Episodes
Thursday Nov 14, 2024
New Format for Trinity Heights Church
Thursday Nov 14, 2024
Thursday Nov 14, 2024
Tune in to hear Eric and Stephen discuss the new format for Trinity Heights Church.
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Friday Oct 11, 2024
1 Corinthians: You Are a People - Part 6
Friday Oct 11, 2024
Friday Oct 11, 2024
The final installment and summary of our 6-part series in 1 Corinthians titled, "You Are a People."
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Friday Oct 11, 2024
1 Corinthians: You Are a People - Part 5
Friday Oct 11, 2024
Friday Oct 11, 2024
In the fifth part of our series we looked at the famous love passage: 1 Corinthians 13. This passage has been used so often at wedding after wedding that it is difficult not to think of it as mushy sentimentalism that comes part and parcel with wedding cake and toasts to the bride and groom and confetti. For this reason New Testament scholar Richard Hayes suggests that ‘this passage needs to be rescued from the quagmire of romantic sentimentality in which popular piety has embedded it.’
In a secular democracy - where we prize the freedom to choose between different religious narratives while also ensuring that no religious authority should influence our political decisions - love is removed from the specifically Christian narrative which gave it a distinctive shape and elevated love to the greatest of all virtues. In the context of a secular democracy love becomes an abstract idea.
But for Paul there is nothing abstract about love:
'Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.'
Love is not a fleeting moment of feeling, it’s not an ethereal experience or a vague impression. Paul thinks love looks like something and he is describing what it looks like.
We might think that by making love so concrete, by demystifying love as it were, we lose any sense of love’s transcendent quality. But - perhaps counterintuitively - it is by describing love so clearly as Paul does, that love becomes something transcendent.
Because in Paul’s concrete description there are no qualifications. Paul doesn’t say love is patient so long as, love is kind only if, love sometimes hopes, love usually perseveres. There is no contingency, there is no escape clause; instead Paul says love is an unqualified posture towards everyone and that’s what makes love something transcendent no longer subordinate to the strategies of our secular democracy. No wonder Saint Augustine is able to say: ‘Love and do as you will’.
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Wednesday Jul 17, 2024
1 Corinthians: You Are a People - Part 4
Wednesday Jul 17, 2024
Wednesday Jul 17, 2024
In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul explores community and unity while addressing the issue of sexual immorality in the Corinthian church. The Bible celebrates sex as good, sacred, and beautiful - not something to be approached with guilt, shame, or prudishness. The Christian view of sex needs to be centered on joy and delight, not scandalized by human sexuality.
The Christian stance on sexuality is not about idealizing a specific family unit but recognizing that everyone’s story is different, marked by love, joy, heartbreak, and unforeseen circumstances.
From a Christian perspective, sex is never to be treated flippantly. People are precious, all sexual encounters carry sacred weight, and personal decisions affect our community.
The church often falls into the pitfall of focusing solely on promoting oppressive systems of accountability or invasive surveillance to strive for sexual purity.
But what if we aimed to share wisdom for real-world situations, respecting personal decisions about sex and intimacy?
Rather than implementing rigid rules, the goal is to begin a nuanced conversation about the theology of human sexuality, exploring the mystery of God’s design for our intimate connections, understanding that our bodies, hearts, minds, and spirits are deeply intertwined.
In 1 Corinthians (specifically in chapter 5), Paul’s primary preoccupation is with the Corinthian church’s health as a community. He’s contending for their unity. Paul is essentially saying to his friends in Corinth, “If these issues of sexual immorality within your church are left unaddressed, they will eventually serve to undo the very fabric of your togetherness.”
How we treat each other matters, both in our personal relationships and within the larger community.
These are inextricably linked, and our approach to sexuality should reflect this understanding.
How might our sexual relationships define our broader connectedness to the community?
How might we embrace a holistic understanding of sexual intimacy as a force for either division or unity/joy?
What if we embraced Christian community as a place to nurture a holistic view of people, each filled with dignity and each an occasion for joy?
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Wednesday Jul 17, 2024
1Corinthians: You Are a People - Part 3
Wednesday Jul 17, 2024
Wednesday Jul 17, 2024
At first glance, it appears as though the divisions in the Corinthians church were over very different and unconnected issues. After all, what have class divisions, the exercise of spiritual gifts, and eating meat sacrificed to idols got to do with each other?
But Paul is able to see the connections beneath the surface and he frames them together with a vast theological vision.
For example, the Corinthians had sensationalized the gift of tongues and made it the mark of serious Christian faith and by doing so they placed a question mark over the faith of anyone who didn’t possess this particular gift. In this context, Paul uses his famous body analogy and pushes it to an absurd place. (Corinthians 12:17-21)
Paul pushes the analogy as far as he can go because he wants them to know how absurd their behavior is when they create a spiritual class system in the church. The point of the gifts is to nurture unity and togetherness in the body.
But then again, in another dispute over dietary differences, Paul calls some Christians weak and others strong depending on whether they eat meat sacrificed to idols? (1 Corinthians 8:9-13)
Paul is having a joke at their expense. He knows that the Corinthians have been trained to think in terms of class and status, it was part of their culture and how they operated day in and day out. And so Paul plays along and he says - with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek: You who are so ‘strong’, you super believers you, don’t stumble your ‘weaker’ brother.
Throughout the letter, Paul maintains the distinction between mature and immature Christians but the Corinthians have been using the entirely wrong register. For Paul, maturity and immaturity are always about whether or not a person’s life brings people together or pushes people apart, whether they create peace or strife between people, whether they create unity or division.
