SPEAKER_03: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Together.
SPEAKER_03: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_03: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_03: O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy.
SPEAKER_03: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy.
SPEAKER_03: That with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal.
SPEAKER_03: Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_03: Now, unfortunately, kiddos, please be seated.
SPEAKER_03: We do not have godly play today.
SPEAKER_03: We have some come up, and so if you are, you know, used to go to godly play, I invite you to maybe come and grab something from the playground, or we've got some other toys and things there.
SPEAKER_03: You are, of course, welcome in the sanctuary always and everywhere.
SPEAKER_03: But sorry, no godly play today.
SPEAKER_03: Next week.
SPEAKER_01: A reading from 1 Samuel.
SPEAKER_01: There was a man, a Benjamin, whose name was Aesha, the son of Aviel, the son of Zehor, the son of the Korah, the son of Ophiok, himself, a son of Benjaminite, a warrior-hearted man of substance.
SPEAKER_01: He had a son whose name was Saul, a fine young man.
SPEAKER_01: There was not a man among the people of Israel finer than he.
SPEAKER_01: He stood above and beyond everyone else.
SPEAKER_01: Now the female donkeys of Kish, Saul's father, had strayed.
SPEAKER_01: So Kesha said to his son, Saul, take one of the boys with you, get up and look for the donkeys.
SPEAKER_01: Now the Holy One had uncovered the ear of Samuel the day before Saul came, saying, About this time tomorrow, I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be leader over people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen the humiliation of my people, because their cry has come to me.
SPEAKER_01: When Samuel saw Saul, the Holy One told him, Here is the man of whom I spoke to you.
SPEAKER_01: He it is who shall govern my people.
SPEAKER_01: Then Saul approached Samuel in the center of the gate and said, Tell me, please, where is the house of the seer?
SPEAKER_01: Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on Saul's head and kissed him and said, Has not the Holy One of oil anointed you leader over God's own heritage?
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Sing to the exalted unused.
SPEAKER_01: Sing to the Most High, bless her name.
SPEAKER_01: Declare among the nations her glory.
SPEAKER_01: For all the gods of the peoples are idols.
SPEAKER_01: Splendor and majesty are before her.
SPEAKER_01: Give to the majestic one, you families of the peoples.
SPEAKER_01: Give to the fire of Sinai the glory do her name.
SPEAKER_01: Bow down and worship the sovereign one in majestic holiness.
SPEAKER_01: Say among the nations, the ever living God reigns.
SPEAKER_01: Indeed, the world is firmly established.
SPEAKER_01: It shall never be moved.
SPEAKER_01: Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad.
SPEAKER_01: Let the field exalt and all that is in it.
SPEAKER_01: Before the wisdom of the ages and for she is coming.
SPEAKER_00: God gave him fall.
SPEAKER_00: A man of the tribe of Benjamin for forty years.
SPEAKER_00: And God had removed.
SPEAKER_00: God made David the ruler.
SPEAKER_00: And God has testimony about David.
SPEAKER_00: God has I have found David, the son of Jesse, to be a man after my heart, who will cry out and carry out all my wishes.
SPEAKER_00: From this seed, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as promised.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry.
SPEAKER_03: And the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.
SPEAKER_03: But Jesus answered, It is written, Not by bread alone does humanity live, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.
SPEAKER_03: And the devil took Jesus to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple.
SPEAKER_03: And he said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.
SPEAKER_03: For it is written, God will command God's own angels concerning you, and on their hands they will take you up, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus said to it, Again, it is written, Do not put the Holy One your God to the test.
SPEAKER_03: And again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the dominions of the world and their glory, and it said to him, All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus said to it, Away with you, Satan, for it is written, Worship the Holy One your God and serve only God.
SPEAKER_03: And the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: This is the gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_03: Happy Sunday, everyone.
SPEAKER_03: Yay.
SPEAKER_03: I think it's gonna be a fun one today, y'all.
