SPEAKER_04: Well look, this is gonna be our last week of Ezekiel, so we've we've split it into two weeks.
SPEAKER_04: And whether we deal with this week or last week or any portion of the book, I want to check in with my typical open-ended awful question and see what Ezekiel is doing for you.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and the last part is giving hope.
SPEAKER_04: Would you say more about the hope that you see?
SPEAKER_04: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04: Would you say more about the hope you feel like this the second part is giving?
SPEAKER_07: Well, saying, you know, God is going to straighten things out, and Jerusalem will become great again.
SPEAKER_07: But in the first part he says, you know, things are not gonna be things are not gonna be well, but it's the first one that really says there is hope.
SPEAKER_00: He's not condemning all people.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying individually.
SPEAKER_04: Would you would you tell me what that means to you?
SPEAKER_06: It was a little easier.
SPEAKER_06: I like it.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: I kind of fast forward to like nineteen forty-nine.
SPEAKER_04: Would you say more about that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, yes, I I think that uh when I read this, this this it feels like the the um, and I'm not saying it's unfounded, don't misunderstand me, but the justification for for the Jews, the uh I always say this wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Uh dispar the diamond.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna say it wrong times, Mike, until it finally stays.
SPEAKER_02: The diaspora um finally made it back to Israel for good.
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
SPEAKER_04: Somewhat, right?
SPEAKER_04: I mean I think there's more for good's a long time.
SPEAKER_02: But um, I mean the bottom line is is um they they're they have taken much of what I've read here and they have created much of what God said.
SPEAKER_02: Ezekiel says God said to create in Israel.
SPEAKER_04: At a tragic cost, right?
SPEAKER_04: And uh very safe to say there are many more Jewish people living outside of Israel than there are within.
SPEAKER_04: And those living within Israel, I'm gonna make a blanket statement, uh, largely agnostic or atheistic.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Well you can you can be that way and still see this.
SPEAKER_02: Of course, as a cultural promise.
SPEAKER_02: As a cultural problem.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: I haven't had a very close Jewish and this is just a couple, but they take that position.
SPEAKER_06: It's it's a cultural, yeah, but it's it's not it's not any part of their life or practice or it's it's quite an interesting combination.
SPEAKER_06: I don't quite understand it.
SPEAKER_04: But I would tell you, I think most American Christians are actually similarly agnostic or atheistic in the middle of their Christian practices.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, well, I I yeah, you're I think you're right about absolutely.
SPEAKER_04: It's changing now.
SPEAKER_04: I think that's changing.
SPEAKER_04: The evidence is that Sunday is no longer a sacrosanct day for you know sports schedules or work schedules.
SPEAKER_04: Uh it's no longer like you have to belong to a church in order to get a promotion.
SPEAKER_04: That was the case 50 years ago.
SPEAKER_04: Yes, right?
SPEAKER_04: Um so I think it's an interesting bit.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, no.
SPEAKER_06: And I I remember as old as I am when you'd fill out work applications, if I'm not mistaken, sometimes there'd be questions uh there'd be a question about religion of your church, yeah, your church affiliation.
SPEAKER_06: Are they still there?
SPEAKER_06: I don't know.
SPEAKER_04: They can be, depending on the job, right?
SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04: I mean hospitals ask you that too, so they can assign you the proper chaplain.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02: I want to come back to what I was to what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02: So current-day Israel, okay, uh the West Bank is is populated by Muslims in general.
SPEAKER_04: Muslims and Palestinian Orthodox Christians.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: The question where are they were they originally the also Judeans, or do they have a lot of people?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's really great you said that.
SPEAKER_04: Judean, remember, is a geography.
SPEAKER_04: Right.
SPEAKER_04: And the word Jew in the Bible is actually very ambiguous.
SPEAKER_04: It might mean people who live in Judea, it might be religious Jews, as we usually map that.
SPEAKER_04: So there's a lot of ambiguity, whereas we usually approach it with a singularity.
SPEAKER_04: So I think actually to say all the people in Israel are Judeans would be very biblically appropriate.
SPEAKER_04: Because in that region you have religious Jews, you have cultural Jews, you have atheists, you have Christians.
SPEAKER_04: The Baha'i faith is centered there as well, right?
SPEAKER_04: So you've actually kind of got a lot of Baha'i is um a more of a recent innovation religion that has eight ways to heaven.
SPEAKER_04: Uh essentially.
SPEAKER_02: Is it founded on is it is it Christian founded or is it?
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_02: It's nothing founded.
SPEAKER_04: Well, it includes everybody, really.
SPEAKER_04: So there's like the big five, there's you the the ways of faith are like Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, uh, Jewish, uh Hindu, uh Sikh, um, I forget the other one, and then other prophets is number eight.
SPEAKER_04: So it's very similar to the Unitarian Universalist approach, but there's many, many ways, right?
SPEAKER_04: But the they it's not a huge world religion, but it is there.
SPEAKER_04: It's headquartered in in in Haifa, uh right by Mount Carmel, actually.
SPEAKER_02: But the Palestinians, there may be a few, but in general not Jews.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, uh just yeah, very, very fair to say that.
SPEAKER_04: And what's really interesting too is you've got all different kinds of ethnicities there, too, because it's really easy to say, uh, hey, look, uh there's Jewish people and there's non-Jewish people, but most of us don't realize that there's a very strong division even in the nation of Israel, regardless of your religious preferences, as to your descent.
SPEAKER_04: So most of you know there's two major groups of Jews, the Ashkenazi and the Sephardim, right?
SPEAKER_04: And uh actually it's very socially advantageous in Israel to be Ashkenazi.
SPEAKER_04: Uh they look down on the Sephardic Jews as being scientist sort of well mumpkins.
SPEAKER_02: And um Is that is that because in general the Ashkenazis came from Eastern Europe and they came and they actually settled after 1949, more of them came from that area versus the Iberian around?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, it goes the other way around.
SPEAKER_04: The Ashkenazi come from the west, the Sephardic come from the east.
SPEAKER_02: So well in the Sephardic view, are you saying which one is the preferable Sephardic?
SPEAKER_04: The Ashkenazi sort of have this higher status in its.
SPEAKER_04: So there's hymns and there's a sermon, and up here where we would put our tabernacle is the ark that holds the Torah, right?
SPEAKER_04: Well, if you go into the Sephardic synagogue, there's a platform here in the middle of the pews.
SPEAKER_04: They don't have that in the Ashkenazi.
SPEAKER_04: And uh there's somebody who gets up here called um, it's the I'm gonna say this wrong.
SPEAKER_04: I'm trying to remember if the bhima is the person of the platform.
SPEAKER_04: I I my brain used to work really well.
SPEAKER_07: It's still early.
SPEAKER_04: It's the bhima, the bimah is the platform, and this is man is the chazan who gets up and and chants.
SPEAKER_04: He's sort of like the, I don't want to say the cantor, but he'll chant most of the service.
SPEAKER_04: And when the Torah is read, they bring it up on the bhima, like we bring the gospel out to the middle of the people.
SPEAKER_04: Isn't that interesting to see?
SPEAKER_04: Um they get that from the church, maybe, or maybe we got it from them.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, we kind of like chicken cachitori here, but but even the the things are different, you know, and actually the Sephardic are more pronounced with the way that they do this while praying.
