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8/22/26 The Eye of the Storm · Omnia Christus

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  SPEAKER_00: Dune may not be your cup of tea,
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  SPEAKER_00: but it's a book that I particularly like and it was recently,
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  SPEAKER_00: at least the first part,
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  SPEAKER_00: released as a movie and I particularly liked that too to the extent I think
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  SPEAKER_00: of seeing it five times in the theaters.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that might be a shock to some people,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially those who haven't read the book because they're like,
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  SPEAKER_00: well that was just weird.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if you read the book it was actually really good.
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  SPEAKER_00: Presentation of that besides being directed by one of my favorite recent directors.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there's one scene from that movie which has stuck with me and which comes back
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  SPEAKER_00: to me over and over again.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's when Paul and his mother are headed in their thopter into the Coriolis storm.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they start to get taken by it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Paul realizes he has to just ride the storm.
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  SPEAKER_00: So he sort of puts up his hood,
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  SPEAKER_00: puts his arms into his sleeves,
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  SPEAKER_00: locks in the gears, and lets the thopter go in the Coriolis storm.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it just is blown around.
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  SPEAKER_00: Inside the storm until finally it's blown up to a level which he can re-engage.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then he re-engages and is able to sail out and,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, escape more or less unharmed from that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But that image of Paul going into the Coriolis storm and just folding in,
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  SPEAKER_00: folding in to himself into that place of peace in the middle of that storm as
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  SPEAKER_00: the storm just rolls around him.
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  SPEAKER_00: Has been for me a sort of a leitmotif, you know, one of those images that stays with you.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is somehow speaking to a current situation.
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  SPEAKER_00: What I was thinking about with this gospel,
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  SPEAKER_00: of the many things that I could have thought about,
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  SPEAKER_00: because there are many things here,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it's certainly not very complementary to those of us who work
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  SPEAKER_00: in religion especially,
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  SPEAKER_00: but of the many things that these readings call out,
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  SPEAKER_00: that image and the idea of being in a place of peace Was something that stood out
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  SPEAKER_00: for me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Again, maybe for personal reasons, I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_00: But this gospel here,
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  SPEAKER_00: because it's talking about the way that the scribes and Pharisees are and the way
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  SPEAKER_00: that, you know, that they receive honor and the way that they think of themselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so, of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: you might think, well,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: all those priests up there with their, you know, special robes on and whatever.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it's all of us.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not just me.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not just people who officially work in religion.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's all of us who present ourselves as Christians who have a temptation to To think
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  SPEAKER_00: that we're better than we are and to get accolades for that
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  SPEAKER_00: when it's not really true of our deepest self.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what Christ is trying to say is he's saying change that deepest self.
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  SPEAKER_00: Be that which you claim to be at your deepest level and that's what matters.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it really doesn't matter what they say to you and it doesn't matter
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  SPEAKER_00: the honorifics that they give you and it doesn't,
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  SPEAKER_00: all those other things don't matter.
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  SPEAKER_00: The greatest among you must be a servant.
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  SPEAKER_00: Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a message for all of us, and it's a temptation that we all have.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there's this affliction that we have in this culture,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I have talked about this more times than most of you care to hear,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I will say it again,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is that book that has been so helpful for me in getting me a little bit more
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  SPEAKER_00: towards that place,
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  SPEAKER_00: Where Paul is entering into the Coriolis storm and that is of course the book
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  SPEAKER_00: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer.
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  SPEAKER_00: That book has come back to me over and over again
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  SPEAKER_00: and has absolutely been transformative in my life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Transformative to the extent in which my life has changed,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe not,
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  SPEAKER_00: but transformative in the way that I want my life to change and I'm working
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  SPEAKER_00: on my life changing and I'm working on being better and transformative in the sense
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  SPEAKER_00: of seeing the way that we're called to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: To be at peace with God, to have that inner peace.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even in the middle of that storm,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're getting tossed around by this whole storm that's blowing around you.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can't change the storm, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: You can't change the fact that your thopter's going into a Coriolis storm.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can change what you have inside and you can change the way that you engage with
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  SPEAKER_00: that storm and you can have peace within you.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Christ is calling us to have.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's calling us to have that deep authenticity that Is underneath any sort
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  SPEAKER_00: of religious appearances that we might have.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not to worry about those appearances, but to seek that deep place within.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there are just a few lines from this book which are so helpful for us
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  SPEAKER_00: to remember and to meditate on.