SPEAKER_03: So I know, I know I'm a priest and I've I've been a priest for a long time, but did anybody, and it's okay, I don't expect anybody to answer this question yes.
SPEAKER_03: Did anybody have a moment when we had the reading today where you thought to yourself, are we in Lent?
SPEAKER_03: Did that happen to anyone?
SPEAKER_03: Okay, Jim, of course, right?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Rodney.
SPEAKER_03: The reason is is because this reading, this this reading about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness is historically always and pretty much only read on the first Sunday in Lent.
SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, remember, we have a revised common lectionary in the church that most churches use, and very faithful people decide what scriptures we read every Sunday, and they decided that the first Sunday in Lent we should always read this story from one of the synoptic gospels.
SPEAKER_03: So we should always read this story.
SPEAKER_03: But we are reading a different lectionary, we keep talking about it, and it's Dr.
SPEAKER_03: Will Gaffney, it's the women's lectionary.
SPEAKER_03: And I was really delighted that.
SPEAKER_03: We got to read it.
SPEAKER_03: And here's why.
SPEAKER_03: Like, it has been really meaningful and helpful for me as we embark on Lent to read this story.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: We're getting ready for 40 plus days of sort of a discipline.
SPEAKER_03: We journey together through a wilderness.
SPEAKER_03: We just had it.
SPEAKER_03: We talked about it.
SPEAKER_03: If you're new and you don't know what it is, see me after.
SPEAKER_03: We'll talk about it.
SPEAKER_03: But like it's this season of the church where we together, through some discipline and some way or some intention, order our lives in a preparatory way as we prepare for Easter.
SPEAKER_03: It's a very intentional time.
SPEAKER_03: And so that the church said we should like see that Jesus went out for 40 days after he was baptized, just like the Israelites were 40 years in the wilderness journeying with God towards the promised land.
SPEAKER_03: There's this pattern, and we read, and Jesus, you know, he spends 40 days and he doesn't eat, and then the evil shows up, the devil shows up, Diablo shows up and tempts him in some way, and Jesus, you know, resists those temptations, and then he gets ministered to.
SPEAKER_03: And there's a part of me that needs that.
SPEAKER_03: I need that encouragement to do something hard.
SPEAKER_03: The problem for me is that I have this tendency to make Jesus a superhero.
SPEAKER_03: I'm not the only one.
SPEAKER_03: You hear me preach and push back against it.
SPEAKER_03: Y'all, is my is Marg here?
SPEAKER_03: No, we're my family.
SPEAKER_03: Ah, Margo's here.
SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, so much so that I had a I had a t-shirt that had all of the Marvel and DC superheroes sitting on a bench and it had Jesus in the middle.
SPEAKER_03: And like, I thought it was so clever because he was saying, Let me tell you about the time I saved the world.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's what the t-shirt did.
SPEAKER_03: Like, I like this shirt so much that when perhaps I gained a little weight and it didn't fit, I made my oldest daughter wear it so I could look at it.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: Like, so I but here's that the problem is, is like, if our stories are about being superheroes in our faith, and we need encouragement about people who like white knuckle it and do great things and fight temptation, that leads us to become certain people and to talk about our faith life in a certain way, right?
SPEAKER_03: So I'm kind of anti-superhero now.
SPEAKER_03: Friends, Jesus is not a superhero.
SPEAKER_03: He's not a superhero, right?
SPEAKER_03: He's just he's he is he is a son of God.
SPEAKER_03: He faces stuff that we face, and he had the same spirit that God is giving us, right?
SPEAKER_03: So we're not alone.
SPEAKER_03: So I thought, well, if it's not Lent, and I don't want to talk about the superhero Jesus, like what, like, how can we understand this story as we're in ordinary time?
SPEAKER_03: We're just we're in that time between the seasons where we're just wondering and thinking about what does it mean for us to be people of a Christian faith and a church community that is following this Jesus in the world.
SPEAKER_03: That's the the the normal everyday parts of life.