SPEAKER_04: And again, it's completely different descent.
SPEAKER_04: The Sephardic Jews could be more Slavic than um, you know, French, German, Spanish.
SPEAKER_04: And look, in Europe, there's anti-Slavism as well.
SPEAKER_04: You know, I mean, it's not like European history says we're all Europeans, that's great.
SPEAKER_04: There's lots of this discrimination going on.
SPEAKER_04: And and there actually is a pretty large Sephardic population in Israel, like 40% now, and it's growing because Sephardic Jews have more kids.
SPEAKER_04: Like Polish Catholics do.
SPEAKER_02: Are they Orthodox as well as all over the map?
SPEAKER_04: And again, it's funny there's different orthodoxies because the synagogues even look different.
SPEAKER_04: You and the clothes can be very different.
SPEAKER_04: We usually think, uh, like orthodox Jewish people, that's like big beards and black and black hats.
SPEAKER_04: That actually comes from the Polish nobility of the 1800s, so it's not like Jewish people always dressed like that.
SPEAKER_02: If that's Polish, then that would be Sephardic.
SPEAKER_04: It's a Sephardic influence over Ivan Oshkenazi, though.
SPEAKER_04: That the uniform sort of won the day.
SPEAKER_04: Uniforms are funny things, right?
SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, the neck tie came to us from Croatian military attire.
SPEAKER_04: It's not like people in France and Germany wore neckties.
SPEAKER_04: That came from the Croatian military.
SPEAKER_04: It's super strange, right?
SPEAKER_04: The Hungarian military people wore panther skins when they were officers.
SPEAKER_04: Thank God we don't do that.
SPEAKER_04: Not enough panthers on the planet.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, um, all that stuff is really bizarre, you know, and in it, and it we we often think, aha, the necktie is very old or it's British or it's whatever.
SPEAKER_04: And and we just don't know.
SPEAKER_04: And the same thing with Judaism today.
SPEAKER_04: What's interesting, you know, the diaspora has come back, but it's not like people are viewed with equality in Israel.
SPEAKER_04: There's just sort of like this, you know, again, Ashkenazi think of Sephardic.
SPEAKER_04: This is gonna sound awful when I say this, it's very presumptive of me, but they look down upon Sephardic Judaism.
SPEAKER_04: Ethnically, the way they practice, etc.
SPEAKER_04: So it's not like, yay, we're all back together and we're all happy.
SPEAKER_04: It's like, you bumpkins, we have to share this place with you.
SPEAKER_04: And hey, think about some of our own religious stereotyping.
SPEAKER_04: If you're pro if you're Protestant and you see a Mormon family with 12 kids, I mean Protestants have two, right?
SPEAKER_04: And here's a Catholic family with 14 children, it's like, why are you having so many kids?
SPEAKER_04: How about some birth control?
SPEAKER_04: And um same thing.
SPEAKER_04: Because they have a social welfare system, right?
SPEAKER_04: So are these people gaming the system?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, listen, this we're not unique in our ability to to be uh prejudicial, you know.
SPEAKER_04: So it's an interesting thing to think about whether or not the nation of Israel does indeed embody this unification that Ezekiel has in mind.
SPEAKER_04: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if if he had that in mind, then the temple would have been rebuilt.
SPEAKER_00: But the temple has has not been rebuilt.
SPEAKER_04: But you see why the temple can't be rebuilt.
SPEAKER_04: Do you know why the temple can't be rebuilt?
SPEAKER_02: Today.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a mosque up there.
SPEAKER_04: There's a mosque that happens to be honestly like one of the oldest and the most beautiful buildings in the entire world.
SPEAKER_04: Um and the temple can't be anywhere but there.
SPEAKER_04: It has to be there.
SPEAKER_02: During the um uh election campaign uh in Israel, B.B.
SPEAKER_02: Netanyahu said he proposed building a third temple up there.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's you know, the reason that's crazy is rabbinic Judaism is not interested in sacrificing animals anymore.
SPEAKER_04: It's not.
SPEAKER_04: So that's like this play.
SPEAKER_04: So if you're wondering, hey, there's all this stuff in Judaism about sacrificing animals, what do they do?
SPEAKER_04: Not that.
SPEAKER_04: They believe that reading about it is as good as doing it.
SPEAKER_04: Because you can't do it when there's no temple, and if a messiah ever comes, the messiah brings a new temple from heaven.
SPEAKER_04: Most Jewish people accept this.
SPEAKER_04: Most Jewish people are not itching to rebuild some kind of temple.
SPEAKER_04: Um what's interesting though, I don't know if you it's kind of hard to catch this.
SPEAKER_04: The temple Ezekiel has in mind that he describes is massive, is gigantic.
SPEAKER_04: So just to give you an idea, Solomon's temple was like a city block, smaller.
SPEAKER_04: Smaller than a city block.
SPEAKER_04: Ezekiel's temple would have fit five football fields.
SPEAKER_04: Now Herod's temple, that one behind you, fit like three and a half football fields.
SPEAKER_04: So he's actually really, really big.
SPEAKER_04: And if you look at the picture, you'll see Ezekiel's temple looks a little different.
SPEAKER_04: There's actually would be three buildings in it.
SPEAKER_04: Um, if you didn't mind, I'll just I'll just sort of point to this diagram here.
SPEAKER_04: This is a scale replica of what Herod the Great built, uh, which was the eighth winder of the ancient world, truly.
SPEAKER_04: I'm not making that up.
SPEAKER_04: So you could fit three and a half football fields in there, and this is what was called the court of the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_04: Really, what it was is the Acropolis.
SPEAKER_04: And the Acropolis, as the name implies, is always the high city.
SPEAKER_04: As it was in Athens, there's a temple, but this is where all the shopping occurred.
SPEAKER_04: This was the model of the Americas, it was very big.
SPEAKER_04: Um Ezekiel had that, and by the way, Gentiles could go everywhere in here, but you had to be Jewish to live in that door.
SPEAKER_04: You see it?
SPEAKER_04: And if you went in there as a Gentile, you'd get killed.
SPEAKER_04: And that was accepted.
SPEAKER_04: Like you just did, that was profane.
SPEAKER_04: You couldn't do that.
SPEAKER_04: Um, women and men could go into this court, men could go into this court, priests only could go in there, and of course there's smaller rooms in there depending on the day of the year, right?
SPEAKER_04: Well, Ezekiel's got something like this in mind, a huge court of the Gentiles, so that everybody can be included.
SPEAKER_04: And this is where I would tell you, I think the nation of Israel, as it's being practiced, is completely off from this idea.
SPEAKER_04: The idea is to bring the nations in, not keep them out.
SPEAKER_04: Look, there's walls to protect the sanctity, but they're not being built around Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_04: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04: The walls are there actually to protect the Gentiles from doing something out of ignorance.
SPEAKER_04: They're not meant to make the Gentiles a second-class people, like the wall around Bethlehem does.
SPEAKER_02: Was this a Gentile?
SPEAKER_02: Did a Jew have to have a, I'll call it a Jewish succession?
SPEAKER_02: Or could a Gentile convert to Judaism?
