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Savior, Lord, Model: Conversation · Beyond the Sermon

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You're listening to Beyond the Sermon, the podcast of First
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Methodist Church in Collingswood, NJ.
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On our podcast, the goal is not just to share our sermons, but
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to go beyond the sermon and talk about what we're learning and
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what God is doing in us and in our community.
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This fall, we're living in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke,
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and John and learning how to live from our model, Jesus.
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This conversation was inspired by our series The Gospels.
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You can find more information about our church at
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fumccollingswood.org. Thanks for joining us for this
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conversation. Welcome back to the podcast.
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In a minute. On our new day of the week,
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which will be Thursdays. From here on out.
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Yes Sir, When was our last episode?
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Well, we had the the mission team share.
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We shared that a couple weeks ago, so.
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If you missed that, find that from a couple weeks ago.
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Yeah, worth listening to. And besides that, it might have
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been back in June. I can't think if we released any
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conversations. Yeah.
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So since June, what was a ministry highlight and a
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personal highlight from the summer?
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Ministry highlight for me has been as we've moved through this
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process of going from our two services to 1 service, just
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watching everyone come together and the way, you know, one of
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the constant refrains I keep hearing from people is it's so
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nice for everyone to be together.
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And to me it finally feels like we really are one church there.
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I've always felt that divide between the first service and
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the second service. And hopefully as we continue in
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this pattern, those walls would continue to break down.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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So I'd be a ministry highlight. And personally, personally, I'd
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say Megan, I took a couple days and went up to New York City
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here towards the end of August, and we just had a great time
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together. Boys were in different places
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and doing different things and. In New York on their own.
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No, no, no. We left them in New Jersey.
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Yeah, just to get a couple days. It was just to be together, to
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have all kinds of good conversations, to make memories
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together, to see things in New York that Meg had never seen
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before. It's a great time.
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I got two more, two more stadiums ticked off my stadium
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chafing. Trip for you and Meg, but it was
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really a baseball trip disguised as.
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AI mean Yeah, well, we did plan it around those things.
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So what about for you? What are your your highlights
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this summer? I would say besides Mexico,
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because everyone's probably tired of hearing about Mexico,
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we had a book club running through the summer with some of
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our youth. It was an optional thing where
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they could pick a book, a Christian book, and they read
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it. And every time we gathered, they
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would share what happened, what stuck out and pose a question to
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our group. And while we eat snacks and
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whatever. And it the books were good and
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fruitful for them. But then it also led to like a
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really good dialogue and it just made you feel like you read a
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whole bunch of books in a summer, which you really only
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had to read 1, which I like because I hate reading personal.
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Well, this is still Mexico, really.
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But how was it to have your kids in La Pamia?
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A mess? No, it was.
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Because that's the first time you took.
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Yeah, it was the first time you took either of them.
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Yeah, it was the first time either of them had been to
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Mexico. So everyone in the village has
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been dying to meet them in person.
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And when they got acclimated with someone, it was great and
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like everything I'd ever dreamed.
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But it takes some time for toddlers to warm up to people.
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So when you're going to like new environment and new people every
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few hours because of all the invitations, we have never
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really gets a chance to warm off.
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Yeah, yeah. And that's tough.
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A lot of the social life is at night time.
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Like church starts at 7:00 and then you hang out and do stuff
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afterwards. And their bodies never adjusted.
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So they were asleep by 5:30 and awake from 4:00 to 5:00 in the
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morning. So then I always up at 4:00 to
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5:00 in the morning with them. And staying out.
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And then staying out late with it and then doing team stuff all
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day. And then so it's going to be a
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few years, so we go back. But I'm very glad that we did
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it. They were incredible during the
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travels. They survived 5 hours on the
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plane. They survived 6 hours of busing
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and like, maybe on the way down, maybe when whimpered for 30
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seconds, Jack. And that was it for the whole
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thing. So very, very blessed.
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But yeah, so that was a win in certain aspects.
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But everyone was so happy. And then every time Theo was
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like upset and throwing a fit, they were like, just like when
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Jeremy was a little great. Well, I'm glad they're taking it
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with not being offended at how sure upset he was at certain
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times. I would say I got some family
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vacations pre Mexico that feels so distant now.
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But time with my in laws, time with my family, my family
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vacation is always extremely refreshing.
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Yeah, rejuvenating for my soul. And this year, the time with my
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in laws was also that. And I'll edit it if I think
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Rebecca doesn't want that out there.
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I was going to say, what's he going to say?
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Here, both were very nice this year and I'm very glad it all
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worked out. And so as we start getting back
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into the swing of things with the podcast and school schedules
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and life and all of that, that kind of comes with September.