SPEAKER_03: No, it's it's the normal everyday part.
SPEAKER_03: And and as I'm doing that, I'm listening to a podcast because y'all know I like to listen to philosophy podcasts.
SPEAKER_03: It wouldn't be a Sean Steele Storm if I don't introduce you to some random philosophy scholar.
SPEAKER_03: So I introduce you to a man named Peter Schladerdyke.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so I'm listening to a podcast about a man named Peter Schlauderdike, who is a German, he's deceased now.
SPEAKER_03: He was a German philosopher, and he was a philosopher of religion.
SPEAKER_03: He studied comparative religions, and he grew up in Germany post-World War II.
SPEAKER_03: So he was raised and reared seeing like the worst of what faith can do.
SPEAKER_03: Remember, the Nazis used their Christian faith to subsidize and to justify all of the atrocities that they were doing.
SPEAKER_03: So he was sort of reared and grew up in this reality of seeing the worst about religion.
SPEAKER_03: And so he didn't end up being a person who proclaimed a particular faith, but he did start saying this really interesting thing, right?
SPEAKER_03: Is he said that religion is actually critical and necessary and important for humanity and for all people.
SPEAKER_03: Because it forms and trains us into being certain kinds of people.
SPEAKER_03: And so he coined this term called anthropotechnics.
SPEAKER_03: Here we go.
SPEAKER_03: Anthro, anthropos for human, and techne in the Greek for like tech technique, like skill, like a craftsperson, like something that you can learn by habituating and practicing over and over again.
SPEAKER_03: And he's a philosopher, right?
SPEAKER_03: But he's also a psychologist and all of these other things.
SPEAKER_03: And he says that it without a doubt, human beings are not just what they eat, we are what we eat.
SPEAKER_03: We all know that.
SPEAKER_03: Garbage in, garbage out, we know that.
SPEAKER_03: We are what we do.
SPEAKER_03: Like, we become the way that we behave.
SPEAKER_03: And that doesn't mean, like, that doesn't mean that like you can in your head say, oh, I am a person who loves to care for the poor.
SPEAKER_03: But there's nothing I can do about it.
SPEAKER_03: He says that what makes a cynic.
SPEAKER_03: He says that his big criticism is cynicism.
SPEAKER_03: He says that cynics are people who can acutely see the problems and the realities of the world, but then they let themselves off the hook and they just sit and they're, well, there's nothing I can do about it.
SPEAKER_03: So I'm just gonna sit and point out how everybody else is doing it wrong and how everything is so horrible.
SPEAKER_03: So he says that like religion is supposed to be the response to cynicism, and that we're supposed to train and order our life and our behaviors in a way that combats the things that we see are wrong in the world.
SPEAKER_03: That we're supposed to be working towards something.
SPEAKER_03: We can't just do it in our head.
SPEAKER_03: He uses analogies.
SPEAKER_03: He says, you know, it's just like playing the piano, y'all.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know anything about this piano.
SPEAKER_03: But I promise you, I cannot sit down and start playing Rachman and off.
SPEAKER_03: Like, that's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03: How many hours do you think you played piano or organ in your life?
SPEAKER_03: Are you at 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 20,000 hours?
SPEAKER_03: He said, the ethical human life is just like that.
SPEAKER_03: That we actually have to build in practices to become the people that we are.
SPEAKER_03: So stay with me.
SPEAKER_03: I started thinking, what happens if I take what's now called this Peter Schlaughterdykian lens and I apply it to our Matthew 4?
SPEAKER_03: What if this isn't just about like appreciating Jesus as superhero who inspires us to do hard things and to like white knuckle it?
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: Work harder, right?
SPEAKER_03: What if this is a pattern and this is about facing and building disciplines in our life so that like we can be and do the things that God is calling us to do?
SPEAKER_03: So notice that like Jesus doesn't really show up a lot before his baptism.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, he doesn't.
