Latest / Red Couch Theology / Deep Hope for a Weary Season (and book recommendations!)

Transcript

Deep Hope for a Weary Season (and book recommendations!) · Red Couch Theology

0:00
Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Red Couch
0:03
Theology Podcast. Hey, this week I'm having a
0:06
conversation with Jessica Rust, who brought our message on
0:09
Sunday. And we're talking about this
0:11
deep, abiding hope that expands far beyond the little hopes that
0:16
we might have for this season and actually is a hope we can
0:20
bank on. We also spend a little bit of
0:23
time talking about some of the other Advent resources that she
0:26
encountered this season so that you can hear someone other than
0:29
just Fleming Rutledge from Alex and I.
0:32
So let's dive right in. Well, hello, hello, everyone.
0:37
Welcome to the Red Couch Theology podcast today.
0:40
I'm excited because Jessica Rush is joining us because she
0:44
brought the message on Sunday. Yeah, are we sure we have sound
0:47
this time? I, I, you know what?
0:50
I'm about 80%, which is good enough for me.
0:53
OK, Yeah. In about two minutes, we'll know
0:56
for sure whether we're talking to no one because unlike when I
1:00
make you guys run the podcast without me, I can actually check
1:03
it in just a moment. But yeah, welcome.
1:08
Thanks. Thanks for preaching Sunday.
1:10
It was, it was awesome. I have like I used a lot of
1:13
images just like a single image in the message and those images
1:19
just like locked in my brain in and in some powerful ways.
1:23
So I look forward to our conversation today.
1:27
Before we dive in, would you actually just give us a for if
1:30
someone didn't get a chance to listen to Sunday, you just give
1:34
us like a 30,000 foot overview of the text and where you kind
1:37
of took it? Yeah, so our text in the
1:40
lectionary this week was Isaiah 11 one through 10 a shoot will
1:47
spring up from the stump of Jesse from his roots of branch
1:49
will bear fruit. Isaiah 11 one going on to talk
1:54
about a king that will come and the kind of king that he will be
1:57
ruling with wisdom and righteousness and justice and
2:02
empowered by the Spirit of the Lord and the kind of Kingdom of
2:07
piece of Shalom that he will establish.
2:13
So the the big idea of the message was we can have hope in
2:16
a world that feels hopeless because a king is coming.
2:19
And Isaiah uses this tree and stump imagery, obviously in
2:25
verse 1 of this chapter, but also in some of the previous
2:31
passages. So kind of pulling out a little
2:34
bit of what that meant in this contrast he was making between
2:39
life or what seems to have life and what is lifeless or seems
2:43
lifeless and the true life that the King Jesus will bring.
2:49
Yeah, so I think you opened you opened the message with some
2:55
some back story and I'm I'm making some assumptions.
2:58
You can correct me if I'm wrong. It like it seemed like you
3:01
wanted us to feel the sort of the emotional makeup of the
3:06
current moment when this text was written.
3:08
So you kind of gave us some back story about what's going on in
3:12
Israel at the time and why this where when this text in that
3:18
narrative lands. So can you give us a quick
3:21
overview of that as well? Yeah.
3:24
So Isaiah was prophesying in Judah, the southern Kingdom of
3:29
what had once been Israel. And by that point in split into
3:32
southern Kingdom of Judah, northern Kingdom of Israel,
3:37
Israel's a bigger, more powerful nation than Judah is.
3:40
And at this point in Judah's history, when Isaiah's
3:45
prophesying in this 7 to 11 chapter span, Israel's trying
3:51
once again to invade Judah with the help of another nation.
3:55
And that's where Isaiah starts to pull in this tree stump
3:59
imagery. These nations and kingdoms,
4:02
Israel and Arum and Assyria, which is like the biggest nation
4:07
around at that point, seem strong and powerful and sturdy
4:12
like a tree. They seem numerous like a
4:15
forest. But the power of the Lord is
4:19
greater than theirs, and really they will themselves be cut down
4:25
and left lifeless. Is a stump Judah's also ruled by
4:30
kings who are descendants of David who also was this faithful
4:37
king at the kind of king general generally with a couple moments
4:44
that someone who was the king of Israel was supposed to be.
4:48
And his line has dwindled in faithfulness and effectiveness
4:55
to the king that they had at that time.