SPEAKER_04: Gentiles can yeah, Gentiles absolutely could convert to Gentile to Judaism.
SPEAKER_04: Here's the easiest way to tell you the easiest way to tell if somebody's Jewish?
SPEAKER_04: You lift up their robe.
SPEAKER_04: Oh well, that's if they're a male.
SPEAKER_04: Well, okay, so I mean, what we what we don't realize is in general, since male are the free people property holders, religion is largely male.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, can consider Islam today.
SPEAKER_04: You see those pictures of people going to the mosques.
SPEAKER_04: There's no women in there, they're not allowed in the same room as men.
SPEAKER_04: Women are equal under Islamic rule, separate but equal.
SPEAKER_07: Well, that's the way it used to be in Jewish temples.
SPEAKER_04: That's the way it still is in some Christian denominations.
SPEAKER_04: And if you're Orthodox Jewish, you cannot sit with your husband in the synagogue.
SPEAKER_04: There's like a gallery when you might be able to peek at what the men do.
SPEAKER_04: You're all equal, it's just that you're separate.
SPEAKER_04: Now, this this goes against the grain of our American sensibilities, hopefully so, right?
SPEAKER_04: Because we know separate but equal is not equal.
SPEAKER_04: We we I mean we kind of accept that as Americans.
SPEAKER_04: What we don't accept is that women can be clergy.
SPEAKER_04: Because they're equal, they're just separate.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, anyway, it's funny how we do this, right?
SPEAKER_04: But but evangelicals, at least women can sit in church together, and at least women can teach Sunday school.
SPEAKER_04: Well, to boys, you can teach Sunday school to children.
SPEAKER_04: And we this is the way we use women up, actually, is we we say that's what they can do.
SPEAKER_04: Well, anyway.
SPEAKER_04: I'm saying too much.
SPEAKER_04: Look how I'm recording this.
SPEAKER_04: But I do want to say, John, I think I think there's really something interesting to question whether or not this nation of Israel is living into what Ezekiel has in mind.
SPEAKER_02: Uh and and and the other prophets too.
SPEAKER_04: And the other prophets too, and I would tell you no.
SPEAKER_04: Again, the the goal of of what you read here, I think, is to say, look, Jerusalem is like a city on the hill that invites people to God, not bars them away, invites.
SPEAKER_04: So think through, and look, I don't want to sound all political here, so I'm not, you know, I'm not as much of a fire brown as this as it sounds like.
SPEAKER_04: But when you wall off a whole group of people, and they don't have access to electricity or sanitation or voting rights or markets or education, and you say, Well, you know, we're just doing that so that we know who.
SPEAKER_04: Lives where, right?
SPEAKER_04: I don't think you can say in any way that that is living into this vision.
SPEAKER_04: Again, that's what the wall of Bethlehem does.
SPEAKER_04: And you can see it, you can physically see Bethlehem looks like Appalachia.
SPEAKER_04: Why don't those people throw their trash away?
SPEAKER_04: Because no one picks it up.
SPEAKER_04: The Israeli government controls sanitation and they don't drive trucks in there.
SPEAKER_04: Now, maybe those people, those people don't have the same standards.
SPEAKER_04: See, once we start using those people, I don't think we're living into this vision.
SPEAKER_04: Does that I hope this makes sense?
SPEAKER_06: Of course this makes sense.
SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: And I I I just wonder if you will, if you can go back where they came from.
SPEAKER_02: Were they Judeans who were who were converted, whether they wanted to or not, to um Islam?
SPEAKER_02: You're talking about our many, many years ago.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you hear Palestinians who have been on the land for 300 years, but before that.
SPEAKER_04: In general, yes, right.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, so so um and in in general, yes.
SPEAKER_04: These are people who have lived in the land a long time, and you know, uh after the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, Islam spread really quickly, including to this area.
SPEAKER_04: Boy, the crusades made Christianity look really, really bad.
SPEAKER_04: Um but some Christian people stayed.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, there were, and interestingly, at the end of the crusade, Saladin didn't kill the Christians or make them leave.
SPEAKER_04: He just said, if you're gonna fight, then I'll fight you.
SPEAKER_04: But if you want to live in peace, you live here.
SPEAKER_04: He wasn't punitive, that's the interesting thing, right?
SPEAKER_04: So Christian and Jewish people resumed living in peace with Islam at the end of the crusades.
SPEAKER_04: So there's always been these little little pockets.
SPEAKER_02: When did when did the top when did the uh top of the of the mountain here in Jerusalem Jerusalem become a mosque?
SPEAKER_04: Oh, they built that mosque in um 670, something like that.
SPEAKER_04: But you've got to remember that the temple, that that temple you see was ruined in the year 70.
SPEAKER_04: There was nothing really there for 600 years.
SPEAKER_02: They're not gonna build the temple.
SPEAKER_04: Well, no, the walls there were gone too.
SPEAKER_04: The only thing left was one of the retaining walls.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, the whaling wall.
SPEAKER_04: The whaling wall is a retaining wall.
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's the only one that's left out of the four walls.
SPEAKER_04: Basically, yeah, you know, a lot of that's ruined.
SPEAKER_04: Now that temple platform uh seems to still be there, and that's where the Dome of the Rock is.
SPEAKER_04: And some people think the Dome of the Rock's built over the stone on which Avram went to sacrifice Yitzhak.
SPEAKER_04: That's called Mount Moriah.
SPEAKER_04: Some people think that the you know, Jewish folk don't really walk around up there because you if you walk on that spot, God'll kill you.
SPEAKER_04: So easy, and you don't know where it is, so you shouldn't go walk around up there.
SPEAKER_02: But we but that's where the temple was at one time.
SPEAKER_04: That's the belief, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: That's the belief.
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm sorry, guys.
SPEAKER_04: No, no, you're good.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's good history to know, and it's influences.
SPEAKER_04: Again, now Ezekiel's temple has never been built.
SPEAKER_04: Never.
SPEAKER_04: And it's not there.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, again, that is a big place.
SPEAKER_04: But again, please notice what you don't see in the dimensions that I'm trying to tell you is how much access there is for Gentiles.
SPEAKER_04: Solomon's temple had very little court of the Gentiles, like tiny.
SPEAKER_04: This is again football fields big.
SPEAKER_04: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_00: After the Jews returned to Jerusalem and they rebuilt the second temple.
SPEAKER_00: Did any of Ezekiel's um foretelling uh of people coming together happen?
SPEAKER_04: Well, what's interesting, and this is where you can read Ezra Nehemiah, when the Jews come back, a group of the Jews, I mean keep in mind the people who lived there were also Jewish, they just weren't the best and brightest, so they got left.
SPEAKER_04: They've been running Judaism as far as they knew, and then come here come all these educated people telling them they're doing it all wrong and that they're second-class citizens and their own religion.
SPEAKER_04: Imagine that going over well.
SPEAKER_04: Then they come and say, if you've married somebody who's not one of our people, put them outside the walls along with any kids you've had with them.
SPEAKER_04: That's what Ezra and Nehemiah say.
SPEAKER_04: Because foreign people will corrupt your religion.
SPEAKER_04: So I think that's this beautiful vision of inclusion.
SPEAKER_04: Now, there's a developmental reason for this.
