SPEAKER_01: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open.
SPEAKER_01: All desires know.
SPEAKER_01: And from whom no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_01: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_01: O God, from whom all good proceeds, grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them.
SPEAKER_01: Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_00: Now Saul saw the army of the Philistines, and he was frightened, and his heart trembled greatly.
SPEAKER_00: When Saul, whose name means asked, and answered, asked the Holy One of old, the inscrutable God did not answer him through dreams or even through a remote, and not even through prophets, women, or men.
SPEAKER_00: So Saul said to his lair, Sake for me a woman who is a ghost master, so that I may go to her and inquire through her.
SPEAKER_00: So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothes, and they went along there with two men, and they came to the woman by night.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Please divine for me through a ghost and bring up for me who I say to you.
SPEAKER_00: The woman said to him, You, you must know what Saul has done.
SPEAKER_00: How do you not cut off the ghost workers and the necromancers from the land?
SPEAKER_00: So why are you setting a prayer for my life to kill me?
SPEAKER_00: And Saul swore to her by the faithful one, As the ever living God lives, no charge of iniquity shall befall you for this day.
SPEAKER_00: Then the woman said, Who shall I bring up for you?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Bring up Samuel for me.
SPEAKER_00: And the woman saw Samuel, and she cried out with a loud voice, and the woman spoke to Saul, saying, Why have you deceived me?
SPEAKER_00: You are Saul.
SPEAKER_00: The king said to her, Fear not.
SPEAKER_00: What do you see?
SPEAKER_00: And the woman said, I see divine beings coming up out of the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to her, What is his appearance?
SPEAKER_00: And she said, An old man is coming up and he is wrapped in a robe.
SPEAKER_00: So Saul knew that it was Samuel.
SPEAKER_00: And he bowed with his face to the ground and gave him orange.
SPEAKER_00: Then Samuel said to Saul, Why have you disturbed me to the point of bringing me up?
SPEAKER_00: And Saul answered, I am greatly troubled, for the Philistines are attacking me, and God has turned away from me and does not answer me at all, through female or male prophets, or even through dreams, and so I have called you to tell me what I should do.
SPEAKER_00: Then Samuel said, So why do you ask me since the Holy One of old has turned from you and become your enemy?
SPEAKER_00: That's the Holy One has done to you, just as God has both through me.
SPEAKER_00: So the judge of all the earth has torn the monarchy out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David, the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let us shout to the rock of our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Let us come into her presence with thanksgiving, with psalms of praise, let us shout to her.
SPEAKER_00: For the ever living God is a great God, and a great majesty above all gods.
SPEAKER_00: For in her hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountain are hers also.
SPEAKER_00: For hers is the sea, for she made it, and the dry land to which her hands never acted.
SPEAKER_00: Come, let us worship and bow down.
SPEAKER_00: Let us kneel before the angels God earth, for she is our God, and we are the people of her pasture, and the sheep of her hand.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, test the spirit to see whether they are from God.
SPEAKER_02: But many false prophets will anger have gone out into the world.
SPEAKER_02: By this, you all shall know the spirit of God.
SPEAKER_02: Every spirit that confesses in the flesh Jesus the Messiah has come is from God.
SPEAKER_02: And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.
SPEAKER_02: And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that is coming and now is already in the world.
SPEAKER_02: You are of God, children, and you have conquered them.
SPEAKER_02: For greater is the one who is in awe of you, and the one who is in the world.
SPEAKER_02: They are of the world, therefore they speak according to the word.
SPEAKER_02: And the world listens to them.
SPEAKER_02: We are of God.
SPEAKER_02: Whoever knows God listens to us.
SPEAKER_02: Whoever is not God does not listen to us.
SPEAKER_02: From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now Jesus and the women and men with him came to the far side of the sea, to the region of the Garussians.
SPEAKER_01: And when Jesus got out of the boat, just then a man out of the tombs, with an unclean spirit, met him.
SPEAKER_01: That man lived among the tombs, and not even with a chain could anyone bind him, for he had often been bound with shackles of chains, but the chains he tore off of him, and the shackles he smashed, and no one had the strength to subdue him.
SPEAKER_01: So the whole of the night and every day he was among the tombs and on the mountains, howling and cutting himself with stones.
SPEAKER_01: Then he saw Jesus from a distance.
SPEAKER_01: He ran and bent down before him on the ground, and he shouted with a loud voice, saying, What have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the Most High God?
