Most popular and most controversial episodes of 2020

Hi everyone- welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox, and I'm going to be the guest speaker today and take a look back at some episodes in case you missed any- the ones that were most often downloaded, as well as the episode that was the most controversial. I had originally thought honestly, 2020 was kind of a wreck.

And I thought then looking at the 28 episodes that have been published since beginning this podcast this year, there were some really phenomenal concepts talked about, Bible verses, guest speakers. And I thought at first, let me talk about each episode for one minute. Cause I like timers. I like things to be in order.

And then thankfully I realized I'm really not doing anybody a service by talking about all 28 episodes for one minute apiece. So I decided to take a look back at the episodes that have been listened to the most. And I thought, okay, I have this number of episodes that were the most downloaded. I should speak about each of them for certain number of minutes. And then I decided to throw that idea out the window, too.

I'm really getting so relaxed in my advanced age. Just kidding. So I printed out a few highlights of quotes, Bible verses and resources. And I'm pretty good at shuffling cards, but not shuffling pieces of paper- I know it's so old fashioned that I actually printed things out. I am just shuffling and I'm going to grab a few and talk.

So the first piece of paper that I have grabbed is actually episode two, so thank you to Melissa for talking with us about fear. I have a couple of quotes from this episode for you- if you'd like to go back and listen to the whole thing, it was published in June of 2020. Melissa said, 

Melissa: I think we do hold onto fear. I've found that fear is kind of comforting, because we know it, it's something we can expect.

We can expect to be afraid of something. And the releasing of it is hard because when you release it, you're going into another unknown. Living in fear is something that's easy for us to do because it's familiar. We're always afraid of something. We're afraid of success. We're afraid of failure, we fear what's to come, but if we own it, we can move forward.

Barbara: Melissa also talked about a situation in her life. After her mom died, she had invited her father to move in with her and her husband and their child.

Melissa: the blessings just poured down on us, from what we thought was a horrible situation of having to sell the family home we were married at, to buy a new home, to do more renovate, all these things that we thought were hardships turned out to be a blessing. The best thing about it is seeing my daughter's excitement in the morning when she can come downstairs and watch paw patrol with her Papa. It's been really nice because her daycare closed. So now a blessing was having my father here because she was no longer able to go to daycare. He became the daycare so that I was able to continue with my studies, which was a blessing that I know a lot of my classmates and those around the country who all of a sudden found themselves needing to take care of children while figuring out how they were going to do their work or do their work from home. We're facing the blessing in our house was that we didn't have that struggle, but I definitely acknowledge and prayed a lot for all of the parents who were having to do that.

Barbara: thank you, Melissa, for that testimonial. And. I just want to acknowledge since this is a Bible study podcast and we talk about blessings. I know I've talked about this in a few different episodes. For Melissa and I in our Lutheran faith, it's not fair to say, if you do this, then something wonderful will happen. Sometimes that does happen. But sometimes it takes a really long time and you're like, okay, I'm still waiting for the wonderful, and there's a different podcast episode specifically on the topic of waiting, but I just want to express gratitude and thanks that some of the fearful and hardship times in Melissa's life did end up feeling like blessings for her and her family. So that's episode two from June of 2020.

All right. We're shuffling some more. Let's see what another, either most listened to episode or most disputed episode was. This is really funny. You heard me shuffling and I picked episode three, maybe we'll end up going in order. I spoke with Deb about church and society and social justice. And the first website that I wanted to share as a resource today is www.UMCjustice.org . Deb is a United Methodist minister and UMC stands for United Methodist church. So all of the resources are listed on the podcast website, which is www.40minutesoffaith.com . There are partial transcripts of each episode there for you in the podcast section, as well as all of the resources that are discussed during every single episode.

So we were talking about becoming wise and active citizens, and Deb said,

Deb: it means thinking before doing- it's very easy to just react to a scene that's happening, but I have found that if I stop, take a breath, pray, think about sort of the biblical implications of whatever struggles are going on in society.

and then at that, of that model, that tends to be something that's much more long lasting than just doing the first thing that comes to my head, which is usually something out of anger rather than something out of love.

Barbara: Deb also gives us two other examples.

Deb: I had a confirmation statement said to me one year, well, Deb, I only have like 1% faith. I'm not sure I want to get up there and say, I'm going to follow Jesus. And I said to her, God could do a lot with that one percent. And so we don't have to totally know what it is we believe, or we don't have to be totally a hundred percent rooted  in our faith journey if God is leading us, if we hear that voice of God saying, I want you to go do this. Sometimes we just have to go and we grow in that whole process. 

Barbara: Finally, Deb mentioned a lot of things, but for the purposes of today's summary:

Deb: I had a pastor friend tell our church if we're not failing at stuff that we're not trying hard enough. Which was freeing for us. It was like everything we do doesn't have to be a success. We just have to go out there and say, Oh yeah, this works. But yet this didn't work so well, how can we tweak it? What do we need to do different? 

Barbara: thank you very much to Deb in episode three, for talking with us about church and society in June of 2020. All right. We're doing the great shuffle again here.

Okay. We have episode six, which was released in July of 2020, and this is the one that I received the most amount of pushback from. I'm open to engaging in conversation. And that's one of the things that Sara and I talked about. I am interested in knowing that I might not always be right. I still have room to learn. I don't know everything. And to continue to engage in conversation with each other. Sara says: 

Sara: I'm someone who doesn't like confrontation at all, but I like to think that, especially with some of these challenging topics, I want to add   spice and stirred up, because I think it's really important that we talk about these things in church.

If we can't talk about it and how they relate to our faith, I think in many ways we're doing a disservice to ourselves and to others. Because they're important. It helps us understand who God is and how we interact with God as well.

Barbara: the topic of this episode was inclusive and expansive language. I attended a workshop at my school, which is Wartburg, theological seminary. And this is a position that has come out of my faith body, which is the evangelical Lutheran church in America. I didn't make this up on my own and it wasn't Sara's idea. She's a student at the school also.

So we had a conversation about what it is that we learned during this workshop and how it might apply to our churches and in the lives of people who we know. I asked Sara about inclusive language and she said:

Sara: that's a tricky one because it can be different for all people. But I think it, especially in relation to how we understand, God means being willing to use God or God's self, instead of saying he all of the time. which can be tricky, especially when we read the Bible and it's so full of he's.

And then trying to distinguish between, is this he talking about God, the father, is it talking about Jesus, the person? It's being willing to at least have those conversations and look at what does it mean if we just refer to God only as he all the time. 

Barbara: There's obviously a lot more to the episode that I would encourage you to check out, but I have two more comments from Sara when we're talking about inclusive and expansive language and how we bring that into our faith groups and talk about it with other people. Sara says:

Sara: one of the biggest things that we can do about this is have a dialogue with people. It means being willing to hear what other people have to say and genuinely hear that in our seats, it means listening actively without just thinking about what next defensive point you're going to make, but really being open and trusting that the spirit is going to help guide those conversations and be present in that. It comes down to what Dr. Sam Giery talks about it as viewing people from the lens of Christ and not from our human lens, because it's really easy to look at someone and say, well, you did X, Y, and Z wrong.

And how dare you? But that's not how Christ has redeemed us sees us. And so being willing to approached conversations that way, I think it's going to be really important moving forward. 

Sara: part of that is just being willing to have those conversations and meeting people where they're at and growing slowly with them, instead of going straight for where you want them to be, because we're not all at the same point in talking about inclusive language or racism or sexism or any of that.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's partially just a product of how we were raised in the society that we live in. but. Change doesn't happen overnight. It definitely is a process and being willing to commit to the process instead of just expecting change to happen immediately.

Barbara: So thank you to people who have given feedback, both positive and constructive criticism. I don't need to always be told about how wonderful everything is.

If there's a concerning situation, your comments are welcome. If you learn something new and helpful, of course, that information is welcome as well. And I look forward to continuing to bring interesting topics of diverse natures to future episodes. All right. We've got the big shuffle going on here. Let's see.

What's next.

Okay. In episodes, eight and 10, Heather talked with us about human rights. The conversation was so comprehensive that it ended up being two episodes. So we have both episode eight and 10 from July of 2020. I shared with Heather a document that was published by the evangelical Lutheran church in America.

The website is E L C A.org about human rights. And there are a series of social messages and social statements that discuss. Important topics in this day and age, including situations that might feel like ethical dilemmas. There are certainly some issues that might be considered controversial there. And I haven't gone through all of them yet in podcast episodes, but look forward to doing so in the future.

When we were talking about human rights, Heather said:

Heather: as far as how we can do better, it starts inside of us. We have to first rid ourselves of any judgment that we have towards specific communities, and really do some soul searching.

We have to pray and ask God to uncover that. And it can be painful, to reveal these works that we were trying to ignore or that just weren't coming to light. And then, once we work with God on healing those things, because he is the great healer and we may feel really bad about some of the thoughts or ideas that we've allowed to stagnate internally.

But God can remove all of those things from us. If we have a heart for him to do it, and if we allow him to do it, and sometimes it takes a little while, maybe we won't be healed right away, like a miraculous healing that Jesus performed many times, but it takes some work and effort depending on how long you've allowed those things to fester.

So the first thing I think is you have to work internally and you have to work with God on relieving you of those things. And I think also times when God really relieved people of those things very quickly, including myself- there's been times where I prayed on different things for relief and God relieved me of them right away.

So he knows where you're at with that and he can work with you on it. So, another thing we have to remember is, it's not my right to determine another person's worth. And their rights. So the statement that you read said that no person has more rights or fewer rights than another- I don't set the rights of anyone.

I don't even set the rights of myself and I don't establish my own worth or another person's worth or how I should treat them with dignity or not. That isn't up to me. God established that when he created you, and my brother and my sister and, myself. So God gave that worth to me. And it's not my place to take it away from anybody, but to recognize and to promote and help those that maybe society isn't treating with dignity, in different ways.

So, we have to keep those things in mind and I think that is one way we can do better. Then after you feel that your conscience is clear, then you can pray and ask God to lead you forward in what type of action you can do externally. So first internal second, external. And how does that look for you?

It's going to be different for every person. Not every person is going to have people coming in their house to talk about this and not every person is going to be on the street doing peaceful protesting and not every person is going to be working in the homeless shelter with that community. So just because I do things one way doesn't mean that when you have this awakening or this realization of an area that you need to be healed, that you have to follow in my footsteps.

And so that's something as we work with others on human rights issues. Make sure that they are in relation with God on that directly and that we're not telling them, Hey, this is what you should do, but here's some things that you could do. And why don't you ask God to tell you which one of them is going to be your lane?

Barbara: Heather also talked about spiritual gifts and here are some of her thoughts. 

Heather: thinking about, spiritual gifts, there are gifts of grace that are mentioned in Romans, and prayer that you mentioned is absolutely one that I think we should all be doing, but some people are going to be led to specifically pray, and to be a prayer warrior and to pray for a certain thing or a certain cause, certain group of people. For other people there's gifts of mercy. And that might look like, Hey, I'm going to go out and I'm going to serve at a homeless shelter, or I'm going to go serve the refugee community in my area. Or I'm going to invite people to fellowship with me either through my church or my home, or however that looks.