SPEAKER_04: When we have children, we worry a lot about their friends.
SPEAKER_04: Because we realize our friends, our kids' friends, can be very strong positive or negative influences.
SPEAKER_04: And when our children are not mature, we have this strong thought that I think is developmentally appropriate that hey, you know, if I don't want my kids exposed to drugs or pornography or theft, I don't want my kid around other kids who do those things.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: Hopefully, there comes a point where we think our kids are mature enough to handle those everyday occurrences.
SPEAKER_04: Hopefully.
SPEAKER_04: But when is that?
SPEAKER_04: It's not in the first grade, right?
SPEAKER_04: I don't want my five-year-old going to school with other children who describe pornographic movies.
SPEAKER_04: That happened to my five-year-old.
SPEAKER_04: That's child abuse, by the way.
SPEAKER_04: But you can't do anything about that because you're not observing it.
SPEAKER_04: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_04: Well, we we try to, and I would tell you the number one reason we have private schools in the United States is so that we can pick our kids' friends.
SPEAKER_04: Anybody who tells you something different, I think, doesn't even know that's why they're putting their kids here.
SPEAKER_04: I have similar values with every parent here in the sense that I want my kids to be around virtue, and I value education enough to spend extra money and time on it.
SPEAKER_04: You know, I mean that's really what private schools do.
SPEAKER_04: And and in that sense, they're they're luxurious, but boy, farming your child is their birthright, it's no luxury.
SPEAKER_04: You know, I mean that's sort of an interesting thing to think about, right?
SPEAKER_04: Um so maybe developmentally, here's like who are we gonna be as Jewish people?
SPEAKER_04: Well, we can't have corrupting influences because we're not mature enough to figure it out.
SPEAKER_04: So I want to cast that positively, even though I think it's also like not good.
SPEAKER_04: Because what it leads to is this mentality of, hey, let's have self-imposed quarantines.
SPEAKER_04: So there's a difference between a ghetto, that's where you're forced to go, and a sanctuary, which you create.
SPEAKER_00: Is there any of the prophets that foretell the destruction of the second temple?
SPEAKER_04: No, because none of them were none of them were around.
SPEAKER_04: All the prophets happened before that thing even got built.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_04: All of them.
SPEAKER_04: And remember that prophets are not in general foretellers.
SPEAKER_04: What they say is here comes the natural consequences.
SPEAKER_04: And folks, you might think God is gonna protect this city and you don't have to do anything, and you need to know.
SPEAKER_04: Now, this is crazy theology, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04: The Babylonians are the rod of the Lord.
SPEAKER_04: Can you imagine saying the Nazis were the rod of the Lord?
SPEAKER_04: God should pick better rods, don't you think?
SPEAKER_04: I don't know that the prophets are claiming that's literally the truth.
SPEAKER_04: I think what they're trying to say, you know, if we focus on that too much, the injustice of it is impossible to swallow.
SPEAKER_04: I think what they're trying to say is since you think everything happens for a reason, these people have been sent by God.
SPEAKER_04: Again, you can say something without it having to literally be true.
SPEAKER_04: Does that make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_04: In some ways, the Third Reich was exactly what Europe earned itself.
SPEAKER_04: I know that's terrible.
SPEAKER_04: But when you take a people and belittle them and take away their economy, of course they will want vengeance.
SPEAKER_04: And this is what we did after the Second World War, right?
SPEAKER_04: Is we tried not to be punitive.
SPEAKER_04: We did things like the Marshall Plan, right?
SPEAKER_04: Uh because we I and this is an interesting thing when we think about a war on terror, right?
SPEAKER_04: We'll kill all the terrorists through drones who show up in the sky and shoot missiles at families and kill those terrorists.
SPEAKER_04: Well, what is everybody else gonna think?
SPEAKER_04: They're gonna think the United States is a bunch of terrorists.
SPEAKER_04: Usually people don't submit to terror, usually they decide to get revenge.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, this is a hard thing.
SPEAKER_04: By the way, again, I I know I I'm sounding really political today.
SPEAKER_04: I don't mean to.
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't remember who it was that wrote that when a people are conquered and they are able to throw off their conquerors, and they conquer somebody else, they run their conquerors' behavior, and then they're redone on the people that they conquered.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think the same thing with children.
SPEAKER_04: I was gonna say you can dial that down to a family level, right?
SPEAKER_04: Most people who abuse children were abused as children.
SPEAKER_04: And in some ways they should know better, but they're doing what they were like imprinted on.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, whether you were abused or not, how many times have you said, I remember, you said something to a child or or to a friend, you said, your father said that, or my mother said that.
SPEAKER_04: Even though as a middle schooler, you said, I will never say that to my kids.
SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
SPEAKER_04: And then you have them, and well, it was good enough for me.
SPEAKER_02: Can I uh ask a question?
SPEAKER_02: So Ezekiel says that um when the Jews, when the the the uh yeah, Jews come back from Babylonia starts around 70 years after the fall of the uh of the uh David's lint line after uh Zedekiah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, probably more like 50 years instead of 70, but yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But so I I presume they don't all get together and come back at one time.
SPEAKER_02: People start coming back slowly.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there is an initial party.
SPEAKER_04: Ezra leads that party, right?
SPEAKER_04: Cyrus sends them back with some money to rebuild the temple, so the biggest group comes in in sort of a colony.
SPEAKER_02: Well, what I was reading, not here but in another book, was that the Jews, many of the Jews that went to Babylonia to Babylon or Babylonia, did quite well there.
unknown: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02: And some of them did very well there money-wise.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: So I mean, if these these maybe someone said, I'm staying here because I'm doing pretty well.
SPEAKER_02: Plenty of them did that.
SPEAKER_02: Or I'm those that came back.
SPEAKER_02: Um how long was it before they started building the second temple?
SPEAKER_04: Uh well, if you read Ezra and Nehemiah, they they got on it pretty fast.
SPEAKER_04: It just they stalled down and took them a long time.
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Now it does say in here that uh God, the true shepherd, will still need a servant leader, um, and it will be my servant David.
SPEAKER_02: Does that mean that David's lineage will somehow be um uh brought back and become, if not king, at least the servant of God and maybe the head um rabbi?
SPEAKER_04: I think it depends how you view it, and it and there's all kinds of different thoughts about this, right?
SPEAKER_04: Um you know, there's one way in which you sort of see the gospel writers tracing Jesus as like Davidic lineage, but you know he wasn't related to David at all.
SPEAKER_04: Joseph is related to David, but Joseph's not his dad.
SPEAKER_04: And there's no genealogy for Mary.
SPEAKER_04: So I think it's pretty safe to assume Mary's not related.
SPEAKER_04: So I think like what the gospel writers have decided is that this is meant to be taken figuratively.
SPEAKER_01: David like.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and what is David like?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, David means beloved, and he's this person who brought a bunch of different tribes together with a common purpose.
SPEAKER_04: He ushered in like the Hebrew Golden Age, which lasted like 40 years.
SPEAKER_04: 40 years?
SPEAKER_04: Ish.
SPEAKER_02: Wow, really?
SPEAKER_04: Not very long.
SPEAKER_04: I was gonna say no.
