Hey friend, welcome to another episode of the podcast Happy
Post Easter. We are jumping into hopefully a
new rhythm and regular weekly recordings of these podcasts now
that we're through Easter. So it was fun to relaunch with
Easter, and now our plan is to continue with the weekly
recordings that, as we've done, follow the sermon series that
we're in. So we're back into Luke, which
means every week we're gonna jump into a deeper conversation
around a few specific things from the text.
This week we started Luke 16. Doozy right after Easter to
like, jump into just like one of Jesus's most confusing parables
just just for fun, you know? This is this is the thing that I
said on Sunday was like, if you are just back because it was
Easter and you're new to church and, you know, maybe you came on
Easter or went somewhere on Easter or maybe, you know,
something has kind of been nagging at you.
I would say that that's God. But you know, something's been
kind of in the back of your mind.
I need to go to church. And like yesterday was the first
day you showed up. I love that you were there.
And it's a hard, it's a hard passage to jump into, yeah.
But I think the thing that I want people to know just as we
begin is, uh, you know, like the, the reason why I think it
matters that we address the difficult conversations in
Scripture and we're going to get more into that later on, I think
today. But the reason why I think it's
important to just not gloss over or jump through or skip over or,
you know, just like pretend like they don't exist.
These types of passages is because we really actually at
the end of the day, like we say things like the gospel matters,
Jesus matters for your everyday life, like the practical way you
live your life out. But then we talk often like the
church, we get so stuck talking in spiritual, I say like realms,
but like in in spiritual conversations or emotional
conversations, which are all great.
We say it's practical. But then when it comes to money
or some of the most practical topics that we think the
Christian faith should impact, we're like, that makes me
uncomfortable. Let's not talk about it.
So we like hyper spiritualized stuff for the sake of not
talking about. No, like just the brass tacks of
it. Like what does this change for
the way that you spend your money?
So if it was your first Sunday, I love that you were there.
If you know somebody, if you're listening and you met somebody
on Sunday who's, you know, who's there for the very first time,
like I think it actually matters to continue to have these
conversations in the church. And that's what we hope this
podcast does on a larger level as well is encourage you to have
conversations. So don't let it die.
Like I know you're listening, some of you are listening on
your commutes or while you're exercising, you know, walking
outside, inside, like a whole lot of different places and
spaces. Don't let it die there.
Like don't let it die in your earbuds just by listening.
Try to have one more conversation.
I think that would be my my challenge to you.
Well, and I, and I think that, so I mean, sort of tying into
where I was hoping to go today is to talk through like how we,
how we intentionally lean into harder passages and, and get
into, you know, like, so there's, there's two
conversations that I'd like to have.
And it may go in a few different directions, but there's a kind
of a meta conversation, a higher level conversation around what
we do with passages like the parable of the shrewd manager
and, and the difficulties that it raises, the tensions it
raises. And there are tons of passages
like that, you know, innumerable.
We could, you know, go through, we could spend days going
through the scriptures and, and highlighting, man, this, there's
a lot of tension in this, in these passages, a lot of things
we don't know how to answer or deal with.
So there's sort of like a higher level conversation that I, I'd
be interested to get into. How do we press in rather than
check out? And and then and then a little
later on, I want to get more out of personal level and, and OK,
but also there is a conflict our own selves and how do we how do
we deal with that? But let's start at the higher,
higher level first. And, and so, yeah, like when
scripture is a little confusing, when it's unclear the the the
meaning that we're meant to derive.
And I think that's very true here is that it's, we were, you
know, sitting there, you and myself and Allison last
Wednesday, I think it was we were sitting there just like,
OK, what, what do we do with this?
How does this preach? What like what, how do you go?
And, and then at even even like an hour and a half later, it was
like, OK, Grant, bless you, go, go have fun.
You know, like that was that was part of the challenge, right?
And so like when, when the, the, the meaning we're supposed to
derive is a little unclear. How, how do we read it?
How do we learn and grow from passages like this?
And how do we press in rather than checking out?
And I'm kind of giving a whole bunch of questions that you can
latch on to whichever way you feel.
Yeah, so, so I think I said this when we were meeting for some of
the sermon prep conversation is like, I'm weird.
I love these passages. Like actually I enjoy these
ones. They're they're so much fun to
preach. And like, I had a pretty good
idea of where we were going to go and we were going to land.
