as scary as it looks. God’s ability to bring us through trouble and grow our hearts through it is amazing. For me, this means that I look at future challenges as adventures as much as possible. Like Frodo leaving the Shire, we need to look into the unknown and charge forward with courage.

Divine Interruptions-Scars & Identify

When the resurrected Jesus appeared before his disciples the book of John tells us that Thomas is not confident that Jesus is really raised. As the story goes, Jesus then appears to Thomas and asks him to touch the holes in his hands and side. For many reasons, this is a fascinating encounter. If one has the mistaken understanding that “resurrection” is just a way of talking about immortality of a body-less soul or some kind of magical way to fix all that is broken, this story shatters such an illusion. While the pain of the crucifixion is gone, Jesus still has scars from it. There is continuity between Jesus’ resurrection body and the body that goes into the tomb. It is transformed, but the same entity. Perhaps more interesting is that Jesus ultimately gives proof of his identity with his scars. “Aren’t sure it is really me? Check my wounds.”

There is a delicate balance for human beings to strike in how we identify ourselves by our wounds. On the one hand, those who follow Jesus believe in redemption. Every person is much more than the worst thing that has happened to them, or the worst thing they have done. On the other hand, our wounds do help to shape who we are. It is the survival of pain that often moulds us in one way or the other. Generally personality types (like the MBTI or similar instruments) do not change over time, unless a major trauma happens in someone’s life. We’ve all known someone who lost a spouse or child and was never quite the same. Those who lived through significant events know that the United States has never quite been the same post-COVID, or post-9/11, or post-Pearl Harbor. While our wounds are not the totality of our personhood, they do make a special part of our story. Thus, Jesus shows Thomas who he is by his wounds.

This week in our teaching time we talked with Preston Cottrell, one of our shepherds, about the loss of his parents. Preston’s mom and dad both passed pretty closely together when he was around 30. Losing your folks before you are comfortable in your own adulthood is a life shaping event. I’ve known Preston before that loss and I hadn’t considered the force of those events on his life until this lesson. In many ways Preston hasn’t changed from the young man I first met. But as I look at his leadership, it is obvious that there is a depth and empathy that he carries now that is hard won. These hard experiences have interrupted his life but also shaped his worldview. He is so much more than a man who lost his parents but you cannot talk about who he is, particularly spiritually, without acknowledging that experience either.

If I had to boil down what this teaches us, I think it is that Jesus offers a particularly helpful lens for our wounds because he is a healer. Jesus is defined by his wounds, but they are healed wounds. No longer did his hands or side bleed or ache. The evidence of past pain is there, but in a way that puts that pain in the rear view mirror. If we define by our wounds without healing them, that is dangerous. That becomes bitterness. The path of Jesus offers us neither the option to wallow in our losses nor to ignore their existence. It is a path of accepting, learning, appreciating, and then growing through and past those hard times. May God grant you the peace to cope with your wounds and find new life, scars and all.

Divine Interruptions-Streams in the Desert

Yesterday in Providence it was 60+ degrees in the afternoon. This is not normal for February at all. So Fran and I decided that once everyone was out of school and work we would go out and grab some ice cream with the girls. The problem is that our kids come home from school they always have this ravenous hunger, like they never get fed. “Dad can I get a snack?” “Dad can I have a piece of candy my teacher gave me?” Left and right I’m seeing pretzels and Cheez-its and anything else they can scrounge up.

As a dad I’ve found that kids are a really helpful metaphor for understanding our relationship to God. The wisdom and understanding gap makes for a decent analogy. They had no idea that they had ice cream cones coming their way. In their impatience and limited understanding they were taking up precious stomach space with mundane junk food that will still be there on Saturday afternoon the next time a snack attack comes upon them. Getting them to wait, however, was not easy! “Why not dad?! I want something NOW!'“

On Sunday Ray shared with us some of his story of how God has blessed him with bad days. For those who didn’t hear Ray, he talked about how his struggles with various things, including losing his business and suffering through heart issues, have led to growth and vitality in his faith. Those bad days ultimately redirected his life to better places, like a vine that was pruned so that it grows in a new direction.

So often in life we think we know what we need, or at least what we want. And so often we are wrong. I know my life is not what I thought it would be when I was in college. And more often than not the things that God has worked in my life provide a better future than what I wanted. Better does not always mean more money, or easier, or more comfortable. But I find more meaning and beauty in my life than I might have anticipated otherwise. Certainly I have a partner in my wife that is different than what I imagined as a young man, having strengths I didn’t even know to look for in a partner!