SPEAKER_04: But you gotta remember, and this is the other thing you said about going to Babylon, Babylon and Persia is like New York City.
SPEAKER_04: Jerusalem is like Santa Fe, Texas.
SPEAKER_04: So you go from being prosperous in Santa Fe, and then you go to prosperous in New York City.
SPEAKER_04: Boy, you're loath to go back to some Santa Fe, don't you think?
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, keep in mind in Babylon's got like the wonder of the world, the hanging gardens.
SPEAKER_04: In Babylon, you can make a U-turn on the city walls while driving a chariot.
SPEAKER_04: Well, Jerusalem's city walls were a bunch of rocks piled up by folk.
SPEAKER_04: There were no U-turns on chariots.
SPEAKER_04: They didn't even know how to ride horses in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_04: They knew how to hook them to a car, they didn't even know how to ride a horse.
SPEAKER_04: So, why wouldn't you be loath to go back to Haiti having grown up in New York City?
SPEAKER_04: And you know, when they build a second temple, the first thing they do is weep because it didn't look like the image they had in their minds.
SPEAKER_04: Well, the image they had in their minds was because they'd been in Babylon where there's money and architects and resources.
SPEAKER_04: And now they've gone back to Zanzibar and they've built this mud hut.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, I mean I don't want to be like bad, but that's kind of what's happened here.
SPEAKER_04: The other thing you said is really interesting, I don't know if you all know this.
SPEAKER_04: The first major Christian symbol for Jesus, do you know what it was?
SPEAKER_04: It wasn't the cross.
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned it last year.
SPEAKER_04: It's Christ the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_04: And look, here shows up this image of shepherding, right?
SPEAKER_04: And and Jewish people have always had a shepherding identity.
SPEAKER_04: In fact, way back in Genesis, um, when Joseph lives in Egypt, I don't know if you realize this, he's like the second in command of Egypt, but Egyptians won't eat with him because he's a shepherd and they're agrarian.
SPEAKER_04: He's a they think he's gross.
SPEAKER_04: So they always have been this shepherding people.
SPEAKER_04: And God, curiously enough, says, your shepherds are bad.
SPEAKER_04: They didn't take care of the sheep, they sacrifice the sheep to feed themselves.
SPEAKER_04: A good shepherd actually sacrifices themselves for the sheep.
SPEAKER_04: Well, look, when John starts saying this, when Jesus says this in the Gospel of John, he's just quoting Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_04: But God will be the shepherd of the people.
SPEAKER_04: When Ezekiel says that people have this opportunity to be individually accountable, that would have been shocking.
SPEAKER_04: We latch on to that because Americans we like to think I live and die by my own choices, and part of that is silly.
SPEAKER_04: We we we way over exaggerate some of that, right?
SPEAKER_04: Again, you didn't make an individual choice to be a Christian person.
SPEAKER_04: You didn't make that choice, not entirely, right?
SPEAKER_04: We were carried there by folk.
SPEAKER_04: And same thing, I I mean, Obama said this well, whether you like him or not, but hey, that road you used to go to work, you didn't build that road.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's what he said.
SPEAKER_04: We we we rely on each other more than we'd like to admit, right?
SPEAKER_04: And if that road weren't there, you'd have to drive through Webster, which would be terrible.
SPEAKER_04: You know, it would be dreadful.
SPEAKER_04: Um and and and this is an interesting thing to think about, right?
SPEAKER_04: So actually, people had a much stronger, and you see this in the Middle Ages, you can see it in Hinduism.
SPEAKER_04: It's called the great chain of being.
SPEAKER_04: Everybody has their place in this really hierarchic society, and you can't really move much out of that place, right?
SPEAKER_04: Because it's the fabric of society.
SPEAKER_04: Now we like to think that the great chain of being doesn't really happen.
SPEAKER_04: So anybody, the American dream, right, is you can make it anywhere.
SPEAKER_04: And there are times when that happens.
SPEAKER_04: But again, I would put to you that if you're born into a family that is at or below the poverty line, your chance is much lower than somebody who's born in the highest tax bracket.
SPEAKER_04: I hope that's not controversial that I'm saying this.
SPEAKER_04: No, it's all possible, and this is one of the few countries in which I do think it's possible, but it's not like a child born in inner city Chicago to a teenage mother with no father really has the same kind of accountability as somebody born in Kennebunkport, Maine.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, do you think?
SPEAKER_04: And that I think is this interesting thing.
SPEAKER_04: If we say, well, they both are equally accountable for every choice they make, it's silly of us.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, it's really silly of us.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, when your mother can't read and you learn how to read, great on you, because you've overcome a natural impediment, right?
SPEAKER_04: Um, so so if we hook on this too strong, oh, it's all individual accountability, it can really take us away, I'm afraid, from being compassionate and pathetic, and honestly from the justice that God is interested in.
SPEAKER_04: So uh part of it, I and I want to put this to you in a strange, in a strange way, is we also have this very strange American approach to sin and what God's interested in, I think.
SPEAKER_04: So if it's okay, um I'm gonna tell you in the Bible there's a huge difference between this and that.
SPEAKER_04: This is when I tell a lie, or I steal, or I have a lustful thought in my head.
SPEAKER_04: This is distorted relationship period from which all of those things come.
SPEAKER_04: So if I could put this into a health analogy, um if I'm really worried about this, I'm taking cough drops when I really have pneumonia.
SPEAKER_04: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
SPEAKER_04: You know, Jesus, when the power of sin has been defeated, it's not that.
SPEAKER_04: It's not that.
SPEAKER_04: It's this big power with a capital S.
SPEAKER_02: Well, is is the maybe as a small sin individual, the big sin is collective?
SPEAKER_04: Um maybe, maybe, I think it's harder to say than that.
SPEAKER_04: I think the big sin has to do, and maybe this is okay to give you a weird analogy.
SPEAKER_04: Um when my daughter was born, I carried her around in a baby bjorn all the time.
SPEAKER_04: So much so that she would, it was easier for her to take a nap in the bjorn than if I put her in the crib.
SPEAKER_04: And it poor thing, it looked like her neck was broken and she just lay like this.
SPEAKER_04: But if I stopped walking, she'd wake up.
SPEAKER_04: So you better believe I wore that bjorn all the time.
SPEAKER_04: And um, it's funny what we do.
SPEAKER_04: And after two years of wearing that, my posture was not great because it was pulling like this all the time.
SPEAKER_04: Now I had this great idea that I was gonna fix my posture by thinking about it.
SPEAKER_04: But you know, you actually can't fix your posture by thinking about it because the moment you stop thinking about it, you go back.
SPEAKER_04: The way you fix your posture is by doing these exercises that strengthen and and naturally pull things kind of back where they need to be.
SPEAKER_04: And they can take a really long time.
SPEAKER_04: And you know what's interesting is they may not even be hard, it may be that you just have to do them over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_04: So the same with a capital S is about us having bad posture.
SPEAKER_06: So in the Catholic Church, the fact that we can go to confession and we have a little kid, I grew up going every Friday, and and so all those little things that you know you had to be told how many times and we counted it roughly.
SPEAKER_06: And um I I don't know, maybe it's just for me, um as a kid, it helped.
