SPEAKER_00: These videos just out of here.
SPEAKER_00: 2005.
unknown: Really?
SPEAKER_00: You would have thought the late 70s, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, uh hairstyles like that never go into style, really.
SPEAKER_00: At one point, he said Solomon's Empire was the biggest, and then he went in and talked about King Ahab.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, the biggest territorial appears to be under Ahab's father, the King Omri.
SPEAKER_00: So uh he's the one who shows up in something called the Moabite Stone, which unfortunately uh tomb raiders essentially broke.
SPEAKER_00: It's no longer it's now a disaster, but we do have like a rubbing of it, and we saw that in Jordan on the hill of Amman.
SPEAKER_00: But Omri appears to have had the biggest territorial hegemony, not Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: Um questions about the video or responses as we basically concluded our study of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't read all of it, we read the lion's share, though, and this is our conclusion of the book.
SPEAKER_00: So did anything surface for you as we went through, or again, uh comments or questions about the video.
SPEAKER_05: I have a question.
SPEAKER_00: Please.
SPEAKER_05: Maybe I misread this.
SPEAKER_05: See, Jeremiah was he the grandfather of King of Jedediah?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah is in some kind of priestly class.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm disagreeing very openly with the book that Jeremiah may not have been in the highest class of priests, he may have been a Levite, so he may not have been a member of of the nobility.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but he's not related to these kings in any way.
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
SPEAKER_05: I guess their names are similar, but I read it and I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_00: Their names are very similar.
SPEAKER_05: Wait a minute.
SPEAKER_05: And then getting along his grandson to be the king?
SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so there's uh some real the real big tricky wicket when we read the history in Kings and Chronicles is that there's King Jehoiakim, and then there's King Jehoiakin.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And those are really darn close.
SPEAKER_00: And then you may have noticed in the video, the king of Assyria is called Tiglat Pelezer, but they call him Pull.
SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like reading War and Peace, if you've ever done that, which there's like each character has 20 different names, which only a Russian person would know.
SPEAKER_00: Um anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon is called Jedediah as well, which is really confusing because he's yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_05: Just because.
SPEAKER_00: Just because.
SPEAKER_00: That's apparently a common nickname for Solomon, Jedediah.
SPEAKER_00: Sounds a lot alike.
SPEAKER_02: All these names have meaning, correct?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I mean there's a really strong read that says your name, particularly in the Hebrew Bible, is an indication of your character or who you are.
SPEAKER_00: You heard that on Sunday morning if you were here for the sermon, um, and it does kind of bear out.
SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes we're scratching our head trying to figure out what the connection is, and sometimes there's some real confusion, like Solomon is related to the word for peace, but it's more than likely not a Hebrew name.
SPEAKER_00: It's more than likely a Jebuzite name because David comes from the Jebuzite town of Bethlehem, and so Salim is a Jebuzite god.
SPEAKER_00: And what do you know?
SPEAKER_00: Solomon builds a temple much like the Jebuzites.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew people didn't worship in temples, they had the tabernacle that went all around.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Solomon and David are around Jebuzites who build a home for their gods, and so what do you know?
SPEAKER_00: They build a home for God.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So did the Levites live in the temple?
SPEAKER_00: So the Levites in general manned these local shrines, and this is a thing that we don't like have a big grasp on.
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't just the temple in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: There was that.
SPEAKER_00: But if you had to butcher an animal and you lived uh like in the Galilee, that's a really a far way to take your butchery.
SPEAKER_00: So you needed essentially a shrine, and and that's where the Levites were.
SPEAKER_00: And notice that there's shrines, particularly in Dan and Bethel, and Jeremiah refers to those.
SPEAKER_00: He says, or in Shiloh as well.
SPEAKER_00: But go have a look at Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem's gonna be like that.
SPEAKER_00: Shiloh was destroyed by the Assyrians 722 utterly, and and Jerusalem doesn't get totally destroyed until 586.
SPEAKER_00: We're getting to hear, the book is asking you to hear and read this history again and again and again because it's not familiar to us.
SPEAKER_00: Again, a lot, I think the average church person doesn't even realize that the the kingdom split into Israel and Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Most people don't realize that the northern kingdom is called Jacob or Israel or Ephraim, like interchangeably, over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: And and that there's this sort of transition between the knee, and it's important, it's not the Assyrian Empire, that's ancient.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Neo-Assyrian Empire that becomes the war machine.
SPEAKER_00: They're like the first Sparta to give you, I mean, they predate Sparta by 400 years, but they're extremely militaristic.
SPEAKER_00: Um and then that only lasts so long as we know on the world scene, they get replaced not by Babylon, because like the code of Hammurabi is from 2000 BC.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Neo-Babylonians that replace them, and then those get replaced by the Medes and the Persians, which we we now call the Persian Empire.
SPEAKER_00: The Medes get kind of swallowed by the Persians.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Greeks come next.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Romans.
SPEAKER_02: In Jeremiah, they talk about, I maybe spelled this wrong.
SPEAKER_02: They call them the C-H-A-L-D-A-L.
SPEAKER_02: The Chaldeans.
SPEAKER_02: Now they are, are they a uh uh we'll call it a uh were they hired, if you will, by the Neo-Babylonians to fight their battle?
SPEAKER_00: The Chaldeans are the Neo-Babylonians.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So Abraham comes from Ur of the Chaldees, which is pretty close to modern-day Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Ancient day, modern day Babylon, ancient day Babylon, and that of course is the seat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and that's again Chaldeans is a is a wide geographic swath.
SPEAKER_00: If you say the Babylonians, you're talking about the people who live in the city Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: That's one city.
SPEAKER_00: The Chalbee is the most large geographic area.
SPEAKER_00: Curiously enough, it's really close to Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these aren't like vastly different people.
SPEAKER_00: They're essentially Fertile Crescent people, both the Assyrians and the Neo-Babylonians.
SPEAKER_02: I read a little bit of some other literature, and it said that the Assyrians are really good documenters.
SPEAKER_02: That they actually built, well, in particular, Assyria built a particularly good library.
SPEAKER_02: Whereas the Babylonians were not.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Neo-Babylonian Empire didn't last very long.
SPEAKER_00: It lasted about 50 years, to put that in perspective, and then Cyrus wipes it out.
SPEAKER_00: Cyrus is the Persian Persian.
SPEAKER_00: And we have some Persian artifacts, and of course, the Persian culture and religion sort of was you know, Syria is this first really big kind of empire.
SPEAKER_00: Babylon is a quick takeover, and then the Persians grab all of that and make it bigger.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Greeks sort of take that, and the Romans take that, you know, so that you kind of get expansion of empires.