SPEAKER_01: I charge you to swear by God not to torture me.
SPEAKER_01: For Jesus had said to him, You unclean spirit, come out of the man.
SPEAKER_01: Then Jesus asked him, What is your name?
SPEAKER_01: He replied, Legion is my name, for we are many.
SPEAKER_01: He begged Jesus repeatedly that he not send them out of the region.
SPEAKER_01: Now there on the hillside a large herd of pigs was feeding, and they, the unclean spirits, begged Jesus, saying, Send us into the pigs, and we may enter them.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus gave them permission.
SPEAKER_01: Thus the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs, and the herd, about two thousand, rushed down the steep decline into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
SPEAKER_01: Now the pig herders fled and told the news in the city and in the farm country, and people came to see what it was that happened.
SPEAKER_01: Women, children, and men came to Jesus and saw the man in whom the unclean spirits had been sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion.
SPEAKER_01: And they were afraid.
SPEAKER_01: And they explained it, they who had seen what had happened to the man with the unclean spirits and to the pigs.
SPEAKER_01: And then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01: Then, as he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by the unclean spirits begged Jesus that he might be with him.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus did not permit it.
SPEAKER_01: Rather saying to him, Go to your home, to your people, and tell them the news of what the Holy One has done for you, and what mercy God has shown you.
SPEAKER_01: And the man went away and began to proclaim it into decapitals, the ten cities, how much Jesus had done for him.
SPEAKER_01: And everyone was amazed at the gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Praise thee, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You know the story from Samuel?
SPEAKER_01: How many of you know the story from Samuel?
SPEAKER_01: And I had a doozy.
SPEAKER_01: Especially when we read it with this whole Legion story.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as a young person, these were the kind of stories that struck fear into our youth group about red-clawed demons possessing people and bending their will toward evil.
SPEAKER_01: These were the kind of stories that made us afraid to play Dungeons and Dragons and touch Ouija boards lest we be, well, demon-possessed.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, I'm not commending those sayings.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to say I'm not sure that fear is well placed.
SPEAKER_01: Read a particular way, these are kind of like the exorcist movie.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: And please, uh, please hear this.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the scriptures are clear that people can do magic.
SPEAKER_01: This lady really brings Samuel back from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: But please notice that anytime in the Bible somebody does magic, it's not good.
SPEAKER_01: Pharaoh's magicians can turn water into blood, but the whole Nile's already blood, so you don't need more.
SPEAKER_01: Pharaoh's magicians can pull frogs out.
SPEAKER_01: It's already covered with frogs, you don't need more.
SPEAKER_01: This lady can bring Samuel back from the dead, but he doesn't have anything good to say.
SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting to hear.
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, magic's real and it's dangerous.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I could probably give you a sermon about the dangers of rock and roll music, because I heard that as a kid too.
SPEAKER_01: And turn it down, if you play songs from the Beatles backward, it sounds really weird.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, if you play any music backwards, it sounds really weird.
SPEAKER_01: So there's all of this stuff out there, but I would like us to take a closer, closer look at these stories.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, I want to talk about the Samuel story first, and I want to do it in an intuitive way, uh, if you don't mind, because sometimes this happens, and in fact, it happened in the last couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody came in to see me and they said, you know, Mike, I know these couple of people who just have this really close relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to have that.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever seen somebody with piety that you wish you had?
SPEAKER_01: I have.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the first time I met with the bishop who ended up ordaining me, that might have been a lapse of his judgment.
SPEAKER_01: The first time I met with him, I thought, like, he's the bishop because his prayers are better.
SPEAKER_01: He is the bishop because he's like the better paragon of virtue.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying he isn't, but I will tell you, uh his piety any better than yours.
SPEAKER_01: Because he's a person just like yours.
SPEAKER_01: I wish when I see the Dalai Lama that I was happy all the time too.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what I told this person, which was not what they wanted to hear, and what I hear happening in the story is you don't know that they're any closer to God, you just think they are.
SPEAKER_01: You see how they talk, but you don't know what it is like to be them.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what's happening in the story.
SPEAKER_01: Saul has something that I'm gonna call spiritual envy.
SPEAKER_01: He wants God to speak to him in a particular way.
SPEAKER_01: Don't you want that too?
SPEAKER_01: I often do.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not working for him.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: He's not getting an answer to his prayer.