There's also people that God gives the gift of generosity and he blesses them financially.  I hope we don't pigeonhole anybody or ourselves into thinking the only way that I can help with this is either to become a community activist or to give money because that's not the only way.

And the easiest and the most cost-effective way is to pray and ask God to bless that specific sector, that specific issue. But, if you have resources and you feel led to share them, whether they're time, money, or your home or whatever your faith, we should be sharing our faith.

And that is a resource that's renewable. And I should mention this because it's really important. I think there's been a lot of talk about dignity. I love that we're talking about that today. I want to make clear that as you help or as you're inclined to repent of any judgment that you've had  for certain people, I don't feel that you are going to lose anything by trying to help others. You don't lose dignity by trying to help others to recover theirs. And so the fear that I think that some in the Christian Church have that they're going to somehow give up their rights. To see the rights advance of another group.

That's not based in God's teaching at all.

Heather: God doesn't give you dignity only to take it away and give it to somebody else. He's only asking people that have the resources or the ability to help his children that may not be able to fully realize the dignity that some of us are able to, because of the way society is structured is only asking us to help them.

Those that have less opportunity for that. It doesn't diminish mine at all. In fact, it increases my dignity to show love and to show forbearance. And to allow God to work through me, to on behalf of other parts of his church in his kingdom. So I hope that people see that my heart is really heavy right now about how the Christian Church is so divided on this specific topic and how some people are seeing this as a scary thing that for me, who is called to support and advocate for the black community. It's really hard for me to see that there are Christians that I know are loving people, but they may have a hard heart about this. And they're seeing that this is somehow an affront to their faith or their freedom. I hope that their hearts change on that.

And I may not be the one that can be that, but I'll do my best with people that are open and receptive to it.

Barbara: Thank you, Heather, for talking with us about human rights in episodes eight and 10 this summer.

Okay. The great shuffle continues. Next. We have episode 11 that was released in August, 2020. And my friend Casely talked with us about international faith. We talked about a Bible passage in second Corinthians, chapter five, verses 16 to 20. And I'm not going to read that passage right now, but I would strongly encourage you to look it up.

Casely: It's so refreshing to read and to be reminded again, that who we are is as a result of what Christ has done on the cross to settle the relationship that We have with God, and we also enjoy and encouraged because of what God has already done, that we will settle out a relationship with each other. Each of us has this fresh start. I like that fresh start. And in the last, 25, 30 years, I've had the privilege of being a global missions pastor at two big churches.

One was in Boston, Park Street Church. And then also here in Maryland Annapolis Bay area, community church. And I was fairly content with what I was doing, doing global missions all over the world, whether it is sending people to go to places like South Sudan or South India in leadership development, in training of pastors in church planting, or going to Ghana to do evangelism and discipleship, go into Uganda to do HIV AIDS ministries.

We're going all over the world, ESL programs in El Salvador, in Poland. And I thought I was all set. And then the Lord redirected me- a phone call came through. They were looking for a secretary for the global Christian forum. And the friend said, I think you'd be a very good candidate for that. And I said, I don't think so.

And she said, why don't you pray? And I committed to prayer. And after praying for two weeks and after consulting with so many different people, I was at a point where I was like,  it doesn't hurt to make myself available.

And I think that's a good place to be. when you say I'm available for God to use me, I don't know what the future is. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm just going to be available. And there's been one thing after the other, just confirming just the willingness to be open. And I feel very confident that I am doing exactly what God wants me to do at this time.

Barbara: We also talked about persecution:

Casely: That is the side aspect of our lives. These days, that Christians in many, many places where they are minorities are being persecuted and it comes from whether it's discrimination in housing or employment, or even family issues and marriages. And then sometimes sadly Christians lose their lives all over the world. we are told that this century we have lost more than all the previous centuries combined.

So it is a very sad occurrence. It goes on, every day. I think as Christians, there are four things we can do. I think the first is to pray for perseverance and for faithfulness, for those that are going through periods of persecution. But secondly, also to pray for protection for them, we know that nothing comes to any of us without going through the gracious hands of our sovereign God.

But we also know that he calls us to pray that we'll be protected from the evil one. So we should pray that Christians who are in all parts of the world should pray for brothers and sisters. The third thing I think we can do also to use legal means, government to government advocacy, whatever ways that we have, especially those of us in the Western world, where we have freedom of religion, enshrined in our constitution is respected by all other non Western countries. Also, most of them have freedom of religion, but they don't respect it, especially they are Christian minorities and we can use our influence in government, in policymaking to us that they just respect the constitution that they have, especially because we respect and allow everyone who is in the Western world to practice their religion, that they have.

The fourth idea is that, of Christianity in the Western world do feel marginalized- they will not call themselves persecuted, but they sometimes consider ourselves as being irrelevant to the societies in which we live in because people don't really appreciate the values that we have because we are more pluralistic in a more secular society.

And just as we find ways of allowing all faiths and all religions to practice in safety in the Western world, we should also, of course not discriminate against the very Christian heritage of the Western countries. We should have a balance where we can celebrate our Christian heritage as well as allow others to practice their religion.

And I think that will be a good witness to the whole world. 

Barbara: Thank you Casely, for speaking with us in episode 11, about international faith this summer. Okay, we got the big shuffle. In episode 15, I spoke with Michelle about addiction and faith. Michelle told us a very powerful resurrection story, she called it, and I have a few quotes and I'd strongly recommend that if you haven't listened to this episode, or if you know someone who might be interested in hearing some of what Michelle has to say to share this with them.

Michelle: I don't like the term highly functioning because I wasn't functioning. I was going to work. I was doing all the things I never got into trouble. I never lost my driver's license. I had a really good masquerade going. I was a professional in the community- people did not know that I was suffering in silence and w near the end of my drinking days.

Again, many relationships falling apart, abusive relationships. I was also getting into prescription drugs. So January 5th, 2015 was my last drinking and drugging day. the next day I was found unconscious in my apartment after not showing up for work and taken immediately by ambulance to the emergency room and ICU, where I was suffering from alcohol poisoning and prescription drug overdose and attempted suicide. And I honestly, I truly believe that I was ready to check out. I was in so much pain because I didn't know how stop drinking anymore. And I didn't know how it was going to survive. I wasn't taking drugs with it. I was no longer able to go to work without a drink or a drug, engage in a conversation, leave my house. I had no control anymore.

Barbara: Michelle also shared with us some examples of her journey in recovery.

Michelle: what I saw was these perky little makeup, perfect hair, perfect husbands and families, and just perfectness. It's just all the superficial stuff.

Barbara: Yeah. We wear masks, not even COVID masks, like social masks. Like my life is great.

Michelle: we are trained as a society to where those social things even from a young age: don't let anybody see what's going on inside. And as an alcoholic, I can tell you I was consuming more and more alcohol at each sitting because thirst was never quenched. That thirst was a God-sized hole in my heart.

Barbara: I will never forget that. So there are so many resources from this episode on the podcast website, 40 minutes to faith.com the episode. Was aired in August of 2020 it's episode 15. And it's in the podcast section and there's also a separate resources tab, but I haven't figured out how to get a clickable table of contents. So that's going to be my homework assignment. Okay. But I would encourage you to either listen to the episode or check out the resources on the podcast website. Thank you so much, Michelle, for sharing your personal experiences with us about addiction and faith. And there's a lot more to it.  

And we have another Michelle in episode 12, so not right in a row, but near each other. In August, 2020, I spoke with a different Michelle about spiritual direction. And I asked her if she could give a definition so that someone who may have never heard of spiritual direction can have an understanding of what's involved.

Michelle: spiritual direction is an art. It's an art of accompaniment of one Christian - in a Christian context - of one Christian to another. That enables them to pay attention to their experience of God, their capacity, to respond to God who initiates reaching out to us God, who is love.

And it offers an opportunity to grow in depth and in breadth, in our prayer and relationship with God  as we live into what this means in our daily lives. Spiritual direction can be known by other names. You might say some would say spiritual companions, soul friends, spiritual accompaniment, and in a broader sense, it would fall under this area of having a mentor or a deep listener on the spiritual journey.

Someone who comes for spiritual direction. Can trust that they will be  listened to and honored for wherever they are in their life journey. It is not about proselytizing, but rather listening deeply for the movement of the spirit in an individual's life and meeting them right there in that journey.

Michelle: Spiritual direction would come often in a time of transition- maybe growing into a deeper stage of faith and they're doubting and they need someone to help us with that through maybe they're in grief after moving or losing a job or the death of a loved one or a new diagnosis of an illness.

And having a companion on the spiritual journey where the Holy spirit is the director and the spiritual director, companion is one who helps us foster a listening for that movement of the spirit and train in how to go about that, that in spiritual journey action, a person brings their life story. And their experience of God and their, gifts of prayer and struggle with prayer.

Barbara: Thank you, Michelle, for sharing with us in episode 12, about spiritual direction. And Michelle now has her own podcast as well. And I'll put a link to that on the podcast website.

I'm going to pick one more, even though there's a few more left and maybe we'll have to do another episode of this, of the best of. In episode seven, I spoke with Carol about gloom and all of these Bible verses again, are going to be listed in great detail on the podcast website, but it wasn't only about gloom.

We talked about diagnosis and about hope. So this summer in July, Carolyn, I talked about her faith journey and the diagnosis of her son and her moves all around the world as a military spouse. And Carol is currently a social worker.

Carol: I really liked to help people.  I definitely had some questions about politics and just things in the world.

And I guess I just started looking back on things that I was raised on, things that I feel like people had different views on from what I did. And  either I need to be more open minded or I need to look at the Bible and see what it says to make sure that these things that I'm feeling I want to support line up with the Bible. So first it just kind of started with looking at social programs itself because I'm like, you know, wait a minute. There are people out there who are trying, but it's not their fault. So the more I looked I was just like, Oh, this class sounds really interesting. And it kind of all ended up under the program. Social work, definitely not something I had on my radar at all.

I'm taking classes that the changes in the world are happening right now. I mean, you were seeing so many oppressors that's group and they've always been there.

They've always been there. It's like you said, that it was in the Bible. They were there in the Bible.  we need to do something. And education is something that no one can ever take from you.

So  there's always something to learn. I was with all the changes going on and me questioning how I grew up, as a conservative Republican, most people are not really towards.

Social programs. I kind of always felt like it was bad or it's like a bad use of money.  I was just kind of really questioning everything. I was lucky to be able to go to a Christian college and that definitely helps, relate worldly views back to the Bible or what's going on.

If you think about it, Jesus was kind of a social worker. He was always hanging out with the crowd nobody really wanted to, but those are the people who needed him. And there are so many people in the world. Who need us. I've just learned about all the programs where there's just gaps and people are just falling into them.

Barbara: regarding the diagnosis of Carol's son, she said:

Carol: we definitely had some times of sadness. There's also times of blame of your like,  maybe we should've done this or if he was on a stricter  schedule or, then I watch too much TV or just did anything that I guess you're just trying to really find a period.

cause no one really wants the comma. They don't want it to keep going. You want an answer and there's there just really wasn't one. so once we got that, then he qualified for ABA therapy, which is applied behavior analysis. And on the spectrum now, there's not like Asperger's and Autism.

Nolan was diagnosed with ASD level one. So autism spectrum disorder level one, which means high functioning and, the doctor says, it just may be his personality’s a little quirky.