SPEAKER_06: Need to stay in line, so to speak.
SPEAKER_04: And this is why I think this is where I wanted to go too, is because I think sometimes we think that part of what God is most interested in is our obedience.
SPEAKER_04: And I want to suggest to you, I think that must be completely wrong.
SPEAKER_04: Because if the relationship God has with us is always predicated on our obedience, it's a one-way relationship.
SPEAKER_04: I don't know if you thought about this.
SPEAKER_04: I had this idea this morning, so I haven't quite conjured with it.
SPEAKER_04: But for most of my Christian life, God has just wanted me to obey.
SPEAKER_04: And when I disobey, I'm being obedient.
SPEAKER_04: But you know, there's this other thought like there's this African proverb that says, God created us because God thought we would enjoy it.
SPEAKER_04: That's interesting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04: And there's this other idea that prayer is when we talk to God because God is actually interested in us.
SPEAKER_04: If God's only interested in our obedience, then dialogue is of no interest to God.
SPEAKER_05: What about the thought that God is interested in prayer?
SPEAKER_05: And out of that love for him, that adoration comes a desire to be obedient.
SPEAKER_04: See, and this I think is a really interesting idea.
SPEAKER_04: I just want us to step outside of this mold that we've been, I think, printed into, which takes a little bit of thought.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, imagine that like heaven or eternity is where God enjoys us forever.
SPEAKER_04: Where God enjoys us forever.
SPEAKER_04: That's a very different picture from something we earn by following the rules so that we can enjoy it forever.
SPEAKER_04: And maybe we have to end up somewhere in the middle, but I don't know if we can get to the middle when we start here.
SPEAKER_04: I think to get to the middle, we have to think about what God's actually interested in.
SPEAKER_04: And we usually rest in obey, obey, obey, instead of God is delighted with us.
SPEAKER_04: Well, how can God be delighted with somebody who doesn't obey?
SPEAKER_04: Because God wants a mutual relationship.
SPEAKER_04: Well, that's that's really the revel that's really different thinking for me.
SPEAKER_04: Because sometimes we look at ourselves and say, well, there's nothing God can enjoy about this because I'm barely doing what I'm supposed to do.
SPEAKER_04: And that's what I want to suggest that this might actually lead us there.
SPEAKER_02: You know, is obeying a um doing something that you know or believe is right?
SPEAKER_02: Um is it oh gosh, I had a good thought.
SPEAKER_02: It's escaping me right now.
SPEAKER_02: Um or is there any joy in obeying other than non-guilt?
SPEAKER_04: I want to say there might be, but I think maybe a bit of a concept is about honoring.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Because obedience is about I do or else, you're greater than me.
SPEAKER_04: Honoring is about some kind of mutuality.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, listen, there's things my wife wants me to do that I don't really want to do.
SPEAKER_04: Um and sometimes I do them because I don't want to be nagged.
SPEAKER_04: Boy, if that's a relationship we had, I'm gonna be honest, I could live in that relationship for the rest of my life, but I wouldn't freely choose that one.
SPEAKER_04: I can do it.
SPEAKER_04: Because I have premiums around stuff like that.
SPEAKER_04: But you know, there's other times where I do things I don't naturally want to do.
SPEAKER_04: In fact, I do things I think are silly, but so that I can honor my wife.
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and and to be honest with you, when I'm when I do it just because I don't want to be nagged, I it leads me into bitterness and separation.
SPEAKER_01: Is your there is there do you get joy in honor?
SPEAKER_04: Yes, you get no joy in obedience.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Because obedience is always based in threat.
SPEAKER_04: It's always based in threat.
SPEAKER_04: And honor is based in joy.
SPEAKER_06: To me, because I brought up the idea of confession and all that, as I as I mature, you I just you know gradually you really begin to see a big world and the fact that honoring and that um the being uh a good person would doing the right thing um was an honorable way of living.
SPEAKER_06: It was not so much about obedience, because then it becomes like a prison that that the word obedience is incarcerating.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and I think actually, here's this really interesting thought about it, and this is why I wanted to talk about posture and exercises a little bit, is that if we in an obedience mentality, we have to confess so God will forgive us.
SPEAKER_04: In an honor mentality, we confess because it helps us pull our posture back.
SPEAKER_04: Confession is for us, not for God.
SPEAKER_06: And marriage vows no longer have obey.
SPEAKER_04: Marriage vows no longer have obey because, and I think this is actually really good thinking.
SPEAKER_04: Well, I shouldn't say because to me, in the evolution of marriage, women are increasingly no longer property.
SPEAKER_06: Right, right.
SPEAKER_06: I mean it just that just though I don't know.
SPEAKER_06: Um, it's good, but it's good.
SPEAKER_06: But it's true.
SPEAKER_06: It does kind of relate to me.
SPEAKER_04: And and I I know this is silly, like we're spinning wheels on a very small linguistic difference, but I hope they lead us into a much bigger reality.
SPEAKER_06: It's it's again, I think I said this before here when the Catholic Church when they turned the altar around so we could see what the priest was was doing, and we could see that.
SPEAKER_06: And I know that happened in other churches also.
SPEAKER_06: That made a huge difference because it wasn't something private or in high in it, and then we taught about what it meant and what was being said, and they had the books, and they were in English and Spanish, and so that anyone who came into my church in South Texas could read them and understand what was happening.
SPEAKER_06: Yes, it made a it was a huge opening of change.
SPEAKER_06: I don't know.
SPEAKER_04: It's at least an invitation to do so, right?
SPEAKER_04: It's an invitation.
SPEAKER_04: Um are we spinning, am I overspinning our wheels on these big themes?
SPEAKER_04: This is a tough one.
SPEAKER_04: I actually could park on this for a long time because I don't I don't know how to live into it.
SPEAKER_04: I'm just gonna be honest with you.
SPEAKER_04: Normally I think God is fundamentally disappointed with me, and I can't imagine what God would fundamentally enjoy about me because I know how disobedient I am.
SPEAKER_04: I know whenever I do something good, I could have done more.
SPEAKER_04: I know that because I've been hardwired to obey.
SPEAKER_04: And obedience might be how it starts, but I think if it doesn't go to honor, we're still like two-year-olds in our faith, in our marriage, and our friendships.
SPEAKER_04: And it is always this great question when we think about commandment number five: how do you honor your parents?
SPEAKER_04: I decided a long time ago that if I obeyed my parents, I would not be myself.
SPEAKER_04: I actually had to disobey them to honor them.
SPEAKER_04: That's interesting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04: I had to disobey them to honor them.
SPEAKER_06: You know, my father did something once.
SPEAKER_06: Um my mother, my sister and I were divorced and remarried, and my mother had this reaction about as a as mothers would, oh my god, we're Catholic, but none of my broke boys have been divorced, our two daughters have been divorced.
SPEAKER_06: I just can't see them coming in with some other memory.
SPEAKER_06: And my dad said, and she told me, he said, you we never ever shut our doors to our children.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you that the doors that's how you honor your children, then, right?
SPEAKER_04: That's this really interesting thing.
SPEAKER_04: And sometimes I think we shut our doors to our children because we think that's how we teach them, right?
SPEAKER_04: But when our relationship is at stake, the lesson is obey, not honor.