How can our lives be a bridge between people who think they can’t be together?
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Monday Jul 15, 2024
Guest Spotlight: Let the Little Children Come - Steve Gumaer
Monday Jul 15, 2024
Monday Jul 15, 2024
Guest and friend of Trinity Heights, Steve Gumaer, delivers a reflection on Matthew 19.
Thursday Jul 04, 2024
1 Corinthians: You Are a People - Part 2
Thursday Jul 04, 2024
Thursday Jul 04, 2024
Paul refers to the Corinthians as ‘Saints’ or ‘sanctified’, terms implying they are ‘set apart’ for a unique purpose. But what does it mean to be set apart?
The Met Gala’s theme last Monday was inspired by J.G. Ballard's 1962 short story, "The Garden of Time." This tale features Count Axel and his wife, who live in a grand villa with a garden of mysterious "time flowers" that slow time when plucked. As an angry mob approaches, the Count uses the flowers to delay the inevitable destruction, while the Countess plays Mozart and the Count tends to his library.
This story mirrors the disparity between the privileged few and the struggling masses, a theme highlighted by Rosalind Jana in her critique of the Gala. She notes the irony of celebrities in lavish attire amidst images of poverty, pondering if the event’s organizers are hinting at class rebellion.
Christians sometimes project an image akin to Met Gala attendees, as if sainthood and holiness grant a superior, detached status.
However, Paul uses metaphors to counter this misconception. He calls the Corinthians ‘God’s Temple,’ emphasizing their role as a bridge between heaven and earth, a place where God’s presence is uniquely manifested. This metaphor signifies that being ‘set apart’ means being deeply connected with people, serving to draw them closer to God and each other.
For Paul, being set apart does not imply detachment but rather a closeness to people, aimed at fostering unity and spiritual connection.
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Thursday Jul 04, 2024
1 Corinthians: You Are a People - Part 1
Thursday Jul 04, 2024
Thursday Jul 04, 2024
Paul gets bad news from Corinth… his friends are at each other's throats.
Disputes have broken out all over the place over multiple issues.
Paul says he is coming to visit them and that he 'does not want to see them only in passing’ (1 Cor 16:7)
In other words, when he gets there he is going to have to stay a while to sort all of this out.
Paul writes this letter to the Cornithians (which this new series is based upon) as a stopgap measure, until he can go to them in person.
Paul’s strategy for addressing these conflicts is revealed in the first couple of verses where he says: ‘To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours’.
He calls them the church, using the ancient Greek term ekklesia which refers to a gathering of citizens responsible for the affairs of the city. He also tells them that they are a people and reminds them that they are ‘together with’ everyone everywhere who calls on Jesus’ name. A gathering, a people, together with… in other words, from the outset of this letter Paul is getting the Corinthians to think corporately and communally.
The theological equivalent of supposing that the sun goes around the earth is the belief that the whole of the Christrian truth revolves around me and my salvation. Many Christians today assume that the central question is ‘What must I do to be saved?’ or ‘How can I enter a right relationship with God?’ And this is not just the wisdom of many contemporary Christians, but the wisdom of our broader culture which claims that salvation is found in discovering and becoming our true selves. The self is something buried deep down inside us just waiting to be discovered.
In this context Paul is a Copernicus or a Galileo… because the radical story Paul is drawing us into is one where salvation is not just about me personally but about a collective and corporate salvation where we are saved together. And in this story your ‘self’ is not something found within yourself but your selfhood or personhood emerges at those places where our lives touch each other.
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Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
Trinity: Community of God - Part 3
Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
In our final part of our series "The Trinity as Community", we read Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We often focus on the action—going, making disciples, baptizing. But sometimes, it feels like a religious assembly line, missing the relational depth.
The key is the part that says, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” When you bring the Trinity into the mix, discipling and baptizing become richer and deeper. Sharing our faith can feel awkward, like we’re pushing an agenda. These fears come from losing touch with the essence of the Trinity—God as a loving community, relational from the start.
Let's reconnect with this through two stories.
First, Dorothy Sayers, a British crime novelist, devout Christian, and author of "The Mind of the Maker," explains how the Trinity informs creativity:
Idea (the Father): the initial spark; "I have an idea for a painting."
Energy (the Son): the process of creating, with all its struggles and efforts.
Power (the Spirit): the impact of the finished work on others.
Sayers shows how great art reflects the Trinity through these elements.
The second story is about a viral TikTok video, "When Alexa Accidentally Plays Classical Music." A little boy in his high chair listens to Mozart's Requiem. He asks his mom, "Do you like this song?" She says, "I do, it's very peaceful." He replies, "It is… think about that. Think about that, mommy, and I will think about you." He continues, "You’re thinking about me and you?" She says, "Sure." Then he adds, "Sure, we could bring daddy too. We can bring everybody."
This boy captures how great art opens up a world of love and relationship, where everyone is welcome—a beautiful picture of the Trinity’s loving community.
These stories remind us that discipling and baptizing should be about creativity, generosity, and hospitality, drawing people into God’s love, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Monday Jun 17, 2024
Trinity: Community of God - Part 2
Monday Jun 17, 2024
Monday Jun 17, 2024
In part 2 of our 3 part series on the Trinity as Community, we explored how Trinitarian ideas intersect with contemporary discussions in art and science.