SPEAKER_03: We get some stories in Luke and Matthew, but largely there's not a lot of stories floating around about Jesus' first 30 years.
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's intentional.
SPEAKER_03: So Jesus is baptized, and something happens in that moment where he hears, he has a revelation.
SPEAKER_03: There's a voice, either he hears it, other people hear it, you know, there is a voice of in some way a revelation where Jesus hears, you are my beloved son, and in you I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_03: You are God's beloved.
SPEAKER_03: He is given this identity.
SPEAKER_03: And I would like to think that every single one of us, whenever we have experienced the baptism, when we come here in some way, we hear you are God's beloved child.
SPEAKER_03: Like you are God's beloved child.
SPEAKER_03: You hear me say this over and over again.
SPEAKER_03: So Jesus has this revelatory moment that is spirit-given.
SPEAKER_03: And then that same spirit drives him into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't mean like invited or suggested, it literally means compelled.
SPEAKER_03: Like grabbed by the crook of the neck and drove out into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_03: Why?
SPEAKER_03: To prove something?
SPEAKER_03: Or was this to begin the process of habits so that Jesus can become and do the thing that he realized he needed to do?
SPEAKER_03: In his baptism, he got a compelling vision about the world and his work and who he was supposed to be.
SPEAKER_03: And that required training.
SPEAKER_03: That required discipline.
SPEAKER_03: That required practices.
SPEAKER_03: So he goes out into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_03: And so I started thinking like, what are the things that Jesus was facing?
SPEAKER_03: What did he need to train in his life?
SPEAKER_03: Like, what were the behaviors that he had to get used to doing and pushing back against to be the person that God was calling him to be?
SPEAKER_03: What are the behaviors that we need to have?
SPEAKER_03: What's the training we need to have in our life to be the people God is calling us to be?
SPEAKER_03: And so if I titled this like little reflection, it would be Pain, Shame, and Shortcuts.
SPEAKER_03: Pain, shame, and shortcuts.
SPEAKER_03: That's what that's what I want you to leave here with.
SPEAKER_03: These are the things we have to train ourselves against.
SPEAKER_03: And them dominating our life.
SPEAKER_03: So the first one, Jesus, 40 days he didn't eat, it says.
SPEAKER_03: What is the longest you've ever gone without eating?
SPEAKER_03: Honestly.
SPEAKER_03: What's the hungriest you've ever been?
SPEAKER_03: We got any like military people who had to do some like, yeah, Jed, I bet at the longest in the military, when you're doing your wilderness training, it was probably what three days?
SPEAKER_03: Four days?
SPEAKER_03: Three days?
SPEAKER_03: And how hungry were you?
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
SPEAKER_03: We're talking like on the verge of death, people.
SPEAKER_03: Hungry, in pain, psychologically, physically.
SPEAKER_03: And then the temptation is hey, just turn these bread to stone.
SPEAKER_03: Make that pain go away, that suffering.
SPEAKER_03: And and Jesus' response is you don't live by bread alone.
SPEAKER_03: My life is not just about me avoiding pain.
SPEAKER_03: And guys, I gotta be honest, he's fighting, I don't know, a couple million years of evolutionary biology.
SPEAKER_03: Do you know why we have pain?
SPEAKER_03: To tell us that something is that's why pain exists.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, according to the evolutionary biologists, and for some reason, and I think it's a good one, God is telling Jesus, you need to train yourself to not interpret pain always and everywhere as the thing that you have to avoid.
SPEAKER_03: Otherwise, when you have to face a hard thing in the world, Jim just earlier says, Man, the Christian life is risky.
SPEAKER_03: If you take it seriously, it's a risky life.
SPEAKER_03: It invites you into discomfort and pain and hard conversations and sacrificial giving and standing up and speaking truth to power.
SPEAKER_03: Like physical, maybe, existential, emotional pain.
SPEAKER_03: And if we orient our entire life to just avoid pain, that's a successful life.
SPEAKER_03: I just don't look at it.