SPEAKER_02: Does Persia ultimately take the uh what is today in modern Israel?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, all the way down to here.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_05: Now I'm curious to know, have not the Persians been monotheistic for a long time?
SPEAKER_00: Uh depends how you choose to read it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because the the the religion of the Persians is Zoroastrianism.
SPEAKER_00: So if you ask your regular old Zoroastrian, I think they would tell you there are monotheists.
SPEAKER_00: Although there's people who quibble and say that Ahura Mazda, the supreme deity, has an opposing deity, and there might be dualism, like sort of like we do with God and Satan in a corrupted version of Christian religion that gives like this opposite figure a lot of power.
SPEAKER_00: Um the thing we don't really know is, I mean, most of the Zoroastrian scriptures are no longer extant, like they there's a lot missing.
SPEAKER_00: So you can read the Zarathustra, right, which are the writings of Zoroaster, but a lot of them are just missing.
SPEAKER_00: And there's not really a lot of uh Zoroastrians left in the world.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are some, but at one time it was extremely influential, uh, so it hasn't really been maintained, which is an interesting thing when you consider how many of those people there were compared to how many Jewish people there were.
SPEAKER_00: About as many as there are now.
SPEAKER_00: Like half of a percent of really influential religion in the same of the world to have been practiced by so few.
SPEAKER_03: There were still some very strong Persian descendant family.
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh uh what's his name?
SPEAKER_00: Um Bob Marley.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: No, you're way more swagger than Bob Marley, it's Freddie Mercury.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, really?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Of course.
SPEAKER_05: That's right.
SPEAKER_02: He was from that part of the world.
SPEAKER_02: Or I mean his family was.
SPEAKER_00: They were from that part of the world, moved to England, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: His real name is Farouk.
SPEAKER_00: And uh anyway.
SPEAKER_02: I have a question, please.
SPEAKER_02: How do you pronounce N-I-N-E-V-E-H?
SPEAKER_00: Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: In in Hebrew it's pronounced Nineveh, but we call it Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: This is where Jonah ends up going in the book of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And that is arguably the capital of the Assyrian Empire.
SPEAKER_00: The older capital would be the city of Ashur, but um, but it seems like Nineveh is the Neo-Assyrian capital.
SPEAKER_00: So shall we dive straight into some of these bits here?
SPEAKER_00: I do there is one thing I wanted to make sure you saw, and it has to do with covenants, and and I it shows up in Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll read it to you.
SPEAKER_00: You can join me if you want to, but it's in Jeremiah 34, verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to give you a textual example of covenants.
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, there we go.
SPEAKER_00: Um those who transgressed my covenant did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me.
SPEAKER_00: I will make like the calf when they cut it in two and pass between its parts.
SPEAKER_00: So reminder, I told you covenants are never made, they're always cut, and symbolically that is when you split an animal in half and pass between the parts, and you say, if you don't keep your your part, may you be like this calf.
SPEAKER_00: So here's a direct reference to that.
SPEAKER_00: That shows up in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: God, Abraham cuts a bunch of animals in half and passes through them with a torch, and God is present in this terrible, it's Genesis says this like terrible darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And um and here it is again in Jeremiah as well.
SPEAKER_03: Jeremiah what?
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 34, 18.
SPEAKER_00: And the promise of cutting a covenant is if you don't keep your end, I'm gonna cut you in half.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that's how it's different from making a contract or making an agreement.
SPEAKER_00: You don't make a covenant, you always cut one.
SPEAKER_00: So the Jewish covenant reminder is not made at circumcision, it's cut at circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why circumcision is so so important, because it still is a cutting.
SPEAKER_02: Well, this it goes on to say that uh I'm not gonna read it all, but I've seen this more than once.
SPEAKER_02: Their corpses shall be food for the birds of the air and the animals, animals of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
SPEAKER_02: They s this particular passage, if you will, I've read it numerous times in here.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And that's really bad because it means you're deprived of proper burial, which means your afterlife in the place of the dead will be ambiguous.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So this is still true today.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we scramble to get a funeral within three days.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you're Jewish, you're gonna be buried within 24 hours.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you're not gonna go to the morgue in the hospital.
SPEAKER_00: Like if the hospital does that to you, it's really bad.
SPEAKER_00: So Jewish dead patients can stay in that room a lot longer than you can.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish mortician removes them, does whatever embalming, within 24 hours, they're in the ground.
SPEAKER_05: Because I have an in-law who's in this situation, it's Jewish, has a fatal illness, and this is this may sound like a crude question in another state.
SPEAKER_05: Would Jews make arrangements to be close by if a person were gonna die?
SPEAKER_05: Because you wouldn't be able to get a flight out.
SPEAKER_05: Maybe 24 hours.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have people at your funeral, you just have to have one.
SPEAKER_00: But they're in any of this cremation, and they're in any of this, hey, we're gonna wait a week and and prop up the body.
SPEAKER_00: You got 24 hours to get the body in the ground.
SPEAKER_02: I know there may be a is there not only a religious component, but also a I'll call it a uh health component, if you will.
SPEAKER_02: You don't want a dead body sitting around for an hour.
SPEAKER_02: It just starts to to to decompose pretty quickly.
SPEAKER_00: And they don't do all the formaldehyde pumping that we've become accustomed to.
SPEAKER_05: So do you think that affects your afterlife if you pump full of formaldehyde?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't even know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes there's just something you do and you do it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I how could you know I think there's this weird I and this isn't here or there, but I since it came up.
SPEAKER_00: Um, my parents were really opposed to um cremation because how is your body going to be resurrected?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I gotta say, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's people been dead 5,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: For God to reanimate them and give them bodies is no more miraculous than doing that out of a bunch of ashes in my brain.
SPEAKER_00: But part of it is, hey, there's this tradition, you need your body.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so what's interesting is that's a Western tradition and it's relatively new.
SPEAKER_00: Cremation's actually pretty darn old, alright?
SPEAKER_00: The Indian people have been doing that for a long, long, long, long time.
SPEAKER_00: So it's funny, we're not.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I love about the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to make decisions based on scripture reason and tradition, knowing that tradition's not always reasonable.
SPEAKER_00: We still make room for it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we do, because hey, life isn't just subject to pure reason.
SPEAKER_00: It isn't.
SPEAKER_00: We don't make decisions like that.
SPEAKER_05: The most important thing is to make sure you're really dead.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that helps.
SPEAKER_00: Cremational do that.
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll let you know.
SPEAKER_05: Didn't they used to have a little bell?
SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know how that came about?
SPEAKER_02: This is really may I.
SPEAKER_02: You please.
SPEAKER_02: It's really interesting.
SPEAKER_02: Back in Ireland, okay, they made, they made the first Irish whiskies uh were not well uh distilled.