4:57
King Ahaz who was talked about in second King 16 and he's not
5:03
the kind of king he's supposed to be.
5:05
He's turning to idolatry. He's turning to Assyria
5:09
specifically for protection. So Isaiah is also using this
5:14
imagery of the tree. The Davidic kingship used to be
5:18
strong, steadfast, beautiful, life giving.
5:21
Now it's withered down to this lifeless stump.
5:25
But out of that ineffective dead stump of the Davidic kingship,
5:30
life is going to grow as she will spring up from the stump of
5:33
Jesse. And it did.
5:35
It did take a while to unpack all of that and I did think
5:39
about that as I was putting the message together.
5:41
But without some of that back story and without some of the
5:44
understanding of, oh, this imagery of life versus death and
5:49
power versus weakness has been building for multiple
5:54
prophecies. And because it's not all just
5:57
one, you know, stream of consciousness right across those
6:00
chapters and building in this book for multiple chapters.
6:04
And if you don't know any of that, the actual image that
6:08
Isaiah is landing on here, which is out of what seems dead,
6:12
actually, there's still life. There's still hope.
6:17
And the type of king that's coming, the type of king that's
6:20
promised is the ultimate giver of life in this beautiful
6:23
picture of what he will bring and who he himself is.
6:28
And without all of that, like, oh, because he's making this
6:32
huge contrast in kingship and what life is and what power is
6:37
actually, you just get, oh, that's weird.
6:41
There's a stump here in verse one.
6:42
OK, yeah, I guess we're, I guess we're moving on to talk about
6:46
some other stuff, but like, weird.
6:48
Probably the more the more emotional sort of visceral
6:53
response for Isaiah's original readers because they know that
6:57
back story and then they see this, the image of a stump, like
7:04
just hits them kind of deeply. But we're not the ones who we're
7:07
living at, so we need that unpacked for us.
7:10
Well, I, it was interesting because I remember, you know,
7:14
maybe we have a little side nerd moment.
7:17
Occasionally we do this on the show where we just talk about
7:20
preaching. But I had this moment where
7:22
like, you gave the back story and you're starting to track.
7:25
OK, I can imagine what they're feeling.
7:27
I can imagine this sort of thing.
7:28
You actually when you pivoted to we know what this feels like and
7:33
you gave a few brief examples, but it was like, man, it hit me
7:38
hard that pivot. And so the, the question I have
7:46
for like from the sermon perspective is, or maybe it's
7:51
not a question, an observation. I I just think it's fascinating
7:54
and I'm curious whether you think about it this way.
7:59
I was moved multiple times throughout the message, but you
8:03
have a very even delivery I. Do yeah.
8:06
And so I, that always fascinates me, like the language is very
8:11
precise. The way you preach, your style
8:14
sort of of preaching is very precise.
8:16
You, you tend to manuscript and then rehearse and internalize it
8:20
deep down. And then the, your delivery is
8:23
like, I'm up there, I'm shouting and I'm running around and like
8:26
getting really animated and people know that I'm emotional
8:29
or whatever. And so sometimes that elicits
8:31
some of that emotional reaction. But for you, it was just like
8:34
these measured story pivots. Do you think about that
8:39
consciously as a delivery method or is it just part of who guys
8:44
made you and it's sort of just the voice that he's given?
8:47
You the even delivery or the story and then pivot to
8:51
application. These like, do you think about
8:55
how am I gonna draw in not only their minds but their hearts,
8:58
the emotional reaction? And is that a language choice?
9:03
Like could I do this without jumping around on stage is maybe
9:06
the question and how? Well, yes, I mean, I'm, I'm a
9:17
word person. I'm also a very internal
9:20
processor and just by part of who I am, I do place a lot of
9:25
weight on what I'm actually saying.
9:29
I'm not someone who feels like I can just stand up on stage and
9:32
like, wing it for 40 minutes and like, here's a coherent sermon
9:37
with a big idea and like a clear thread, right?
9:40
Maybe I could do that better than I feel like I could, but I
9:44
don't feel like I can do that. So I spend a lot of time trying
9:47
to make sure that, OK, there's a clear structure this builds in
9:52
the direction that it's going. And part of that's also, there
9:56
are so many things that you could possibly include in a
10:00
sermon, so many threads you could pull, so many directions
10:03
you could go. There's so many things I thought
10:06
about including or even had in previous drafts that I pulled
10:10
because it just really, honestly didn't fit in the end.