SPEAKER_03: I shove it away, I numb over here.
SPEAKER_03: I do if our relationship with pain is always and everywhere, it's failure and it's meant to be avoided, then we're not going to be able to do the work that God has called us to do.
SPEAKER_03: So I think this is Jesus starting a practice in his life to engage discomfort.
SPEAKER_03: And to say that discomfort is somehow how God shows up sometimes.
SPEAKER_03: I'll be honest, looking back, the biggest moments of transformation in my life, the biggest moments have always involved great pain.
SPEAKER_03: Well, Richard Rohr says it like this transformation always happens with great love or great pain.
SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately, it's rarely great love.
SPEAKER_03: Friends, we gotta have practices.
SPEAKER_03: And so the church says maybe you should have a fasting practice, maybe you should take a pilgrimage, maybe you should forego some type of comfort for the sake of somebody else, having basic or minimum needs being met.
SPEAKER_03: Create discomfort in your life.
SPEAKER_03: Get used to it.
SPEAKER_03: Otherwise, we will orient our entire life just around avoiding pain.
SPEAKER_03: Now, listen, I'm not asking you to go out and buy that little whippy thing that you hit yourself with.
SPEAKER_03: Like, listen, we're not doing that.
SPEAKER_03: Okay?
SPEAKER_03: Like, there's enough in life.
SPEAKER_03: I'm just saying, perhaps recognize if you're orienting your entire life around avoiding it.
SPEAKER_03: The hard conversation, the slight discomfort, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_03: Develop a practice.
SPEAKER_03: The church has said there are lots of practices that we can do to engage discomfort in our life and to build that muscle.
SPEAKER_03: The next one.
SPEAKER_03: Now, of course, you might say, okay, Sean's the shame guy.
SPEAKER_03: I talk about shame all the time.
SPEAKER_03: And the reason is, is because I'm writing my dissertation on it.
SPEAKER_03: When it's over, you won't hear it anymore.
SPEAKER_03: I'm just kidding.
SPEAKER_03: The reason is, is because I think it's really, really important.
SPEAKER_03: I think it's the core thing.
SPEAKER_03: I really do believe this.
SPEAKER_03: And so let's look at the second little test or temptation.
SPEAKER_03: He takes Jesus up to the top of the pinnacle of the temple and he says, you know, if God really loved you, you could throw yourself off, and God would catch you.
SPEAKER_03: So here you have Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: He does a psychological attack, not a physical one.
SPEAKER_03: You have Jesus, he encountered I am God's beloved child.
SPEAKER_03: He had this moment of like, I am God, nothing can separate me from the love of God.
SPEAKER_03: That's what happened to Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: He realized that God loves me, I have a place at the table, nothing can separate me.
SPEAKER_03: Hard stock.
SPEAKER_03: Remember, shame is the painful feeling that we are flawed and unworthy of that love.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus had a moment, and then the tempter comes in and is like, are you sure God loves you?
SPEAKER_03: Why don't you just chuck yourself off?
SPEAKER_03: And God will save you if God loves you.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus pushes back and begins a practice of saying, you know what?
SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna spend my life just validating that God loves me.
SPEAKER_03: Because there's work to do.
SPEAKER_03: How many of us orient our entire life every day just trying to fill that shame bucket?
SPEAKER_03: Shoot, I'm so good at it, I can actually make you think I'm doing something good for you when really all I'm doing is meet my own shame needs.
SPEAKER_03: There is a way for us to orient our entire life around just saying, God, really, do you love me?
SPEAKER_03: Do you love me?
SPEAKER_03: Am I good enough?
SPEAKER_03: And if we allow that to dominate our life, how are we gonna do the work God wants us to do?
SPEAKER_03: So the church has practices for this.
SPEAKER_03: You're seeing a theme here.
SPEAKER_03: The church has said there are practices that we can do to push back so we can catch ourselves when we're curving in.