SPEAKER_02: And they had a lot of methanol in them.
SPEAKER_02: And so sometimes people would pass out and they would appear to be dead.
SPEAKER_02: So they would they would have a wake and then they would bury them with a string and a bell above the ground so that should they wake up, they could they could wheel their toe and the bell would ring.
SPEAKER_02: But of course, I would say who's in the the the um graveyard at night when the bell is ringing.
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, that's how that came about.
SPEAKER_02: And and and the same thing with a wake.
SPEAKER_02: The reason the wake came about was so that they might wake up.
SPEAKER_02: They might wake up and they did.
SPEAKER_05: And you may want to wake up during cremation.
SPEAKER_05: That's what's scary.
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like that.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no waking up during cremation.
SPEAKER_05: Oh no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: That fire is like 2,000 degrees.
SPEAKER_00: That's like a kiln.
SPEAKER_02: So jumping into a uh scares me.
SPEAKER_02: Volcano.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to make sure you know.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it would be.
SPEAKER_05: I just don't know, but people are getting cremated now because it's so expensive to have a normal funeral.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's much more environmentally friendly, too.
SPEAKER_05: But the interesting thing about that is his grandfather.
SPEAKER_05: It's uh wanted to be cremated because he said, Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting to know that in Germany you you can be buried with a with a maximum term of 50 years, after which they will dig you up and cremate you because they don't have enough farmland.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it was British.
SPEAKER_05: And I heard on the radio last night that we've already done pre-mation that some cultures have a practice of digging up the dead on their birthday every year, having a picnic with them and re-burying them.
SPEAKER_00: Well, just because you asked about the Zoroastrians, I'm going to tell you, you can go to these places in Iran still that are like these um where Zoroastrians did burial, and they didn't they didn't really do burial as we understand it.
SPEAKER_00: They took uh people's dead bodies up to these towers, and vultures ate all of the stuff, and then they took the bones, collected them, and put them in an ossuary and buried that.
SPEAKER_00: And you were there for two weeks as a family, like eating food and grieving, and then you went back with the bones and put them in the family ossuary.
SPEAKER_00: So in India it's been a big problem because they do this, and India is really populated, and the vultures, well, they drop pieces of people when they fly away.
SPEAKER_00: So that's been a major problem.
SPEAKER_04: They put it in the river.
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Not the Zoroastrians, the Indians put the ashes in the river.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: We saw one of those places, one of the towers.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: And very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: It's totally different.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I do have to make sure we go back to Jeremiah, and you're here at a great time.
SPEAKER_00: It's because there's a lot of really good things here.
SPEAKER_00: So we want to make sure we get what happens with Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: Um, just chronologically in the book.
SPEAKER_00: He does some interesting, interesting bits, and maybe let's go backward.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah tells the people, don't go to Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: And they say, You're crazy, we're going to Egypt, and we're taking you with us.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah goes, and this is why, if you've seen the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Ark is in Egypt, because they there's this myth that the Ark was never destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: It was taken to Egypt, and we have found some very old textual graveyard.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, remember, Hebrew skulls aren't discarded, they're buried like they're a person because they have God's name written on them, particularly an Elephantine island, and that's sort of down by Luxor and Karnak, and it's just an island in the middle of the Nile.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that's the very end of the book.
SPEAKER_00: Well, but that's the end of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: So apparently he dies in an exile in Egypt, he didn't want.
SPEAKER_00: If Jeremiah was gonna pick where to go, it's clear he would have picked Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't he go there?
SPEAKER_00: He's not smart enough.
SPEAKER_00: This is really important.
SPEAKER_00: This is where I disagree wholeheartedly with the book.
SPEAKER_00: People who were smart and educated and part of the aristocracy did not have a choice about whether they were staying or going.
SPEAKER_00: They were taken into captivity.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah didn't make the cut.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean he was a dummy.
SPEAKER_00: What I mean is he didn't have like the proper connections or wealth for birthright.
SPEAKER_00: He has some money because he's able to buy a field.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is really important.
SPEAKER_00: He buys a field at fair market value before the invasion.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a good real estate plan, right?
SPEAKER_00: So after, and I mentioned this in a sermon a month ago.
SPEAKER_00: After Chernobyl melts down, the land abutting it should be available for pennies on the ruple.
SPEAKER_00: You should not be paying pounds on the ruple for post Chernobyl land.
SPEAKER_00: But Jeremiah does that as an effort of a good faith, and honestly, as an as an effort of justice.
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures are very, very clear that you're not to profiteer off your brother in need.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah actually lives under the Torah very carefully that way.
SPEAKER_00: This is apparently a final land transaction.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, many transactions are reversible in the year of Jubilee.
SPEAKER_00: When you have to sell land to pay a debt, you will get it back 50 years ago, even if you're dead, your family gets it back.
SPEAKER_00: This kind of transaction, though, is sealed and marked, etc.
SPEAKER_00: This is a permanent thing.
SPEAKER_00: The people who have sold the land, what that means, right, is that they've sort of sold part of their ancestral story forever.
SPEAKER_00: Doing this is really a big thing.
SPEAKER_00: And hence, Jeremiah pays fair market value to honor how deep of a ritual this is.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02: So if you purchase it, it's yours forever.
SPEAKER_00: If you borrow depending on the terms of the purchase.
SPEAKER_00: If it's a fire sale, your family will get it back.
SPEAKER_00: If you're liquidating it to pay a debt, because the Bible is very shrewd about this.
SPEAKER_00: If you have to liquidate your land to pay a debt, your family will always be slaves.
SPEAKER_00: Because they'll always be starting with no capital to farm, which means they'll always be sharecroppers or servants.
SPEAKER_00: So every 50 years you're supposed to reset it so that people have a chance then of no longer being born into servitude.
SPEAKER_00: We're not sure anybody ever practiced this.
SPEAKER_00: We just know it's in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: So when Bono says forgive the third world debt, really this is kind of a biblical principle that, hey, if Africa owes us a bajillion trillion dollars, how are they ever going to pay that back?
SPEAKER_00: And if we're demanding always interest, if interest is being compounded daily and all they can pay is interest, how are they ever going to pay principal?
SPEAKER_00: If their money is all going to this debt, how will they invest in infrastructure?
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, this makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, lenders don't like that practice.
SPEAKER_00: However, it allows for new trade to emerge.
SPEAKER_00: You know, so it's if you can be very short-sighted with it.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the field of Anathoth.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Jeremiah does have a conclusion that's not poetic.
SPEAKER_00: You notice it's prose.
SPEAKER_00: The very last chapter says Zedekiah tries to run away.
SPEAKER_00: They catch him, they kill his children in front of him, and then put his eyes out and take him back to Babylon, where he lives in this kind of sad place.