10:14
And I was already in my original draft at 40 minutes, and then I
10:17
cut stuff. So there was even more that I
10:20
didn't include in there. But to have everything build in
10:26
the direction that really it needs to go to effectively
10:29
communicate what it seems like God is trying to communicate to
10:33
our people and to the original people through that text, to be
10:37
faithful to that, I feel like in my process, I need to be more
10:42
precise. And I mean, I've thought about
10:46
the whole movement thing. Part of it is like, I just need
10:49
to go out there and be myself. I've talked about that on this
10:52
project podcast before of having that like really conviction.
10:57
Basically the first time I went up to preach a couple years ago
11:00
of like, I'm not replacing Alex, I'm not substituting for Alex.
11:04
I don't need to try to be Alex. I just need to show up as me and
11:08
God's going to work through that.
11:10
So I do come with that mindset every time.
11:13
The first time I also preached on stage here after Alex came
11:18
the first time ever was just on video because it's COVID.
11:21
It didn't matter. I do multiple takes, which was
11:24
great, but the first time I preached live here, I was
11:29
actually getting over a pretty severe illness.
11:31
Yeah. And physically did not feel like
11:33
I could stand on stage and move around for two services.
11:37
Like I didn't have that. Ability, yeah.
11:40
So I sat down and then that's just kind of what I've done and
11:43
actually I fell down the stairs on Saturday.
11:47
I heard about this later it. Was it was It was 3.
11:51
Stairs, You know, she fell down the stairs and I was like, what?
11:54
Yeah, it was 3 stairs, all carpeted.
11:58
I didn't like, hit my head or get a concussion or anything.
12:00
I would it was, it was OK. It was like the smallest number
12:04
of stereos. You can fall down right and
12:06
still claim you fell down the stairs.
12:10
But I did like, Wrench. I was trying to talk to both
12:13
members of my family at once and like pivoted to talk to my
12:17
daughter and then slept. And I had been holding onto the
12:20
railing. So I wrenched my shoulder and my
12:23
back and landed on my hip. So I've been thinking about
12:27
like, you know, maybe this time I don't use the the table.
12:30
And I was lying in bed that night, like feeling the injury
12:34
and really sore. It was like, no, yeah, no, I'm
12:38
glad. I'm glad I set a precedent of
12:40
just sitting down and just talking because like, I don't
12:42
want to move. Yeah.
12:44
Yeah. So no, I do, I do think about
12:46
that piece and I think about changing that piece.
12:48
But it's also like, no, this this time it was just not.
12:51
Yeah, I like having a table, partially because I it creates
12:59
like a subconscious barrier, which is like sometimes not
13:05
good, Yeah, but then I like to break that barrier when I give
13:09
my big idea. Yeah, because then you get up
13:11
and move around. So like, I get up and I'll move
13:13
laterally throughout the message.
13:16
Oh, I don't. I'm not sitting anyway, but I'll
13:17
move laterally. But then when I want to make a
13:20
really strong point that I really wanted people's
13:23
attention, I move in front of the table.
13:26
That's the only time I ever do that.
13:29
And there might be one or two moments where I'm really trying
13:32
to grab people's attention and I'll move in front of the table
13:34
And they, they, they may not, I don't know.
13:37
One of my preaching professors gave this as a tip or trick or
13:41
whatever is and he, he described it as like, subconsciously
13:45
they're like, oh, wow, something's changed.
13:47
And they don't even know that that this is an important
13:49
moment. But just by breaking the barrier
13:51
of the table, you can state something.
13:54
So anyway, fascinating nerdy preaching stuff.
13:58
But so then you said you, you ended up cutting a bunch of
14:03
stuff. Is there anything you would like
14:05
to share that you cut? Do we get a sneak preview?
14:08
If you want to see the text, I can pull it on the path here.
14:13
Anything specific do you recall? I mean, it was just it was more
14:16
in the application piece and like pulling in some of the
14:19
other examples. And I ended the sermon talking
14:24
about hope because the idea of waiting in hope in Advent is
14:32
such an abstract thing. Like how how do I do this right?