SPEAKER_03: Augustine calls it curving in on yourself to curve out.
SPEAKER_03: Confession.
SPEAKER_03: It's a great practice.
SPEAKER_03: You come in, you sit with the priests, and you say, Yeah, I'm broken.
SPEAKER_03: I say, Yeah, I'm broken too.
SPEAKER_03: Say, this is what I did.
SPEAKER_03: Does God love me?
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
SPEAKER_03: Stop worrying about that.
SPEAKER_03: Let's get on with it.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's really, I mean, it's more a little bit more holy than that.
SPEAKER_03: But I mean, essentially, what we're saying is the church has built in a practice that said, shame is gonna creep in, but if you let it dominate your life, then everything you do is always gonna be really a conversation about you and your worth.
SPEAKER_03: So let's build in practices that push back.
SPEAKER_03: Let's confess it, let's talk about our brokenness.
SPEAKER_03: Let's have a community of people that remind us that it's okay to be imperfect and that we're loved.
SPEAKER_03: Let's actually get out with the suffering of other people.
SPEAKER_03: That's the second practice that I want to recommend to you.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus said, Go be among the poor, go be among the broken.
SPEAKER_03: And you know why?
SPEAKER_03: Because it's really hard for me when I'm doing the food distribution, talking to people who have so much less and are carrying so much heavier of a burden for me to be so obsessed about my own self-worth.
SPEAKER_03: I'm not the only one.
SPEAKER_03: So the practice is how do we get out of our own head?
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus starts pushing back and developing that difference, that that that developing that practice to push back.
SPEAKER_03: And the last one, pain, shame, and this one was a little interesting because I thought, wow, this is so true for me.
SPEAKER_03: It's shortcuts.
SPEAKER_03: This the the story's fascinating, right?
SPEAKER_03: Jesus is taken up to a grand mountain and says, All of this will be yours.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it already was, which is interesting, right?
SPEAKER_03: It already was.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, in the story, Jesus is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_03: Who knows what his revelation was, but Jesus is Lord over all of creation and earth.
SPEAKER_03: But he comes in and he's like, all of this will be yours if you just sacrifice your highest value.
SPEAKER_03: And I started thinking, wow, shortcuts.
SPEAKER_03: We live in a society right now that idolizes and worships speed and efficiency.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03: All of our technology and development is about faster and more efficient and less energy.
SPEAKER_03: Faster.
SPEAKER_03: It's everywhere.
SPEAKER_03: How can I get there as quick and with the least amount of resources as possible in my life?
SPEAKER_03: There's a guy named Koyama, he's a Japanese scholar.
SPEAKER_03: And he wrote this book called The Three Mile an Hour God.
SPEAKER_03: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_03: It's slow.
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
SPEAKER_03: But you know why he says God moves at three miles an hour?
SPEAKER_03: Because that's the pace of an average walking person.
SPEAKER_03: He says that redemption happens relationally and slowly at three miles an hour.
SPEAKER_03: And there are times where we just want to get there and relationships and things, and we don't want to go through the relational process and we don't want to just sit with it.
SPEAKER_03: And usually those times are, you know, when we're invited to sacrifice a value.
SPEAKER_03: And if you're like me, you can rationalize that sacrifice to move quickly.
SPEAKER_03: And the story is saying that Jesus had to build in practices to say that, like, I know where I'm supposed to go.
SPEAKER_03: I know I am Lord over all of the earth.
SPEAKER_03: I know this is what God is doing.
SPEAKER_03: I know we're supposed to get there.
SPEAKER_03: But I'm not gonna take shortcuts, I'm not gonna sacrifice my values to get there.
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna walk slowly and I'm gonna do it relationally.
SPEAKER_03: This tyranny of busy, y'all.
SPEAKER_03: The Sabbath is the only commandment that we brag about breaking.
SPEAKER_03: We brag about it.
SPEAKER_03: How you been?
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I'm busy.
SPEAKER_03: Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.