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Explain the series we're doing now.
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I know it connects with something happening outside of
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our church, but why go with what Wake Up Call is doing?
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So what are we doing and why? Yeah.
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This fall we're we're taking a solid 3 months in the Gospels.
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And there have been different times in preaching schedule here
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where we've focused in on maybe a chunk of a gospel or certain
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themes within a gospel like we did the I Am series during Lent,
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one year from John and and those kind of things.
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But when Seedbeds started talking about doing their daily
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devotional from 1 chapter a day in the Gospels over the course
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of 89 days, that it started to resonate with me.
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And the idea of just encouraging our people, not just in our
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sermon series, but throughout the week to engage with these
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stories from the life of Jesus. I quickly realized that like,
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this is where God was leading us.
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And so I was grateful that seedbed, you know, announced
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that in enough time that we could make the plans and
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encourage people to sign up and, and and listen.
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It's a challenge by choice, choice kind of thing, right?
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Like you might come and you're just listening to the sermon
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series or maybe this podcast. You can also read the one
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chapter a day. You can add in the daily
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devotional from seedbed. And I think a couple of the
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Sunday school classes, like I think the youth and the
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conversation class are both also taking like some chunk of what
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we're reading during the week and talking about it in their
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Sunday school class. It's just a great, great
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opportunity. Because Jesus is right smack at
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the center of of Christianity, right?
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If he's not, it's not Christianity.
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And So what better way to get to know him better to see more of
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the example he left us than to spend this time in the Gospels?
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Yeah, I'll forewarn for this whole season, if you want to
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call it, of the podcast of what I'm studying in seminary.
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So when you hear me referencing stuff, you already know that
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this semester we'll be studying. We'll now that you're part of
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this for free, we'll be studying church history.
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And as I've started the class, it's great because it's not just
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like what historical events happened within the church.
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Yeah. We're also going into the
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history of, like, Christian thinking.
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Yeah. And the history of theology.
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And so it's all of that will be popping up from time to time,
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probably most definitely within our conversations.
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Now you're speaking my language, Jeremy.
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It's great. I love this.
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Stuff and I, we don't have time today to go over everything.
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No, I'd love to talk about. But I love to look at at the the
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history of Christianity and the intellectual history of
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Christianity and how the thought processes that were coming in
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from the world around them enabled them to think deeper
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thoughts about who God was and and created a context where
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Christianity could be planted and take root and build upon
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what what God was doing. And so within that class, the
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professor is provided an extra credit.
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And so I'm obviously taking it. Take all the help I can get.
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And it's one of his own books. Jesus the stranger by.
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Ken Collins. Yeah, by Ken Collins.
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And it's kind of covering this, the fuller picture of Jesus, not
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just a we like Jesus for this part or this part, but each
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little section covers like what he was teaching on what he was
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experiencing, what was going on that he was speaking into.
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And so I think our series that we're doing is going to be just
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an an exceptional opportunity if the people take it up for them
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to really get to meet with Jesus in a way that maybe they've
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never holistically done within their church life slash personal
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walk life. And I'm sure that when we're
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gone next week in for the seedbed conference that we can
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thank JD Walt in person for what he's doing.
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But as you talk about like your love for the history of
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Christian thought and how the early church fathers like, OK,
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this is what we know for sure. This is what we all agree upon
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as we're establishing the early church intentionally or
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unintentionally, depending on the time and place and people.
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You know, heresy is not just that it goes against the Bible,
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it goes against the agreed upon tradition from the early church
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fathers. And yesterday, essentially, you
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were walking a line. Yeah, you're walking a line.
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And people, if they misinterpret or how hold a certain view of of
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another area, could think that you were on the edge of entering
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into heresy. Not a great thing for a pastor
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to do, to fall into heresy. Give us what you thought was
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borderline heresy, why you don't believe it to be so, and why you
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thought it was important enough to get close to that edge from
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the pulpit. Well, let me start by saying, I
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think when we look at the history of Christianity, we look
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at particularly like we'll say the 1st 500 years, that's well
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that's kind of broadly accepted as early Christianity.
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Within that time, there were any number of times when someone, a
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leader within the church, kind of rose up with a contrary view
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that came to be called heresy. And almost across the board it
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had to do with the nature of Jesus almost entirely.
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So you had like the the Aryans who followed a pastor named
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Arias, and Arias taught that Jesus wasn't God.
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He was the first creation of God, through whom then God
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created everything else. So their their mantra came to be
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that there was a time when he was not.
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Because it says he was in the beginning, at the beginning of
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Earth and physical fruition. But Arias took that to be that
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there was a beginning even for the sun.