SPEAKER_04: Now, there are ways we shut our doors to our kids, like, hey, you cannot live with me in our house again.
SPEAKER_04: But I do care about you and I will support you in the following ways.
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
SPEAKER_04: And our kid can take that as, hey, obedience, they don't really care.
SPEAKER_04: We can't always control that, right?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, we we we we make complicated decisions about whether we enable people or not, and enabling is not really loving them.
SPEAKER_04: And it's hard.
SPEAKER_04: It's a hard stuff.
SPEAKER_04: And honor, I think, is much harder to figure out than obedience, because honoring is amorphous, and obedience is black and white.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: How do we identify honor?
SPEAKER_04: Well, boy, I think we do it through this, my least favorite word in the church, discernment.
SPEAKER_04: I hate discernment.
SPEAKER_04: I like to make decisions.
SPEAKER_04: And how do we discern, God help me?
SPEAKER_04: I'm not a spiritual director.
SPEAKER_04: This is not my thing.
SPEAKER_04: And how about we discern for a while?
SPEAKER_04: Let's just make a decision.
SPEAKER_04: That's what I want to do.
SPEAKER_04: But I do think that properly, and to be honest, discernment is used like a club on people.
SPEAKER_04: Like, hey, Pastor, I really want to do this ministry, and how about you discern that for a while?
SPEAKER_04: Which is a really way of saying, like, I don't know about you.
SPEAKER_04: It can be clubbing.
SPEAKER_04: But I do think there's an interesting thing about, hey, like, we really do need to figure out if this is the voice of ambition or anxiety or obedience, or if this is your authentic self.
SPEAKER_04: And you're are you following joy or are you following obedience?
SPEAKER_04: Because those are different things to follow.
SPEAKER_04: And you know, I if it's okay to return to the story here, right?
SPEAKER_04: We can hear that story about the dry bones as being some kind of metaphor for heaven when we die.
SPEAKER_04: But we we could also hear that story really as a way of being renewed as a community.
SPEAKER_04: We don't always get this, but the word spirit, it actually just means moving air.
SPEAKER_04: It doesn't mean like a ghost or a soul essence.
SPEAKER_04: It means moving air, most often wind or breath.
SPEAKER_04: So how curious, right?
SPEAKER_04: That a holy moving wind, as in an extraordinary one, a holy one, blows over these reanimated corpses and they live again.
SPEAKER_04: That's like the gift of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_04: Where God goes and all of a sudden these dead things have new life.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's a resurrection story, right?
SPEAKER_04: It's it's a second wind.
SPEAKER_04: I wish I could get a second wind.
SPEAKER_04: I don't always get a run.
SPEAKER_04: It takes like seven or eight miles before you get it.
SPEAKER_04: That's the interesting thing, right?
SPEAKER_04: You don't get a second wind before you start going.
SPEAKER_04: You get it after you've been going and you hit this wall of exhaustion.
SPEAKER_04: And boy, you can't always even predict it as a runner or an athlete or like in your spiritual journey.
SPEAKER_04: But essentially, there's this interesting thing that the Holy Spirit is not some gift of a ghost.
SPEAKER_04: It's it's like a reinvigorating way of being in the world.
SPEAKER_04: It's like a when you change from breathing in obedience and shame and reward to honor and grace, which I'm struggling to do.
SPEAKER_04: I'm really struggling to get that second wind of my spiritual journey.
SPEAKER_04: But we could read it as that dry vine spit could be us, and it doesn't necessarily mean we prosper and America conquers the world and our taxes go down 20%.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, that's I would tell you, I think the Bible's not interested in any of that stuff.
SPEAKER_04: I think it's interested in our way of being and in our posture in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And I think our relationship with God.
SPEAKER_04: All of it's predicated on that, right?
SPEAKER_04: And that's, you know, again, there's this great diagram of this triangle.
SPEAKER_04: The closer we get to God, the closer we must get to ourself and to others.
SPEAKER_06: And you get closer to God through other people, other relationships with other people, I think.
SPEAKER_06: Um I brought all those oranges here, I took them to the to Chris Hall, and and I had more oranges, and so many oranges.
SPEAKER_06: I had a huge bag of oranges, and I think Samuel Gladley took a bag.
SPEAKER_06: But the gentleman, the black gentleman, Tommy.
SPEAKER_06: Tommy, okay.
SPEAKER_06: At the end we I came back, everybody was gone, and uh the oranges were there, and I thought, what am I gonna do with these oranges?
SPEAKER_06: And Tommy said, Did you raise the did you plant the tree?
SPEAKER_06: And I said, Yes, and and they're it's your tree.
SPEAKER_06: You didn't go to a grocery store and say, No, I didn't do it.
SPEAKER_06: He said, My kids in my neighborhood walk the streets and they would love to have the oranges.
SPEAKER_06: It was the sweetest, and I've never even had a conversation with him, but he asked, You planted the tree, you harvested the oranges, you picked them and brought them in here, and I'm taking them, and so I could just see an in an inner city school to have you know black kids laying on out in the street, yeah, and him out there handing out what she said, yeah, they came from my tree.
SPEAKER_04: Well, and that kind of matches Ezekiel's vision of this other thing in the temple, which is never going to be in the temple, which is the river of life, right?
SPEAKER_04: Do you notice that it flows into the Dead Sea and now there's life in the Dead Sea?
SPEAKER_04: And of course, if we take that literally, we failed.
SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh, have we failed?
SPEAKER_04: This is an image about what worship does.
SPEAKER_04: It brings life to places where there never could be any.
SPEAKER_04: And our posture in the world affects whether that happens or not.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I think this is where it's all connected, right?
SPEAKER_04: Do you notice that there's Ezekiel reapportions the land among not the two tribes, but among the twelve.
SPEAKER_04: And ten of them are gone.
SPEAKER_04: No one knows what happened to any of them.
SPEAKER_04: And so this is like this magical restoration where everybody has a place.
SPEAKER_04: It's this sort of, you know, thing we see in the Bible over and over again is not like sin and fall and heaven, it's about returning home.
SPEAKER_00: It seems, it it seems that there is the first part of these equal, and then the second part, they don't kind of vary any relationship to each other.
SPEAKER_04: I might be able to help.
SPEAKER_04: Um, so I don't know if anybody has ever tried their hand at masonry.
SPEAKER_04: If you've ever done this, um boy, it's really difficult to work with.
SPEAKER_04: Not only are bricks heavy, but you know, using that trowel, I could not figure out how to use the trowel.
SPEAKER_04: I started using my hands because I could scoop it and spread it or whatever.
SPEAKER_04: You know, it'll destroy your hands, touching cement, it's dreadful, and you can't quite do it right with gloves on.
SPEAKER_04: Well, it turns out in masonry, what what happens is if you start building a course and you get to the end and you realize it's not quite level, what you have to do is put on more masonry.
SPEAKER_04: And uh boy, by the time you put on that second row, it might be odd in the other bit, right?
SPEAKER_04: It turns out masonry is not very strong.
SPEAKER_04: We like to think it is, but it's really, really weak.
SPEAKER_04: It's not watertight, um, it creates the first thing that cracks.
SPEAKER_04: So imagine building a building that's all the levels are just janky.