In the book of Isaiah God begins to talk the people through what it will look like for them in exile. It is hard to explain how crushing exile was for the people of Israel and Judah. To understand one should start with the devastation we see on TV from Ukraine with a foreign nation invading. Then think about the vandalism we sadly see toward certain religious communities. Finally throw in the terrible experiences that refugees suffer through. Exile is all of that. It was truly terrible. In the midst of that experience God says, ““Forget the former things;  do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:18-19). Even in the horrors of exile God suggests that he will work through the situation to bring new life.

The challenge for us is to be patient as things seem to unravel. Sometimes God erases certain things in our lives in order to write a new chapter. That process is often painful. But as Ray shared with us, it is amazing when we experience the new streams that God can bring through the desert.

Divine Interruptions-Trajectory Changes

We have a core value at The Feast Church that is “trajectory.” It is the core value that is the least intuitive to people, in my experience. What do you mean by trajectory as a value? Trajectory is not a word we hear a lot in day to day conversation. Sports is maybe the easiest comparison. Increasingly baseball analytics experts talk about launch angle or launch trajectory. The angle a ball comes off a bat can be the difference between an easy fly out at the warning track or a grand slam. Golfers know all too well that a little mistake in the trajectory of a golf swing can change your score by several strokes! My parents are getting ready to go on a long flight to Africa. If the pilot is five degrees off in her heading, they will not land close to the appropriate destination.

All of these examples get at why we think trajectory is an important value. Little decisions have big impacts. Tiny life changes, multiplied by decades, can result in a completely different person. This gives power to the current moment. It makes every decision important, significant, and dangerous. A little choice to be more patient with those who serve you in restaurants can impact millions of lives over a life time, when you factor in that server, the people they work with, their families, the other people at the table, and so on. If you have every marveled at an 80 year old person filled with grace and kindness or recoiled at an 80 year old person who is entitled and grumpy, they may have started as the same sort of person. One just learned kindness one choice at a time for 80 years and the other learned bitterness one choice at a time for 80 years.

We talked with Alana, one of our shepherds, this Sunday about the everyday way she serves other people. To suggest that she does a lot of “little” things is right, but also very wrong. Many of her efforts in the world are simple tasks that anyone could emulate. But the impact is not little! At this point hundreds of children have learned skills like empathetic listening or sharing or responsibility in Ms. Alana’s class. Those skills, in the lives of hundreds of students, will cause thousands of people to have a better experience when in contact with those students. Those interactions then help shape the larger culture of a community. This is how true change comes into the world.

I find that people get far too excited about elections. They worry about how policy changes will affect people. And I understand that sometimes laws are devastating. But generally speaking, I think people misunderstand how the world is truly formed. In my mind, election results are the end product of the culture, not the cause. They are a report card showing how we have collectively lived over decades. Harmful policies and laws are the result of what has already grown in our hearts, not a seed that grows something new. The seeds are in far smaller places. Face to face interactions. Routines built by families. Priorities set in household budgets. Volunteer hours served or not served. Those little choices are what truly sets the trajectory of a society. May you realize the power of such things in your life and use that power well.

Divine Interruptions-The Radical Gospel

This week we talked a little about the Philippian jailor and his conversion experience. God interrupted his life suddenly. One day he went to work, knowing nothing of Jesus, and that night he was baptized. What a massive change to happen in the span of a few hours! As I have reflected on that conversion more, it made me think about just how radical the call to follow Jesus would have been in the ancient world.

Ancient prisons were nasty places, at least in the time of the New Testament in Rome. Prisoner rights were essentially non-existent. The state didn’t see a need to provide medical care, temperature control, safety from fellow inmates, or often even food! This is the sort of place that the jailor is in charge of running. When Paul comes and teaches love of enemies, or Jesus words about providing freedom for the captives, it must have felt so strange. While treating all people, including convicts, with a general degree of dignity is something that is just part and parcel of our modern understanding of human rights, it would have been a somewhat foreign concept to the man we meet in Acts 16. Just how radical would he have heard the call of Jesus to be?

The beauty and challenge of being a Christian in the 21st century is that some of the core concepts behind Christianity are not as unusual as they used to be. This is in part because the teachings of Christ have been so influential throughout the world. “Treat others as you would like to be treated” is sort of assumed in most people’s ethics today. In this way, God has worked to make the world a much better place. We can be thankful we live in a kinder and gentler place than ancient Rome. On the other hand, sometimes it is difficult to show that Christianity offers a marked improvement over ways of conceiving of ethics and morality. In order to meet this challenge it is important for Christians to still be radically committed to living selflessly for others and living out our commitment to improve the lives of all with whom we come in contact.