We could not get the ABA therapy covered by Tri-Care until he had the diagnosis. So I've also learned so much through that. That, even as kids are borderline, sometimes they may go ahead and give that diagnosis just so they can go ahead and start those early services. 

Barbara: Thank you Carol, for talking with us in episode seven, about gloom and faith and hope and diagnosis.

So we didn't get to talk about all of the episodes that were the most listened to, but I would invite you to. Find your favorite podcast distribution service, or go to 40 minutes to faith.com. You can listen to all of the episodes there as well. We look forward to your comments on the website. Your prayers are also very welcome as we pray for you.

I also pray to keep an open mind myself, to keep learning and to share what I have learned in the spirit of continuing a conversation about faith, about the challenges in life and about the many blessings in life.

Resources:

https://engagingfranciscanwisdom.org/ Michelle’s podcast

What's next?

Barbara: Hi everyone- welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God.

I'm offering two prayers, one morning prayer at the beginning, and one evening prayer at the end of this episode, in addition to our regular prayers, to support and encourage you. They were written by Martin Luther 500 years ago, but I still find them relevant and comforting. Morning Blessing:

Let us pray. I give thanks to you, my heavenly father, through Jesus Christ, your dear son, that you have protected me this night from all harm and danger. I ask you that you would also protect me today from sin and all evil so that my life and actions may please you completely. For into your hands I commend myself, my body, my soul, and all that is mine. Let your Holy angel be with me so that the wicked foe may have no power over me. Amen.

I'm trying something new today, and that is to provide a completely unscripted episode. This makes me a little bit nervous, but I find that when I write things out ahead of time, which I like to do to be organized, I don't like how I sound when I read texts that I previously typed out. So I wrote down three things and I looked up three Bible verses and I accidentally found a fourth Bible verse that's really fantastic. And I could have kept going. So today isn't about just one Bible passage, but about three different situations and four passages that I believe are relevant to all of us and perhaps more so at different times.

Today is the one-year anniversary of us getting a truckload of furniture and belongings from our move. We moved from Germany to upstate New York. I had learned when we first moved to Germany in 2015 that I wanted to be able to just let go of our stuff. And one example is that there's websites that say, don't forget this, don't forget that. And one place said, make sure you take all your photo albums with you in your luggage, which sounds like a good idea.

And for a military move, you're allowed to have two suitcases, and that might need to last you for two months, depending on where you're moving to and when your stuff is coming. That's what it turned out to be last year. Everything that we could have in our two suitcases had to last us for two months.

Now there is a small shipment that hypothetically you get more quickly, but that doesn't always happen on time and it doesn't always happen, period. So I thought to myself, you know what, I would love to carry my 15 full-sized scrapbooks in my luggage, and that's just not going to happen because I need to bring clothing and personal items.

And the cats had their own little carry on suitcase. And shoes, it was winter time, warmer clothes. So I just prayed to be at peace because If something had happened to the container or the ship or the transport or whatever, and we never saw our stuff again, I just prayed to be at peace with that because the stuff didn't really matter, even though I was incredibly happy to see it.

I don't think that I'm a materialistic person, but I'll tell you, the temporary furniture provided by the military for which I'm very grateful is tremendously uncomfortable. Even our cat just jumped right up on the couch as soon as the movers left. And we got all our photo albums. Of course there's always things that get broken, but having today be the anniversary of getting our stuff, I just felt, again, such a sense of gratitude as I did that day. We moved out of our house in Germany on October 26th, and things were packed up on the 27th and following. And then we flew over and we were able to borrow some furniture from some friends and we had intentionally purchased some new furniture so that we didn't have to live in a hotel for quite so long, which might sound kind of glamorous- you get to live in a hotel! Well, maybe it's a little bit glamorous, but it's not really tremendously glamorous to my experience, having three cats in a hotel room and housekeeping won't come into the room unless the cats are in their cat carriers. And if you're going somewhere, I didn't want to leave them in their cat carriers all day long.

So really that's a first world problem. I know that, and just listening to your neighbors, making noise and things like that. So I'm incredibly grateful for having a place to live, even though you feel a little homeless when you're moving. We really we're never homeless by any stretch of the imagination.

So some Bibles have a topical index and you can also go online. If you want to look up a verse, say, for example, if you're worried about something or you're stressed, or there's all kinds of different lists of Bible passages that you can find if you're in a certain situation and you'd like to find a Bible passage to go with that.

So I found a passage in Philippians, the fourth chapter verses six to seven. Philippians is a very small book, almost all the way at the end of your Bible. It's written by Paul to a community in Philippi and the people who live there are called Philippians. And at the beginning of my Lutheran study Bible, there's a little background information.

I took a summer Bible study on Philippians, but I didn't take any official classes on it. I wanted to just share one sentence from the Lutheran study Bible about this particular book. It says Paul's thanks are combined with his belief in God's grace for both himself and the Philippians and therefore God deserves ultimate thanks.

So here is Philippians chapter four, verses six to seven, and I'm going to be reading it today from the new revised standard version. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

So, first of all, I want to say that this does not come easily to me at the beginning where it says, do not worry about anything. I was kind of brought up by professional worriers. So it just makes a lot of sense to me to worry about stuff and try to anticipate things. And that has been a pretty common theme to my observation in the military and military family community.

If you know you're going to be moving, let's get going, let's get things organized. In the olden days we had huge ring binders. Probably some people do everything electronically these days, but there's still a lot of paperwork generated- like actual physical pieces of paper. So maybe some people still do have ring binders. I sure did last year.

So I had selected this first for today because. Not worrying about anything does not come easily to me, but sometimes I can.

So when we moved to Germany, I just decided that I had to be at peace with never seeing our stuff again, because I just couldn't pack everything in our suitcase. We sent a couple of boxes ahead to us and we did get our first quick shipment. But again, I'm not going to put 15 scrapbooks in the first quick shipment.

That's kind of for pots and pans and bedsheets and stuff like that, that you might need. But what I also am comforted by in this passage is the reminder to pray and have thanksgiving and let your requests be made known to God. So I think that's really great, and elsewhere, it talks about having our prayers be in alignment with God's will, so I can pray for something wild and outrageous, that's welcome. But at the same time, am I looking to pray for my life to be in alignment with God's desire for my life? And I also really like verse seven, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. That is so amazing to me. I do feel God's peace sometimes. And then there's other times where my own worries or fears or nervousness get in the way of myself.

And then to finish the sentence, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So I don't have a big speech prepared about explaining this verse. I just have it here to share as part of the thought about moving and “stuff”. And I was thinking about materialism and I'm certainly not the greatest example of living a minimalist life, but most of the military families that I've talked with, when you move, you end up giving a bunch of stuff away, you kind of clear through your stuff, if at all possible, often end up discarding, just throwing away things that you kind of think, okay, do I really need this where I'm going? Can someone else use it?

Can I donate it? Or is it something that I've just been holding onto? And I don't need to hold onto it anymore. I don't need this where I'm going. And then we also found, we often end up donating things on the way there and also when we arrive- our kitchen in Germany was smaller than our kitchen in Massachusetts.

And I just realized we don't need all these drinking glasses that you collect randomly- the plastic ones, the ones with logos on them. And even the glassware ones, we just don't need this much stuff. So, let's share it with some other folks who might be able to benefit.

I also have an example of how people take care of each other, because I'm so grateful every time we've moved, people have supported us who in two cases were complete strangers. When we got to Germany, we attended a chapel service and someone had asked my husband, are you here by yourself? And he said, no, my wife is home, but she isn't feeling that great.

And we didn't have a car. We were just walking everywhere and that's fine. You know, it's not the end of the world, where we were in that location, but I had just walked several miles during the day to run different errands. And I just wasn't up to walking to the chapel that evening for a few different reasons.

And the person literally said to my husband, come on, let's get in my car, let's go get your wife and bring her back to chapel, and someone will give you folks a ride home. And I was so incredibly grateful for that. It was probably only a 30 minute walk, but I just wasn't up to it that evening, in both directions, even though I walk that long routinely, it's no problem at all. Just on top of everything else.

And another family invited me over, another woman to have tea with her at her home, which was a really quick walk from where we were staying before we had a car and just an offer of friendship that has felt like a universal experience. Now, not all the experiences have been positive. That's another episode. But in terms of God providing through both material needs as well as friendship. And when we got here to New York, I had mentioned that we stayed in a hotel. I attended a yoga class at the gym and another military spouse said, Hey, I haven't seen you before, are you new? And I said, yeah, we just got here this week.

And she said, I need you to tell me what I can lend you so that you can get settled in better. And I couldn't believe it. We literally just met five minutes ago. Well, maybe it was at the end of class. So an hour previously that same day. And I thought, well, I didn't remember to pack scissors and we own a bunch of scissors. So yeah, I can go to the store and buy more scissors, but I said, do you have an extra pair of scissors that I could borrow for a couple of weeks because you're trying to open things and unpack things. So she lent us a card table and some blankets and I just was so incredibly grateful that literally complete stranger would say, she was very insistent- you have to tell me what you need so that you can settle in better. And we also had the wonderful experience of three families, believe it or not, from Germany, now in upstate New York. The timing has been a little different- one family got here ahead of us and they're already gone, but they were able to lend us some camp chairs and some other things even just a trash can- you can hang a trash bag off of a doorknob, but it's really nice to have a trashcan. So I interpreted those as examples of God just providing for us in different ways. And we would've been okay without those people, but our lives felt so much better.

The second topic that I had written down for today is that I'm facing a wide open future right now. And I wonder how many other people feel like their futures are wide open? And what does that mean? And how do we react to that? For me right now, that means that I have finished my master's degree coursework and I'm going to be job searching and I don't know how that's going to turn out.

So I am trying to wait prayerfully. And also, proactively, I need to send out my resume and apply for jobs and things like that, but it's just a mystery to me about what's going to happen. So I have for you today Proverbs chapter three, verses five to seven. And Proverbs in my Bible is to the left side of halfway. So if you go halfway and then go a little bit back it's after Psalms.

And I had actually been going somewhere else in Proverbs that I had gotten from this list that I had mentioned of different Bible passages related to different topics. I was so happy to see that I had verses five to seven underlined from some other time when I had read it. I have lots of passages underlined in my Bible, and I just thought that they were really terrific, even though it wasn't where I was going in the first place, it was really great. It just jumped out at me.

So from the message version, Proverbs chapter three, verses five to seven: trust God from the bottom of your heart, don't try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go. He's the one who will keep you on track. Don't assume that you know it all. Run to God, run from evil.

So I can clearly see why I underlined it at some point in the past. And that is just my prayer that I can trust and know that it's going to be okay. Not having any idea what's going to happen, and being grateful that one full-time job in this household right now is enough to cover our living expenses.

And another example of trusting relates actually to the previous passage- when we were house hunting last year, many of the homes actually that we looked at in this area had Bible verses either on the walls as framed artwork or wall stencils - there were a lot of Bible verses, which is totally fine with me, obviously I was happy to see them. And the house that we ended up buying had guess what Bible verse on the wall in one of the rooms? I'm looking at it right now, it says: pray about everything. Worry about nothing. So it's not a direct quote, but I just thought, Hey, that's really cool.

