SPEAKER_00: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed be God's kin now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_00: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: O God, who wonderfully created and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature.
SPEAKER_00: Grant that we may share the divine life of Him who humbled Himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Feel free to be seated.
SPEAKER_02: A reading from Isaiah.
SPEAKER_02: God's near and wants to be found.
SPEAKER_02: Pray to God, who is closer than your jugular?
SPEAKER_02: Let the wicked abandon their way of life and the evil, their way of thinking.
SPEAKER_02: Let them come back to God, who is compassionate.
SPEAKER_02: Come back to our God who is lavish with forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: I don't think the way y'all think.
SPEAKER_02: The way y'all work isn't the way I work.
SPEAKER_02: God's decree, for as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way y'all work.
SPEAKER_02: And the way I think is beyond the way y'all think.
SPEAKER_02: Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don't go back until they've watered the earth, doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed.
SPEAKER_02: They'll do the work I sent them to do, they'll complete the assignment I gave them.
SPEAKER_02: So you'll go out in joy, you'll be led into the whole and complete life.
SPEAKER_02: The mountains and hills will lead the parade, bursting with song.
SPEAKER_02: All the trees of the forest will join the procession, exuberant with applause.
SPEAKER_02: No more thistles, but giant sequoias.
SPEAKER_02: No more thornbushes, but stately pines.
SPEAKER_02: Monuments to me, to God, living and lasting, evidence of God, the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Please join me in reading the Psalm antimately.
SPEAKER_02: To you, O Lord, I thought south, my heart, my mind, my strength, my soul.
SPEAKER_02: O my God, in you I trust.
SPEAKER_02: Deliver me from shame.
SPEAKER_02: Do not let my enemies get the best of me.
SPEAKER_02: Do not embarrass those of us who wait for you.
SPEAKER_02: Show me how you work, O Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Be mindful of your compassion, O Lord, and of your steadfast love.
SPEAKER_02: Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions.
SPEAKER_02: God, you are fair and just.
SPEAKER_02: You lead the humble in what is right.
SPEAKER_02: From now on, every road we travel will take us to God's steadfast love and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: Reading from Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: Celebrate God all day, every day.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, revel in God.
SPEAKER_01: Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you're on their side, working with them and not against them.
SPEAKER_01: Help them see that the master is about to arrive.
SPEAKER_01: God should show up any minute.
SPEAKER_01: Don't fret or worry.
SPEAKER_01: Instead of worrying, pray.
SPEAKER_01: Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns.
SPEAKER_01: Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down.
SPEAKER_01: It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
SPEAKER_01: Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious, the best, not the worst, the beautiful, not the ugly, things to praise, not things to curse.
SPEAKER_01: Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized.
SPEAKER_01: Do that, and God who makes everything work together will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
SPEAKER_03: The word of the Lord, it's a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00: You are already pruned back by the message I've spoken, so live in me.
SPEAKER_00: Make your home in me just as I do in you.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself, but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you're joined with me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the vine, you are the branches.
SPEAKER_00: When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant.
SPEAKER_00: Separated, you can't produce a thing.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who separates from me is dead wood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire.
SPEAKER_00: But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon.
SPEAKER_00: This is how my father shows exactly who God is.
SPEAKER_00: When you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples, I've loved you the way my fathers loved me, so make yourselves at home in my love.
SPEAKER_00: If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I've done.
SPEAKER_00: Kept my father's commands and made myself at home in his love.
SPEAKER_00: I've told you these things for a purpose, that my joy may be your joy, and that your joy may wholly mature.
SPEAKER_00: This is my command.
SPEAKER_00: Love one another the way I loved you.
SPEAKER_00: This is the very best way to love.
SPEAKER_00: Put your life on the line for your friends.
SPEAKER_00: You are my friends when you do the things I command you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Be seated as you're comfortable.
SPEAKER_00: But if the ghost is in you, you go ahead and stand up.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, so welcome to Fat Tuesday, right?
SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm not from New Orleans, right?
SPEAKER_00: But you know, in New Orleans, my understanding is this is a day where you just gotta get it all out, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because tomorrow, tomorrow is when you're gonna be giving it up.
SPEAKER_00: So today you just gotta get it out.