I think I interestingly, I say interestingly, not ironically,
but interestingly, the answer to both of your questions, I think
is the same. So I, I think the answer to both
of your questions, and we'll get there, like we'll get to the
second part is community. And that, you know, I think one
of the things that we've done in sort of like the post
enlightenment era of information and formation is we've made it
very personal. So what's happened in, uh, you
know, certainly like more really more recently, even the last 100
years is that information formation and spiritual
formation has become radically individualized so that the, the
narrative is how am I growing or being shaped or being formed?
Even to ask that question is like, I think a little bit
further along down the road, most of us are being formed by
something without even realizing it.
And so we consume and we watch, we read, we, you know, hours of
it inputting all of it, shaping us, informing us.
O I think we need just to simply say that's happening.
Formation happens and what you consume is either gonna form you
or to a certain extent deform you into more of I would say as
a pastor, as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus into more of
the person that Jesus is creating you to be or less of
the person Jesus is creating you to be.
Another way to put that is, you know, Christ likeness is the way
Scripture talks about it. So how am I being shaped more
into the likeness of Christ? How am I being shaped less into
the likeness of Christ? How am I being formed more to be
like Jesus? How am I being deformed to be
unlike Jesus? That's happening all the time,
like unless you're really good at silence and solitude, it's
happening like almost 24/7. And so that is something that
that's something that we need to name now.
I think where it becomes really problematic for us is that we
think about our formation from a, the individual's perspective,
like from my, my formation, whether that's spiritual,
psychological, emotional, relational, intellectual, it
it's, it's often and, and almost always about my, how am I being
shaped and formed or how am I shaping and forming someone
else. But we think about that being
shaped and being formed at an individual level.
It's me, it's you. Those are different.
Like we're, we're different. You're being shaped and formed
one way. I'm being shaped and formed in
another way. And, you know, occasionally we
have conversations, but like, you know, maybe parallel tracks,
but we're we're, you know, completely separate.
And I think that is it's something that's that's new.
Now bring it back to scripture where it comes in for us as we
read Scripture is for a long time.
The church has now spoken about like my time in scripture, which
is good. Like don't hear me say like you
need to spend time in insert If your take away is don't read the
Bible, you're you're wanting to hear that like you're trying to
hear. That you read the Bible in
church and community, right? You know, like that's not yeah,
that's not the take away. You're trying, you're trying to
hear something that I'm not saying, but you know, I, I do
think we, we have this greater emphasis on my personal time
with Jesus, my reading of Scripture, my prayer, my
individual spiritual formation. And that's where, where passages
like we dealt with on Sunday about the shrewd manager become
problematic because it's so easy to do what we said we don't want
to do, which is either ignore it and jump over it and skip it and
just be it makes me uncomfortable.
So I don't want to deal with it or it it puts me in a place
where like, I don't actually understand what's going on here.
And I'm not sure what we're supposed to get from it.
Either you make a bad like this is the thing I'm supposed to get
from it, or you just, again, you move on because it's hard to
understand. And so, you know, these
passages, more than any other passage in Scripture, are these
invitations into community and into this community formation.
How are we being shaped and formed together and how are we
participating in that? Like, even I think about Justin,
these conversations that you and I have are, you know, are are
fun and encouraging and, you know, hopefully helpful to other
people, but it helps shape and form you and I.
Yeah. To have these conversations.
Like we talk about Scripture and that shapes and forms us
together differently than if I were just reading it by myself
in the same way. And I'm glad you brought up our
preaching meetings. It's the exact same approach
there. I can hole away and think and
pray and then go for walks and write and edit and think and
pray and write and edit and read and input from authors that are
maybe some alive and some dead and like, I can write an entire
sermon by myself without talking to anybody.
Is that a better sermon than one that was sort of at least either
initially crafted and formed and shaped in community with you,
with Allison, with others who are preaching and teaching, if
not at the beginning, kind of part way through the process.
Is it better for me to bounce ideas off of people who are
living inside of the same community and feeling the same
things and reading the same news and going like we're reading the
same passage now and wrestling it out?
No, the the first option, me holding away, you know, might be
necessary a few times, you know, in a preaching cycle.
But vastly more helpful is the community formed and shaped
message where you know, there there are these conversations
that are happening. So you know, I, I think just to
kind of summarize the the danger is to make everything radically
individualistic, radically about only yourself and how you
approach Scripture and these passages more than any of them,
but all of them are an invitation toward community.