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Gotcha. And so, you know, so when you
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get to the Council of Nicaea, from which we get the Nicene
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Creed, that's when what what we call orthodoxy, right?
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Belief established that no, Jesus was not created, He is
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uncreated, He's begotten of the Father in some kind of eternal
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way, but that he always coexisted as part of the triune
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God and so did the Spirit. So that's just one example.
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There's all kinds of other ones like Marcionism said that there
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there was actually a split between the Old Testament God
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and the New Testament Jesus. And so we see this angry,
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vengeful God in the Old Testament who was supplanted by
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this God of grace and love in the person of Jesus.
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And so, you know, Marcian wanted to to cut the Old Testament off
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from Holy Scripture and all those kind of things.
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Some people do that and and some people practically are Marcians
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all kinds of things like that modalism which said that you
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know the God you're. Going Tom Get.
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Back to my question, sorry I was trying to buy myself some time.
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Yeah, nice try. But now I'm deep down the rabbit
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hole. So, so the the heresies about
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Christ in the early church always tended to lean one way or
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the other, either that Jesus was really God and not really human,
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or that he was really human, but he wasn't quite God.
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And, and I think in the American church, at least in my own
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experience, it feels like we've leaned toward he's really God,
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but maybe he's not quite human. You know, he's, he's super
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human. He's something other than.
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He's got 100% package. Yeah, wrapped up, Yeah, He's got
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a human body, but his mind, his will, his heart, that was all
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God. And I don't think that's quite
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captures what the church has taught about the incarnation,
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that Jesus was 100% God and 100% human.
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And that's just really hard to wrap our minds around because we
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we can't have 200% of something like it's mutually exclusive in
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in our limited thinking. And so my fear was that people
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would hear most of what I was saying and only hear the part
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that said, But Jesus was really just a human.
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And I think that's where we get in trouble, because he wasn't
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just a human, but he was completely and entirely a human.
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He was a human with the first credit card.
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Yes, sorry if that analogy tripped anybody up.
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It helped me. It made sense to me to think
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that, you know that Jesus retained his divinity, but he
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didn't. He chose not to act from that
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aspect of it, or not to use the power associated with it, and
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certainly not to use that power to accomplish His own will and
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desires, or to make things easier for Himself.
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Yeah. I think that's where we have to
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be if we're going to take seriously this 100 percent, 100%
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God and man, this unique once in time reality.
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But to recognize that within Jesus, humanity lies what is
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possible for a human being. Because I think too often we
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think, oh, Jesus, you know, Oh yes, he was quote UN quote
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human, but he is an exception. You know, we can't actually live
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up to that. And in a lot of ways I get that.
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But then it makes it real easy to say, oh, but what about the
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apostles? Well, they were also exceptions.
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And then, then, then we make the entire Bible into the these
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stories of all these exceptions. So why bother trying?
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So why bother trying? Yeah, or, or.
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Why bother thinking that anything other than the quote,
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Normal human experience is what we're made for?
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And we limit what God can do and then through US.
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Yeah, yeah. And that kind of leads into a
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question that we got from a listener shout out to Ang says
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if we're if you talked about us becoming like Jesus, are the
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words like that get thrown around sanctification, spiritual
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formation. We also use a lot and there's a
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fancier 1 theosis. Are they all different ways of
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saying the same thing? So before I answer that, Jeremy,
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why don't you just go ahead and and define what those, what
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those terms? The questions, that's why I'm
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asking. The questions, all right.
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You're the answer, man. Yeah.
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Sure, I tried. All right.
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So when we talk about sanctification, all right,
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that's, that's a good Wesleyan word.
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John Wesley talked about sanctification line.
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He talked about the sanctifying grace that God gives us.
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We're talking about the process of being made holy.
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That's what it means to be sanctified, the process of being
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becoming set apart and becoming distinct from what you were
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before or what the world is. You know, those kind of things.
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Spiritual formation is the other one to use spiritual formation
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similarly, it's in practicing the way John Mark Comer talks
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for a while about how we're all being spiritually formed, right?
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This isn't a uniquely Christian thing, and it's not just a
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religious thing. Even people who don't practice a
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religion, they're outside the church, all that kind of stuff,
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they're still being formed spiritually by the spiritual
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influences all around them, whether they recognize it or
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not. In spiritual formation, we're
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just. Choosing to enter in and engage
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more intentionally for the purpose of of cooperating with
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the work of the spirit in our lives.
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So spiritual formation you could swap in the word discipleship,
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all those kind of things. It's it's that learning process
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of cooperating with God, theosis.
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Theosis is a key concept within the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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So. Kissing the pictures.