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of us think about this like, hey, it's fat today, because tomorrow is gonna be thin, so we're gonna binge before we purge.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you do in New Orleans, but that's not what we're doing here, because what we're here to do is bury the skinny God tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that sounds rough, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because we like to fat shame people in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about burying the skinny God.
SPEAKER_00: What's the skinny God like?
SPEAKER_00: The skinny God's got really thin margins.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't get it right, the skinny God's gonna be real mad at you.
SPEAKER_00: The fat God's not like that.
SPEAKER_00: That's awful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: God is fat.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, we're afraid of being fat.
SPEAKER_00: God is so fat, the universe fits in the palm.
SPEAKER_00: God's love is so thick, if you don't like it, it's nothing to God.
SPEAKER_00: God's gonna love you anyway.
SPEAKER_00: There's no skinny love with God.
SPEAKER_00: It is hecka-wide.
SPEAKER_00: We're celebrating.
SPEAKER_00: Because, like Isaiah said, God's love isn't like ours.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't give like we do.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't give because God wants that ROI, a return on investment.
SPEAKER_00: God gives because God's thick with love.
SPEAKER_00: I mean like corpulently, morbidly obese.
SPEAKER_00: Like so thick, there's room for you, and there's room for the political party you hate, there's room for your neighbor, there's even room for me.
SPEAKER_00: That's a big God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we celebrate.
SPEAKER_00: Not that we're gonna binge and purge, but no matter what we do, God's love is fat enough to hold every single one of us.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate that no matter what you do the next 40 days, God ain't gonna love you more.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what you don't do the next 40 days, God isn't gonna love you less.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate that God's ways aren't ours.
SPEAKER_00: I was talking to somebody today who said, I haven't been to church in five years, and you know, like I just feel a little bit sad about that.
SPEAKER_00: Glad you're back.
SPEAKER_00: Glad you're back because you want to be back, right?
SPEAKER_00: But there's no shame.
SPEAKER_00: There's no shame.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I want to talk about fat God.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds shameful.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's glorious.
SPEAKER_00: The breadth and the width and the girth of God is not shameful.
SPEAKER_00: It's glorious.
SPEAKER_00: And it's our chance to turn fat shaming about love into fat praise.
SPEAKER_00: And it's our turn to turn our skinny margins into wide ones for each other.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we think about?
SPEAKER_00: We don't think about petty things like in Philippians, right?
SPEAKER_00: We got that reading today.
SPEAKER_00: We don't think about, oh God, you're so mad at me and I'm no good, and God, I've got to earn this, and God, only 144,000 of us are gonna make it, so I'm gonna be one of the ones.
SPEAKER_00: No, we think about God, you love me no matter what I do.
SPEAKER_00: God, like even my weird stuff, like God, even though I thrash around in my sleep and my breath is bad, like you're okay with that.
SPEAKER_00: We think about glorious things like that, because when we think of God that way, then we can love our neighbor that way, and we can love ourselves that way.
SPEAKER_00: That's fat kind of love.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus reminds us, hey, don't be worried.
SPEAKER_00: You're not a branch that's gonna get thrown into the fire.
SPEAKER_00: The whole point of land is to pull the branches off you.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that you are a branch that's bad, it's that we've all got dead branches.
SPEAKER_00: And why does God want to pull that off of us?
SPEAKER_00: So we can be fat with fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Not bitter fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Not sour fruit, fruit that actually tastes good.
SPEAKER_00: Why is all of this here?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, I came so your joy would be complete.
SPEAKER_00: Not so your misery would be complete, not so your earnings would be complete, not so you'd made Santa Claus's niceness.
SPEAKER_00: That's not why I came.
SPEAKER_00: I came so your joy can be complete.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we gotta get out of us?
SPEAKER_00: Probably what we're afraid of.
SPEAKER_00: What do we gotta let hang out?
SPEAKER_00: Our fear, our shame, our anxiety.
SPEAKER_00: What do we get to let go of?
SPEAKER_00: All of that so we can do like God is put on the weight of love for the next 47 days.
SPEAKER_00: So we got a couple more songs with the band.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna nourish you with some food so you got energy to live into some fat love.
SPEAKER_00: When the band plays, you do you, right?
SPEAKER_00: You do you, but this is meant to be a celebration because we know no matter what we do, God's got us.