SPEAKER_01: You ever had your prayer unanswered?
SPEAKER_01: Me too.
SPEAKER_01: Uh there's this other thing that we don't use anymore that people in the Hebrew Bible had.
SPEAKER_01: They're called Rumensumen.
SPEAKER_01: They're kind of like magic dice.
SPEAKER_01: And you sort of say, like, God, should I buy this house or not?
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna flip the coin, and if it's heads, you're saying yes, and if it's tails, you're saying no.
SPEAKER_01: So you flip the coin and you do whatever it says and pretend it was God that told you.
SPEAKER_01: That may sound nuts, but that's that's what these things are.
SPEAKER_01: So they roll the dice, which by the way, live in the priest's vestment, and they come up with the magic gate ball, ask again.
SPEAKER_01: Like over and over.
SPEAKER_01: So he gets no answer.
SPEAKER_01: He even goes to the prophets, to the Dalai Lama, to the bishop, the people who have a good piety, and they're like, I don't know what to tell you.
SPEAKER_01: So, what does he do?
SPEAKER_01: He goes to the person he thought had the better piety, and that person's dead.
SPEAKER_01: So by hooker crook, he brings that person back from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: And what does that person have to say?
SPEAKER_01: You want this thing you think I have, which is why you'll never have it.
SPEAKER_01: It's not interesting.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to remind all of us here that it's okay if your piety is not like mine.
SPEAKER_01: It's okay if your piety is not like the Archbishop of Canterbury's.
SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
SPEAKER_01: Actually, the problem is when we treat relationship with God like a commodity that is ours to possess, we can rest assured we will never have it.
SPEAKER_01: We will never have it when we try to possess it.
SPEAKER_01: So this person asked me, who I saw recently, should I just read the Bible more so I can get it?
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is if you do spiritual practices so you could have something, you'll never have what you're trying to get anyway.
SPEAKER_01: Should you read the Bible more?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I guess it depends how you read it.
SPEAKER_01: I know lots of experts on scripture who are about as far away from God's presence as I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I'm one of them.
SPEAKER_01: The question is, how do we read?
SPEAKER_01: How do we read the story?
SPEAKER_01: And how do we do the practices?
SPEAKER_01: Because if we do the practices to get a thing, I sort of think we never get it.
SPEAKER_01: This is how relationships in general seem to work.
SPEAKER_01: If you do all the things so that somebody will marry you, and you do, well then you have the rest of your lives together, right?
SPEAKER_01: You have two years together.
SPEAKER_01: You got two years to figure out what you're gonna do next.
SPEAKER_01: And hey, if you run a marathon, if your goal is to run a marathon, I did that one time.
SPEAKER_01: When the race is over, what is there for you?
SPEAKER_01: So the question is: do we do these things to get something, or we do these things because we enjoy doing them?
SPEAKER_01: So I have to admit that the first three miles I don't ever enjoy.
SPEAKER_01: Because on average it takes 20 minutes to get your second width.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know this.
SPEAKER_01: I was talking to my orthopedic doctor, and he said, I don't really like running.
SPEAKER_01: And my question was, what's the longest you've run?
SPEAKER_01: About three miles.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, that's probably why.
SPEAKER_01: Because the first three miles are about it's hot.
SPEAKER_01: Ugh, I don't feel like doing this.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to breathe.
SPEAKER_01: And then what do you know?
SPEAKER_01: If you do it long enough, you find yourself in sync, and by the way, so it is with every practice worth doing.
SPEAKER_01: New things are hard the first time you do them.
SPEAKER_01: So it is with Scripture, and so it is with prayer.
SPEAKER_01: It takes time.
SPEAKER_01: And if we do them to get something, I think we might be disappointed.
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, if we engage in these practices so that we can say, God, what's the story been and where am I in it?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you get other than joy.
SPEAKER_01: So I'd like to remind you that the point of this spiritual life is not the destination.
SPEAKER_01: It is the journey.
SPEAKER_01: And spiritual envy, frankly, will take us to places of death, which is exactly where Saul is living, where Samuel is living.
SPEAKER_01: 1 John gives us this really interesting thought.
SPEAKER_01: Any spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I suppose you could meet somebody who you think is possessed by an unclean spirit and demand that they repeat that formula.
SPEAKER_01: I would rather remind you that the litmus test is whether or not we believe Jesus has anything to do with our bodies.