14:41
And I personally don't really enjoy when the message of a
14:49
sermon or book or podcast or whatever, it's just like do this
14:54
abstract thing, wait and hope, choose joy, be with Jesus.
14:58
It's like, but how do I do that? What does that even mean?
15:01
Like just just do it. It's like, I but what?
15:05
But where do I start? To like, not have something more
15:08
concrete, yeah. Yes, and it also seems like that
15:13
kind of message is delivered generally from someone who's
15:18
already walked that path like so many years ago that they just
15:21
know how to do it. They know how to be with Jesus.
15:25
They know how to like wait in this anticipation.
15:29
And if I'm like, not necessarily there yet or in a more difficult
15:32
season, usually it's a more difficult and grumpy season
15:37
because it's difficult season and then I don't want to receive
15:40
that of like, well, that's good for you.
15:43
You've already figured out how to do this, but like, I'm not
15:45
there yet. And when it comes to hope,
15:48
especially around December, like the last time I had, I think a
15:52
December that felt enjoyable and like everything that I hoped for
15:57
actually happened was like 2019, right?
16:01
And it's just been dumpster fire December after dumpster fire
16:06
December. And then that places a little
16:08
extra pressure on like, well, do I just like, you know, keep
16:12
making plans and they get crushed and I act like it's
16:14
fine. Is that how I wait and hope?
16:16
Like, what does that even mean? So one thing that I pulled was
16:21
unpacking some of my own personal experience with that a
16:24
little bit because it just when I was already at 40 minutes and
16:28
we had a number of things happening in the service and to
16:32
that just wasn't in the end what the message really called for.
16:36
I acknowledged it a little bit, but I didn't need need or have
16:40
space to get into my own personal like.
16:45
And this is how I've lived it. And I'm not just telling you
16:50
like you should just do this. So then can you give us a little
16:53
bit of how some of some of the things you've learned over the
16:56
last several years of struggling with it with Decembers?
16:59
Are there some things that you to give the podcast listers as
17:05
tips on how to live and hope? I mean, honestly that this year
17:10
that's been something I've felt really a conviction of.
17:13
I need to relearn how to do this.
17:16
Like, I was so tired of disappointment that I've just
17:21
started living in this space of like, well, it's all just going
17:23
to be bad. Inevitable.
17:24
Like the dumpster fire is coming and December is just going to be
17:27
terrible because it always is. And like we.
17:32
Were just talking about that when it comes to illness, when
17:33
you're just like, you know, someone that you that's sick and
17:37
then every single like tiny sensation in your body, you're
17:42
like, I'm it's, it's I've got it.
17:43
I've definitely got it. Which is.
17:45
Which is actually why Aaron and I are sitting at a pretty good
17:47
distance right now. Just in case actually.
17:50
Yeah, 'cause we found out you can pray for Alex.
17:53
He's he's under the weather and we were around him a little so.
17:59
Before we know and before he knew.
18:01
Honestly, That's right. Yeah.
18:04
So that was something I was processing, which is also partly
18:07
why I felt like I needed to kind of unpack what that means a
18:10
little bit. And Tish Harrison Warren wrote a
18:15
really wonderful book on Advent. It's just called Advent.
18:20
It's purple if you're trying to look it up.
18:24
But she it's not a devotional. It's more of like a what is
18:29
Advent as a season? What's the history behind it?
18:32
What's the theology behind it? What are some of the themes and
18:36
a little bit into then like how do you practice Advent?
18:41
But I read that book in preparation just for the season
18:46
and loved it. I would highly recommend it.
18:48
But she towards the end impacts this idea of hope versus like
18:53
hopes with a lower. Case Speech.
18:57
And an S and the hopes that we have are not necessarily like
19:04
bad things. You know, they could be like
19:09
getting married or having 50 years of a great fulfilling
19:16
career where you're using your gifts and making the world
19:19
better or your kids having this kind of life for whatever.