I'll give you a really quick example.
I had somebody come up to me after the sermon on Sunday and I
love this, absolutely love this. It is like, it's bold and brave
and like, you know, not everybody has the, the, I think
to do it all the time. Did they say they disagreed?
With you. No, that that would have been
awesome. Like that would have been great.
And I'm waiting. You know, those are fun
conversations, but no, this person is so, you know, I was in
the kitchen. We were kind of packing up some
of the stuff from communion and somebody came up to me and said,
hey, I still don't like, I get this and I get this and I get
this. I still don't understand this
one point. What's this one line here?
And it interestingly was actually a line about community.
It was the line about friends. And this person was just, I love
that this person was able to say, hey, I, I get this, I get
this. I still don't get this one
piece. And so we had a great
conversation and it wasn't long and it wasn't me just saying,
well, it's this, let's move on with our day.
It, it was just a quick, short, but meaningful exchange.
And at the end it was like, oh, yeah, this is it.
Of course, this is it, but we got there in conversation
together, and that's the invitation of difficult passages
that we'd rather skip. If I'm left on my own, it's like
you just easily skip over it and not think twice.
I'm gonna go read something else that's better and easier and
make me feel happy about myself. But it's when we get to passages
like this that we need to feel and need to wrestle with and
need to be challenged by community.
Like holds you there in the passage.
Well, and even at A, at a very practical level, you know, going
back to our, our preaching planning meeting, you were
toying with an idea. I hope it's OK.
Yeah. OK, cool.
Yeah. You were toying with the idea
of, of bringing in not just this parable, but the following
parable, which you're gonna be preaching from this Sunday.
And Allison and I were both like, I'm not, I'm not sure you
want to do that. You know, like, and not in like
obviously we have a good trust amongst each other.
And it was a it was a a healthy conversation.
There was, it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like harsh
pushback. It was just like, oh, like
that's a lot to, you know, that's a lot to handle.
Are you gonna be able to do that?
Are you gonna give these passages the full weight and
justice they deserve? Right.
And and and clearly, based on, you know, where you went, we you
persuaded yourself or some mixture of of all of the things
or but like you did, you did it and I think it was the right
call like to stick with the one and and to dive a little deeper
into it. I still, I joke with you and
Allison in those meetings, like I'm still waiting for one of you
to say, no, that's not it, you're wrong.
Like I'm still waiting for that moment to happen where, you
know, a in, in an outline or in a point or instantly say, you
know, Nope, that's not it. You've lost it.
I'm still waiting for that moment.
And it'll be fun when it happens because it will.
But yeah, it, it was, it really was, it was a great, I think it
was a great conversation where I, I had one outline sort of
applauded out and, you know, was starting in the middle and then
work both in both directions dealing with both the parables.
And what we ended up doing was starting in the middle and
moving backwards toward the first parable.
And and this coming Sunday, we're gonna start in the middle.
We're gonna work forward toward the next parable.
And that outline didn't change. But yeah, you, you both were
able to say, hey, like, that's that's a lot.
That's a lot to deal with. We've got communion.
And I did, you know, I walked away going.
Yeah. I wasn't fully certain still
whether it was going to be one or two when we left that
meeting. But as I started writing, it was
it was became very clear like, no, there's too much here.
You know, those guys are right. There's too much here.
Just listen and be done with it and.
Perhaps a little bit of divine Providence, since there was also
some illness that had befallen your, you and your family that
that that I think would have put pressure on seriously, they'll
put pressure on trying to make something cohesive out of the
whole package. Right, for sure, yeah,
absolutely, absolutely. So in in community, it has to be
the way we do it. And and please again, I want to
say this, you need to spend your personal alone time with
Scripture, in prayer with God. You need to allow God to
challenge you as an individual. Please hear that.
But I do think that there's something so significant about
community that happens when we vessel out difficult texts like
this together for exactly some of these reasons.
And one of the other pieces of that that I think is just worth
naming is that because we can do this in community, you know,
through Bible studies or through things like, you know, obviously
our situation with sermon prep is a bit unique to us
specifically. But for others in small groups
or when we do like community Bible studies and things like
that. But also when you are
individually reading, like there's also a wealth of, of
people from Christian history from like thinkers and
theologians and scholars and commentaries.