SPEAKER_01: Not whether Jesus Christ is come or is a spirit or is good, but whether Jesus was embodied.
SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, sometimes things happen in my body that all I can say is, geez, that feels really unclean.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not just talking about going to the bathroom.
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about arthritis.
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about IBS.
SPEAKER_01: If you haven't had it, you probably will.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was embodied too.
SPEAKER_01: Which leads me to this crazy story.
SPEAKER_01: Crazy in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't even use that word.
SPEAKER_01: Leads us to this very different story about this person who is possessed by a bunch of unclean spirits.
SPEAKER_01: And we so often, at least, maybe I should speak for myself, I so often hear the story and think like, wow, Jesus met with like the worst person ever, and look, he fixed that person, and we take ourselves right out of the story.
SPEAKER_01: Because what do we know about the story?
SPEAKER_01: The guy lives in the tombs, which means he lives in death.
SPEAKER_01: And he's so offensive to the people that he lives around that they have tried to shackle him and they cannot make him do what they want him to do.
SPEAKER_01: So easy to think that's a story about other people and not recognize that we live in death all the time.
SPEAKER_01: We have habits that we know are going nowhere, but we're so used to them.
SPEAKER_01: So used to them.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, we like to look at other people and say, they've got mental problems.
SPEAKER_01: Can't believe what they're doing, and not say, in what places am I living in debt?
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you, I've got places I'm living in death, and I've tried to shackle them, and they keep breaking my artificial bonds.
SPEAKER_01: Have a look at those red boards right over there.
SPEAKER_01: That represents every mass shooting we've had in the United States since January the 1st, and you'll see over there right now 64 times 6, which I think is 192, and there'll be another 32 up like next week.
SPEAKER_01: Talk about a place of death we've tried to shackle ineffectively, and what do you know?
SPEAKER_01: It keeps breaking the shackles.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a solution to the problem, and uh look, talking about mass shootings in the United States is not something partisan, it's something political.
SPEAKER_01: The board speaks for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: 192 before June the 1st?
SPEAKER_01: Talk about a legion of problems.
SPEAKER_01: A legion of problems.
SPEAKER_01: There's a couple interesting details in the story.
SPEAKER_01: You notice that when the people see this man dressed and in his quote-unquote right mind, the first thing they do is ask Jesus to leave.
SPEAKER_01: Please leave.
SPEAKER_01: Why would they ask him to leave when he's done this miraculous healing?
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know the answer, but a couple of flaws.
SPEAKER_01: Now they don't know what to do with this guy.
SPEAKER_01: Now he's not presenting a problem, so I guess they have to let him live with them.
SPEAKER_01: And they'd rather him be in the penitentiary, because then he's not a problem.
SPEAKER_01: We have this problem with ex-cons.
SPEAKER_01: Even after they've gone to prison, are you going to hire them?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that just wouldn't be prudent.
SPEAKER_01: What are they supposed to do?
SPEAKER_01: It would be easier if we just put them back in jail.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have, if you don't understand that mentality, I don't know what to tell you.
SPEAKER_01: But that's how we function socially.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know what to do with people who have done something we think is majorly wrong, no matter how long ago it's been.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you, they might also be afraid because they might be next.
SPEAKER_01: The people who think everything's okay and they're the normal ones, they're afraid Jesus might drive something out of them.
SPEAKER_01: And that's scary thought.
SPEAKER_01: As bad as I want Jesus to fix these crazy politicians, maybe Jesus would like to fix me.
SPEAKER_01: And that'll well thought.
SPEAKER_01: I don't love the idea that these unclean spirits, whatever those are, hop into these swine.
SPEAKER_01: Because, I mean, I know, I know pigs aren't kosher and all, but I mean, I didn't do anything wrong.
SPEAKER_01: The fact that they're drowned, it's just, it's always been a little tough for me to understand.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I've read Bible commentators that'll tell you, ah, this is like a lovely allegory because Legion is the military division of the Roman Empire, and look, that's going into these unclean animals who are being drowned in watery chaos.
SPEAKER_01: So it's like a sweet allegory.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm going to tell you, I'm afraid it means something else.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to go ahead and out myself as this word I sometimes use, and I don't know if that is totally defined as if it's definable.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it is, I'm afraid, one of the most insidious sins that, frankly, we are steeped in, both within the church and within our culture.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the word ableism.
SPEAKER_01: Ableism.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I am probably the most ableist person I know, personally.