We proposed that God as the Trinity is the foundation of our reality. This might seem to contradict contemporary scientific understandings, which focus on string theory, quantum fields, and the Big Bang.
Today, science is our primary tool for explaining the universe, often sidelining religion. Modern culture sometimes views rejecting religion as enlightened.
However, discarding religious concepts is not straightforward. For example, early in Einstein’s career, his equations suggested the universe was expanding, implying a beginning, which conflicted with his belief in a steady-state universe. He introduced a "fudge factor" to his model.
In 1929, Edwin Hubble’s observations confirmed the universe's expansion, leading Einstein to embrace the Big Bang theory, admitting his initial resistance was philosophical, not scientific. Interestingly, the Big Bang theory was proposed by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest, who accepted a universe with a beginning.
Thus, the Christian concept of the Trinity informs both art and science. God’s triune nature, a community in himself, is fundamental. His personal nature underpins all reality, predating matter, energy, space, and time. This contrasts with the contemporary view of an impersonal, random universe. The Trinity shows that absoluteness and personalness are inseparable in God.
From this perspective, arts and sciences are distinct yet complementary. The sciences rely on God’s absoluteness, while the arts draw on his personalness.
Often, we feel compelled to align with one over the other, but a more complete human experience might come from embracing both aspects. Reflecting God's image involves acknowledging the importance of both his absoluteness and personalness, recognizing that questions about human nature are as significant as scientific inquiries.
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Thursday Jun 06, 2024
Trinity: Community of God - Part 1
Thursday Jun 06, 2024
Thursday Jun 06, 2024
Oftentimes, Christians and Skeptics alike view the concept of the Trinity as a kind of Christian mythology, a strange part of the story, off to the side, mysterious and nebulous.
And, as a result we struggle to understand just how fundamental and essential Trinitarian Theology has been throughout the ages with many early Christians and theologians coming to the conclusion that the Trinity is in fact the embodiment of love itself as a foundational element of the universe.
A wild claim and one that we'll be peeling back the layers of in this three-part series.
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Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
Stand Alone
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
In this episode, Chris Lawrence delivers our reflection.
A week after Easter, we see Doubting Thomas standing alone, out of sync with the rest of his friends, unable to bring himself to believe, unable to match the energy of their ecstatic belief.
Yet, we see that he was not ostracized.
Thomas wasn’t left behind to figure things out for himself. Instead, Jesus shows up on his behalf, embraces the humility of God and presents his body, the very proof Thomas had asked for
Thomas shows us that in these Easter and post resurrection stories, it’s not always easy to JUST BELIEVE.
With Easter a week behind us, it’s quite possible that there’s been enough trouble in the world and maybe enough stress and struggle in our own lives, that the good news of Easter begins to fade.
Perhaps for us the dazzling shaft of light illuminating the empty tomb has quickly lost its mystery and now all we’re left with is a dark cave.
Whatever our post-Easter headspace might be, we see that Thomas, full of doubt, was not sacrificed for the majority as if he was expendable. He’s an integral part of the post-Easter story and his position deserves to be considered.
And so, we read his statement, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” - John 20:25
And, we find that his challenge was met.
The resurrected Jesus showed up on Thomas’ behalf as the physical embodiment of new creation, even as he bore the marks and scars of the old world; remnants of a struggle not to be glossed over. In Jesus, God is “caught up in the struggle” and his wounds speak to anyone and everyone who has ever endured suffering.
And yet, Jesus is not only God’s commitment to physical reality, but also God’s commitment to time. As Jesus presents his scarred body to Thomas, he not only embodies the humility of God, he also embodies the patience of God.
It is a beautiful thing that Christians can be people of a particular patience. In a world which often seems to only know violence and retaliatory response, the Christian can pause, and this is a rare gift in the sort of world in which we inhabit.
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Thursday May 09, 2024
Easter 2024 - Part 3
Thursday May 09, 2024
Thursday May 09, 2024
On Easter Sunday we celebrated the miracle of Christ’s resurrection and explored the implications of his crucifixion and return from the grave, often misunderstood to be the way that we might go to heaven when we die and leave this world behind, a world destined to end. Stephen stated that, “it may come as a relief to some of you to know that while it is true that the Easter message is at the heart of Christianity, it is not about the end of the world and how we can go to heaven.”
John begins his gospel with, “In the beginning…” which theologian N.T. Wright jokes is like saying, “I just wrote a new and original symphony,” only to have the symphony begin with the famous opening of Beethoven’s 5th, because that’s exactly what John is doing: he starts his gospel by evoking the very first verse of the bible in Genesis: "In the beginning…"
But this is John’s way of saying, “this story of Jesus, this good news that I’m about to tell you is a new creation story” and at the end of John’s Gospel, you find that, like in the account in Genesis, John begins to count the days. In the Genesis creation story the author lists the days of the week; John suddenly becomes obsessed with the days of the week. He keeps reminding us in the middle of all of this calamity - the trial, crucifixion, and death of Jesus - which day of the week it is.
The resurrection of Jesus is not meant to be understood as an odd event in the world; the resurrection is the beginning of a new world and points to the way the world is going to be. We are meant to look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ and see new creation.
Because, we have all had hopes and dreams that we’ve lost or will lose. We all have something in us that’s been broken or will be broken. We all have people we love and care about, friends and family who will be taken from us and who we'll one day be taken from.
Yet, the resurrection is a promise, that just as God has reclaimed Jesus from the grave one day he will reclaim all of creation, he will do this for creation and he will do this for you and for me. He will restore us to each other.