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Kiss So to get into Jeremy's Christian history class, you
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know, in in 1054, I think it was there was a split between the
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eastern side of the church and the western part of the church
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over. There are probably a lot of
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contributing factors, but it kind of came down to whether the
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Holy Spirit proceeds just from God the Father or from God the
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Father and God the Son. Anyway.
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So the the Bishop in Constantinople and the Bishop in
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Rome who had kind of risen up to be kind of the leaders of each
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of those halves, mutually excommunicated each other.
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And there became the the split between the ether Eastern
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Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern
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Orthodoxy. This idea of theosis is the idea
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that as we progress in our faith, as we mature in our
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faith, we are in the process not of becoming God, but of being
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united with God. I think critics will often kind
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of draw a picture of it that that makes it look like using
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even their own words that were somehow becoming God.
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And I don't, I don't think that quite captures what they mean
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when they talk about theosis, but it's this process of
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becoming united with God or in union with God.
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And I think there's something beautiful in that picture of
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becoming united with God. I think they're nuanced ways of
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talking about what maturity in our faith looks like to be
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spiritually formed, to be sanctified, to be, to go through
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theosis, to become united with God.
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I think they're probably more similar than they are different
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in their core concepts, but the way they get talked about, the
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way they get worked out are a bit different.
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Yeah. And then the last is kind of a
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hypothetical. It hurt my brain hearing it,
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reading it, but I'll throw it out there.
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So if Jesus is in your thing, always following the will of the
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Father, if during the temptation, which is the
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majority of Scripture from yesterday, if during his
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temptation in the desert he decided to go against the will
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of the Father and given to one of the offers the devil makes,
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would that split the union of the Trinity?
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And was it even possible? Like that's why I thought like
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is it even possible for him to not?
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Like if it's 100% human, then that means that there's a
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possibility of falling short. Yeah.
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So then he couldn't be God. Then he couldn't be 100% God.
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That's where I think that mystery comes in.
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I don't know that we can explain it away, but I, I do somehow
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think, I do somehow think that it had to be possible for Jesus
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to choose other than the Father's will, or else he
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wouldn't have really been human, right?
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And the temptations wouldn't have really been temptations.
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They would have just been kind of window dressing.
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But if he wasn't able to actually choose those things,
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then it wasn't really temptation and what was really accomplished
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through it. Yeah.
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Maybe Satan didn't know it wasn't possible, so he tried
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anyway. So then that means we do go down
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the rabbit hole of let's say he chose not to.
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But he didn't, and I think it's part of why I'm really
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frustrated and also really glad that we don't really have
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stories in between the birth narratives, the Christmas
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narratives, and Jesus's ministry.
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Because besides the one, well. Aside from the one, but there's
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not much there, right? Because it doesn't really.
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I think if we had a bunch of stories there, it would make
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things a lot more Gray or questionable in some senses.
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I wish there were right. So we could say like, all right,
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what was Jesus like as a 13 year old boy?
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Because I know what 13 year old boys are like.
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And to imagine that that he somehow got through that without
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sinning, like, but we don't have those stories.
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And so we just have what we have.
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And I think that's enough. I think we have the Bible today
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that God wanted us to have. You know, he has faithfully
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preserved scripture down through the years and things that were
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rejected along the way were rejected with with good reason.
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You know, they weren't accepted by all believers at all times in
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every place. It's, it's the classic saying
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and, and what we have, particularly in the stories of
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Jesus temptation are a window into a person, a human being in
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the power of the spirit who's able to reject temptation and
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reject an offer to choose something other than God.
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And I think that then then speaks to us because if Jesus
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could do it in the power of the Spirit, again, like we're not
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saying it was implicitly through his own power as God, but
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through the power of the Spirit was able to reject temptation,
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then so can I, so can you. We can live lives that are
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pleasing and honoring to God in this life as we stay in union
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with the Father and the Spirit. So I I get the idea of the
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question and I get the desire to kind of untie some of those
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knots, but I don't think we can based on the revelation that we
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have. Yeah.
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I hope you were satisfied with this return to the podcast.
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And just as quick as we come back, we're going to be gone
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again because we have a sea bed conference next week.
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But we have a very, very special episode that is coming out next
27:34
Thursday that you should still check out even though it won't
27:37
be live. And about our all of the sermon
27:42
coming up this Sunday. Well, that's our conversation
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for today, but that doesn't mean the conversation is over.
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We'd love to hear your thoughts on these topics as well.
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To ask a question about anything we've discussed in this episode
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or to join the conversation, you can head over to
27:57
fumccollingswood.org/podcast. Thanks for being part of this
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conversation.