SPEAKER_03: Y'all, listen, mom, I love you.
SPEAKER_03: You know I love you.
SPEAKER_03: My mom, at some stages of her life, I don't know how she did what she did.
SPEAKER_03: I look back with all the demands that she had, and you talk about feeling like she was a superhero.
SPEAKER_03: The woman didn't sleep, she didn't do anything.
SPEAKER_03: I just don't know how she did it.
SPEAKER_03: Now I call her and she's got one doctor's appointment a week.
SPEAKER_03: And when I asked her how she's doing, you know what she says?
SPEAKER_02: Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, really?
SPEAKER_02: You want the high V and a doctor this week?
SPEAKER_03: Like, like what?
SPEAKER_03: Y'all, because it because the we're so trained and ingrained that if we're not busy, then we're not valuable.
SPEAKER_03: And busy is related to efficient.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: The tyranny of this and the practice that the the started with our Jewish brothers and sisters and goes on with us is this practice of rest and Sabbath.
SPEAKER_03: Sabbath, don't do anything but be in relationship with each other and God.
SPEAKER_03: Do nothing.
SPEAKER_03: You don't need to do anything.
SPEAKER_03: All the work that needed to be done was done in Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: We're good.
SPEAKER_03: You're not that important.
SPEAKER_03: Meet your neighbors.
SPEAKER_03: Don't just look at a screen.
SPEAKER_03: Sit with somebody, get to know them.
SPEAKER_03: Move at three miles an hour.
SPEAKER_03: Sabbath.
SPEAKER_03: Rest.
SPEAKER_03: Service.
SPEAKER_03: Prayer.
SPEAKER_03: Embrace the slowness.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus had to put practices in his life so that he wasn't tempted to take shortcuts in every way.
SPEAKER_03: So here's the good news.
SPEAKER_03: I don't think the angels were a reward because Jesus somehow slugged it out like Rocky for 40 days, right?
SPEAKER_03: It was like, oh good, we'll get you, you know, we'll get you a doctor to care for your wounds.
SPEAKER_03: I think that's in the story because it's saying that like as we build these practices and as we orient our life, we get reminded that God doesn't leave us to do it alone, that God sends God's very own spirit and angels to minister to us.
SPEAKER_03: And that the point of life, right, is to be these beloved children and to tell the world that they are beloved children, and to put bricks in the kingdom of God that is full of shalom and peace and equity and love and justice and forgiveness and welcoming, you know, welcoming the stranger and hospitality and speaking truth to power.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is hard stuff, and we we gotta train.
SPEAKER_03: We gotta train our ethical life, is what I'm trying to say.
SPEAKER_03: And I and I think that that I think that, you know, Mr.
SPEAKER_03: Schladerdyke was right.
SPEAKER_03: I think we are what we do.
SPEAKER_03: And so my invitation to you today is one, just remember that you're God's beloved child.
SPEAKER_03: Like that's who you are, that's your identity.
SPEAKER_03: I'm not asking you to go to earn anything.
SPEAKER_03: You can't earn that.
SPEAKER_03: You are it.
SPEAKER_03: God loves you.
SPEAKER_03: Hard stop.
SPEAKER_03: And then I wonder like, what are the practices and behaviors of your life?
SPEAKER_03: Like, who is that forming you to become?
SPEAKER_03: And can we do anything about it?
SPEAKER_03: And I think the story and the church is saying you can.
SPEAKER_03: We can be people that resist discomfort and don't always and everywhere avoid pain.
SPEAKER_03: We can be people that don't fold in on ourselves, that think about other people and work towards like their wholeness, that we can be a part of that system.
SPEAKER_03: And we can be people who can slow down and be in relationship.
SPEAKER_03: We don't have to get so worked up about how long it's gonna take.
SPEAKER_03: So, is there a practice in your life?
SPEAKER_03: Is there a behavior I invite you to?
SPEAKER_03: Because I think it'll form us more fully into the beloved children that God has already said we are.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.