SPEAKER_00: So that's where the book ends, although that's just not really a poetic, I mean, that's not like the rest of the book.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the factual pattern into the story, and we believe that's how that actually went.
SPEAKER_00: Prior to this, right, Jeremiah gets imprisoned twice.
SPEAKER_00: Once he gets imprisoned because the people perceive him to be a deserter.
SPEAKER_00: The Babylonians back off, and he goes out to see his land, and he gets reported as deserting, and he says, No, no, I'm a deserter, and he gets put in jail, and he appeals to the king.
SPEAKER_00: What did I do wrong?
SPEAKER_00: I told you these people were coming.
SPEAKER_00: The false prophets told you they were going.
SPEAKER_00: So why are you mistreating me?
SPEAKER_00: Then he sends Baruch, his scribe.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, now this book has decided scribe means secretary, so Jeremiah is too important.
SPEAKER_00: Another way to understand it is Jeremiah himself isn't literate.
SPEAKER_00: He sends his scribe into the temple because he's forbidden to go to share one of his oracles.
SPEAKER_00: And when he shares it, people are real mad and they throw him in a cistern that has no water in it, but has a bunch of mud, right?
SPEAKER_00: And a servant of the king pulls him out of the cistern, and then there's this really important moment, I think, for compassion here.
SPEAKER_00: The king says, What should I do?
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah says, Surrender.
SPEAKER_00: And the king says, if I do that, the people who have gone into exile will mistreat me.
SPEAKER_00: The people who have held out will mistreat me.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah says, No, they won't.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this poor king is in the middle of a rock and a hard place.
SPEAKER_05: And he can't even let them know what they've talked about.
SPEAKER_00: Because if he did, right, he would be in one of those rock or hard places.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is what we call the double bind.
SPEAKER_00: So, a little bit of compassion for Zedekiah.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he knows he's got nowhere to go, but his alternative isn't any better.
SPEAKER_00: Because his own people might lynch him, let's just be honest.
SPEAKER_00: So, do you trust the mercy of the of the of the conqueror, or do you trust the mercy of your own people?
SPEAKER_00: It's tough.
SPEAKER_00: Um, those are some of the the other uh major kind of fact act, right, is that Jeremiah makes a yoke of wood.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Look, this is your yoke.
SPEAKER_00: And this other prophet, Hananiah, says, poppycock and breaks the yoke.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah makes a metal yoke and says, Oh, things will actually be much worse than I had initially offered.
SPEAKER_00: And Hananiah, you'll die in the next year.
SPEAKER_00: And apparently he does.
SPEAKER_00: These are the big actions in the latter part.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, actions sometimes speak louder than words.
SPEAKER_00: So this is like prophetic deed or performance art or whatever it is you want to call it happening here in the book.
SPEAKER_00: We do get another fact issue is that things are really bad, and all the people free their slaves.
SPEAKER_00: And the people back off a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: The Babylonians back off, and then they re-enslave their slaves.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah says, Because you've done that, I will set you all free by the sword.
SPEAKER_00: Which is really tough.
SPEAKER_02: This is him speaking for God.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: You freed them and you re-enslaved them, and that becomes this really interesting thing to think about.
SPEAKER_00: That happened in a concrete historical moment.
SPEAKER_00: But there is this, I think, thought about whether or not we perpetuate that system of injustice.
SPEAKER_00: Uh again, I what's the average credit card uh interest rate?
SPEAKER_00: 20%?
SPEAKER_00: And payday loans is like more than 20%?
SPEAKER_00: And listen, I don't need that stuff, but some people apparently do.
SPEAKER_00: So then how do you free people?
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is where you come back to the Jubilee.
SPEAKER_00: How do you cancel a debt, but also give somebody the opportunity to earn a living wage?
SPEAKER_00: And this is a tough, tough bit.
SPEAKER_00: And if you didn't mind me doing this, I'm gonna talk out of Jeremiah for a second.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody liked some post on Facebook, and I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook, I sort of do it when I have nothing to do for five minutes at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00: I never do it right before bed because that's not gonna be good for me.
SPEAKER_00: But it was about how Walmart has gone to automatic checkouts, and um, people are all enraged about Walmart going to automatic checkouts, so they're not gonna shop there anymore, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right, I'll believe it when I see it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Walmart has been really, really pushing the boundary of like employment rights for a long time, and no one cares about that.
SPEAKER_00: But now they're upset because they don't like computers and they're taking away American jobs.
SPEAKER_00: It's really, really interesting to think about.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so does buying a pair of shoes that are manufactured in Vietnam take away American jobs, and nobody seems to be complaining about that on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this really interesting uh book, apparently, that was written that says most jobs are essentially just made up so that people have something to do.
SPEAKER_00: They actually have very little actual value, but it gives people a perceived value and they can earn this wage.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you think about that premise.
SPEAKER_00: I think there's something to it, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think that that's about this a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And some of the posts on this were saying, well, uh that's because we insist on paying these people$15 an hour, so if we paid in less, then people wouldn't need these computer checkouts, and they couldn't survive.
SPEAKER_00: So, like this is this interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, listen, we'll free you to be, we want our, we're gonna mandate you be check-arounder people at Walmart at 29 hours a week so they don't have to pay you benefits, and they'll hire you at whatever you choose to work because capitalism's great.
SPEAKER_00: So pay people$2 an hour to do this, and then we'll go back and shop at Walmart because people will be nice and respectful.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I think the Bible actually has a lot of insight into these kinds of problems.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that there's a straight ruling because it's really hard, but I think there's a whole lot of insight into this.
SPEAKER_00: Similarly, this is going to sound crazy.
SPEAKER_00: I I actually think I'm probably superfluous in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, you know, there's all kinds of online resources.
SPEAKER_00: There's people way more educated and talented than I am.
SPEAKER_00: You could just watch those videos, you know.
SPEAKER_04: You're so much more fun, though.
SPEAKER_00: I choose to believe that.
SPEAKER_00: I actually think, I actually think it's because, and this is I think the same thing with the checkout people, there's an opportunity for relationship there that we can't have and automate.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And and I and I thought, you know, there's actually these really great, like instructed Eucharist videos, and I'm like, hmm, maybe I should disconnect people with those.
SPEAKER_00: But I thought, no, I should make my own version of those videos because then they'll have a link with me in this local community.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably what I end up wanting to do.
SPEAKER_00: Um, because we are essentially relational people, and that's not contrary to this book, that's not wasteful, that's actually a form of investment.
SPEAKER_00: So the question is, how do we choose to invest in that structure or not?
SPEAKER_00: And do we create, I mean, it's interesting, right?