19:26
Like my hope for not being sick for once over Christmas and
19:32
actually getting to enjoy the week off that we have after
19:36
Christmas is done instead of nursing my family back to health
19:39
and then getting sick myself. Like that's that's not a bad
19:41
thing. That's a really nice thing that
19:43
again, I hope happens this year, But that's a lower case H hope,
19:50
right? And that's different than what
19:55
our hope is actually based in as followers of Jesus, which is who
20:00
Jesus is, what he's done, this story of the world, the
20:04
universe, what is true and right and good and where everything is
20:08
going. And regardless of how our
20:11
lowercase H hopes may succeed, may fail, may fail repeatedly,
20:19
the big H hope of the story that we live in.
20:24
Who we are in Christ, what the end of the story is, does not
20:30
change. And that was a helpful
20:33
distinction for me. And that's also something I
20:35
tried to pull out at the end of the sermon is I think being able
20:38
to live in hope, wait in hope isn't just, you know, OK, this I
20:45
just have to believe harder that this time and it'll all be fine.
20:48
It's a foundational understanding of the story that
20:53
we live in, the story that we tell, and to retell ourselves
20:57
that story if we need to. Yeah, I love that.
21:00
So I think, yeah, I remember that distinction when you're
21:04
describing it and it it reminded me of something that is new, a
21:10
new sort of little discovery I've had in Advent this year is
21:17
the relationship between Advent, Christmas and 2nd coming of the
21:23
second coming of Christ or the promise of a second coming that
21:28
I just hadn't seen prior, which is what I think gives the
21:32
capital H hope power. Because if you all, the only
21:38
evidence you're referring to is the historical list of hopes
21:42
that didn't work out, then why would we have a bigger hope?
21:46
But because of Christmas, the Christmas story narrative that
21:53
God himself did actually come down and accomplish the most
21:58
important thing for humanity, which is waging war and
22:03
defeating sin and death and the principalities and powers and
22:05
all these things on our behalf. That acts as sort of a down
22:11
payment guaranteeing the big hope of second coming when all
22:16
things will be made right again. And I just, you know, I'd
22:20
already embraced the power of Advent as like the season that
22:23
acknowledges the, the, the heavy of life.
22:27
And that was as a relatively optimistic person, that was a
22:30
pretty powerful gift to me to like, go ahead and let myself
22:35
see the darkness and not try to escape it too, too quickly.
22:40
Right. But this year was kind of like
22:43
wait, wait, wait. But this hope has a grounding
22:46
because his first coming is that grounding.
22:48
It's this promise. It's a down payment of the of
22:50
the ultimate promise. Yeah.
22:52
It's not based on nothing. It's yeah, it's rooted.
22:55
It's anchored so, so powerfully. I will also say this isn't
23:00
necessarily a theological practice.
23:02
Right, and it's a shame Alex is to hear from us, but I reread
23:07
the Lord of the Rings every year.
23:08
Alex also rereads The Lord of the Rings every year, but I just
23:13
finished Return of the King, which is all about like the
23:16
darkness can't last forever. Things seem like a bleakest but
23:20
light peeks through it certain spots.
23:22
And I had this moment of like, oh, The Lord of the Rings is
23:26
like an Advent series with the whole like going from light to
23:33
the depths of darkness to glimpses of hope to ultimately
23:36
the King returning and establishing this reign, even
23:41
though everything's not immediately perfect.
23:44
So if you want a series that pulls in some of these Advent
23:50
themes without being specifically about Advent, read
23:53
The Lord of the Rings. There you go.
23:55
Or watch the movies. That also works too.
23:57
But I would highly recommend reading.
23:59
Yeah, it's been. The Hobbit may or may not be
24:01
included in that advanced sense, but.
24:04
I feel like we're in some dangerous territory for those
24:07
who are huge fans starting to open that debate.
24:11
All right, so here's a question that I had.
24:15
Speaking of books, so, you know, and have called out multiple
24:20
times comically, as we let into at least on staff going into the
24:25
Advent season, how big fans Alex and I are of Fleming Rutledge.
24:29
Yeah. And how Fleming Rutledge it
24:31
becomes sort of like the the mascot of South Fellowship
24:34
Church in Advent. But this year, and I think
24:40
you've done other readings in the past years, this year you're
24:42
like, I would. I know that Aaron and Alex are
24:45
going to quote Fleming Rutledge a lot, which I didn't get to
24:47
preach so it would. Have been more So you're
24:49
excused, yeah. I'm excused.