So facing a wide open future, my prayer for you would be that this is able to in some way be comforting and that it's not terrifying, cause I know a lot of people have lost their jobs, lost their income, lost their health, haven't been able to see their families in many, many months in this time of our pandemic.

And I know that that's hard. So I'm not trying to gloss over any of the unhappy situations or very real stresses that people do experience.

I just wanted to read the Proverbs passage from the inclusive Bible for it's gender neutral tone. So here's Proverbs chapter three, verses five to seven from the inclusive Bible. Trust Yahweh with all your heart. And don't rely on your own understanding, acknowledge God in everything you do, and God will direct your paths. Don't be wise in your own eyes. Revere Yahweh and avoid evil.

And the verse goes on to talk about some of the good things that we may experience when we do those things and it's in the Bible, so I absolutely honor that. But for those of you, in case you're reading, and then you see some more stuff, or you're familiar with these passages and you know what comes next, I thought the part that I read that's enough. FYI, the Bible does say in many places, if you do these things, then these good things will happen to you. And some people interpret that to mean that if you have good things happening for you, then that means that you must have either been good or pleased God, or God is blessing you as a reward.

And that is a possibility, it's not my place to say what God is doing or not doing, but I always want to point out that in the Lutheran faith, we are not earning our salvation. So I am doing things, of course, to please God, but not to try to get my way to heaven to earn points or anything like that.

And also I know that sometimes bad things happen to good people. And that's something that I'd be happy to have another podcast episode about- why do bad things happen to good people? That's a huge conversation. So that's another reason that I stopped reading where I stopped reading, because I don't believe that if bad things are happening in your life, it means that you have done bad things to displease God that's between you and God. That's none of my business. But just to affirm that sometimes there's very real struggles in people's lives. People who are faithful and who love God and who trust God. And sometimes it doesn't make sense and we can't see the end of it or understand what's happening. And maybe sometimes later, We can understand what happened and why, but not everybody agrees with that, either, to always kind of look back with rose-tinted glasses.

So I'm just talking about where I am prayerfully right now. Just looking to trust God and looking to be grateful and looking to be thankful.

Finally, I have some passages about life as I experienced it this fall. My mother passed away. And many of you are in the same situation. You haven't been able to see your family members possibly at all since March. And that was the case with me. So that was hard because people who have dementia probably don't remember that they got a phone call a few minutes later. So there's no consolation then for the loved ones of someone who has dementia because you can call them and then they forgot that you called them, where at least if someone remembers that you called them, wouldn't it be nice to think they don't feel as lonely because we just had a nice phone call and then we'll be able to have another nice phone call soon. So that was sad. And then there's also a sense of release, I suspect, among people who have had a loved one with dementia pass away. My belief is that she's now free from pain. It was my impression that she was just confused about what was going on around her. And I do worry that she felt lonely and in physical pain as well. So again, I don't have any for sure way of knowing that, but that's just my sense.

So I have a couple of Bible verses to share with you not knowing what your situation is, your family situation. People either who are having memory loss or dementia or people who have passed away.  I have a passage from second Corinthians, which is towards the end of your Bible. Another letter to people who lived in Corinth, and this is going to be from chapter five, verse seven. And I'm going to read that from the inclusive Bible.

I have a pretty good sense of Bible passages, but I don't remember where they are. So I can't quote you chapter and verse, even though I have seen this verse many, many times, I actually have a postcard with this verse that I'll tell you about in a minute, that's kind of funny. So let me just read second Corinthians chapter five, verse 17 from the inclusive version: we walk by faith, not by sight.

And I found comfort in that verse because I don't understand always what's happened, what is God's timing? And I feel terrible that I wasn't able to visit with my mother, even though I had absolutely intended on buying plane tickets and going to visit her.

But I also respect the safety protocols around nursing home visitors. Of course, it makes sense that you can't visit in person and just hold someone's hand, which is another aspect in my experience of visiting with someone with dementia- for a while she could talk. And then after a while she could talk, but it didn't make any more sense. And then later on, she pretty much stopped talking, but when I held her hand, she smiled and that was of some consolation to me, even though it's not about me, but at least it felt like there was a connection. So I honor that for safety reasons, you can't hold someone's hand when there's a virus going around, that's killing a lot of people.

So I appreciate this we walk by faith, not by sight verse, and I actually have it as a postcard where it's set up like an eye exam. Where the biggest letters are at the top. And then the writing gets smaller as you go down. But when you're just sitting there looking at it, you can read all of the words.

And then my accidental bonus passage that came up was in my message Bible. I had a long passage underlined, and I'd like to read it to you because it was really meaningful to me. And I  don't know when I underlined it, but it's a good one. Well, I mean, it's all good stuff, please don't hear me say that some of it's better than the other, I just meant to say that I don't have every single sentence in my entire Bible underlined. So in that same chapter, second Corinthians chapter five, I have verses 16 to 18 from the message version.

Because of this decision, we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong. As you know, we certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside and what we see is that anyone United with the Messiah gets a fresh start is created new. The old life is gone. A new life burgeons, look at it. All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We are Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade people, to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself. Now become friends with God. He's already a friend with you. How, you ask? In Christ, God put the wrong on him, who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

That is quite a passage, packed with so much information. And again, I don't have a big speech prepared about this passage. There is a class I believe called new Testament letters, but I haven't taken it, but it also speaks to my heart. And that's something that I feel comfortable sharing now, that the whole phrase relationship with God, I think is a little bit loaded because it might mean different things to different people. And I've also had conversations with several folks about, I grew up in what I considered to be sort of an intellectual or a less emotional, maybe faith where emotions are okay, but you don't see a whole lot of emotion among a lot of Lutherans. And if you want to talk with me about that, I'd be thrilled to talk about that. So I felt like I knew who God was and I knew who Jesus was and I sang the song what a friend I have in Jesus, but I didn't necessarily really feel it very strongly.

It was in my head. And I'm sure it was in my heart, but I guess I didn't really feel it. And then the first time I went somewhere where there was a little bit more sort of enthusiastic singing, enthusiastic preaching, and I heard great preaching growing up. I'm not arguing about that at all. But I was overcome emotionally the first time I was in a situation where people were really expressing their emotions very freely and in a very different way than what I had grown up with.

And I really came to enjoy having the opportunity to attend in different church service styles in the military chapels. And I know that there's conversations to be had also about different kinds of music, because I grew up with hymns and I love old church hymns that many of them are based on Bible verses. And then you have a bunch of verses and you're singing a whole bunch of words and that's great. And there's some conversations to be had about some music that's a little simpler that doesn't have as many verses with different words, that's a little bit more repetitive, but I absolutely love that kind of music, too.

And it took me many years of Bible study from people of many different faiths to have a stronger sense of relationship. There was a particular example in my mind, and I don't remember what study it's in, cause I've taken a few Bible studies from the author, Beth Moore, and she talked about having a sense one day that God was really saying to her, I love you.

And my family is wonderful, I've just been talking about them and. They said, I love you. And then I said, I love you, too. But to imagine God saying, I love you. And then Beth talked about us saying back to God, I love you, too, God. And that absolutely blew my mind. That's not something that I had really thought about, even though I can sing the song, I love you, Lord. That's a great song, but just the way she was talking, like God is showing us love. And then we say, I love you, too, God. That was really neat.

And another example is that in some Bible translations, you'll hear the word Abba, which means father. And I know I've had a previous episode about inclusive and expansive language, but in this case, Jesus is saying father to God, his father. And when we were in Israel, We were walking through a marketplace and there were tons of vendors, all around, lots of different stuff for sale people saying to the customer here, come and try this. And people coming and going very busy place, and there was a younger guy who was carrying a box of some kind of product in their stall area. And. He called over to somebody who was out of view. And he was just carrying this box walking along and he goes Abba. And I almost started to cry right there in the market because it sounded to me like he was just calling to his dad, just everyday kind of business. And that totally changed my perception of hearing this Bible verse of Abba.

So anyway, I just wanted to share some of these different. Experiences with all of you. Because this passage is about our relationship with God. And it also talks about how we judge other people. And it talks about our old life has gone and a new life starts. And in this case, it's not talking about life after we died. That's a different passage, but it made me think that maybe my mom has had a fresh start. She believed in God, she brought me to church. She was the leader of our children's choir. And again, none of that made it so that she's with God now, but that she has a fresh start. And is free from pain. Now that's at least the way my human brain can think about it.

At the very end of this verse in the message version, it talks about become friends with God. And To me, that's a pretty amazing thing to think because I have been brought up to be respectful of my parents and my elders. Again, I know the song, what a friend we have in Jesus, but I wasn't necessarily thinking of God as my friend- sometimes we think of it as the old Testament God, the Hebrew Bible God, the God of judgment, the God of law, even though there's tons of grace and generosity and kindness and love in the old Testament as well. So it's not just a simple split, but to think about this invitation in this message translation, which I know it takes a little bit of liberty with the Greek language.

So I want to read the same passage in another translation and see what we get. And again, you could read a whole bunch of different translations and get a whole bunch of different passages. So let's take a look at second Corinthians chapter five verses 16 to 18 in the inclusive version.

And so from now on, we don't look on anyone in terms of mere human judgment, even if we did once regard Christ in these terms, that is not how we know Christ now. And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation. The old order has passed away. Now everything is new. All of this is from God who ransomed us through Christ and made us ministers of that reconciliation. This means that through Christ, the world was fully reconciled again to God who didn't hold our transgression against us, but instead, entrusted us with this message of reconciliation. This makes us Christ's ambassadors as though God were making the appeal directly through us. Therefore, we implore you in Christ's name, be reconciled to God. For our sake, God made the one who was without sin to be sin, so that by this means we might become the very holiness of God.

I actually just realized, I read up to verse 21, which I didn't realize before, because in my copy of the message there aren't verses. I had just written down verses 16 to 18. So you just got a double dose. That's your bonus Bible verses. I'm just kidding. I'd rather make a joke out of it. And I'm not going to apologize for having a few extra verses thrown in there. So now you can see some of the differences, the message translation talks about become friends with God, but that's not how a different translation took it from the original Greek.

So that is enough for today. And thank you so much for walking this walk with me. And I'm praying for you for the world, for our faith journeys, for our physical journeys, for our life journeys.

Martin Luther's evening blessing: Let us pray. I give thanks to you, my heavenly father through Jesus Christ, your dear son. That you have graciously protected me today. And I ask you to forgive me all my sins, where I have done wrong and graciously to protect me tonight, for into your hands I commend to myself, my body, my soul, and all that is mine. Let your Holy angel be with me so that the wicked foe may have no power over me. Amen.

Martin Luther adds after that: Then you are to go to sleep quickly and cheerfully.

Resources:

Philippians 4:6-7

Proverbs 3:5-7

2 Corinthians 5:7

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

3rd semester seminary classes

Hi everyone. And welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God.