SPEAKER_00: We have a permanent class of servants in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the people who are baristas and who work at checkout counters.
SPEAKER_00: Um and we can respond to that one of two ways.
SPEAKER_00: We can be really mad that the servants aren't treating us right, or we can relate to those are people in our family.
SPEAKER_00: I I guess there's more than two options.
SPEAKER_00: But but I actually think this bit about economic justice and slavery and whether and how we treat that is even in the case of this Walmart checkout thing, is wrapped up here in Jeremiah for us to consider.
SPEAKER_00: So again, if if we get rid of these automated checkouts at the grocery, which I listen, I don't like them, but if they're open, I'm gonna go there because it's faster and I rarely need help.
SPEAKER_00: Um if a if a human being's open, I'll always go there first.
SPEAKER_00: But if not, I'll go to the open one first, because I believe in efficiency, darn it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so so but but what all this means for for folk, I I think Jeremiah asked that question, really.
SPEAKER_00: And and what do we release people to?
SPEAKER_00: So again, if we release people from prison and you've paid your debt to society, but now you have to put on every job application, you're a convicted felon.
SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna hire you?
SPEAKER_05: Nobody they don't hire you.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how do this this prisoners they're all thieves because we sent them to jail and they went back and stole again after they couldn't get a job?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like this becomes really interesting.
SPEAKER_00: And in prison we socialize them to live in this very, very constrictive environment where they have to get up and do this and do this and do this and do this, and they come out and they don't have anybody telling them what to do anymore.
SPEAKER_00: When we taught them they have to do what we say, and they find the world like really big and confusing.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same with veterans, right?
SPEAKER_00: They come back, right, and it's like, well, we don't want to hear about how you know your friend got shot.
SPEAKER_00: Like, keep that away from us, so then look, what is there for them?
SPEAKER_05: This is there's a thing called the prison industrial complex, and there is a reason they want people to go to jail, and it's one of the reasons they created rap music about all of that.
SPEAKER_05: The lyrics about committing crime because they're making money in the prison industrial complex.
SPEAKER_00: All of this, I think, is really important in social justice business, and you know, the first thing we read in chapter 22 is Jeremiah says, practice repentance or die.
SPEAKER_00: And repentance means being just and righteous.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say anything about piety.
SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: I believe in piety, but piety that does not walk us in to justice and righteousness, Jeremiah says, is idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: So I think this is really interesting because again, having just come back from clergy conference, and again, we think about idolatry, I want to tell you that, and I'm not throwing shade here, I I don't mean all people who go there.
SPEAKER_00: I think the evangelical church is committed to idolatry.
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry to disturb you.
SPEAKER_01: Can you point me in the direction of the keys for that track and I'm gonna move it out?
SPEAKER_00: Either in my office desk.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Is it a problem if I add somebody up there too?
SPEAKER_00: I'll just give them.
SPEAKER_00: Is that okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna get them.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you want to give it to me, I'll think.
SPEAKER_03: The only thing is if somebody dropped me off, so I'd be walking home if I don't get that track.
SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
unknown: Oh, does the next bottle stuff?
SPEAKER_01: No, I've got a I've got a bunch of chocolate.
unknown: And it had it's Snickers, so it has nuts and it's so good protein.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, there you go.
SPEAKER_05: It's healthy.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I said a really inflammatory thing, and I'm gonna come back to it.
SPEAKER_00: You heard it on the sermon on Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: I was at my home and two evangelical people came.
SPEAKER_00: Well, one man and his two teenagers came and they wanted to convert me to their way of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And the way it worked was they said, Do you have food for the food pantry?
SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I give it to my church.
SPEAKER_00: They said, While we're here, we want to hear what you think about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We want to hear what you think about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is what they said.
SPEAKER_00: When I told them what I thought about Jesus, they did not want to hear that.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to correct what I thought about Jesus so that it matched what they thought.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this may not sound like injustice to you, but they didn't even ask me my name.
SPEAKER_00: They were so caring about my eternal soul that they didn't ask my name.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think they know that they're even doing it.
SPEAKER_00: And I think I think they've been told that this is the right way to treat folk.
SPEAKER_00: And what I want to suggest is.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, did they give you their hands?
SPEAKER_01: Did they introduce themselves?
SPEAKER_00: Because it didn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: Our souls were too important for all of that.
SPEAKER_01: Their theology was more important than the humanity.
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where I think what's really interesting is what we hear the word idolatry and we think it's wrong doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah seems to really be talking about wrong practice, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And I know that those two really can inform each other, but they don't always.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm almost at the point where I'd say, if you have to pick between having faith and doing what's right, pick what's right.
SPEAKER_00: But I think the truth is we don't have to make that choice.
SPEAKER_00: It's a false choice.
SPEAKER_00: It's an idol.
SPEAKER_00: Because what I grew up is if you have to pick between doing what's right and the right and the right belief, you pick the belief.
SPEAKER_00: Christians aren't better, they're just saved.
SPEAKER_00: Christians sure as hell had better be better.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I think.
SPEAKER_00: Not like better than you, but I mean in the process of becoming better folk.
SPEAKER_01: Which is the way.
SPEAKER_00: Which I think is the way.
SPEAKER_01: The way, the big W way.
SPEAKER_00: And and this I think is part of what Jeremiah offers us to consider.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this really tough line in there.
SPEAKER_00: When the people bring in Jeremiah and they're all mad, I don't know if you notice this, they say, well, what about that scroll of Micah?
SPEAKER_00: Because Micah said there'd be this doom, but the people repented, and God changed God's mind.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe that's it here.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: Because as an evangelical, of course, God knew everything, and God never changed God's mind, because God knew everything.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah says God changes God's mind.
SPEAKER_00: That is, there are times where God spares us from natural consequences of our actions if we seek justice and not mercy.
SPEAKER_00: This is really tough to read, don't you think?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Because I think we could hear it like, oh my god, I better do the right thing all the time, or God will punish me.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that's what Jeremiah is saying.
SPEAKER_00: I think what Jeremiah is asking us to do is to constantly be trying to free ourselves from idolatry so that we can enjoy our lives more and offer enjoyment to other people more.
SPEAKER_00: And I I go back to this a couple of times to think it's really important.
SPEAKER_00: Because I know there's a problem in the world doesn't mean I have to fix it.
SPEAKER_00: I may not be able to.
SPEAKER_00: But there is something really important that's saying that's a problem.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what to do about it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to do about what I believe to be really shameful employment practices at Walmart, but I can tell you Target's not a lot better.
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
SPEAKER_00: I don't really know what to do about people living in substandard housing conditions and manufacturing cheap goods that I buy.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't even know where to buy comparable goods, even at higher prices, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, if I can buy a pair of shoes for$100 or$50 and they're the same shoes, I'm gonna pay$50.