And, there is no greater promise than that.
He is Risen.
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Thursday May 09, 2024
Easter 2024 - Part 2
Thursday May 09, 2024
Thursday May 09, 2024
Like us during an election cycle when hopes ride high that if we can get the right person elected they will make the world a better place, the crowds had high hopes for Jesus when he entered Jerusalem. They hoped that King Jesus would banish the Romans who taxed them into poverty and executed them when they complained.
The Pharisees offered a solution to the Roman problem: we need to follow the Torah with precision so that when we revolt God will guarantee our victory over Rome. But the Sadducees had quite a different solution: we can’t beat this superpower so the solution is not revolution but cooperation. Which agenda would you have supported: emancipation or survival?
As is often the case the political solutions were out of touch with reality. How can the Sadducees talk with a straight face about ‘surviving’ to a people whose friends and family are being crucified? But then again how can the Pharisees talk about emancipation when going up against an unimaginably strong superpower?
The chasm that usually exists between political & political reality is often because we haven't understood the depth of the problem we're up against. That was certainly true of the people in Jerusalem that day who externalized evil in the form of the hierarchies over them. Evil is "out there" and embodied by someone else.
But Jesus refuses to offer simplistic solutions that were philosophically, theologically naïve about the problem of evil. He won’t let them externalize evil and locate it outside themselves and in someone else. Right after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem he goes to the Temple and turns over the tables of the money changers. A symbolic act, a type of prophetic street theater, which said ‘look, it is at the heart of your institutions, it is in your parties and partisanship, it is in your political ambitions that evil resides. It’s all much closer to home.
Jesus recognized that the disarray in Israel was symptomatic of a greater disarray in the created order and in humanity as a whole, a problem that was well outside the scope of the small political ambitions of the people which couldn’t possibly deal with the reality of evil as long as they externalized it in someone else.
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Thursday May 09, 2024
Easter 2024 - Part 1
Thursday May 09, 2024
Thursday May 09, 2024
Luke chapter 9 and uses the phrase, “He set his face towards Jerusalem.”
Luke is referring here to Jesus and his resolute focus on the holy city with the direction of Luke’s gospel hinging on these words. Once Jesus turns his face towards Jerusalem, everything that follows falls in the shadow of this idea.
The city of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day was many things. But most importantly, Jerusalem was the site of the holy temple and was understood to be the exact place on earth where the God of the universe had chosen to meet with his people. Jerusalem itself was seen as being the literal embodiment of the pulling together of heaven and earth.
Right after Jesus “sets his face towards Jerusalem," he and his disciples are met with aggressive inhospitality as they pass through a Samaritan town. The Samaritans hated the impenetrable institutions and inaccessible hierarchies surrounding the temple and they rejected the temple in Jerusalem as the sole seat of God’s power, instead declaring their own Mount Gerizim and the temple on it as their personal center of religious life.
The disciples get their feelings hurt when the Samaritans are not hospitable toward them and ask Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Jesus rebukes them and they continue on to another town.
Jesus does NOT rebuke the Samaritans. He confronts the disciples for adopting an all too familiar posture, a holier than thou attitude that declared, “We are the chosen few and those unsophisticated, uneducated, unclean Samaritans, they should all do us a favor and die.”
Jesus understood this insidious demonization of the Samaritans. He also understood the Samaritan’s inhospitality to be a forgivable misunderstanding.
Jesus' slow march to the holy city was not to reinforce the elitist hierarchies of the temple. It was Jesus expanding the presence of God for all, with the site of the temple shifting from the physical building onto Jesus’ own body. And so Jesus himself becomes the physical embodiment of the pulling together of heavens and earth and ultimately makes himself available to the Samaritans, Jews and everyone alike.
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Saturday Apr 13, 2024
The Prophetic Imagination - Part 8
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
When Jesus is warned that Herod wants to kill him, he says, ‘Oh Jerusalem Jerusalem you who stone the prophets and kill those sent to you.’ Jesus recognizes that Herod is the most recent iteration of a long history of Israel’s leaders defending themselves from people like him in order to maintain the status quo.
Matthew’s gospel tells us that Herod had all the baby boys in Bethlehem two and under put to death. Mark and Luke tell similar gruesome stories about Herod. George Orwell says: ‘In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible’, and Herod was the indefensible status quo of Israel. When faced with a choice between Herod or Jesus, Israel’s leaders went with Herod. They had to narrate their reality so that they could make peace with the decision.
Because language is used to defend the indefensible, Orwell explains that our ‘political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.'
Joe Biden was the chair of the special senate committee for foreign relations from 1997 to 2003. During his tenure, Biden began to advocate for the invasion of Iraq 5 years before George Bush executed the war. After Bush waged a war of aggression, Obama became president and smoothed it all over. By that time Obama felt he could drop the euphemistic language and said ‘we tortured some folks’. He went on to explain, ‘While I don’t believe that anybody is above the law, I also believe that we need to look forward instead of backwards’. Obama instructed America to put the illegal war and the torture program down the ‘memory hole’ - another Orwellian term. Obama himself would go on to start new wars, renew the patriot act, and arrest more journalists and their sources than any president to date.
If the church is going to have a prophetic imagination, we have to be willing to break with the herd and refuse to speak the political language handed to us by the predominant culture. This may not mean success for the church in the sense of convincing others to see what we see; but the church is not called to be successful, but rather to be faithful.