24:51
I don't think Dan will quote her this weekend.
24:52
Yeah, so you decided to go read a bunch of other material.
24:58
If you don't know, Jessica's a huge reader.
25:01
She, she and Alex kind of share that.
25:03
I wish I could read efficiently. If I were, The Lord of Rings
25:07
would take me probably 2 years to read because I was such a
25:10
slow reader anyway. So who's the who's the next best
25:17
competitor or better advent material maybe?
25:21
Can you make a case for? I don't know about better right,
25:24
like it's not like you know, 11 book or resources the be all
25:32
end. All you read what 6 devotional
25:34
I. Think so.
25:34
I think I I spent most of my staff book budget on Advent
25:40
devotionals. Yeah, having in my list.
25:43
So I I really do like to cherish.
25:45
And Warren, she wrote again, it's just called Advent.
25:51
It's part of a series on the liturgical calendar.
25:56
She also wrote a book that I actually quoted last year when I
26:00
preached called Prayer in the Night, which is not about Advent
26:03
specifically. It's going through a prayer
26:07
called the Complan Prayer that you pray at night for those who
26:12
work or watch or weep and some other things.
26:15
But it was a really beautiful book and it pulled into.
26:17
Some of that long, yeah. Let's see Making Room in Advent
26:25
by Betty Dickinson. I like the lot she she does her
26:28
own artwork and has a different piece for each of the 25 days
26:34
Waiting for Jesus by Rich Philotus.
26:37
Also devotional. I really enjoyed that one and I
26:40
did actually quote that one. Russ Ramsay, The advent of the
26:45
Lamb of God. He is going through and
26:50
retelling pieces of the story from Old Testament, like the
26:54
beginning of the story all the way to the birth of Jesus.
26:59
And each chapters from a different perspective.
27:03
And some of it is like, OK, you know, I've heard narrative
27:06
retellings of Abraham before, right?
27:09
But some of them, like especially when he gets to the
27:11
prophets, felt very new, like, oh, wow.
27:16
Like I've never. You know.
27:18
Thought about Malachi this way. Kind of, yeah.
27:21
So yeah, those were some of them.
27:23
But I also felt like I ended up quoting the same people every
27:26
year when I preached at Advent. Well, I need some new material
27:29
too, and I can't quote Fleming Rutledge because I don't.
27:32
That's going to be covered. So I guess I need to find some
27:35
other. Books.
27:36
Yeah, that's great. So it was funny.
27:38
Jessica and I were talking because we as a staff went on an
27:43
Advent retreat just to prepare ourselves for the season and
27:47
this sort of thing. I had gone on a silent retreat
27:51
and basically hung out with Fleming Rutledge, Fleming
27:54
Rutledge's book on Advent for my whole silent treat prior to the
27:58
staff retreat. And then you had were like 5
28:03
books deep already at that stage.
28:05
Yeah, I started reading them in like September.
28:08
Yeah, so, so like we went on this retreat and they have like
28:11
this like really contemplative moment where they did teaching
28:14
on Advent and we were kind of debriefing afterwards.
28:17
We're like, it was a great retreat for other reasons.
28:20
But the actual content we're like, Yep, we're all in.
28:23
We're like, we'd already consumed so much Advent content
28:27
that their presentation was kind of like, not, not bad in any
28:30
way, but it just didn't, it wasn't like the fresh
28:33
rediscovery like some of some of the folks in the room.
28:36
Maybe they were they were inviting people to embrace the
28:39
weight. Like not the wait waiting, but
28:43
the W EIGHT of like the heaviness of the darkness and
28:51
the need of the world for Jesus and the longing and like where
28:59
where can you sense longing this year?
29:00
And I remember just sitting there like, I mean, do you want
29:03
the list? I've already been there for a
29:07
long time. But I mean, Alex talks about how
29:11
he naturally events like a corrective to his natural, like
29:17
personal state and the direction that he goes and the type of
29:20
things that he tends to think about or talk about, right?
29:23
And Advent kind of swings the pendulum the other way.
29:28
And, you know, he's mentioned that multiple times.
29:30
It's like, OK, I think I'm more of an Advent person, like my
29:35
natural bench as well as just some of the things that, you
29:39
know, I've experienced in the last couple years, but family's
29:41
experienced in the last couple years.