Divine Interruptions-The Untouchables

Whenever the subject of the “rich young ruler” comes up in a Bible class, people get uptight really quickly! For those who do not know, Jesus meets a man we call the rich young ruler. This rich fellow is trying to follow God and has come to Jesus for advice. What will it take for me to really serve God? Jesus response is that the man must sell all that he has and give it to the poor. The man walks away dejected, because he cannot do the one thing that Jesus calls him to do. This story makes American church goers nervous for one obvious reason-they don’t want to sell their stuff. Jesus sounds like a radical. Pretty quickly people in the class will give their interpretations of the story, which tend to be “Jesus wants us to be willing to give up anything for him, but he doesn’t mean we all have to sell our belongings.”

This response shows, I think, a real challenge for people who want to seriously follow Jesus. While these comments help to blunt the story and ease the materialist living in our hearts, we don’t even take the reframing seriously. Most of us will chronically avoid the question “What is so precious to you that you would not give it up if Jesus asked for it?” For each of us it would be something different, but we all could come up with something. Followers of Jesus largely get around the discomfort of the idea by rationalizing away any possibility that Jesus would ever truly ask for that thing.

This trimester our sermon series is all about “Divine Interruptions.” Do we make space for God to interrupt our plans? Are we willing to go somewhere unexpected for the Lord? In the first sermon time we had a chat with Carolyn, our Connections Pastor, and she shared about a change to her work life that has happened in the last year. For many of us our work is something we would not give up. Our careers can be closely held to our sense of personhood. If God asked for a career change, would you make one?

When considering this the scariest part, to me, is that feeling of “I could not do THAT.” As soon as we say in our heart that we are incapable of something, it brings into question our loyalties. Is it that we can not do it, or that we will not do it? Would a career change really be impossible, or would it just be uncomfortable? What about a move? What about a change to your family size? What about changing your economic situation? The point is not to identify things that bring us joy or comfort and then threaten to take said joy and comfort. The point is that when we hold those things too tightly they become idols. They are goods above and beyond our value for serving God. Scripture says those things are bad for us. Idols are bad not just because God is jealous (though the Bible is fine describing God that way) but because they are disordered. They make the temporary permanent, the immediate transcendent, the vapid meaningful. Part of our spiritual efforts in this season of welcoming divine interruptions is to make sure that we have ordered our world so that only God is truly given the deference we should give the divine.

Carrying the Wrong Weight

This Sunday we talked about Jesus’ promise that his burden is easy and his yoke is light. I remarked how this can be pretty confusing when we look around at Christians in America. We serve a lord who says that his way is easy and light, yet so many Christians are miserable, tired, haggard, burned out. A disconnect exists between what Christ offers and what so many of us are experiencing. What is the deal?

Simply put, the reason that Jesus’ burden doesn’t seem light is that most of us are in fact carrying around a far different yoke. The yoke we carry is instead one we’ve built with our own personal issues, cultural expectations, religious tradition, and a host of other heavy things. We are burned out because we cling to our own mess instead of handing that over to Jesus and replacing our burden with his.

So what does that mean? How do we do better? A few thoughts:

1. The church must do a better job of thinking about what we ask of people. At The Feast Church we try to balance having a bountiful calendar that offers opportunities for fellowship, service, learning, worship, etc. with the reality that our members only have so much time. We often ask too much of those who serve in our churches and that is heavy.

2. Personal mental/emotional/psychological health is important. The writer Pete Scazzero has suggested that no amount of spiritual growth can outpace emotional unhealthiness. Many of us carry scars and wounds from families of origin, trauma, and other situations that we need to process. Healing that with the help of a counselor, self reflection, and good mental health practices help us elevate burden.

3. We need a personal relationship with Jesus. That can sound odd to someone new to faith, but I am saying that each person needs to be personally convinced of the call of God in their life. Christians believe that God works in our lives, through the work of the Holy Spirit. Without learning how to listen to the Spirit, we often end up defaulting to merely what the preacher said last week or what our grandparents taught. Sometimes this can cause us to adopt practices and responsibilities that are not Jesus’ call on our lives, but empty tradition.