 Today I will be sharing details of the third semester seminary classes that are being wrapped up next week for the fall of 2020. The first class I'd like to tell you about today is Isaiah. You may have heard of the book of Isaiah in the Bible. It's substantial. And at about the halfway point of your Bible, if you'd like to take a look, I'm going to read a passage in Isaiah chapter 57, from the message version, starting at verse 15:

A Message from the high and towering God,
    who lives in Eternity,
    whose name is Holy:
“I live in the high and holy places,
    but also with the low-spirited, the spirit-crushed,
And what I do is put new spirit in them,
    get them up and on their feet again.
For I’m not going to haul people into court endlessly,
    I’m not going to be angry forever.
Otherwise, people would lose heart.
    These souls I created would tire out and give up.
I was angry, good and angry, because of Israel’s sins.
    I struck him hard and turned away in anger,
    while he kept at his stubborn, willful ways.
When I looked again and saw what he was doing,
    I decided to heal him, lead him, and comfort him,
    creating a new language of praise for the mourners.
Peace to the far-off, peace to the near-at-hand,” says God—
    “and yes, I will heal them.

I learned many things about prophets in this class, as well as in another class that I took last year, Kings used to have prophets who would advise them sometimes giving warnings that were heeded or instructions that were ignored.

The prophets spoke, not only to the Kings, but also to the people about God's will and desire for the people. There are words of warning and admonition and also words of love and care. There's a few points that I'm eager to share with you today. And one of them is that the Bible text has been used, unfortunately, sometimes for humans to be awful to each other.

And so, for example, in this passage, the word Israel is being used, but this is not to say that we should be angry at the nation of Israel that exists today. And I'm not saying that any of you are feeling this, but just to give an example of there have been Bible passages that have been used to persecute people or to judge people.

So the context of this passage, as I understand it is that it's the nation. The people are disobeying God, and we still do that today. And at the same time, I'll be talking in another class, coming up about the message of reconciliation and love and grace and salvation. So not only in the book of Isaiah, but also in other prophets and other books of the Bible, you will hear and read messages of judgment, and then messages of forgiveness and grace and peace. I also got for myself this semester- I have an assortment of Bibles, you know that I like The Message. I have the new revised standard version, which is the official school translation and probably several other translations on the shelf. And I now have the inclusive Bible and one example that I wanted to just bring up is that there are gender neutral ways of saying things that I had never really thought of before, because for example here, what I just read, it says, I decided to heal him, lead him and comfort him and I'm not a him. I don't identify as a him and the inclusive Bible that I have here talks about in verse 17, I was enraged by your sinful greed. I punished you and withdrew my favor, but you maintained your willful ways. I know your ways, and I will heal you. I will lead you and comfort you, you and those among you who mourn, I will bring praise to your lips.

I will bring peace, and it keeps going. And so this is an example of if I self identified as male and was reading this, I will heal him. Lead him, comfort him. I would say, great. This might apply to me, but as female, what does it mean to me? When I hear the phrase, I decided to heal him, lead him and comfort him.

So I might think, well, hopefully it applies to me, but I'm not really sure. And I'm not getting any profit or anything like that from saying, Hey, listen, I have this new Bible translation, but when I read the word, you he'll, you, I will lead you and comfort you. Then I think for sure, that probably could apply to me, even though the actual text is referring to people a long time ago and not every single thing in the Bible is about me, but it's easier to sort of hear.

So I just wanted to point that out.

One assignment that I had to develop for this course was a weekend retreat based on an aspect of Isaiah, the students actually had a choice of assignments and I picked this one because I've attended retreats before and enjoyed them. And I thought, Hey, this is something that I might like to do in the future.

I selected the theme of remembering and forgetting in Isaiah. God remembers us and God forgets our sin. Do we sometimes forget God? According to human history, we sure do. Do we sometimes remember our sins and those of others, even though we don't need to? A concept that came up in the next class I'm going to describe is that we can advocate against injustice even if we forgive someone who has done something awful.

Someday, I look forward to being able to attend a weekend retreat in person. In the meantime, I'm thinking about how to use this retreat idea for a digital Bible study.

One significant theme in Isaiah and other prophets is that of justice and care for those who are oppressed. While the Lutheran faith does not believe that we do good deeds in order to get to heaven, we do them because it's the right thing to do. This is reflected in today's Bible passage from Isaiah 57. One way of looking at it is that we humans can serve as God's messengers with both uplifting words and physical actions to help our neighbors. This includes standing up to oppressive systems that keep people down in order to benefit others.

The next class, Lutheran confessions, sounds serious. And on the one hand it is, but the conversations were so real and relevant. Serious doesn't have to be a downer, is what I'm trying to say. Also, confessions might mean different things to different people. I attended a Catholic junior high school, even though I wasn't Catholic and have never been.

The private confession before attending worship service and receiving communion was something that I wasn't familiar with because in the Lutheran church, we say a confession, everybody together at the beginning of a church service. And we're all forgiven as a group. So for me, confession is part of the church service.

It's not something that I have to do separately and make a big deal of and make sure I do it before I go to church. In this case, What this class was about was that when I was in junior high in my church, I got a book that I still have, which is the short version of teachings by Martin Luther.

It's called the small catechism. And guess what? Along with it is a much longer book called the large catechism. I don't like to use fancy words when ordinary words will be clearer. So for your information, catechism means a summary of beliefs with questions and answers. For example, Martin Luther writes about the 10 commandments, the Lord's prayer and other important concepts by stating what they are and asking questions about what they mean in our lives.

And the reason that this was really important to me to do as an adult again, is that I did care about this stuff in junior high but I needed to basically get through the class in order to be confirmed, which is a confession in and of itself because I don't think that's why I was doing it, but on paper you have to go through this class to get confirmed. It was a good process, but I don't remember learning as much during that class.

And please no offense, in case the pastor who taught that confirmation class is listening, I don't mean it that way. I just mean you think differently later as a second career adult than you do as a junior high student. So I'm really glad I had a chance to go through this stuff again. The  small catechism is sort of a basic outline with a few sentences on each topic.

And then the large catechism gets into much more detail with all of this stuff. I'd like to just give you a few examples so that you know what I'm talking about. And if you really have some time on your hands and would like to dig much more into Lutheran beliefs and all kinds of documents from history that are still informative today, there's a really big book called the Book of Concord, which is the confessions of the evangelical Lutheran church. It's absolutely massive. It's 700 pages long, and I'm not going to read all 700 pages to you today, or even telling you about all 700 pages, but there's some really interesting information. And most of the stuff is online also, which is pretty cool.

I don't mind having a paper book that I can dog ear and underline and write notes into, but I know some people just love having digital access, whether it's on a website or even on an app. So we have creeds, which is what we believe in, we have the small catechism and large catechism that I had mentioned.

And also in this book of Concord are other historical documents that came about during the reformation when Martin Luther and many of his colleagues were saying, Hey, this is what we believe. For example, when we attend a church service, we're not going to church to earn our way into heaven because a huge belief is that we can't do anything to earn our way into heaven, whether it's going to church or doing certain other good deeds.

So let's just be really clear about that, that we are going to church to attend, say a worship service to sing, to praise God, to pray, to receive communion in the case of the Lutheran folks to receive forgiveness after making a corporate confession, but that we're not earning anything by going to church.

And that's also important these days, in times of COVID because I miss going to church, I would like to physically be in church, but since I know that I'm not doing it to earn my way into heaven, as much as I miss it, I can still feel that there's great meaning and benefit from watching church services online or participating even in an online Bible study.

So anyway, back to the large catechism, the longer explanations of things were really helpful to me as an adult. And I had alluded to this in a previous episode as well. For example, the 10 commandments we think, wow, that's just a whole bunch of law. There are 10 laws, but they're pretty broad. And we have all these measures of how we're supposed to act. And again, knowing that it's impossible to keep them all, but also that there are nuances. And so what I appreciate is that Martin Luther wrote not only, you shall not do X, Y, and Z, these 10 things. You also on the flip side of that, then should say, for example, look, to take care of your neighbor, to make sure that your neighbor has what they need and if they need something that you help them.

And that you're supporting them actively and doing things proactively for society, that benefits individuals who might need things. Also the Lord's prayer is talked about in quite some detail, you know, what does this mean? Your kingdom come for example, is God's kingdom already on the earth now, is it somewhere way, far off in the future somehow?

How do we understand that? and how are we taking care of the planet in addition to each other as human beings?

And that's just really a five minute overview of this large textbook or online app that I would highly recommend that you take a look at either online for free or by getting a copy of the book. Another class that I took was called pastoral care and practical theology.

This class included topics that felt applicable to regular people. In my view, for example, our textbook by Pete ward addressed the concept that ordinary people can think and discuss important things about God. Without needing to go to school. Imagine that. So I absolutely love that because I've had the privilege of going to school for a really long time, but

some people think that you should have some book learning and understand sort of these complicated religious concepts, but on the other hand, Regular people who may not have had the opportunity to take all these classes can also have relationship with God. And I have a couple of quotes to read to you.

one talks about tradition. So I belong to a faith that has a lot of tradition and many church services have tradition during the services. Like how do we do things during a church service? And one of the things that this textbook that I mentioned talks about is that yes, we can quote, draw on the wisdom of the church over the ages.

And quote, but this doesn't mean that we have to always do things the same way all the time. And is there room for innovation and there wasn't any particular recommendations made here, but just to honor, if regular people can have a relationship with God through their understanding, then does this mean?

That there are certain people who are experts. And yes, on the one hand there are experts. But one of the quotes that I wanted to read to you is from the Reverend Dr. Joyce and Mercer, I read a chapter in a larger book that she wrote, and she said that there is not a separation. Between the sacred and human experiences.

So what that means to me is that our regular everyday lives can be about God, not just when we're in a church building, which is a good thing, because right now, most people can't be in church buildings because of the pandemic. But even before the pandemic, You know, I would go to church once a week, maybe twice a week or on rare occasion if I had a meeting or something like that, a third time in a week or choir rehearsal or whatever.

and yeah, maybe I can feel closer to God in that church building, but that we don't have to only think about God at certain times or in certain places. And the way I noticed this, I have one more quote from another author, is that over the years of attending women's Bible studies, which I've also talked about in other episodes, I noticed that sometimes women feel denigrated by being quote only.

A stay at home mom when their life circumstances show that to be the best option for their family, or there could be, it appears that there are no other options at the time for their family and the author, Bonnie Miller McLemore said. That daily chores in caring for family allows us to know about God.

So, wow. I don't particularly like doing household chores and I probably don't often think about God while I'm helping out around the home. And. I do value when I have a job outside of the home. And I feel like I'm making positive contributions, but it kind of blew my mind that these two women authors were talking about everyday lives and our relationship with God and that, you know, yeah.

If you can get to church and you like going to church and you have access to it and knowing that that's sometimes isn't possible and that we can feel close to God or learn about God or understand God just in our. Normal ordinary environments. I thought that was pretty amazing. So practical theology encompasses a lot of different ways of looking at the world.

And I got to hear from some of my classmates, in addition to the textbooks on all kinds of different chapters in there's, lots of books and articles and things that you can look at that, but, it talked. A lot about just the balance sort of between quote, regular people and quote theologians, you know, people who really study theology and God, and all this church stuff that we don't have to be separate.

I mean, we may be kind of physically separated, but it doesn't have to be either. Or, and I really liked that it doesn't have to be all this fancy complicated stuff. that God is with us, where we are in our everyday ordinary lives. And I really appreciated hearing about that. So I enjoyed this class and would recommend if you have some time to take a look at some other practical theology type matters.

I really liked a class called introduction to Islam. I was interested in learning more about a faith and a group of people who I didn't know too much about. And I often wonder if what we see or hear on the news is accurate. At this point, honestly, I would say probably not much of the time students were assigned many different readings and documentaries so that we could learn more about this ancient faith and diverse peoples.