29:42
Like, yeah, I already live in that heavy, dark, pondering,
29:50
weighty space. Like probably I need a pendulum
29:54
on a different church season to go to.
29:56
My back a difficult thing in your in your week is not that
30:00
hard. Yeah, it's like, here's the
30:02
eight things. Yeah.
30:03
Here's the. I fell down the stairs and then
30:04
had to go, right. Yeah, yeah.
30:07
So yeah, it's it's interesting how some of those seasons, like
30:11
if we engage with them, some of them is natural, no problem.
30:15
Some of them we do have to push ourselves to engage with.
30:18
Yeah. For various reasons.
30:21
Yeah, so, so I think it was last week on the episode we talked
30:25
about scripture canonization, what is authority happen all
30:33
this stuff, right. So I'm curious what your
30:39
thoughts are on Yeah, the church calendar and some of these other
30:47
resources, like the books we've just talked about.
30:49
Yeah. Where do they sit in the life of
30:52
a believer? Because they aren't Scripture.
30:54
Right. And yet we keep talking about
31:00
this is almost like the language we're using in a lot of these
31:04
episodes. On the podcast over the last few
31:07
weeks, we talked about the church calendar and Advent and
31:08
Advent. And Advent is in the Bible.
31:11
It's not in the Bible as far as like a unofficially biblically
31:16
sanctioned season of the church calendar.
31:18
The church calendar happens years later.
31:20
So what? What are your thoughts on what's
31:22
the role and how do I weigh out this kind of stuff?
31:26
Yeah, I mean Advent, you know, there's no verse of.
31:34
Celebrate Advent. Great.
31:35
And God established Advent starting four Sundays before
31:39
Christmas. So like that's totally true.
31:43
But the themes of Advent and the story of Advent is the whole
31:50
Bible, right? Yeah.
31:51
And I think one of the one of the tensions.
32:06
We have, we all have spiritual practices one way or another,
32:10
right? We might not call them that, but
32:12
like if you pray, that's a spiritual practice.
32:15
And of course the Bible talks about prayer all the time,
32:18
right? And if you read your Bible or
32:20
listen to your Bible, that's a spiritual practice, right?
32:25
And of course, like Scripture engages with Scripture and
32:28
encourages engaging with Scripture.
32:33
And then you have other things that are like, like listening to
32:36
Christian music. It talks about like singing
32:41
songs and stuff like that. But there's no like in, you
32:46
know, you should only listen to Caleb in the Bible either. 2nd
32:51
Colonians. Right, But there are verses
32:53
about, you know, what you feel yourself with and how you spend
32:58
your time and the the sources that you are engaging with and
33:03
filling your mind and heart and soul with, right?
33:06
Which can then lead to different interpretations on what kind of
33:12
music you're supposed to listen to and what music is doing that
33:15
for you and what music is not. And what kinds of Christian
33:19
music are tuning that an archaeologically sound, right?
33:24
These biblical principles and some specific verses of OK, so
33:29
how do how do we stay connected with God?
33:32
What kinds of things does Scripture recommend to stay
33:37
connected with God? What does that look like?
33:40
What are the outer workings of that is that, you know,
33:43
Scripture doesn't talk about apps, but there's apps that
33:46
people find helpful for prayer or for Scripture reading or
33:52
whatever, right? And I would say that the books
33:56
that we read or the church calendar would also fall into
34:00
some of those things, right? It's not Scripture doesn't talk
34:05
about like a book either. Scripture doesn't talk about CS
34:08
Lewis at all because he lived thousands of years later.
34:13
But it's also like, what? How is it feeding back into what
34:18
we know is true? How is it reflecting what we
34:21
know is true? And the church calendar itself,
34:23
like the purpose, is not just this thing that we do, it's to
34:27
reiterate the story of Scripture and help us engage with it when
34:32
our natural tendency is not to really.
34:36
Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's fascinating to me
34:39
that like, it seems like some of these other, for lack of a
34:44
better word, extra biblical resources.
34:50
They, they're like a window into the work of the Spirit and the
35:00
word of God curated into another, into the life of an
35:07
individual who creates another thing.
35:09
And so you still access the work of the Spirit and the scriptures
35:15
through the lens of another follower of Jesus.