4. Finally, we should meditate more on the sovereignty of God. It is a scary universe if God’s purposes hang by the thread of support that is you living your life perfectly! We convince ourselves that God needs us to accomplish God’s work. That is obviously silly if we truly serve a good, omnipotent God. It can be a good thing to say no to a request or even excuse yourself from a responsibility, if for no other reason then it will prove to you the universe works without you!

   Remember, it doesn’t help anything for you to feel guilty about being worn out. That’s counterproductive. Instead, when we feel like following Jesus is a heavy burden to bear, I would encourage us to find ways to lighten the load. Evaluate from where the pressure really is coming. Because Jesus offers a light burden.

The Essential and the Eternal

Each week, for better or worse, we try to find a way to boil down the sermon of the week into a single sentence or thought. It is part of the social media, meme, limited attention span world that we live in. While it is tempting to reject such a practice as simply an exercise in marketing, I think it can be more than that. People don’t memorize 20 minute sermons, but they do remember provocative thoughts. Sometimes, more than a nuanced discussion, we need a simple, strong idea that is convicting.

This week Carolyn preached on Mary and Martha and their time with Jesus in Luke 10. For those unfamiliar with the story, Mary is listening intently at Jesus feet while her sister is dutifully working away in the kitchen. The story is classically used to ask us to consider our priorities in life. Do we allow the spiritual to take precedence? Or do we allow the mundane to be our obsession? It is a powerful story in that it is deeply felt by many of us in our lives. There is so much work to do with the laundry, bills, dishes, homework, etc. that we find days, weeks slip by without much thought to our own spiritual health.

Carolyn phrased her point in a strong way. “Do you get so worried about the essential that you miss the eternal?” I love the word “essential.” So many of the things that distract us are in fact necessary! We must do them. If you have kids, like I do, then there is a ton of essential energy spent in feeding them, cleaning up after them, raising them, clothing them, etc.! No one will excuse a parent for just deciding to stop doing any of that! But it is exhausting and consuming. Essential things must be done, the question is about timing. Does it have to be done right now? Or, is there space to spend some time in prayer first, before tackling the essential? What opportunities am I missing out on that help me to enjoy the Kingdom today? Am I prioritizing that which must happen today or that which will shape me for the hereafter? That may feel like impractical thinking, but spend time with someone who has done only the essential and you will generally find a miserable, nasty old curmudgeon! This spiritual way of looking at things is similar to the right movement in our culture toward self care.

We have to carefully consider, as followers of Jesus, what we are too busy to do or not do. I heard a famous teacher say years ago something along the line of, “If you say I’m too busy for a time of prayer this morning then you are most certainly too busy to NOT pray this morning!” Those who have followed Jesus for some time usually can attest to this reality. Grounding one’s self in prayer, meditation, or reflection can serve as an important launching pad for productivity. That time fuels and enables our busy life, not detracts from it. As Carolyn pointed out, this is a practical outworking of the call to “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these things shall be added unto you.”

Welcome to the Weekly Thought

Each week I will be updating a little thought from the lesson the week before. If you want you can check out the archives of our sermons at www.thefeastprovidence.org/youtube.

This week we talked some about Jesus’ woes against the Scribes and Pharisees. The harshness of Jesus’ language is a bit surprising to us. Someone at church fairly asked in our Q&A “How do we reconcile Jesus call to a kinder, more righteous spirituality when he is making the call by call people sons of Hell?” The balance is fascinating. Certainly Jesus seems to have a moving scale when it comes to someone’s knowledge and culpability. Jesus expects people who know Scripture and know about God’s work in the world to live differently than those who do not. While Jesus is often patient and softly spoken with those who are outside of the bounds of traditional religion, he is harsh to those who position themselves as teachers. This is somewhat in keeping with the book of James, where we see that “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” This principle is in force in Matthew 23.

Our main take away this week was that it is essential that we are changed by our experience of Jesus. We become different people. The Spirit moves in us to create something different. That new creature, to borrow from Paul’s teaching on the Spirit, is more loving, joyous, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. I cannot overemphasize how that definition needs to drive our evaluation of others. If you know a life long Christian that is short fused, sees the worst in others, is harsh with people who are hurting, and just generally is a cantankerous, mean person, something is deeply wrong. People who follow Jesus should be lovely to be around. It is easy as followers of Jesus to look for someone who knows the Bible well or has a lot of influence, but those things don’t necessarily mean someone is being formed into the image of Christ. It is amazing how much the criteria is pretty simple. People who follow Jesus aren’t jerks.