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Saturday Apr 13, 2024
The Prophetic Imagination - Part 7
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
The prophet’s ability to predict events decades if not centuries into the future can seem mysterious and appear as if they have psychic powers or a crystal ball. But when we read Jesus’ words closely - and the words of other prophetic voices - we discover that Jesus and other prophets understood how their time and place was really functioning - regardless of how others said it was functioning. In other words the prophets had a far more intimate knowledge of their own contemporary situation than anyone else around them and it is this deep understanding of their contemporary situation that gives them such predictive powers.
But this too is mysterious - why do the prophets understand their contemporary situation more deeply than the people around them?
We can explore this mystery by considering the question that Jesus often asks his listeners ‘Have you not read?’
Given that the vast majority of people were illiterate in Jesus day this may seem like an odd question to ask. It seems the obvious answer is ‘no of course they haven’t read, because they can’t read or write!’
But when Jesus asks this question he is addressing the literate Pharisees and the educated Sadducees and the cultured Herodians; in other words, Jesus’ sharpest confrontations are with the educated cultured class.
And every time Jesus asks the question ‘have you not read?’, followed by a well-known passage of scripture, he is showing these self appointed guardians of Israel that they do not really know these scriptures in any meaningful way and are in fact at odds with their own texts.
They had co-opted the language of scripture to tell the story in such a way that essentially pushed God out of the way and allowed them to seize control and maintain their own power. By asking have you not read, Jesus wanted to rescue them as he want to rescue us from a self-serving language that leads us astray and disconnects us from the realities of our own contemporary situation.
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Saturday Apr 13, 2024
The Prophetic Imagination - Part 6
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
During a TV interview, British comedian and outspoken atheist, Stephen Fry, was asked, “What would you do if you died and found out God existed?” Fry responded that he would walk up to God and say, "Bone cancer in children. What’s that about? How dare you create a world where there is so much misery that is not our fault. It’s evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?"
Stephen Fry isn’t wrong when he says that our world is full of injustice and pain. Jeremiah and the Psalms are filled with obvious anger and frustration directed at God, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician? Why has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?"
The same feelings of resentment and rage that Stephen Fry directs towards God are in fact echoed with as much vitriol and despair within the Bible itself.
Pastor Stephen once said, “The problem of evil and suffering in the world is as much a philosophical problem for Christians as it is for everyone. The question of innocent suffering before a good, all-powerful God is the engine that drives the entire biblical narrative. It’s in multiple psalms, every verse of the book of Job, in the cry of Jesus on the cross. The Bible creates space for and provides us language to bring our complaints against God.”
The Biblical narrative itself is designed to hand us the language of lament in times when our own words fail us and when all we have is a wordless groan.
In response to the Prosperity Gospel in American Christianity, Kate Bowler (professor of American Religious History at Duke who was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 35) says, “We don’t serve a Quid Pro Quo God. Our lives are built with such delicate material; it doesn’t take a lot to topple the whole thing over... our culture makes us feel embarrassed for the terrible things that happen to us. It makes us feel ashamed, lonely and like a loser. I would love if we had a culture that could embrace those of us that fall... give us a language and support to help us feel like we’re not problems to be solved, we’re just people to be loved.”
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Saturday Apr 13, 2024
The Prophetic Imagination - Part 5
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
The prophet Jeremiah witnessed the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple at the hands of Babylon. Even after being allowed to remain with his people in Judah instead of being taken to Babylon, he had to flee to Egypt where he eventually died, never having returned home.
A tragic sequence of events for a prophet of Israel who understood full well that the very prophetic tradition of which he was a part had started back with Moses and the Exodus out of Egypt. For Jeremiah, to be stuck back in Egypt would have felt like a cruel joke.
If you open the book of Jeremiah and jab your finger down on any given line of text you’re more than likely to find gut-wrenching grief, lament and gruesome descriptions of human mortality/death. But why focus on death and dying?
Lydia Dugdale is the director of The Center for Medical Ethics at Columbia University, having first established The Program for Medicine, Spirituality, and Religion at Yale School of Medicine, and is also the author of a book, "The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom."
Lydia is an exemplar of what it means to actively practice hope, AND look into the darkness and explore human mortality and what she calls, "The Good Death". She is adamant that working to form a healthy concept of "The Good Death" is what informs our ability to live "The Good Life."
Lydia says that she wishes everyone, regardless of youth or health, might internalize the fact that they have a death diagnosis.
People are given 3-6 months to live, and all of a sudden feelings of jealousy, attachment to material possessions, the pursuit of success, all begin to subside; all the ‘Imperial Consciousness' stuff falls away and what remains is The Prophetic Imagination - the hope for a mended world, longing for resurrection and understanding that time is precious and people matter.
Like Lydia, Jeremiah wasn’t gazing into the darkness from a place of overwhelming despair but rather from a place of hope. Through his art, Jeremiah points us towards the fragile beauty of life, mines our universal longings for resurrection, and unearths what often feel like our absurd hopes for a restored, mended world.
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Saturday Apr 13, 2024
The Prophetic Imagination - Part 4
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
We are inundated by messages that say that “hopeful” or promising language is too much, too idealistic for this world.
The prevailing wisdom tells us repeatedly, this world is a violent world that needs violent solutions. We are confronted by the “facts” and we clam up.
“Hope... is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts... hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.” - Walter Brueggemann
Prophetic Hope is not optimism.
Optimism is somehow managing the reality and massaging the facts and attempting to create reasons for positivity. It’s fatuous.