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, that isn't gonna affect the person who made them at all.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where it becomes really, really, I think, complicated.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't have a big mind for this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's things I feel like I know, um, but the connection is tough.
SPEAKER_00: The connection's tough.
SPEAKER_00: And I and I will tell you, because you asked about the clergy conference, we had a lady come in who who is a womanist Old Testament scholar.
SPEAKER_00: Womanist, that's a black feminist, right?
SPEAKER_00: So that's different from ordinary feminism, it's it's explicitly black woman's feminist theology and has very different read of things because the white experience and black experience in this country are really different.
SPEAKER_00: And this person was kind of incendiary, to be honest with you, and was saying that when we preach, we need to always be talking about the evils of empire and the evils of this and that.
SPEAKER_00: And so I get that's fair, but if I got up and just said, this is this bad, this is bad, this is bad, I think that plays into this outrage culture that I see happening right now that I would tell you is one of the seven deadly sins, because outrage culture doesn't build any bridges.
SPEAKER_00: All it does is just build adrenaline cortisol, and people get really mad and disenfranchised.
SPEAKER_00: And if I got up week after week and told you this policy is bad, this is evil, this is evil, this is evil, and I never we never built any bridges, what good would it do?
SPEAKER_00: So I think the task is to hear this and then say, what bridge can I build?
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that I cannot go over the Grand Canyon, at least, at least, I hate to say at least, but what bridge can I build?
SPEAKER_03: How do you I how do you identify the bridges?
SPEAKER_01: Identify what?
SPEAKER_01: Bridges.
SPEAKER_00: Bridges.
SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
SPEAKER_00: I and and I don't know the answer to I don't know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_00: I think what we do is we say, okay, there's this ideology ideology problem.
SPEAKER_00: Now I would tell you, it takes two people to have a dialogue, it takes one person to talk.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So when evangelicals come to my home, and I'm not throwing, I'm not saying they're bad folk, at least they're out there, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um they may not be willing to listen.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't just want to hear them talk.
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, if I just wanted to talk to them, I'd be uh betraying what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So I think the thing is we have to find context where there's traction for us to do something together.
SPEAKER_00: That takes that makes the world a better place for somebody.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe a bri maybe a bridge is simply a step towards.
SPEAKER_01: And I have uh I think a good example of a bridge, opportunity for a bridge.
SPEAKER_01: I am outraged about payday learners, the industry of payday learning.
SPEAKER_01: I cannot do anything as an individual about that industry.
SPEAKER_01: I could write my congressman, but many of my congressmen, or some of our congressmen, own payday loan goods.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's lucrative.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01: But what I can do is sit with vets who cannot find work.
SPEAKER_01: People who've been to jail who cannot find work, or just poverty-level people, and explain to them why a payday loan is dangerous, why it gets them further in debt, and explain to them ways that they can avoid taking out payday loans and help them learn how to pay off this one and then that one and then that one.
SPEAKER_01: So money management at the poverty level or educating at the poverty level for me is a bridge.
SPEAKER_01: And it helps my heart to know that I'm doing something.
SPEAKER_01: Just something.
SPEAKER_00: And think about what we could do, how we could do more together on that one thing.
SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you, four years ago, I insisted that we stop using styrofoam cups to serve coffee, not only because of the environmental impact, but because people don't stay.
SPEAKER_00: When you give people to go cup, they go.
SPEAKER_05: They go.
SPEAKER_00: So we got mugs.
SPEAKER_00: And the vestry person of the day was the person who had to set up the coffee and clean it up.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, that was a lot more work because now we were watching mugs.
SPEAKER_00: And I was buying something at Lowe's, and actually I wasn't buying anything, I was getting cut Christmas tree branches so we can make advent wreaths.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a guy who offered to help me load these in my car who helped in the garden section, and he complained to me that the company was cutting his hours.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I don't know if you're interested at all in serving coffee, but we have a need, and we could pay for that, I think.
SPEAKER_00: So four years later, he's still here.
SPEAKER_00: And what a win for us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I haven't looked at his financial statements.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't looked.
SPEAKER_00: He said he has a need.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been doing this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I guess we could have sent that money to Episcopal Relief and Development, and I'm so glad we didn't.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that we made a bridge to somebody in our community, and that relationship has brought a lot of fruit.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, when my wife came, she comes very periodically, and I said, Yeah, you know, we've done this.
SPEAKER_00: And she was like, Oh, that's an interesting idea.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, Well, did you meet the coffee guy?
SPEAKER_00: And she was like, I don't know, who is it?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, you know, he looks a little different from our average parishier, and she was like, What Tommy?
SPEAKER_00: Like, no, like Tommy clearly goes to your church.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in fact, he sort of does, and he sort of we have this relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and like that's this win-win.
SPEAKER_00: And this is an interesting thing about clergy conference.
SPEAKER_00: I went to the seminar where this guy said two things that are really interesting that churches can do that we don't do.
SPEAKER_00: One is that many churches have commercial grade kitchens.
SPEAKER_00: We don't.
SPEAKER_00: But that if you had a commercial grade kitchen, what you could do is between the hours of 10 and 2 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, use it because that's when Uber Eats sells the most product.
SPEAKER_00: Uber Reets is this sort of thing you order out, they come pick it up.
SPEAKER_00: So essentially, you can employ people who have no job to work these hours where nobody's hiring and make money.
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, you can profit because it costs$2 to make a sandwich that you can sell for$15 on Uber Eats.
SPEAKER_00: So this is like this interesting entrepreneurial idea, right?
SPEAKER_02: And everybody wins.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody wins because the church can even have some of the revenue if you need them.
SPEAKER_00: And this other idea was hey, you could organize a cleaning company because I can guarantee you there were at least 16 families in the church that hire cleaners.
SPEAKER_00: And if we found new cleaners and offered them initially our cleaning product capital that we own, which costs a thousand dollars to get started, essentially 16 people could generate a million dollars worth of revenue a year, of which the church can keep$200,000 as income, and the 16 folk get to have$800,000 in proceeds from the work that they generated because we pulled in together and made that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't want to say that the cleaner I'm already employing doesn't need my work, so I'm not saying fire cleaner, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting way to think about this, and I thought, oh man, you know, like I thought about uh teaching Bible studies and baptizing kids and offering pastoral care, and 60% or more of my job is already taken up with administration, and here we're talking about more for me to administer, and really what we're talking about is practicing justice and righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what's interesting is we don't even think about the capital we we do a lot better job, I can tell you, than most places.
SPEAKER_00: We don't even think how to use the capital we have very well.