SPEAKER_01: Because the one thing I don't want is help.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be able to do everything myself.
SPEAKER_01: It's a matter of independence and pride, maybe.
SPEAKER_01: So let me tell you my ableist story, and please hear.
SPEAKER_01: I'm confessing something that's wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to confess it.
SPEAKER_01: Two years ago, I was on a hiking trip with this group called National Outdoor Leadership in southern Utah, and we were on a 25-day consecutive hike with backpacks.
SPEAKER_01: Now, typically during the trip, as in life, I like to make my own way.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, where we were, there were no paths anyway.
SPEAKER_01: So we were just kind of walking around in the middle of nowhere and finding what seemed like the best route.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I found my own.
SPEAKER_01: And so literally, the day before, I had made this 800-foot descent down a canyon, come back up, everything was fine.
SPEAKER_01: The morning up, I made breakfast for everybody, and it was kind of an exotic backcountry breakfast.
SPEAKER_01: Everything was good.
SPEAKER_01: I had my pack on, down we go, and um I went to the same place I'd gone the day before, which involved a little shimmy and then a little hop down to get down.
SPEAKER_01: Except the day before I didn't have a 50-pound pack on, and this day when I did that, the pack caught on the rock behind me and sent me over sideways.
SPEAKER_01: So I started rolling.
SPEAKER_01: Good thing I had that pack on supported my spine during the roll, and uh I ran over some dead trees and a couple of rocks, and I stopped about three feet from a sheer 35-foot drop.
SPEAKER_01: And the only thing I missed was the skin on my hands and a little bit on my side, and the first thing I said was, I'm okay.
SPEAKER_01: And I guess I was.
SPEAKER_01: It kind of hurt skin in your hands.
SPEAKER_01: There were two friends near me, and later I asked them, because I didn't realize once I got up, like, if I'd turned over one more time, I would have gone right off that cliff.
SPEAKER_01: And what would have happened?
SPEAKER_01: Well, what happens when you fall 35 feet?
SPEAKER_01: I said, you know, if I'd been hurt and I'd asked you to roll me over the cliff, would you do that?
SPEAKER_01: And they said, no, I could go to jail for that.
SPEAKER_01: Of course I'm not doing that.
SPEAKER_01: And then here, you ready?
SPEAKER_01: Here's the Senate ableist.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say, I would rather be dead than be in a wheelchair.
SPEAKER_01: I've said that phrase a few times, but like when I was feeding my father with a spoon because he had Alzheimer's, I said not only in my head but in my heart, I would rather be dead than have Alzheimer's.
SPEAKER_01: You ever said that phrase?
SPEAKER_01: I would rather be dead.
SPEAKER_01: I'd rather be dead than be an alcoholic.
SPEAKER_01: I'd rather be dead than have an addition to narcotics.
SPEAKER_01: I'd rather be dead than lose my next job.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to upbraid you if you said that.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to say that when we say that thing, we are glorifying something that God has nothing to do with.
SPEAKER_01: Ableism.
SPEAKER_01: As if somebody who's lost a limb in the Iraq conflict is a less of a person because they lost the limb.
SPEAKER_01: See, the truth is, if we say, I'd rather be dead than have that condition, how will we treat someone who has that condition?
SPEAKER_01: If we say, I would rather die than have a mental illness, we love that phrase, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: Mental illness.
SPEAKER_01: That way we can discriminate against people who have different brains than ours.
SPEAKER_01: If we say that, then those people are to be pitied, not to be loved.
SPEAKER_01: If we say, boy, you know, this guy on the story must be, he's got schizophrenia, and that's what demons do.
SPEAKER_01: They give you depression and they give you bipolar disorder.
SPEAKER_01: If we say that, boy, then like one-third of the world is to be pitied.
SPEAKER_01: This idea that neurodiversity is caused by a demon, I wouldn't tell you is rooted in sin.
SPEAKER_01: It is rooted in sin.
SPEAKER_01: You may say, but geez, you know, um, you know, this is hard to live with.
SPEAKER_01: You know, lots of things are hard to live with.
SPEAKER_01: But you realize that if Vincent Van Gogh didn't have neurodiversity, he wouldn't have been the painter you know and love.
SPEAKER_01: He did get tired of those voices in his head, and mainly because there was no support for him.
SPEAKER_01: So, some of his greatest gifts ended up being his darkest shadows.