35:18
When you read a book about written intending to draw you
35:22
into some information of a commentary or in the case of the
35:27
church calendar, it's multiple individuals who labored over
35:33
that who observed patterns and rhythms in in in Christianity
35:38
and within the scriptures and the way that God interacts with
35:41
the world. And they said, like we feel like
35:43
this is a good idea. And then as the tradition of
35:46
the, of the body of Christ progresses throughout history
35:51
over and over and over again, the the church family finds
35:56
this, this particular tool just really works well to combat a
36:05
tendency to overly optimize the, the Christian faith in Advent
36:10
and then to underrepresent another thing in another area of
36:14
life, whatever it may be. And so as the centuries
36:17
progress, more and more churches said, you know what, this is a
36:20
great tool. It's an effective practice.
36:23
And then that's why it's gotten so much clout over the
36:26
centuries, just like certain authors or whatever, like ACS
36:32
Lewis. Why is he so big in the
36:35
Christian world? Well, for some reason, he had a
36:38
way of articulating that God gave him a gift that lets us see
36:42
God's heart and the Scriptures through different lenses.
36:46
Yeah, pretty powerful. So on a on a Thursday after your
36:52
message, what are you hoping that the congregation who heard
36:57
your sermon, what's your hope for them that they're
37:03
remembering today or that they would recall from Sunday?
37:15
Well, that we can have hope in a world that feels hopeless
37:18
because a king is coming. Yeah.
37:21
Like that what we see around us when the news personally or
37:29
globally or nationally is what we would say is bad news.
37:36
And a lot of it is right. Yeah.
37:43
The the voice of Isaiah, the voice of the whole story of the
37:49
Bible doesn't diminish that. It actually affirms like, yeah,
37:52
that's that's legit bad news. Yeah, that's.
37:55
Not how the mission. To like, name it and talk about
37:58
it a whole bunch, yeah. Yeah, but also, that's not all
38:03
there is. That's not the whole story, and
38:06
God has not abandoned us to that.
38:09
Yeah. Even when things seem bleak and
38:12
hopeless, there is still hope. And it might not be an immediate
38:16
hope. It might not be an immediate
38:18
answer. Yeah, like the people in
38:21
Isaiah's day actually never saw that king come in their day.
38:26
Yeah, Jesus was hundreds of years later and they had to go
38:30
through exile after like in the middle of that and come back
38:33
from exile and 400 years of silence and all those things,
38:36
right. If avens heavy to you in four
38:39
weeks, imagine 400 years. Right.
38:42
Yeah, but the story is still true.
38:48
The big picture hope. The foundational hope.
38:51
Is still. True, and that's the piece that
38:53
we hold on to even in the midst of that darkness.
38:56
Yeah, there's this this this Advent year A is what we're in.
39:01
Isaiah may have said this last week in that episode as well is
39:05
surprisingly hopeful. There's a lot of positivity in
39:09
the Isaiah texts of the lectionary.
39:14
And yet you if because of the context you gave us, you're
39:19
like, there's this weird juxtaposition that's taking
39:22
place where Advents or Isaiah's like in the midst of the
39:27
disaster, shouting hopeful messages.
39:31
It's in the Advent texts of this year.
39:34
It's sort of a beautiful reminder that we we can do the
39:37
same. Yeah.
39:38
Any any other final words you would like to share with our
39:41
listeners this week? Other than that, have hope.
39:48
Yeah, embrace hope. I mean, you know, you can spend
39:54
multiple sermons on the implication of that, right?
40:01
Even if hope seems difficult, don't automatically reject it
40:06
just because it feels costly. And our hope has implications
40:13
not just for what it means for us, but also how we live in
40:17
other with others, live in our communities.
40:21
How we share that hope with others, which is something I
40:24
didn't have a ton of time to touch on at the end, but try to
40:26
pull out a little bit. So yeah, find as you wrestle
40:31
with what that hope means, find ways to share that with those
40:35
around you. Yeah, it's beautiful.
40:37
Well, thanks for joining us, joining me on this episode, and
40:42
thank you all for tuning in and as we continue to make our way
40:46
through Advent season, preparing for Christmas and for Second
40:51
Coming. Yeah, may he come quickly.
40:54
Alright, see y'all. Bye.