And like there is so much material out there that can help
us understand better. Almost at the point where we
gotta be careful because we gotta know that what we're
looking at is going to be a, a healthy and helpful and, and
thoughtful resource versus just like something that is maybe
potentially even dangerous or heretical or whatever.
So that's again, where I think community can help with the, the
discernment process there. But just in general, like when
we're wrestling with a passage and we don't know where to go
with it, we don't know what we're supposed to learn from it.
Like, I think even you said one of the, you know, one of the
main threads from all of the commentaries you read from this
passage was like, yeah, it, it, it seems a little bit unfair
with the way the shrewd manager has dealt with deal with it.
You know, like that was, that was one of the the common
threads that you had pulled away.
Yeah. And it's like, OK, well, that's,
that's interesting to pay attention to that.
There are multiple theologians, serious heavyweight kind of
people that are like, hey, this is probably one of the things we
need to glean from this is like, life's not fair sometimes.
That's one of the hardest things about this this parable and just
to name it right, is the fact that this shrewd manager who is
soon to be fired because of probably like unethical or at
very least like delinquent work habits, is praised by his
manager for his shrewdness, but not not only for his shrewdness
in in it feels like for acting in further unethical ways.
You know, he's he's overly generous, but did he have the
authority to do the thing? You know, some say yes and some
say no and some argue about what actually he's doing and who he's
cheating. Some people say he's cheating
himself. You know that what he cuts out
of there, out of their bill would be actually like the
managers percentage that he would be entitled to.
But that's like, you know, most people disagree that that like
50% is not like that's not the kind of realm of percentages
that they would have been dealing with calculation.
Absolutely. A lot of speculation.
So, you know, it really is a passage where we see Jesus.
And I think I said it, it's like if if it's hard for us because
it feels like Jesus is praising this, this manager for an
unethical practice. And he is.
And that is what the commentaries say, like most of
the commentaries basically say literally deal with it.
One of them said literally deal with it.
And you know, a few others are are essentially like we, we
wrestle this out. It's just attention that's
there. You can't, you can't resolve it.
You can't make it feel good. You can't, you know, explain it
away. It in fact, it loses its meaning
when you do try to explain it away.
And that's the beautiful thing about parables.
And that's why I think parables were always so here's the thing
about parables. Parables were always meant to be
experienced in community. Jesus never tells a parable to
one person. Yeah.
And I need to like Fact Check me on that one because that's,
that's like I don't have like a, you know, I'm not 100 and 10%
certain on it. But it's either usually his
disciples, his followers more broadly, or the Pharisees.
It's the disciples. The crowds are the Pharisees.
Yeah, it is always community. And he tells it like they're not
resolved. Jesus.
There's barely a parable that Jesus explains right in its
entirety. But sometimes they go after him
and like Jesus, can you? Explain about this or this.
Yeah. And and that's like that's the
whole point of a parable is to encourage your participation in
it and for it to be something that's wrestled out together,
which just he's not telling parables just to communicate,
you know, a three-point truths that everybody can walk away
with. Be like, well, we all heard the
same thing. Great.
Like, no, he would have, he would have given lists of
things, you know, like parables are meant to be.
They're meant to hold tensions. They're meant to be hard.
They're meant to have these aha moments that flip everything
upside down. Like, I thought this was the
direction we're going. And now it's just so upside down
or right side up, however you wanna, you know, describe it.
That it it has to be done. It has to be done inside a
community. And community is going to be the
ones to say to you those things like, yes, it's attention, deal
with it. It's just there.
And in fact, it loses its weight if you explain it away.
Even this guy gets it. How much more?
That's the implication for us. Should we also get it?
Yeah, and, and so like even even within that, there's something
uncomfortable for us of just like some, some parts of
Scripture, this one included the, the full scope and meaning
of it. We may never fully know all the
answers to. And as I, you know, I would say
in my early 20s, that was a real challenge for me.
I remember like wrestling through some things and like, I
think it was particularly in the Gospel of John that I was like
struggling to reconcile with like, you know, what certain
scholars thought and said. And, and, and it was like this
existential crisis of, of like, hey, I'm, I'm, I don't know what
to think and believe. I remember wrestling through as
one of my friends, like leaned more into like Reformed
Calvinist theology and I and I was never raised in that and I'm
ironically now working at a Presbyterian Church.
But like, and, and, and had like deep existential crises over
certain aspects of, of, you know, that understanding of, of
faith as I've gotten older. I'm, I'm turning 40 next month,
which, you know, I feel like, you know, some, some of the
elders in the church would probably be like, you're still a
baby. You're.