HOPE however isn’t afraid to look into the darkness. Christian hope, rooted in ancient traditions reaching back to the Hebrew Bible, connects us into a perspective, a posture which is one of hope, in the middle of darkness.
Texts such as Isaiah 25:6-9 and the stories about banquets and weddings told by Jesus in Matthew 25:1-13 are energizing us to defy the darkness. In Jesus’ story he insists hope is an active work to be done through the night, keeping our lamps fueled even if the wait seems interminably long.
Jesus will come, at the midnight hour, and we will see a new world comprised of all the tens of thousands of gestures of justice, sacrifice, grace and love, with all the compassionate and loyal movements rolled up into a new world where there is only beauty.
No more tears, only beauty, only love and no more death… all that has been beautiful, all that has contained love (however imperfectly we enacted it) will be preserved and brought forward to this new world. The great mending. The great reversal.
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Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
The Prophetic Imagination - Part 3
Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
We often get the impression that the prophet operated as a lone voice over and against the rest of society. This idea is reinforced when we flick through the prophetic books of the bible and find that they are all named after particular prophets: Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah etc.
Certainly, there were times when the prophets felt alone. Remember Elijah sitting by himself, wishing for his own death, claiming that he was the only faithful prophet left?
But even then, Elijah was not alone, because Obediah had hidden 100 prophets in caves and supplied them with bread and water.
Or take Moses for example, when God commands him to go to Pharaoh he replies, ‘I’m not eloquent, I am slow in speech and of tongue’. And so God brings his brother Aaron to him so that they can fulfill the prophetic calling - not alone but together.
Before they confront Pharaoh, they go to Israel, gather the elders, and begin to cultivate the prophetic imagination in them asking, ‘do you remember when things were different? Can you imagine a different future?’ In other words, the prophets belonged to prophetic communities in which their own prophetic imaginations could be cultivated.
For as long as there have been prophets, there have been those who ape the prophetic voice. Last episode we compared the prophets of Baal who ate from Jezebel’s table with the prophets of God who were surviving on rations of bread and water hiding in a cave. The prophets around Jezebel’s table knew what to say and what not to say if they were going to survive and they had no interest in delivering a word from ‘beyond’.
This culture of fear and coerced agreement contrasts with the culture of love which Jesus cultivates amongst his disciples. Jesus says ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ If we love each other the way Christ loves us then we know we will be there for each other no matter what. This kind of love produces freedom to be honest and this honesty and love are the wellspring of the prophetic imagination.
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Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
The Prophetic Imagination - Part 2
Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
This episode contrasts the imperial imagination with the prophetic imagination. The imperial imagination tells us that this is the way things are, this is the way things have always been and this is the way things are always going to be. In other words, the imperial imagination is very good at perpetuating the myth of its own eternity.
On the other hand, the prophetic imagination can see through the way the now is being presented, it knows things are not the way they seem, moreover the prophetic imagination has access to deep memories so it can remember a different past. And because the prophetic imagination can see through the way the now is being presented and can remember a different past, the prophetic imagination can envisage and hope for an entirely different future.
But in order for the prophetic imagination to be able to do all this, the imagination has to be free and the prophetic imagination finds its freedom in relationship with the God who is completely free. But a god, who is ‘coincidentally’ aligned with all our major institutions and the views of the surrounding predominant culture is probably not a free god but the servant and slave of the established order.
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Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
The Prophetic Imagination - Part 1
Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
Wednesday Apr 10, 2024
The history of Biblical prophetic tradition has everything to do with the relationship between the prophet and the Creator God for whom the prophet functions as a mouthpiece. Continued to this day, it’s a tradition that has been fostered by communities throughout history from generation to generation.
Freidrich Nietzsche felt that abstract ideas were easier to understand when they found their roots in individuals. He called these people exemplars. A contemporary exemplar who has continued the Biblical prophetic tradition in our day and who embodies the idea of The Prophetic Imagination, is novelist, essayist, poet and organic farmer, Wendell Berry.
Berry published a book titled "The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture", where he traces the injustices foundational to the initial settling of America and then goes on to outline the ensuing growth of small agricultural communities, the effects of the Industrial Revolution on said communities and the physical, spiritual and psychological unsettling of the American people as they slowly began to be treated less like humans and more like the cogs in a machine.
Berry traces the rise of a kind of person he calls the Consumer Exploiter, contrasted with the Producer Nurturer. He states that in a perfect world all would take on the posture of a Producer Nurturer and there would be no room for Consumer Exploiters.
Berry is a believer committed to the idea of a Creator God. A God that he believes he is in partnership with, as a steward of the land and as a partnering voice in intimate relationship with his Creator.
Berry speaks with creativity and imagination. He speaks out against the injustices of our dominant community and through story, poetry, gorgeous lines of inquiry, robust curiosity, poignant dissatisfaction and healthy doubt, speaks into our present moment with a modern fluency that points towards a new freedom and future.
This kind of prophetic voice doesn’t stop with Wendell Berry. It continues to this day carried by other individuals. A tradition that’s still being encouraged by entire communities.
So, what kind of community works to foster a prophetic voice?