SPEAKER_00: Story I got told from a lady who joined the church last year, we were looking for her letter, and the church that she'd been baptized in had been closed by the diocese so that it could be turned into a community center.
SPEAKER_00: And my immediate thought was how sad that you had to close a church to turn it into a community center.
SPEAKER_00: We did a pretty good job here of saying yes to folk, I I think.
SPEAKER_00: Um but I think we could do more together.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: And it occurred to me that a lot of times when priestly ministry is all about offering sacrifices to the temple and not being entrepreneurial for ways to engage in justice in the world.
SPEAKER_00: We're doing what Jeremiah is really mad about.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: When I say entrepreneurial, I don't mean about making more money for the church, although, hey, it's great if we do.
SPEAKER_00: I mean about engaging in practices of justice that actually give people dignity, living wages, and relationships, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, Tommy is my best example because boy, that guy's welcoming, isn't he?
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, what a double win for us.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I will tell you, I've tried it before.
SPEAKER_00: I hired somebody once upon a time who had come out of an abused background, and I thought that was the right thing to do, and it wasn't a good hire.
SPEAKER_00: It just wasn't.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm glad I took the risk.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, because at the end of the day, I lost a couple months of wages, but we figured that out.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it wasn't like they didn't steal anything, it's not like you know, um, any real scandal happened, they just weren't a good employee.
SPEAKER_00: But but I gave somebody a try who I think nobody else would have given a try.
SPEAKER_00: And they failed in their own right.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was sort of the deal.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think though, there's this there's this opportunity for us to not solve the world's problems, because we can't do that.
SPEAKER_00: I just we can't.
SPEAKER_00: But I think for us to think what problems really grab my heart, and if I brought those to other people, is there something we could do to address that problem somehow?
SPEAKER_00: Not the forget about solving problems.
SPEAKER_00: This is what's hard for me is I have a math degree and I shouldn't have it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, mathematicians think up new problems, many of which are unsolvable.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's their job.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, here's a new problem.
SPEAKER_00: Engineers solve problems.
SPEAKER_00: So, this I think is an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: I love solving problems, even if it's just a calculus problem, because at the end, I made the world a better place.
SPEAKER_00: Even if just on a worksheet.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's actually one of the things that would be great for us to live into as a parish where we have so many freaking engineers for us to think how can we solve a problem and make the world a better place?
SPEAKER_00: Because we can, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're the people, God, go look at that shuttle in the rocket park.
SPEAKER_00: I would never get on that thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: It looks like somebody made that in high school shock class.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you look at it up close, it's not fancy or anything.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, ooh, um, we did that.
SPEAKER_00: So, so if we put that same determination and willingness to follow processes and this sort of commitment, what could really what could we not solve?
SPEAKER_00: What could we not solve?
SPEAKER_00: I by the way, I think that's all in here.
SPEAKER_00: So consider Jeremiah uses this great image for us as a church.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the do you know the earliest image?
SPEAKER_00: The earliest symbol for the Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: Earlier than the fish.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the cross.
SPEAKER_05: It wasn't the star.
SPEAKER_00: It's Christ the Good Shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: Christ the Good Shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: It looks like Jesus with a crozier in his hand and an invitation.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw the image here.
SPEAKER_00: It's the first time you get this really strong image.
SPEAKER_00: In John, Gospel of John, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: The bad shepherds, the bad shepherds don't care about the sheep.
SPEAKER_00: The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, and the sheep know my voice.
SPEAKER_00: John didn't make that up.
SPEAKER_00: He copied and pasted it right out of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: The bad shepherds of the people destroy them and scatter them, and they're only in it for their own benefit.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, God will directly come shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're asked to be God's shepherds.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is an important thing that we usually get wrong.
SPEAKER_00: We mix metaphors.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying this now, even though it's not quite in Jeremiah, but I think it is.
SPEAKER_00: I've been told that this is uh that the clergy are the sheep dogs, and we're here to herd the flock, and here's the proof.
SPEAKER_00: We're wearing our collar, it's connected to the bishop's leash.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's all funny, and I think it's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, who is God's flock?
SPEAKER_00: Everybody.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like somebody's a shepherd and somebody's a sheep.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself did not come as a shepherd with a crozier, he came as the Lamb of God.
SPEAKER_00: So the way we shepherd is we accompany the wayward and we say, listen, this is not sustainable.
SPEAKER_00: Let's join the flock and let's move as a flock toward sustainability.
SPEAKER_05: Is there an image somewhere of Christ the Good Shepherd?
SPEAKER_00: There's one in our chapel.
SPEAKER_00: He looks kind of upset to be holding that sheep over his shoulders.
SPEAKER_00: There's one in the glass where Christ the Good Shepherd's going like this.
SPEAKER_00: Only one I've ever seen, and it's because I helped design it.
SPEAKER_00: The sheep is jumping into his arms, like willingly, not begrudgingly.
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting thing, right, when we can get our fellow sheep to come willingly into more sustainable life together.
SPEAKER_00: This write-eyed Jeremiah, though, is really quite lovely, right?
SPEAKER_00: So whose job is it to shepherd folk?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it is partly my job as jobs go, because that's like the distribution of duties.
SPEAKER_00: But it is also, in some ways, like not my job to do all of it, but to help make some of the connections that we as the rest of the flock follow through.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think there's something really interesting about this, and that that's the practice of justice and righteousness and repentance that God is most interested in.
SPEAKER_05: Have the children in the school been able to make their own drawing of Christ a good children?
SPEAKER_00: Oh well, we haven't had the lesson yet.
SPEAKER_05: But they will do that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it'd be nice if we did that.
SPEAKER_00: Longest time ago, I thought it should be a sheep holding another sheep.
SPEAKER_00: And they're both just so happy.
SPEAKER_00: Because to be honest, when you love somebody and you hold them, I mean my daughter's seven, she's getting too big to hold, and I am so I will be so sad the day I can no longer pick her up.
SPEAKER_00: I've probably got five more years because I like to think I'm a strong guy.
SPEAKER_00: Um she's heavy and it's hard.
SPEAKER_00: And how my heart will hurt when I can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: The day, the night when my dad told me you're too heavy to pick up.
SPEAKER_00: And this, I think, then becomes that interesting image, right?
SPEAKER_04: You sit.
SPEAKER_00: You can sit down, you can change the arrangement, or you can get help.
SPEAKER_00: Because we can do more together.
SPEAKER_00: I mean it.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: I this is, but see, all this kind of poetic speak, it may sound like, oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what we're beating.
SPEAKER_05: So how does God feel when you have God doesn't have feelings.
SPEAKER_05: God's bigger than feelings.
SPEAKER_05: That's been there maybe a time when he just has sort of let you take on a little more responsibility for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't think God's our chief enabler, but I sure do think God carries us all the way.