Halfway to 80. Right, but but like, I think for
me, one thing in my in my mid life, if I can call it that, it
feels dramatic. But like, I've, I'm learning to
like, just be OK and just like lean into like certain elements
of like mystery and not like a cop out way.
Like there are times of like, I know, I, I wanna know the answer
to this, like this, this is dissatisfying and I and I might
not find the answer, but sometimes there are answers.
Sometimes genuinely, truly, there are answers to some of our
questions that we can find through study and further
research. Sometimes there's not right.
And, and just for me, as I, as I grow, just learning to like let
it kind of roll off my shoulder a little bit.
You like, you know what? I know the most important things
that I believe and the most important things that I hold on
to and cling to, and the full meaning of the the parallel of
the shrewd manager isn't the top of that list.
Isn't one of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. I love the way Paul puts it
right. He's like we know now in part
and we see in part and he's got this beautiful vision for like.
But then we will know fully and be known fully and see fully and
be seen fully like he's got this, this, this great, you
know, analogy that you think about ripples in the water where
you see a reflection that is partially distorted.
And you know, I think that's the challenge for for human beings,
I think especially that's the challenge for followers of Jesus
is, is to live in that reality. And, and we are less good at it
in our earlier years for sure, And hopefully with time become
better at it, but don't always. And so I think there needs to be
like there needs to be a conscious effort.
And I'm going to forget the, the philosopher, um, who talks about
this, but like, anyway, stages of faith, there's different
language for it, stages of spiritual development, there's
different languages and different writers.
And that's totally fine. But one of the ways that I've
heard it talked about that has been helpful is that, you know,
in our, in our early years, we grew up with, you know, this,
this naivety. And then we go through seasons
of, of difficulty and deconstruction and questioning
and wondering. And that can lead you down a
couple of different paths for sure.
I think as Christians, like, we're free of that word, like
deconstruction. Oh no, we can be afraid of it in
unhealthy, unhealthy ways. I think every person needs to go
through that season of asking difficult questions of
themselves, of their faith, of God, of the Church, of reality,
of the world, of what's after it.
I. Don't know how you can have a
deep faith without some of that. Right.
So, so, and, and I want to come back to that point.
So you go through this, this first naivety and then you go
through this season of wonder and deconstruction and
questioning and exploring and, and I see it as this like
incredible opportunity. I think some people become
scared and that's fine. Those are different reactions to
the same thing. But then we come to this like
second naivety. So another way of talking about
it is there's a like, there's an enchantment about faith as a
child. And it's like, why do we tell
the stories literally? Like exactly as why do we tell
us, you know, kids, the stories in the Old Testament as, as
literal historical, like this happened and how amazing is
that? And, and, and now I want to be
careful because within the Old Testament, there's a ton of
different genre happening. And you and I can have that
conversation. We know even within our
congregation, there's different, there's different thoughts and
approaches to the like literal approaches to scripture and
stories within it. So I'll just use one that is
debated. And I'm just saying that it's
debated. I'm not saying where I stand on
it and I'm not saying where you stand on it.
The walls of Jericho. So Joshua and the walls of
Jericho marched around the walls, you know, blowing horns.
Those walls come tumbling down. Well, some people say that that
happened literally exactly as it's written in Scripture.
And other people say, well, there's no evidence of walls
around Jericho. And then other people say, no,
there's no evidence ground walls that were around Jericho that
did fall around the top. Like, like there's there's,
there's competing evidence. We're still learning and
exploring in the archaeological record is difficult and hard to
understand. And we're a long way out from
it. But that's, I just named that as
one. But when we're teaching kids
about it, we don't go into, hey, you know, some people believe
this happened and some people don't believe that this
happened. And like some archaeology
archaeologists say that there are walls and they did fall, and
other archaeology archaeologists say that there weren't.
There's like some theologians that that think that passage in
particular or that book book of Joshua was like basically like
war propaganda, right? Try to explain that to a nine
year old, No. What do we do?
We teach them that Joshua led the people to walk around
Jericho and they blew their horns and those walls came
tumbling down. And how amazing is it to see
what God does to his like for his people when they worship and
when they respond in obedience and right.
So we we grow up and and you know, ideally and hopefully you
come out of childhood with this enchanted faith.
This is another way to talk about it.