I have two books to recommend. The first is by Todd green titled the fear of Islam and the second. Is by Mahmoud Ayoub and it's titled Islam, faith, and history. And like I had mentioned, in addition to these two books, we had lots of articles and documentaries to learn more. And for me, what was especially interesting was the foundation of Islam and how things have diversified over the centuries.

And honestly, I feel like that's. That similar concept also applies to other faiths. So one quote in the Todd green book is that there is one faith and many people, and I honestly feel that way even about Christianity, not everyone who is a Christian, right. Acts or talks the same way based on their faith beliefs, there's inclusivity, there's exclusivity.

There's people who believe that there's certain ways to do things that certain things are right. And certain things are wrong. So. What it made me realize is that we have stereotypes about many different types of people in the world. I think there are stereotypes about Christians. There are stereotypes about people on a faith basis, or even, perhaps ethnic where you're from.

What do you look like? That just aren't true. We assume things. And sometimes we assume the worst of each other and sometimes the worst news gets the biggest headlines. And that applies again to lots of different categories of people and places. So fear-mongering is real. And to me that means that. The headlines are often the very worst news and this one piece of news might be true, but if there's 10 other pieces of news that are different from this one, but we're just hearing this one really horrible one.

I don't mean to minimize any of the bad news. That is true, but there's lots of statistics, especially in the Todd green book, the fear of Islam, the talks about how are these statistics. Presented. So for example, I really hated taking statistics. I had to do it for my master's in social work, but now I'm really glad that I did.

And I had to take a research methods class as well, so that I could understand how is research that's being done presented. So when you hear according to researchers, statistics show or whatever, you might be thinking, okay, well, who paid for this research? First of all. So say a pharmaceutical company paid for the research.

Is it going to be a hundred percent objective and neutral? Well, gee, it would be great if it was, but that's really not guaranteed. So let's take, let's take a look at that. and then also, how, w how was the information gathered, say you're taking a poll or something like that? Are you taking a sample of convenience, which means like, I'll just ask these 10 people that I know, and then I'll say, okay, I did research and these were the 10 answers, or am I trying to get a broad perspective?

Do I even want to get a broad perspective? Do I want to be able to share what a bunch of different people think about this topic? And then how am I. Analyzing the data, blah, blah- this is not a podcast about statistics, but the reason I bring this up is that I learned some really interesting things about different cultures from this class that I didn't know.

And I'd actually really like to have on all of these classes that I've talked about so far and the next one coming up as well, do whole separate episodes on these topics and yeah. Bring in some guest speakers who know more about this than I do, or have a conversation about different aspects of this.

Because one thing that's really important to me is to make sure that people are being treated fairly. And wouldn't it be great if people could even be treated well? So one thing that I worry about is who is being mistreated, who is being oppressed. And is there anything that can be done to improve that situation of people?

And so my assumption has been based on what I've seen in the news, that many people in different cultures are oppressed for various different reasons. And there are some examples from this class that I have read the statistics that were presented to me in the books, articles and documentaries, but I have not had the chance to dig back all the way down to see, okay.

Are there other statistics that go against what this says? So I'm not prepared to read off a bunch of stuff right now, but I can say that my eyes were open to think, you know, What about women wearing a headscarf or avail or a face covering or a body covering? Now? I might think, Oh, wow. Is that okay? Are these women being mistreated?

Maybe on the surface, according to my way of living, that may be the case. And then what I also need to question is, is my way of living the only quote right, or best, or, you know, legitimate way of living. So I was brought up without wearing any kind of headscarf or head covering or anything like that. So to me, that's not customary, it's not necessary.

And I might not understand all of the reasons behind it, but reading books and articles, watching documentaries and learning more about it. What I'm thinking now is let me be open-minded let me learn. Let me talk to people. Let me find out if you are wearing a headscarf or a face covering or a body covering, do you feel like you are oppressed?

Is it true? Not just my opinion. You know, how would I feel if one day, all of a sudden I had to walk around with this covering over myself. Just because I might feel one way doesn't mean everybody else feels the same way. So I wanted to bring that up. And also education was another example that was listed whereby you know, I think, Oh, are, are women in different parts of the world sort of stock?

Are they. maybe trapped for lack of a better word. Are they able to feel fulfilled? Can they get the education that they want? Are girls allowed to go to school? And again, from I even even asking those questions in my mind is coming from a place of judgment because I think girls should be able to get an education.

Wouldn't it be great if everyone should feel fulfilled, not just, you know, women, the example that I'm just giving right now. And so I might think. Well, if women are being treated badly, say for example, they have to wear all these coverings that I'm not used to, which doesn't make it wrong or oppressive automatically, or women can't drive.

I am happy to have the freedom of driving. And also I have the economic position to be able to drive, which is a whole nother story. So in my mind, these things are wrongly bundled together. Well, if women have to wear these head coverings, does that mean they're being oppressed? If they're not allowed to drive.

Does that mean they're being oppressed and if girls aren't allowed to go to school, does that mean that all the women in this culture or in the society are being oppressed? And one example of a statistic that I saw about that is to show in which countries, women have a great deal of education and women have been leaders.

And even in the United States, women of different ethnicities and backgrounds, including faith backgrounds in this case do have a great deal of education and professional status. So that's not to say there's no oppression. Of course there's oppression going on, but it's not universal. It's not fair to say, Hey, everybody in this one category of people or countries or culture or faith are all in the same book.

Cause that's just not true. There's uniqueness. Even, like I said, at the beginning of their section there's uniqueness among Christianity, which I happen to know the best. or even in different areas of the United States, different regions, there's different beliefs sort of cultural norms, and possibly about women or about many other things.

So that's it for today on that class, but I would love to continue the conversation in much greater detail. The final class that I took this semester that I also really enjoyed is called rural ministry. We had several small textbooks assigned and the professor also had us view music videos each week that highlighted some of the stereotypes of country living as well as lifting up the beauty and the faith to be found.

Having lived in a relatively rural area in one part of Germany. And now in upstate New York, I can honestly say that I'd rather be in the country than in the city. That said I have a choice of grocery stores within 20 minutes of my house. So I'm definitely not in a true rural area, which I hadn't realized.

I thought just because I can see more grass and trees than houses, that means I'm in a rural area, but I'm not because I learned there's a really big difference between a really true rural area. I can get to a bunch of grocery stores in seven minutes and then even more within a 20 minute radius. I will include several titles of books on the podcast website, which is 40 minutes of faith.com.

And talk about two of them specifically just now and while the class focused on faith development in rural areas, we also learned about diverse cultures within the United States. One book pointed out that there is a class out there somewhere that people can take who live in cities. In order to better understand rural areas, particularly around faith issues, but there's no commensurate class for people to take, to learn about cities.

I appreciate that. Not all city living is glamorous and fun and also life in the countryside is not always boring and stifling. So it has been good. I'd like to think that I'm an open-minded person, but I learned a great deal from this class. And I wanted to just recommend two books in particular. One is called God land and the author is Lynn Lenz, and she did talk about some wonderful stories about faith development and the possibility of, you know, our churches dying in rural areas.

And please let me amend that to say, are white Christian churches dying? Because you did talk about some churches that had new interfaith ministries or the building was shared among people of diverse faiths and backgrounds as something that is changing. And she also talked about the role of women in many, in this particular case with this book, Christian faiths.

that was, that had been a painful experience for her and for some other people. So I would highly recommend that book and also another book called God's country by Brad wroth talking about, again, the question of church growth and church, perhaps dying. what happens when a church just has really fewer members?

And one of the things we talked about in this class together are the way we measure success is really arbitrary and just based on numbers. And that has to do with everything from our own personal lives. I believe to the lives of organized church groups. You know, what does the number on the scale have to say?

What does the number of years that you went to school have to say, what does the number in your bank account have to say? And then when it comes to churches, what about the number of people who were sitting in the pews or the number of people who went through a certain ceremony in your church? This year, say for example, in some churches they count baptisms or confirmations or marriages or funerals, or how many people took communion.

There's probably a bunch of other numbers that I'm not even thinking. And, and isn't it possible that there's so much more to life and to church or faith than just the numbers that we count. So you might look at a church building and say, wow, there's really not a lot of people who go to this service or something like that.

But is there still faith happening? These are God's people and there's some hard decisions. So the whole class wasn't about that, but that's just one example that I wanted to bring out just in support of the assumptions that we make, that my life, I don't want my life to be about the number on the scale or the number of years of school that I had, or the number in my bank counters, maybe some other numbers, the number of friends I have on Facebook and also not wanting.

To say, well, this church is just a goner. Now, maybe we need to do things differently when it comes to building maintenance and the use of the physical plant and, and things like that. Can we, you know, maybe have other groups also using this church building for different purposes or things of that nature, but yeah, if you would like to learn more, I would recommend those books.

And then, like I said, I'll also be putting other resources up on the podcast website. I want to just. Really think all of the faculty and the other students for bringing up really great examples and lessons and helping us to understand more about all of these different topics. I also learned more about agriculture in this class and rural doesn't always mean farming.

there's plenty of other. ways of looking at land and we actually talked in this class too about statistics and government and numbers and how many people live in a certain area. And I just am really grateful to have had a chance to learn more about this and to have a sense on the  great diversity.

I'd like to think that I always knew that about especially the United States, now that I'm living here again. But just to know that. There's beauty to be found in many different ways. Maybe that's another different way that we measure things. So I'm grateful for having the chance to listen to a bunch of different kinds of music.

That's pretty unusual, not very many classes do that. I'm grateful to have had this learning opportunity. So that is it for the summary of my classes this fall altogether. I would say that it was a really interesting semester. I had a wide variety in all of the classes did talk about also the Bible and things like that.

I really highlighted it for the Isaiah class, but certainly the Lutheran confessions chapter was full of the Bible. Well, and really also in the Islam class, I learned about the Koran and also the concept of Abrahamic faiths. I felt like I had a really good diversity of. Understanding of not only the world, the local place, where I am when it comes to being possibly rural, and also different ways that people relate to creation to God, to their understanding of God and different ways of having faith journeys.

I am really appreciative of that and look forward to digging into much more detail at whenever possible.

Resources:

Isaiah 57:15 and following

The Inclusive Bible

Survival of Rural America by Richard Wood

God Land by Lyn Lenz

God’s Country by Brad Roth

The Fear of Islam by Todd Green

Islam: Faith and History by Mahmoud Ayoub

An Introduction to Practical Theology by Pete Ward

Luther’s Small Catechism by Martin Luther

Luther’s Large Catechism by Martin Luther

The Book of Concord

Faith with Sarah

Barbara: Hi everyone. And welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God. Today's topic is how we understand God and our guest is Sarah Mount Elewononi. I met Sarah in Massachusetts and she lives in Pennsylvania now. Sarah has deep United Methodist roots with broad interfaith appreciation and friendships. She has worked for 20 years in pastoral ministry and holds a doctoral degree in liturgy and sociology of religion.

Sarah dreams of growing into her new identity as a cyber circuit writer, hoping to build and strengthen safe harbors communities where disciples of Jesus are rescued from the wrath, where they can grow strong and make a difference in the world. Sarah, how are you all in Pennsylvania these days?