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Friday Mar 22, 2024
Mystery: Trinity
Friday Mar 22, 2024
Friday Mar 22, 2024
In this enlightening podcast episode, Pastor Stephen Cheung delves deep into the profound mysteries of the doctrine of the Trinity, drawing from the Gospel of John and the Athanasian Creed. Through a careful examination of scripture and historical context, he explores the intricate nature of the Triune God and its significance in Christian theology. Cheung eloquently guides listeners through the paradoxes and complexities inherent in understanding the Trinity, emphasizing the importance of embracing mystery rather than attempting to resolve it. He challenges conventional approaches to doctrine, urging believers to step beyond the confines of intellectual comprehension and into a deeper, more profound experience of divine community and love.
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Monday Mar 11, 2024
Resurrection: And So It Begins
Monday Mar 11, 2024
Monday Mar 11, 2024
On this Easter Sunday, Pastor Stephen delves into an encounter between the Apostle Paul and a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens, as recounted in the book of Acts. Paul's preaching about Jesus and the resurrection intrigued some but left others skeptical. However, Paul seized the opportunity to share the message of the resurrection with them, emphasizing its significance in the Christian faith.
By reframing the resurrection as both a promise and an invitation, the episode challenges listeners to reimagine their futures in its light. It highlights historical examples of how belief in the resurrection has inspired acts of compassion, justice, and social change. Ultimately, this episode encourages us to consider how embracing the reality of the resurrection can lead to a renewed sense of purpose and hope in our lives.
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Monday Mar 11, 2024
Humanity: On Being Human
Monday Mar 11, 2024
Monday Mar 11, 2024
What does it mean to be human? Amidst our daily routines and societal discussions on rights, the notion of humanity remains elusive and complex. Drawing from existentialist perspectives and cultural observations, Pastor Stephen navigates through the intricacies of defining humanity in a world that demands its rights fervently. Through a journey spanning cultural reflections and biblical insights, the narrative culminates in an exploration of Jesus Christ as the epitome of humanity, embodying the divine image and offering a profound lens through which to understand our own humanity.
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Sunday Dec 11, 2022
Love, Joy & Peace: Part Two - Peace
Sunday Dec 11, 2022
Sunday Dec 11, 2022
12.11 [Sermon] To rescue us from the "lullaby effect" that comes from overfamiliarity with the Christmas gospel narratives, Eric contrasts Jesus with his contemporary and attempted assassin, Herod the Great. The latter's excessive wealth, paranoia, and brutality leads us to especially welcome Jesus as the Prince of Peace.
This Advent series explores the vast implications of the birth of Christ and the resounding love, joy and peace imbedded in the story of the creator God who intervenes on behalf of his creation and stakes his claim once and for all in the reality that he has always deemed to be "very good."
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Love, Joy & Peace: Part One - Glory
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
12.4 [Sermon] You've probably heard, "Glory to God in the highest," especially around Christmastime. Why do we pursue fleeting glory--fame, beauty, and bliss? How would our lives be transformed by pursuing the everlasting glory of God?
This Advent series explores the vast implications of the birth of Christ and the resounding love, joy and peace imbedded in the story of the creator God who intervenes on behalf of his creation and stakes his claim once and for all in the reality that he has always deemed to be "very good."
Sunday Nov 20, 2022
The Story Behind the Doctrine: Part Four - Mezzanine Discussion
Sunday Nov 20, 2022
Sunday Nov 20, 2022
11.20 [Discussion] The Story Behind the Doctrine: Part Four - Mezzanine Discussion - Stephen and Eric recap the sermon series and discuss the four main ways doctrine tends to be misunderstood aka 'The Four Flips'. Eric plugs the BEMA podcast and finally opens up the conversation with four questions:
1. What do you think of when you hear the word doctrine? Have you ever thought of doctrine as being rooted in story?
2. Doctrine is often misunderstood as being detached from reality. What are some ways you’ve seen doctrine play out in real time and in very real, concrete ways?
3. In the series it was mentioned that doctrine isn’t about finding answers but is actually more about being immersed in the mysterious. How might learning to rest in mystery and paradox inform our lives for the better?
4. At certain moments in history, doctrine was used as a means of abuse and control (Inquisitions, etc…) However, doctrine’s earliest origins actually have more to do with maintaining human freedom in the face of a totalitarian controlling state. How might a deeper understanding of the early origins of doctrine instill freedom, courage and wholeness within each of us?
In our present day, the idea of ‘doctrine’ is often understood to be an unwavering set of rules rigidly enforced by the self proclaimed ‘doctrine police’. And so, the word itself carries with it a certain degree of baggage and may even bring to mind horrific images of historic inquisitions. But, what if we went back, stood alongside early Christians and immersed ourselves in the nuanced story of Christ? What would happen if we were able to understand how a dry word like doctrine might actually be referring to the distillation of a vast story? The story of God’s intervention on behalf of his creation with the key plot points aka ‘doctrine’ compelling humanity towards a greater fullness and deeper hope even amidst the chaos of our contemporary world.
Sunday Nov 13, 2022
The Story Behind the Doctrine: Part Three - Trinity
Sunday Nov 13, 2022
Sunday Nov 13, 2022
Sunday Nov 06, 2022
The Story Behind the Doctrine: Part Two - Resurrection
Sunday Nov 06, 2022
Sunday Nov 06, 2022
Sunday Oct 30, 2022
The Story Behind the Doctrine: Part One - Incarnation
Sunday Oct 30, 2022
Sunday Oct 30, 2022
Sunday Oct 23, 2022
International Justice Mission - Miguel Lau
Sunday Oct 23, 2022
Sunday Oct 23, 2022
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
Being Disciples: Part Four - Staying Power (Hebrews 12:1-13)
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
10.02 [Sermon] Being Disciples: Part Four - Staying Power - Chris Lawrence wraps up our series 'Being Disciples' and explores how resilience is not in fact a gift but is a habit that needs to be learned. Or maybe it's something to be “caught” by association, from those who have found themselves pushing through threatening and painful experiences.