So you, you have this wonder filled vision of what God can do
inside of the world. Well, that enchanted needs to be
taken through seasons that are difficult and that do allow you
to ask questions and express doubts and curiosities.
We go from enchantment to disenchantment, but you can't
stay at disenchantment because disenchantment is cynicism and
it can lead to bitterness and resentment and you need to move
through. Hopefully we encourage people to
move from disenchantment to re enchantment.
And that's the place where we sit with the complexity and the
tension of passages like this or those walls around Jericho and
go, Could it have happened? Yeah, definitely could have
happened. And what is God trying to say to
us in the midst of that tension, whether it did or didn't in the
exact way that it happened in in Scripture?
So for me, I just want to say this one thing, the one, the one
place that I trace my faith back to in all of these conversations
is the resurrection of Jesus. So we're just on the heels of
Easter. Jesus body literally raised from
the dead. Not a figurative resurrection,
not like an emotional spiritual resurrection.
Not a spiritual body. Not a floating ghost movement
like physical body raised from the dead.
That is the one nonnegotiable for me for Christianity.
And for the majority? For the, absolutely.
Some that would say no, but I they're allowed to be wrong.
Exactly. For me, that's the so if that
happened, everything else inside of Scripture is possible.
And so you go, OK, if Jesus's body was literally raised from
the dead, then I go, it's game on.
Anything and everything is possible, but the way we
approach those tensions can change.
Yeah. And that's that.
Like that's that re enchantment of faith where it's like,
imagine what could be possible. Yeah, imagine what God can do.
So, so enchantment, disenchantment, re enchantment,
naivete to like second naivete and the however you want to
describe that trajectory, that's the, the life of discipleship is
from here to there. Um, and that's what we're
invited into. That only happens in community
though. Yeah, I agree.
Agree. And just using that language
around reenactment, like I think what happens when you are
disenchanted versus say, re enchanted with with with
scripture is when you're disenchanted, you'll look at a
passage like this and and you'll see it, you know, through the
well, this this manager, he didn't deserve to be, you know,
praised like this, this, this, this sucks, this is stupid.
This is like, what's even the point?
And you can get down this like sin as cynical sort of unhealthy
route versus you know, I feel like we enchantment should
provoke just like a lot of questions and curiosity
excitement about like, OK, what what's what's God doing here?
What's God saying here? Right.
So re enchantment, re enchantment sees yourself as
that manager, right? Or at least very least allows
the manager to hold a mirror. Up to you to say, man, this dude
is a mixture of selfishness and generosity.
And you know what? At the end of the day, so am I
and So what? Why like, if there's nothing
praiseworthy about him, why should there be anything
praiseworthy about me? Now, at the end of the day, is
there anything praiseworthy about any of us?
Like we can go down that rabbit trail of, of, of depressing
Calvinism and, and we don't have to do that today.
Like Total Depravity is a different podcast episode and
but like, you know, I think the rein chanted faith allows
yourself to see some of these complexities not only in the
people in scripture, so in this manager, but in yourself as well
and go, oh, OK, so this dude mixture of selfishness and
generosity must mean I know, like I know I'm a mixture of
selfish and generous, intense. I love to be generous and I
fight being selfish and you know, like that's attention that
that Jesus is resolving in me and I think wants to resolve
hopefully to greater degrees in all of us.
But it's gonna be around forever.
Like that's, that's part of humanity, part of the human
nature. Well, you've already let me to
cough drops today that I won't give back to you, so you're
already on a good footing on a Monday morning for your
generosity. So perfect.
I appreciate 3 actually. You know what?
You're right. Three but.
You. You're gonna make me cough?
No. Don't.
Please don't. There.
Yeah. So that was like a beautiful
like just segue into kind of just the last thing I wanted to
touch on was was this idea of like, yeah, OK, so that raises.
I'm just as I'm thinking aloud here, when we are seeing
scripture through that like re enchanted lens through that,
that like, you know, we're just asking, we're asking questions
for, you know, what could this mean?
Then it shifts to you, what what could this mean for me?
And then and then you're actually willing to do that hard
work of, of looking in the mirror and saying, OK, that's
me. What do I need?
What do I need to address? Yeah.
You know, and, and as you were, as you were preaching and kind
of going through this example of particularly the shrewd manager,
I started thinking about examples in my own life where I
was like, man, I did something that was outwardly altruistic,
but inwardly I it was gonna help me get what I wanted.