Sarah: we're doing okay. We have two daughters who were doing school in a hybrid fashion for one quarter and about to start doing five day a week in the second quarter. And it all of a sudden became everything at home for the rest of November, and my husband's still goes out to work sometimes and works from home sometimes.

So we're getting along. We've been worshipping through a church I belonged to before I went to seminary in Massachusetts, which has been delightful. I've been able to sing in the choir there and the girls have gone to Sunday school.

Barbara: let's take a look at our Bible passage today from the book of Genesis, which is the very first book of your Bible- we have a really long reading today that we are going to be sharing throughout this conversation instead of reading it all right away. If you'd like to follow along, we'll be talking about several aspects of chapter two, verse 15, all the way through chapter three, verse 24. Chances are that you've heard the story before about the garden of Eden: Adam and Eve were given fruit bearing trees and animals and many other plants, but they were not to eat from one tree. Then along comes a snake, temptation, eating the fruit, fear, hiding, judgment and more. Let's unpack this together.

Sarah, how did you come to select this passage for our conversation?

Sarah: it's a critical passage. I was working as a pastor and dealing with conflict and trying to find my way through the conflict. I discovered something called nonviolent communication. I'm wrestling with certain Bible passages or working to see scripture through this new way of looking - in nonviolent communication, one of the key pieces is recognizing that judgment, blame, shame are all methods of violent coercion of trying to make people do stuff they don't naturally want to do, which was kind of a new way for me to think about things. I was learning this and also working as a pastor, the scripture came up during lent and I looked at it, I was like, Oh,

Barbara: It's full of blame and shame and judgment.

Sarah: Not only that, what does God say not to do? Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we think we know what's good and what's evil, that's judgment- we're labeling things as good and evil, and that's a judgment that we're making and God says, don't go there. Don't do that.

And they go ahead and do it. And what's fascinating is that they assume after they've done that, that God is also judging good and evil and that God has judged them as bad for breaking their rules. Cause along with this whole scheme of judgements, then there's also rewards and punishments. If you do what someone wants you to do, you get rewarded. If you don't do it, you get punished. Adam and Eve assume that they're going to be punished. They hide from God and that breaks the first commandment of Jesus: To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. If you're afraid of somebody, you can't love them with your whole being.

They hide themselves from God. They're feeling ashamed. And then God calls them anyway and has a dialogue. And who told you and why did you eat from this fruit? Adam says, Oh, Eve gave it to me, blames Eve. And then Eve points to the serpent.

Oh, well it's the serpent's idea. So the blame and guilt and the shame breaks both of Jesus's great commandments right there. And it's a different way of reading the story than what was handed down.

Barbara: I'm really intrigued that you have some alternatives for us to consider, because I suspect that many people have had experience here on earth with this concept that you've talked about of a God of judgment and a God of law.

And then people communicate that and implement it and enforce that. I am so happy that you introduced this concept of nonviolent communication and it made me also think then about the 10 commandments - how can we integrate these concepts of a God of love and the 10 commandments and this nonviolent communication and in our earthly experiences?

Sarah: what I've been working on ever since I got these insights from years ago, and  I've been teaching scripture to pastors for the last few years, so I've worked through a lot of these.

So one piece of this too, is abundance in nonviolent communication. You assume there's abundance. We're fighting to get our needs met. Everything we do is trying to meet a need. And if we try to force people to do stuff, to meet our needs, it usually goes wrong.

One way or another, it breaks relationships. And so if you can rely on abundance and recognize what we're fighting over the strategies, not the actual needs, then you can say, okay, this strategy isn't working for this person, but there's 10,000 other ways to meet this need. How can this need be met without making this person do this thing they don't want to do?

How do you understand commandments? I puzzled over this first or got the most clarity with Jesus and the command to love one another. And Jesus is washing the disciples’ feet and says, this is my commandment that you love one another. And that never made any sense to me.

How can you command somebody to love? I can't, there's free will. That's another key. And so the way I think about this is, I thought about the word commandment. And that story of love one another comes up on Maundy Thursday- that word Maundy is related to the English word mandate and a mandate is kind of like a relay race when I've got tube running with and I get to my partner, like passing the baton, right? So if you understand it this way, what God is really doing, what Jesus is saying, this is how things work in the way I've created the world. I've created the world with abundance. You have everything you need and don't go to the place of judgment.

And don't assume that I'm the judge. Just leave the judgment aside. And here's a mandate, here are some things that we know work and don't work to live a happy, healthy, fulfilling life. Right. So loving one another. And here's the conundrum with the washing of feet, right?

How many people really dread or would never want to have their feet washed? This was not the Jesus says if you don't wash feet, you're going to hell- he does not say

Barbara: that,

Sarah: but what Jesus is, meaning is if you can trust one another on this intimate level, that the disciples are allowing Jesus to trust them.

When they let Jesus wash his feet. If you can be that intimate and vulnerable with one another, then you will really understand what love is. Right. It's the way it works. And likewise with the 10 commandments, right? If you'll kill somebody, regardless of whether it's a justified adjust war or not, or if you kill another human being, you're going to have repercussions.

I mean, you can be healed from such a thing, but we're not meant to kill one another. We're not meant to be coveting what one another has, because we have abundance.

We don't have to take somebody else's stuff, there's money there. you know, we're not meant to tell lies, so when we do these things, we're getting into trouble. And so this is a mandate and even the word commandment has that mandate in the root of it too, that it's a way that works.

It's the user manual that God gives us.

Barbara: I've been reading a document called the large catechism for one of my school classes. And I had exposure to it when I was a kid in confirmation class, but I confess that I have a very different understanding of it now than I did then, because there are nuances that Martin Luther writes about.

Okay. So yes. You have all these commandments, don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. And then Martin Luther adds on. Okay. So we're not supposed to kill, to use the example that you had and not only are we not supposed to kill, but, in most of the commandments we are to then act proactively in support of other people.

Yes. Fear of each other. So it's not just don't do this cause I can think, yeah, well I haven't killed anybody but am I actively working to care for and support and work for the betterment of other people?

Sarah: Right.

Barbara: Just the basic commandment,

Sarah: right. And the Methodists, do the same kind of thing when they talk about doing no harm and then doing good, like both of those are important pieces of living life of faith.

Great.

Barbara: And I agree with what you said that God has provided abundantly for our earth and for humanity. And I've noticed that there are some people here on earth who really truly do not have enough, even of the very basics of food. And I'd appreciate your thoughts on where is God and where are we with each other when we have enough, but some people are literally starving?

Sarah: this has to do with, the way societies are set up so that there are some people who have way more than they need. And many people who don't have enough. Right. And systems get in place like slavery of different kinds or feudalism.

There's so many different ways to make sure that some people are getting more and other people don't have enough. Right. And so anytime. there's people without enough it's because we haven't ordered the life the way God would have us order life.

Barbara: I agree with you. And I might think, well, it's just a little old me here in upstate New York, but there are groups working globally to support anti-hunger efforts and systemic change and all that might sound kind of pie in the sky But each effort that we can take, there are ways to advocate for change both on the local level, just in my own neighborhood with a soup kitchen or a food pantry.

And then right on up to. The highest levels of government that can implement. But ultimately it comes down to human selfishness, which is sin. And I have that, I shouldn't just say, Oh, those rich people living in fancy places. It's all of us, not just those other people over there.

part of what we're doing is becoming awake to those systems that are running counter and are based on different stories than the story we get in scripture of God's grace and abundance.

Sarah: as far as the Adam and Eve story, the whole concept of original sin works against us. in that if we think that God is a God of wrath who punishes us for our sin,.

That if we can see it instead that our misery, the wrath all around us comes from our not living in right relationships. but God is doing everything God can to pull us out of that. And the domination culture of any empire, that punishes people and keeps people poor and, keeps people addicted and isolated and depressed.

and rewards the few, God keeps. In grace, meeting us there and pulling us out, showing us this other way to live, which is in freedom.  One cardinal rule is, anybody can say no at any time. And that has to be okay because otherwise we're forcing people to do stuff.

Barbara: Do you mean we can say no to God, or we can say no to each other?

Sarah: all of the above- we only come to life in God's grace because we've said yes to it, because we see it meeting the needs that we have better than anything else, or because we're trusting and hoping that that will be the case.

Barbara: It sounds to me like we humans have taken really the worst qualities and the worst things that we can do to each other and make it happen regularly. I would like to think that I don't treat anybody poorly, but surely that can't be true- we're all saints and sinners, according to the theology that I'm the most familiar with in the Lutheran faith. I can try my best, but I'll never keep every law fully. So even if I don't think that I am intentionally pushing people down or demeaning them, that you have this concept of God's not pushing us away- we're kind of pushing each other away from God or maybe even ourselves.

Sarah: in the old Testament, the various powers, whether they were King David, who had Bathsheba's husband killed, those powers are not living according to God's way. And oftentimes people have assigned to God, the ultimate judge, the one who's punishing, to legitimize their own violence against others. And after Constantine people were being baptized at sword point, and that's when Jews started being slaughtered for not becoming Christian-

Barbara: we have a pretty unholy legacy of treating other people very horribly, killing them.

Sarah: and the emotional, spiritual violence in the church. How many Christians, though we have a practice of confession, how many people actually feel washed clean and free after they confess?

Instead, they're hiding pieces that they're afraid of God, or, that whole image of God is being the one who's going to condemn us and send us to the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, when all God wants to do is pull us out of that. 

And we don't even have to talk about the wrath to come. It's not the punishment we get when we die. It's the wrath we're in the middle of right now. If anybody wants to flee from the wrath, come and find a safe harbor, come and join with others who understand God in this liberating life-giving, grace-filled way.

Barbara: One thing that I'm used to now, and I'm curious if you have something similar in your faith tradition as well, is that at the beginning of a church service there's a corporate confession of sins. So we all say the same words at the same time, basically, “I'm sorry for what I've done and also for what I didn't do.”

And then the clergy person forgives the congregation. I'm wondering how are we doing that these days with people not being able to go to church? In some places, faith groups are still meeting in person, but how can just ordinary people who may or may not be in a church service every week, have a sense of I've done some things wrong and then to feel God's forgiveness?

Sarah: this is what my idea of safe havens is about. And this actually comes from another big learning I've had in recent years, related to food addiction and having small group accountability, and having buddies to talk to. Accountability is not coming to a group and admitting all the wrong I've done so that they can then, agree. Yes, you've done horrible. And this is your punishment, or we're going to shun you, or, there's all kinds of ways the Christian faith traditions have spun that out, give you penance.

That's not the point. The point is when we're in a small group and we all understand we're struggling with this together and we have similar struggles, or even if you might not have a food addiction, but if I can trust you not to judge me from my food addiction, but to have compassion about it, then I can say to you, well, I haven't been doing too well.

These last couple of weeks, I've been bingeing on stuff and I'm suffering. And the beauty of the Methodist tradition is we didn't start in America with large congregations that met in a church building on Sunday morning.

We started in prayer groups that met in a parlor and we were able to be forthright about the ways we've done harm, about failing to do good, and then encourage one another, admonish, one another, that God's grace is available to change. And early Methodists didn't know about food addiction, but they certainly knew about alcohol.