Sunday Oct 09, 2022
Being Disciples: Part Three - A Larger Story
Sunday Oct 09, 2022
Sunday Oct 09, 2022
10.09 [Sermon] Being Disciples: Part Three - A Larger Story - We conclude our Being Disciples series on following Jesus. Our prevailing cultural mantra "As long as I'm not hurting anyone..." turns out to be a woefully insufficient rule of life. Jesus instead invites us into the grand story of devoting ourselves to the good of one another, as he did for us.
Sunday Oct 02, 2022
Being Disciples: Part Two - Knowledge and Dust
Sunday Oct 02, 2022
Sunday Oct 02, 2022
Sunday Sep 25, 2022
Being Disciples: Part One - Come Follow Me
Sunday Sep 25, 2022
Sunday Sep 25, 2022
Sunday Sep 18, 2022
Sunday Sep 18, 2022
09.11 [Sermon] Thoughts on Church: Part Two - Bodies, Banquets and the Muscle Memory of Love - As we wrap up our 'Thoughts on Church' miniseries we explore what it means to gather and worship as a community of Christians and Skeptics - but this time with a twist. Because, buying into church is one thing but if we're really going to explore prevailing 'Thoughts on Church' we have to recognize that many view organized religious gatherings to be archaic, outmoded and outdated and would rather not have anything to do with something, seemingly so out of touch with contemporary reality. So, why do we still choose to meet Sunday after Sunday? What does gathering together actually do? And, how do we find ourselves shaped and changed by our decision to live and worship alongside others?
Sunday Sep 11, 2022
Thoughts on Church: Part One - God With Us
Sunday Sep 11, 2022
Sunday Sep 11, 2022
Sunday Jul 17, 2022
The Things That Shape Us: Part Five - Prayer
Sunday Jul 17, 2022
Sunday Jul 17, 2022
Sunday Jul 10, 2022
The Things That Shape Us: Part Four - The Bible
Sunday Jul 10, 2022
Sunday Jul 10, 2022
Reason, the letters of St. Anselm and a fragment of The Canterbury Tales - all within the same two covers. And remember that the chronological span of the books of the Bible is
even longer than that of the examples I have just given." So the reality is that as soon as you think you know what the Bible is, you turn the page and it turns into something different. So how should we approach this book?
Sunday Jun 26, 2022
The Things That Shape Us: Part Three - Baptism
Sunday Jun 26, 2022
Sunday Jun 26, 2022
Sunday Jun 19, 2022
The Things That Shape Us: Part Two - Communion
Sunday Jun 19, 2022
Sunday Jun 19, 2022
Sunday Jun 12, 2022
The Things That Shape Us: Part One
Sunday Jun 12, 2022
Sunday Jun 12, 2022
Sunday Jun 05, 2022
Pentecost Sunday: Spirit of Presence
Sunday Jun 05, 2022
Sunday Jun 05, 2022
06.05 [Sermon] Pentecost Sunday: Spirit of Presence - What do Christians today believe about the mystery of the Holy Spirit? AND, what do we do with these beliefs? How does this stuff play out in real time? Do we behave as if the Holy Spirit exists, works and moves? OR, do we actually rely more on the power of our own efforts?
Sunday May 22, 2022
Reflections on the Sabbath - Part Five: Mezzanine Discussion
Sunday May 22, 2022
Sunday May 22, 2022
05.22 [Mezzanine] I Will Give You Rest: Reflections on the Sabbath - Part Five - At the end of each sermon series, rather than pushing on to the next thing we intentionally take time to rest and reflect on what's been said. This time around we speak with Mark and Mara and hear how Jesus' invitation into Sabbath rest has recently entered their lives in a new way and continues to inform the rhythm of their week as they work from home and raise two small children in New York City.
Sunday May 15, 2022
Reflections on the Sabbath - Part Four: Sabbath as an Invitation to Freedom
Sunday May 15, 2022
Sunday May 15, 2022
Sunday May 08, 2022
Sunday May 08, 2022
Sunday May 01, 2022
Sunday May 01, 2022
05.01 [Sermon] I Will Give You Rest: Reflections on the Sabbath - Part Two - Stephen Cheung reminds us to welcome the Sabbath as our Beloved. In the Sabbath, God grants us permission to rest, to cease from striving. Creation is good, and Sabbath is "very good."
Stephen suggests four practices for us to lean into Sabbath delight:
- Start where you are with the pleasures at hand.
- Introduce one slow meal in the week.
- Introduce an entire day in your week where you rest.
- Make Sabbath possible for everyone within your sphere of influence.
Sunday Apr 24, 2022
Sunday Apr 24, 2022
04.24 [Sermon] I Will Give You Rest: Reflections on the Sabbath - Part One - Stephen Cheung reveals how American culture has slipped away from the restorative gift of Sabbath rest. He reminds us that the Sabbath is integral to Creation, not an addendum - the practice that restores our relationships with ourselves, others, and all creation.
Stephen suggests four practices for us to lean into Sabbath presence:
- Fight the urge to check the phone first thing in the morning.
- Put your phone into Airplane/’Do not disturb’ mode when meeting with people.
- Don’t bring the phone to the bedroom.
- Turn off the phone for 24 hours once a week.