SPEAKER_02: Well, wait a second, Mike.
SPEAKER_02: Throughout what we've been reading, God's not happy.
SPEAKER_02: He's mad at the Israelites, he's mad at the Judah.
SPEAKER_02: So he's gotta have feelings because he's mad.
SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you, who wrote the scriptures?
SPEAKER_01: Man.
SPEAKER_00: Usually man, explicitly, not just humans, man, men do.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And as we said, men don't carry sorrow, we choose to carry anger.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So the truth is, right?
SPEAKER_00: If I asked you in your most maddest point with your kids or your spouse or your parents, was there a multiplier underneath that of sorrow or anguish or disillusionment?
SPEAKER_00: And you told me no, you'd be lying to me.
SPEAKER_00: For men, it's a multiplier.
SPEAKER_00: It takes anger and amps it up because we can't deal with that.
SPEAKER_00: So I think we always have to say, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it helps us to understand God's.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when Jeremiah talks in feeling and God's thoughts, right, that gives us some insight, but but if we hold on to the insight too hard, we've kind of said God's like some kind of human being.
SPEAKER_02: Well, are we saying then if I'm sorry that don't we miss if God has if God has no emotions or no feeling, um when he says you're not following my covenant and you're I'm going to punish you, he's doing it without feeling.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I wonder, so, and I don't know if I'm saying God doesn't have feelings, I'm saying how do we know God has feelings?
SPEAKER_00: So again, all of this, and I'm not questioning.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't want to be too philosophical, I guess this is what we're being, right?
SPEAKER_00: But if God is infinite and our words are finite, then all language about God is idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: We engage in a practice because to not do it, to not do it, would not give us bridges to God and bridges to each other.
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes, and I'll tell you, we often settle for idolatry because it can take us to another place that we didn't know was there or how to even get moving.
SPEAKER_00: So as long as we do it that way, theology's great.
SPEAKER_02: I am having a real difficult time with the definition of idolatry here.
SPEAKER_00: Because we conveniently make it about bowing down to statues, and it's not about that at all.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry means a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry means being unjust and unrighteousness, because the truth is when we benefit at the cost of other people, we're more important than they are.
SPEAKER_00: That's idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry also means when we limit God to one application, because that means having circumscribed God, who is infinitely expanding like the universe itself, we're missing where God else might be going.
SPEAKER_00: So here's a really interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: You can't make graven images of God, and we've got a lot of pictures of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to say at a certain point, fixation on Jesus can be idolatrous.
SPEAKER_00: Particularly when we draw him as a North American man with blue eyes.
SPEAKER_00: But I tell you, even if you drew him as a black man, that can be idolatrous.
SPEAKER_00: And this is part of the thing.
SPEAKER_00: All lives matter, we get that.
SPEAKER_00: But black lives matter isn't saying that black lives matter more than anybody else's, it's saying nobody cares about black lives, so it's really important to put in there that they matter.
SPEAKER_00: If you held on to that so tight, it can become idolatrous.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, white people love to say that because we don't like being told that we're wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And we are.
SPEAKER_00: And other lives matter too.
SPEAKER_00: But when we hear this injunction, like, hey, black lives matter, well, police lives matter too, what we're doing is failing to, we're listening to the letter of the law and not the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: To our own detriment.
SPEAKER_01: And the words we're using are divisive and getting in between us and the spirit of the law.
SPEAKER_01: Just as our maybe this is what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01: Part of what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01: The words we use to describe God are our words.
SPEAKER_01: And those words carry, those words are imprecise, they cannot describe the infinite infinity of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so maybe those words are creating a barrier for us.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's one more thought.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly on those lines, we brought in a poet to clergy conference as like the plenary speaker, which means everybody had to be there for this talk.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things the poet said was, all language has decay to it.
SPEAKER_00: And my math brain chased that out, because so does uranium, right?
SPEAKER_00: Which means language that can be very, very valuable and insightful has a half-life to it.
SPEAKER_00: And as it starts to decay, what do you do with it?
SPEAKER_00: You could say, I'm not using a word like testimony or witness or you name it anymore because it's so hurtful.
SPEAKER_00: But when you bury toxic waste, it leaches into the groundwater.
SPEAKER_00: So this is an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how good the word or the concept is, I don't know that it's like iridium and never decays over our lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: I've drawn in my own life from image to image.
SPEAKER_00: You can follow them up and down my arms if you want to, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's words we use in the church, like forgiveness and righteousness and sin.
SPEAKER_00: And those words change over the arcs of our lives, and they sure have changed generationally, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because we've allowed, we, we have allowed people to co-opt those meanings and make them very flat and reductionist and ugly and gross.
SPEAKER_00: And we can't say, oh, it never meant all those things.
SPEAKER_00: It's polluted the groundwater for us, too.
SPEAKER_00: Evangelism, evangelicals, whoo, those aren't neutral words even in this room.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't used them neutrally.
SPEAKER_00: Those used to be good things.
SPEAKER_00: The groundwater is corrupted, so what do we what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, again, the truth is any image we use for God, I think, has a decay function to it.
SPEAKER_00: It offers to bring, in education terms, it offers to make a scaffold to bring us to a new place.
SPEAKER_00: But if we stay on the scaffold, we didn't get anywhere new.
SPEAKER_00: And if we get to the new place and stop, I mean, essentially, we're going to decay with it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is why it's not the end of faith, it's the journey of faith.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to keep going.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to keep going because if God's infinitely expanding, we better be infinitely following.
SPEAKER_00: And the same has to be true of images.
SPEAKER_00: So idolatry is when we say, this is it.
SPEAKER_01: They work.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm working really hard every week to say idolatry is bigger than we make it.
SPEAKER_00: We make it so easy to not practice idolatry without realizing we're steeped in it.
SPEAKER_00: That it's in the groundwater.
SPEAKER_05: Is it somewhat the fault of the church?
SPEAKER_00: This is the thing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is the church complicit in it?
SPEAKER_00: Just like spin by the cow?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely it is.
SPEAKER_00: Is it the fault of the church?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: And if we blame somebody, would it help anyway?
SPEAKER_00: It's our fault if we choose to settle.
SPEAKER_00: It's our fault if we say, all that's bad, so I'm just going to be at home and be spiritual, because you know, sheep don't do well in isolation, nor do mammals of any kind.
SPEAKER_00: We're created to be social creatures.
SPEAKER_00: It's hardwired in our brain that we not live in isolation.
SPEAKER_00: It's just how we choose to move in communities, I think, is so important for Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: I believe, I gotta get down here.
SPEAKER_00: The women's Bible study is here at 10 30, and here we are.