Yeah. And I, I felt that like I, I, I
was, I was grappling with that reality of my dualistic nature.
And that is, I wasn't going to solve it that that's gonna be a
that's something that we, I and we carry with us to the end of
our lives. And hopefully we make forward
progress as we lean into, you know, God forming us and
community forming us and all these things.
But it just, yeah, that confronted me and, and I, I hope
I think in a good way because I didn't feel this like, I think I
didn't feel this like deep, like condemnation.
It was more like, oh, oh, yeah, that that's me.
That's me guilty, you know, and I hope for others as well like
that, that is the, the, the right approach wouldn't be
toward like this heaping, heaping self condemnation and
and shame and all these things, but rather, oh, OK, I need to
lean into that. I need to, I need to listen to
that and say ask myself some hard questions and maybe ask my
family and friends some hard questions about me.
Yeah, So I just want to name a couple things.
So like, I love, I love that you share that because that's
exactly what we hope for. I think when we're preaching and
sometimes, like sometimes you're preaching and it's you're
preaching yourself, right? It's like, Oh yeah.
Why is why did this message land your end up the way it did?
Is because it like God's working some real things out in our
lives that eventually work their way into sermons.
Not probably in real time, because that's, you know, an
unhealthier view of. Everything I learned this week
that I'm going to preach to you exactly.
Exactly. Here's the thing.
That's still this big open gaping thing, right?
Like, yeah, no, not that. But you know, 11 of, well,
someone I respect says scars, not wounds, like not open
wounds, but scars. And so I, you know, I like that
language, but I, I just want to name a couple of things.
One, I, I love that you're, you're sharing this here in this
forum because it's exactly what we want people wrestling out in
their own lives. Like for me and my life, you and
your life and for everyone in the congregation is to feel
that, that tension and go, oh, I'm going to sit here.
I'm not going to ignore it. I'm not going to push it away.
I'm not going to numb it or distract myself away from it
like we are so good at doing. I'm going to sit in it.
I'm going to feel it. I'm going to name it, you name
it like naming the thing the church is called for generations
confession. And I think we've lost that
rhythm in that habit of just now listen, like we're not gonna put
up a confessional in the in the in the sanctuary at the back of
the sanctuary and have like a curtain and you can come and sit
and confess your sins. But there's something just
profound and beautiful about being able to say, hey, that was
something that I wrestled with and I'm still wrestling with
and. Tells you can ask me about it.
And, and, and to say you, you took that a step further, which
is OK. Now I'm going to have
conversations with my family and friends.
So now no longer are you confessing this.
It's just, you know, you and God, yet God, you're doing
something in my life and I need to name this thing.
And I know that you're, you're tapping into something here.
That's, that's really, you know, impacting me.
Now you're including a small group of people with it.
And what you're not doing is like, hey, podcast listeners,
this is the thing, right? Like that's not what you're
doing, but what you're naming a process for people that is just
so helpful in, in terms of dealing with the tension.
Because again, there are a couple different there many
different ways we can deal with it, but there are two principal
ways. One, we can feel it and then do
everything we can to ignore it or to we can feel it and do
everything we can to understand and, you know, and move forward
in it and through it and because of it.
And, and I think you've laid out a really good, just a really
good simple process for people. So like, feel it, sit with it,
name it, name it to somebody else and go like that's the
Christian sort of Arc of confession that has been around
for a lot longer than any of us. So and, and lots of other, lots
of other like spheres of, of the world have also caught on to
that. I know that like something like
Alcoholics Anonymous, which has a lot of Christian roots in it,
one of their one of their main steps, and it's also been
borrowed by like Christian programs like Celebrate Recovery
is to admit to God and to someone else the exact nature of
your wrongs. And it's like, boom.
To just to say it, you have to say it as it is.
Yeah. And to say it not without
emotion, but almost without emotion.
It's like no this. Is what I did.
This is it, yeah. So, yeah, we hope that this has
been a helpful conversation. I think this is a great place to
end. Yeah.
To encourage you to sit with the attention and to encourage you
to sit maybe even in the attention of needing to name
something and wrestling out what that next step might be.
So again, wherever this episode finds you, we hope that you are
encouraged, and we hope that you're challenged to live a
little bit differently between Sundays.
So again, we hope to see you on Sunday and in other areas of our
church life, and then again next week for another.
So do the podcast.