SPEAKER_04: Well, if you want to fix that and do it right, you have to knock it down.
SPEAKER_04: So there's a way in which deconstruction can be for our sake, not our punishment.
SPEAKER_04: And I and I want to suggest, I think that's probably a healthy way to read this, is again it has to do with the same image of like a refiner's fire.
SPEAKER_04: You it it's probably not great to think about burning up all that dross, but the goal is to pull out the purity.
SPEAKER_04: Not to punish it, but to purify it.
SPEAKER_04: Um so I think that might be one way to read it.
SPEAKER_04: And if we read it that way, right, then as God as a pedagogue or a tutor or a disciplinarian does not punish us, but tries to remediate us, which requires us suffering the destruction of structures that have already been destroying us.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like why the the army would they have to reshape you to obey.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: And they have to reshape you so you'll kill another person because left your own devices, you'll you'll pretend to shoot them and you'll aim the other way.
SPEAKER_04: So you've got to do that to be efficient.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, uh boy, that can that can go real ugly, but I mean I think this is this is part of the thing here.
SPEAKER_04: I think that might be why Paul uses these metaphors, and we'll read this later, about dying.
SPEAKER_04: Because boy, we rely on some of those things so much that when you want to take them away, it feels like we're dying.
SPEAKER_04: It's really hard to lose elements of our faith we've built on, even if they were not good to build on.
SPEAKER_04: We've built on them so long that to take them away is like, oh my god, you're killing God.
SPEAKER_04: That's how it feels.
SPEAKER_04: Which is why death and resurrection and new life, I think, factor so much in this.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, if you have an obedience mentality and you want to switch it to honor, you're not gonna do that in a moment.
SPEAKER_04: You're gonna have to knock down years of building relationships around obedience.
SPEAKER_07: Well, when my son got out of the military after 25 years, he had a terrible time.
SPEAKER_07: And the one where we lived in Florida, they built this housing area after uh Vietnam, and it was called Veterans Village.
SPEAKER_07: Hated the name.
SPEAKER_07: I worked in the emergency room and I saw more spouse abuse in the ER with that group because they no longer had somebody telling them what to do.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: You know, they call it the military intellect.
SPEAKER_07: My son was perfectly happy with saying, now you go over there and you you know breathe all that green air, you know, save the world, okay, I'll do it.
SPEAKER_07: You know, you see, did people around you, and you they have to stay there because there's minds underneath them.
SPEAKER_07: And but that was okay.
SPEAKER_07: But when he got to where he was supposed to think for himself and make his decisions, it took him a while.
SPEAKER_07: You know, because there was nobody to tell him, I want you at such and such a place at eight o'clock in the morning.
SPEAKER_07: And then this is what you're gonna wear.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Well, and beyond that, I think you know this is a really interesting thing to think that the military relies on us playing into adrenaline and cortisol in our brain.
SPEAKER_04: Those are the spite, flight, freeze connections.
SPEAKER_04: And then people come back and they've been living in their reptilian brain for a year, and now we want them all of a sudden to be mammals.
SPEAKER_04: But we said, you must be reptiles.
SPEAKER_04: You must.
SPEAKER_04: Uh and so this is where we've come up with this concept of moral injury and what it's like then to be that person, and how is it that we reacclimate socially?
SPEAKER_04: And uh, you know, it's really interesting.
SPEAKER_04: The Bishop of Texas said, like off-handedly, two or three years ago, he was just talking and he said, you know, everybody knows it's wrong to kill.
SPEAKER_04: Everybody knows that.
SPEAKER_04: But we tell our soldiers, kill, and you did your job, and that's why we will always need chaplains.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, which is really interesting.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, really, it was very, very insightful to think through this uh switching uh programming, and um I I don't I I think it's a good analogy to think through, like this is part of the switching we're being asked to do um um spiritually.
SPEAKER_04: Look how the good shepherd um doesn't just take care of the sheep but looks for the lost ones.
SPEAKER_04: Again, Luke didn't make that up.
SPEAKER_04: So you imagine God the shepherd is not just saying, Good job obeying me, you good sheep, but well, running out looking for the lost ones, because for whatever reason God enjoys them.
SPEAKER_04: And this is really an interesting thing for us to go.
SPEAKER_04: Into is God doesn't look for the lost sheep to enforce obedience.
SPEAKER_04: God looks for the lost sheep because God enjoys them.
SPEAKER_04: That's just such a different spiritual image for me.
SPEAKER_04: I think it's right, but uh that didn't mean I'm rightfully appropriating it.
SPEAKER_04: Because I usually think when somebody's lost, they should stop being lost.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: We all got maps, and look for it's over here.
SPEAKER_04: I'm a good map reader.
SPEAKER_04: So so I just, you know, it's really this is really tough for me.
SPEAKER_04: Uh but but you see that this is part, I think, of of of his grand vision is God is gonna give us a new heart.
SPEAKER_04: Don't think like emotional center, that's that's the center of your will, and a new spirit.
SPEAKER_04: I mean a new way of breathing.
SPEAKER_04: Something like that is so fundamental, it's like breathing.
SPEAKER_07: Well, one thing I found interesting when you talk about your parents, um my mother was she used to look at me sometime and say, you know, I will always love you, but I don't like you right now.
SPEAKER_07: And I thought, oh, I told my kids the same thing.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: And I was when my first grandchild was born, I heard my son say, and when we went to visit him, you know, I'll always love you, but I don't like the way you're acting.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: And then he's stuck and he said, You're standing right behind me, aren't you?
SPEAKER_07: He said, I now I understand what you meant.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: And with my mother, you know, when I got to be teenage, where sometimes you want to do things that aren't quite what you should be doing, I would say, well, can I go?
SPEAKER_07: And my mother would say, You do what you think is right.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: No, tell me, yes or no, you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_04: You know, you you say something so interesting that connects with the reading we had on Sunday.
SPEAKER_04: Uh, Blessed are the poor, for they will be filled.
SPEAKER_04: You know, and I think a lot of times in our obedience mindset, we like people because they validate us.
SPEAKER_04: Uh, which means we're full all the time of ourselves.
SPEAKER_04: And if we make room for other people to enjoy them as they are, uh I think that's what Jesus has in mind.
SPEAKER_04: So blessed are people who make room for others, who are able to enjoy them whether they obey or not, or have your same politics or not, or enjoy the same restaurants you do or not.
SPEAKER_04: If you make room for other people, you'll actually, oddly enough, that will fill you.
SPEAKER_04: If you don't, if you're already full of yourself, and if your opinions and your obedience uh mentality, you'll always be hungry.
SPEAKER_07: Well, it's like if you want a friend, you have to be a friend.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: It's it's true, and you know, there's another interesting thing with parents and spouses, right?
SPEAKER_04: Is enjoying our kids for who they are instead of making them be who we expected them to be.
SPEAKER_04: And those can be fine lines.
SPEAKER_04: And that's the mystery of marriage and parenthood.
SPEAKER_04: Well, look, next week we'll read some beautiful verses in Isaiah.
SPEAKER_04: We'll read second Isaiah just in time for Advent.
SPEAKER_04: It's really quite beautiful.
SPEAKER_04: Um so see you next week.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.