SPEAKER_01: So it is with everything in life, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: So it is with everything that our gifts can be our shadows.
SPEAKER_01: But to go to somebody who has autism and say, God would like to heal you of that, I'm gonna tell you it's sinful and wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Because God made that.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus was embodied, came in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, all the abilities you and I have are only temporary anyway.
SPEAKER_01: If you live long enough, they will depart from you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm discovering this, my 40s are long enough.
SPEAKER_01: I thought it would have been my 70s.
SPEAKER_01: Nope, nope, they're already leaving, right?
SPEAKER_01: These things, they leave us, which doesn't mean God has left us.
SPEAKER_01: Does not mean God has left us.
SPEAKER_01: We use this language because it's convenient, but it's so couched in ableism that when we say somebody has a mental illness because they've had three incidences of depression, which is the definition of major depressive disorder, mentally ill just seems like a stretch.
SPEAKER_01: And quite honestly, it seems like, well, we'd be demonizing, to use that word, a lot of folks who didn't do anything wrong, who didn't do anything wrong, and get to live with that.
SPEAKER_01: Get to live with that, because I'll tell you, as somebody with that condition, there are gifts from it.
SPEAKER_01: There are gifts.
SPEAKER_01: They're not convenient.
SPEAKER_01: Ableism is all about convenience.
SPEAKER_01: They are not convenient, and they can give gifts.
SPEAKER_01: Very helpful to read this book that we're reading on Wednesdays called My Body Is Not a Prayer Request by Amy Kinney.
SPEAKER_01: And she does this thing that I had not learned when I did my Hebrew studies.
SPEAKER_01: That's very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: You know, in the very beginning in Genesis chapter 1, God looks at everything God has made and says, it is very, very good, right?
SPEAKER_01: And she contrasts the Greek mind with the Hebrew mind.
SPEAKER_01: In the Greek mind, each individual thing is perfect and flawless and perfectible.
SPEAKER_01: Until you turn about 25.
SPEAKER_01: Have a look at Greek statuary, right?
SPEAKER_01: That didn't last forever, right?
SPEAKER_01: Everything on its own is perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Reading this again in Hebrew, my eyes, well, I perceived what I had not seen.
SPEAKER_01: The scriptures say God looked at everything together.
SPEAKER_01: And it was good together.
SPEAKER_01: It was good together.
SPEAKER_01: When each thing has to be perfect, then we discriminate.
SPEAKER_01: When everything is good together.
SPEAKER_01: We have a community.
SPEAKER_01: And what does it take to have community?
SPEAKER_01: Accommodations.
SPEAKER_01: Consideration.
SPEAKER_01: How can I support you?
SPEAKER_01: What's the worst way to be good together?
SPEAKER_01: I don't need nothing from you.
SPEAKER_01: You may say that's the sin of pride.
SPEAKER_01: That's a sin of ableism.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a sin because that means I'm not with you.
SPEAKER_01: We all know people who love to help, who are hard to help.
SPEAKER_01: I actually think this story is about that.
SPEAKER_01: This story is about that.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the sad thing is to think that for a lot of us, recognizing Jesus Christ has come in the flesh in a person who has an autism or a diagnosis from a DSM V, we might do that when pigs fly.
SPEAKER_01: Which is our shame.
SPEAKER_01: I think once again, this is not an ordinary message.
SPEAKER_01: This is not ordinary time.
SPEAKER_01: This is an opportunity to reorder our spiritual ending.
SPEAKER_01: How it is we engage in spiritual practices, the ways in which we conceive in whom God is embodied, and in what ways God is embodied.
SPEAKER_01: Interesting thing I learned this week is that there was a woman who was born without the ability to hear.
SPEAKER_01: And she had a dream about heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And they said, What was it like talking to Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: And she said he was really good at sign language.
SPEAKER_01: Because you know what the normal thought would be?
SPEAKER_01: Well, she can hear in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Her thought is that he can communicate with me.
SPEAKER_01: So this is our opportunity to reorder, to reorder our imperfections into God's embodiment.
SPEAKER_01: Because the truth is, it's going to come to all of us.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to come to all of us.
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't need to be a disaster when it does.
SPEAKER_01: It gets to be a gift because we are good.
SPEAKER_01: Exceedingly good, says the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_01: When we do this, not out of pity, not out of coercion, but because God's here.
SPEAKER_01: We are very good together.