And so early Methodists were very much temperance people and often became teetotallers because they recognized that some people just needed that bright line where they didn't have any. And if they had even a little bit, it could trigger them to a binge. And that's exactly why Methodists ended up pioneering grape juice. Mr. Welch was a Methodist and he figured out how to pasteurize your grape juice so that it was possible to have grape juice in April. Choosing to honor the weakest member- not everybody had an alcohol problem, but some people did. And so we're going to adjust, switch our communion element to grape juice so that the weakest member isn't tempted.

Barbara: I'm impressed because I have a different episode on addiction and sometimes it's a big deal to try to get grape juice introduced or it's in a separate location. So I think that's terrific.

Sarah: having the small group who agrees to protect the weakest members where you can safely name that your sins or the things you're struggling with, the things that are preventing you from living a grace-filled life, can all help you. And then you share those mandates, those different ways, those different means of grace that can help you.

 So now if it's an addiction, having bright lines, that you don't cross is a really helpful thing. And what I would love to envision is a Methodist congregation that has a bright line around the sugar and flour so after worship, I'm not tempted by all business that's laid out in coffee hour.

Barbara: I absolutely, I love what you said about accountability in love. I really think that's the first time I've ever heard that.

And you gave an example of people holding each other accountable in love, but I also get the sense from you and please correct me if I'm wrong. Are you talking about God also holding us accountable in love, which is different from how some people hear not only the creation story, but many other aspects of God?

Sarah: God wants help us to live a life that's free and happy and joyful. Playful, grace-filled. God's tried so many different ways to get us out, and offered so many different options, culminating in the Christian view in Christ, you know, God becoming.

One with us being born in this culture of domination and living in it, being killed by it, cause a huge factor in this whole thing is fear, Death being the biggest thing. So we're no longer afraid of dying if we really believe in eternal life through Christ, then we don't have to be afraid of what the empire can do.

We don't have to be afraid of the forces that want to kill us, what we'll continue to do the right thing and the loving thing and know that that won't die, even if we do. and even. Another piece that I love, it doesn't really show up in scripture but in, in the apostles creed, in the Nicene Creed, it says that Christ descends to hell,?

Sometimes we say the place of the dead, but what that's about is Christ reaching- my favorite icon in the Orthodox tradition is Christ reaching for Adam and Eve hands. He smashed the Gates in the locks and it's open. So

Barbara: they're not stuck there

Sarah: anymore. Daughters of Eve, all the sons of Adam, everybody.

so we're not imprisoned there. another piece of friendship I wanted to share, It has to do with racism and and even homophobia. My, one of my best friends in college there's was an African-American gay man.

and he hadn't come out to us when we first got to college. It took a couple of years for him to feel safe enough for that. But he was my first close black friend and just by being friends with him, helped me to understand and come to terms with what we call institutional racism,  cause I was never raised to be prejudice towards black people,  not in a straight forward way from my family.

though I certainly grew up in a very white culture and a very white part of New York state, but, His friendship. helped me to be, transformed and changed and to, to become an ally, to people who are being oppressed to be an anti-racist as Kennedy talks about it.

and that's actually one piece of my understanding of the Trinity is that friendship with God and friendship with one another,

Barbara: I suspect that that might be a really incredible concept literally to some people that, How is our relationship with God similar to a friendship and that it's not fire and brimstone a hundred percent of the time, or, much of the time at all, that this hand is stretched out to us in love.

Sarah:  that realization was part of my conversion experience that happened a few years before I had the understanding from non-violent communication. I, in my first year in ministry, that was so very hard. I was not doing well with them and not showing the marks of success that one would want to see, or that were being measured by the Methodist, in our reports.

And. I also, had a failed romantic relationship at the time and, I was just feeling badly all the way around. And I was working with a spiritual director and was able to share with her that I couldn't even pray anymore. And there was like big blockage and I didn't know what it was at first, but, As I prayed about it and employed, the creativity that I've learned to use in that prayer.

I finally came to realize that I was picturing Jesus as the judge on the throne and all of these failures. I was attributing to. Me being cast out where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. I was afraid of the wrath of God. And so I couldn't pray. And, within a couple of months, while on a retreat and being handed some modeling clay, I, made this lovely, depiction of a dancing, Trinity three human figures of three different colors, holding hands dancing, and.

in that I heard God's saying come and play. And I love the concept where the Trinity is dancing into each other's. Roles and each other's, places. And that playfulness. And I really needed that to get out of my own prison of thinking that God was the judge who   would send one people to wrath, but God's a Trinity.

And dancing is one of my most wonderful favorite healing activities ever.

Barbara: I like to ask whose voice is missing and the concept of a dancing Trinity , you don't really see that in this passage in Genesis. You hear God and here's the creation and the snake and Eve and Adam, and then God again, and the dancing Trinity isn't the only voice who's missing, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on some other ways of thinking about the story.

Sarah: we have Genesis one and the very first verse or two of Genesis one has what Christians have come to see as a Trinity.

the spirit of God is hovering over the waters and, here's where it's helpful to know what other religions in the area we're thinking about in terms of God and God in creation and in those stories - many of the cultures of the empires around the Hebrew people were, depicting God as a violent King.

Who was slaying a sea monster of chaos who was feminine usually. And in the slaying of the chaos, all the blood and the body parts became the earth and the creatures. Wow. And it connects to, deep rooted understandings and beliefs that matter is evil. It says we're  good spirits trapped in bad bodies.

 So that's the creation story that was all around the Hebrew people. That's the God they were hearing about. And as they started to tell this completely different story about God, it's very interesting because the characters are still there, the waters of chaos are still there, but now the spirit of God is hovering like a chicken over its eggs, hovering over the chaos until something new is born. And when I look at the wrath around us these days, politically, in our churches, my own United Methodist church is getting ready to break apart. one of my go-to words of hope that I, I say to myself and to anyone who will listen one is that the spirit of God is hovering over the chaos and something new is about to be born and just hold on.

Hold on and be midwives to that new birth. Keep your eyes open for what the new thing that's coming that's really gonna usher a different way of life than what we've had.

Barbara: That's true. Really lovely. Our text today doesn't specifically say our bodies are bad, but I do believe that many people think our bodies are bad. Our bodies are sinful and yes, we can act in sinful ways, but this creation story. Says that our bodies are good. And then there's different ways throughout the Bible where we humans have just bungled lots and lots of things. And we do sin, but what God created is good.

Sarah: and not only good, but with the human beings, that's when God says it's very good. Emphasized even more. And why else would God become a body?  What is the incarnation other than Christ and even the understanding of being born of Mary?

The Virgin Mary isn't about your body being sinful if you're having sex, that's not at all what they were dealing with. What they were trying to get across is that bodies- from being conceived in a womb and all the bloodiness of being born, that that's good. And that's the way God wants it to be.

And it's blessed. And so for God to become fully human, God's gonna go through that fully human experience of having a body and not just pretending, not just dipping a big toe into life and death, but actually fully living and fully dying. And then there's resurrection.

Barbara: And now we're full circle again, because as Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden, one of the conditions that God had mentioned was a painful childbirth.

Sarah: Hmm. I haven't worked on that piece of the story so much, but I think that's just more of kind of a description of what actually happens and that God recognizes it's happening, but I still don't see in the text that God is saying, I'm doing this to punish you.

And maybe it's a consequence in some way of our not right relationships, but it's not a punishment. it's not a condemnation. I believe for now, no condemnation goes from the beginning all the way through. And any time somebody thinks God is condemning somebody, they've missed the mark, they're off base.

Barbara: we've got law and gospel, so we can't deny in Bible there is a bunch of judgment and in the Bible is an awful lot of grace and love and forgiveness and redemption.

Sarah: those laws, those bright lines, if you think of it more as this mandate, as these methods, these ways of getting free, and they're tried and true, they've done well by people for a long time, but sometimes also, there's a tendency of making more and more hedges. Making that line brighter and brighter to honor that central piece. And sometimes those can be too bright, too strong, too stringent, especially if we start turning and judging people for not keeping the law.

Barbara: cause we're not earning our salvation by keeping the law.

Sarah: Exactly. That's the danger.

Barbara: I know that some people to this day are still hearing really strong, critical messages.

They feel condemned, they feel wretched. And we don't want to say, Oh, everything you do is perfect. Don't worry. You don't have to change - I believe what we are saying is God loves you as you are. And there is hope. And from my soul to your soul, maybe there's something that we can hold each other accountable for, like you said in love, but that we're not throwing you in jail spiritually, and then throwing away the key.

So how can we take a look at resources that are available to people, with this message of love and grace?

Sarah:  there's some really good research out there now about the formation of habits, how you can't rely just on your own willpower. I've learned self-control works better with a group effort when you have that support those people you can talk to, that compassion- and you learn to have compassion for yourself, too.

There's a whole field called parts work that looks at our internal selves as having multiple parts doing different things. All trying to meet needs, but some of the ways that they've been doing it don't serve us well. So, back to food addiction, cause I just know it well, one of the parts is the controller who says, I'm not going to eat this.

And you can do that for so long. But sometimes your willpower is going to give up. And then there's the indulge that says, Oh, you've worked so hard and you just succeeded at this. You deserve a little something. You've had a bad day. So those two parts kind of fight against each other, which goes right into what Paul is saying, I do what I don't want to do and you don't do what I want to do- if you can understand that those are parts of you, but it's not your whole self. You put your best self in the driver's seat, and you take those other parts, you treat them like you would your beloved children. You don't put them in the trunk, but you sit them in the back seat with the seatbelt on and you listen to them because they're trying to meet a need. Well, what else can I do to reward myself after a tough day? I can have a bubble bath, I can go take a walk, I can call my friend Barbara. There's other ways is that I can get my needs met that will make them better. And how can I not have to have the controller always in control? How do I let that relax every once in a while?

Barbara: I know that we still have the old fashioned way of just sitting with our Bibles and having prayer time in meditation and maybe journaling. And that really works for some people. I have to admit that for me, being a participant in a Bible study is much more helpful. I'm perfectly capable of sitting in quiet and that doesn't really bother me, but it just kind of helps me to focus.

Do you have any favorite resources that people could turn to some resources to check out a way of connecting with God?

Sarah: one of the best resources I've been using since my girls were born- they're 15 months apart- my prayer life got really interrupted for a while. And then I found this wonderful podcast called Pray as You Go. It has its own app and there are Jesuits from England and they put out six podcasts a week and they pick one scripture passage, they always integrate music and they do a little bit of Lectio Divina. They read a little bit the passage and they give you a question and some time to think about it.

Another place and people that I've really appreciated is the center for action and contemplation in Albuquerque led by father Richard Rohr, and there's a podcast with father Richard called Another Name for Everything. And one of the other teachers at the center, James Finley, teaches contemplative prayer and he's got a nice podcast there, too. And with the food addiction, what I found that really helped me is something called bright line eating- it's been really wonderful and it's really working for people.

Barbara: Thank you so much, Sarah, I just got such a sense of God's love from talking to you

Sarah: Thank you. I've enjoyed it.

Resources:

Genesis 2:15 – 3:24

Nonviolent Communication https://www.cnvc.org/learn-nvc/articles

Pray as You Go Podcast https://pray-as-you-go.org

Another Name for Everything Podcast https://cac.org/podcast/another-name-for-every-thing/

Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin, and Free by Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D.