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  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that he says in the book,
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  SPEAKER_00: and he's quoting Corrie ten Boom,
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  SPEAKER_00: he says,
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  SPEAKER_00: Corrie ten Boom once said that if the devil can't make you sin, he'll make you busy.
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  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was good.
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  SPEAKER_00: Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect.
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  SPEAKER_00: They cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul.
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  SPEAKER_00: Famous psychologist Carl Jung had this little saying,
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  SPEAKER_00: hurry is not of the devil, hurry is the devil.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're hard things for us to hear because we live in a culture in
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  SPEAKER_00: which we are hurrying all the time,
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  SPEAKER_00: in which we can't stop non-stop movement, non-stop thinking, non-stop work.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the book's a good book because John Mark Comer,
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  SPEAKER_00: who's a pastor,
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  SPEAKER_00: he starts out with his own experience where he's trying to run a megachurch
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  SPEAKER_00: and he's doing five massive celebrations on a weekend
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  SPEAKER_00: and he asks this megachurch friend to know, he's like, hey, how do you do this?
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  SPEAKER_00: He's like, oh, it's easy.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's just like running a marathon every week.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Well, that doesn't sound very easy.
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  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like really hard.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he sees the trajectory of where his life is going,
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  SPEAKER_00: where he's just living a life that's surviving and all
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  SPEAKER_00: of his energy is being drained out of him.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he can see where that trajectory goes and it goes nowhere good fast.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he pulls back from all of that and reevaluates his life.
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  SPEAKER_00: So he's not speaking from a place of abstract theory.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's speaking from his own experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's experience that we all have living in this world in
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  SPEAKER_00: which we're constantly being pushed, driven,
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  SPEAKER_00: and we drive ourselves and push ourselves to be constantly hurrying,
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  SPEAKER_00: rushing, never slowing down, never stopping.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if we get two minutes back to back,
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  SPEAKER_00: we're immediately scrolling and checking this and listening to that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we can't stop.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can't.
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  SPEAKER_00: Slow down.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can't get to that place of peace.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we wonder why we feel so alienated from ourselves and from others.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's because we can't stop hurrying.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we can't open up that space within us for God to come in in the middle of
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  SPEAKER_00: that Coriolis storm to find peace.
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  SPEAKER_00: He says, love, joy, and peace are the triumvirate of the heart of Jesus' kingdom vision.
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  SPEAKER_00: All three are more than just emotions.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are conditions of the heart.
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  SPEAKER_00: They aren't just pleasant feelings.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are the kinds of people we become through our apprenticeship to Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_00: who embodies all three, and all three are incompatible with hurry.
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  SPEAKER_00: Love, joy, and peace.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hurry drives those things out of our heart.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't have time.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't have time for love, we don't have time for joy, and we certainly don't have peace.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yet those are what the gospel is all about.
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  SPEAKER_00: The gospel is not a book of rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the example of a life so that we can encounter that life and
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  SPEAKER_00: that we can model our life on that encounter.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we see the life of someone who lives in love, in joy, and in peace.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone whose life is not consumed with hurry.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we're invited to share that life.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's something to think about from this gospel that we have today.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's something to meditate on and that's something to put into practice.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because at every moment we have a choice.
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  SPEAKER_00: At every moment we can choose how we're going to live.
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  SPEAKER_00: Am I going to live a life that is rushed and consumed by busyness?
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  SPEAKER_00: Or am I going to enter into a place of peace?
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  SPEAKER_00: And it means stepping back from lots of those habits that we have.
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  SPEAKER_00: It means taking advantage of being stuck in traffic to meditate,
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  SPEAKER_00: to be in the Coriolis storm, not to give in to rage and frustration.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe to take ourselves a little bit less seriously.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why will the world end if I get to where I'm going five minutes later than I thought I would?
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm not that important.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe God is giving me this opportunity so that I can enter into peace.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that I can be filled with his presence.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I can bring that peace and presence to those around me.