VUE Church
By George Stull
It’s pastored by George Stull. Find us online at www.vuechurch.org
VUE ChurchApr 08, 2021
5.12 Isn't She Beautiful (wk5) Not So Silent or Submissive (Jarrod Morris)
What is a church? Jarrod Morris-How can you talk about the beauty of the church without talking about the women of the church? For Mother's Day, Jarrod did just that, talked to us about the role of women in the church.
5.5 Isn't She Beautiful (wk4) Compromise: a dirty word?
What is a church? The book of Acts is the very first story of the church. What is the big story of these texts and how do they still matter to us in the modern world?
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
“When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosen-ness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosen-ness of others. That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. There is a place for everyone – a unique, special place. Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God’s eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God’s heart.”
-Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved
4.21 Isn't She Beautiful (wk3) Doing Difference Differently
What is a church? The book of Acts is the very first story of the church. What is the big story of these texts and how do they still matter to us in the modern world?
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
The great gift of Christianity is to be united while remaining oneself. - Teilhard De Chardin
The Eucharist invites us to gather as family.
Nothing is an island, not even a molecule or an atom. Everything is meant to be in relationship. The Eucharist honors that. The Eucharist is meant to form us into one body in a way that takes us beyond the differences of personality, ideology, theology, gender, ethnicity, history, social status, preoccupation, privatized agenda, and jealousy. Often, it alone has the power to do this. God gives us something we couldn’t give to ourselves: a common heart and spirit. The Eucharist is, therefore, both the sacrament that celebrates unity and the sacrament that cleanses us for it.
—Ronald Rolheiser, Our One Great Act of Fidelity
4.14 Isn't She Beautiful (wk2) If God Is Love Don't Be A Jerk
What is a church? The book of Acts is the very first story of the church. What is the big story of these texts and how do they still matter to us in the modern world?
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
How much I must criticize you, my church and yet how much I love you! How you have made me suffer much and yet owe much to you. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. Never in this world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, and yet never in this world have I touched anything more pure, more generous, and more beautiful.
Carlo Caretto, An Ode to the Church
“I will put together my church, a church so expansive with love and energy that nothing can stop it.” Jesus
The task of the Church is "to be the irrefutable demonstration and proof of the fact that God is love,” Steve Chalke
'As St. John of the Cross said: "Mission is putting love where love is not.”
What is a church? It is people who are sensitive to the idols in their world…
-the ones we bow down to
-and the ones destroying the people we love
And it is people who are discerning…
-where in the midst of all the idolatry is there an earnest seeking for God?
-where in the midst of those misplaced trusts, is there something we can celebrate and affirm to help people reach out to the God who made them and loves them?
4.7 Isn't She Beautiful (wk1) Breakthroughs In Becoming More Loving
What is a church? The book of Acts is the very first story of the church. What is the big story of these texts and how do they still matter to us in the modern world?
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
The gift of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful; in a word, more alive. A church is a group of people who are learning—imperfectly and with lots of grace—to live in the way of Jesus together; embracing his spirit and his work in the world. From science to technology, psychology to theology, we are “breaking through” many of the things we thought we knew. Our call as Christians is to make sure that our primary “breakthroughs” are becoming more loving. -Sebastian Moore, The Contagion of Jesus
3.31 Easter (I went with my heart)
Waiting in hope is open-ended. Much of our waiting is filled with wishes; we want the future to go in a very specific direction. Hope is something very different. Waiting open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God's love and not according to our fear. —Henri Nouwen, Seeds of Hope
To say “we believe” is to say you are part of a community learning to trust and carry this story together. It’s people saying we are becoming a family of people who root our lives and hope in the reality that after evil has done everything it can, love has more to say.
3.24 I Really Am What I Eat
Palm Sunday- Where do we find God's physical presence in the world? In the historical Jesus, the body of Christ (his church and people), and in the Eucharist.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING
Christianity is without doubt the earthiest of all religions. It doesn't call you out of the physical, out of the body, or out of the world. Rather it tells you that God enters the physical, becomes one with it, blesses it, redeems it, and that there is no reason to escape from it. —Ronald Rolheiser, Our One Great Act Of Fidelity
How separate and divided is our world! We look around us, watch the world news, watch the local news, look at our places of work, our social circles, and even our churches, and we see tension and division everywhere. We are far from being one…
We cannot heal ourselves and find the key to overcome our wounds and divisions all on our own. So we must turn our helplessness into silence, a Eucharistic prayer that asks God to come and do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
—Ronald Rolheiser, Our One Great Act Of Fidelity
We must keep eating and drinking the Mystery, until one day it dawns on us, “My God, I really am what I eat! I also am the Body of Christ.” —Richard Rohr
3.17 Living Rhythm (Six & One)
When we forget the rhythm of work and rest, things in our lives can begin to slowly unravel and break down. Are you honoring the rhythms built into the fabric of creation and your life? SLIDES GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING fields not factories Genesis 2 Leviticus 25 Hebrews 4
We used to sing the hymn "Take Time to Be Holy." But perhaps we should be singing, "Take time to be human." Or finally, "Take time." Rest is taking time ... time to be holy ... time to be human.
Walter Brueggemann Our work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives. We lose God-consciousness, God-awareness, sightings of resurrection. We lose the capacity to sing “This is my Father’s world” and end up chirping little self-centered ditties about what we are doing.
Eugene Peterson
3.10 The Transfiguration (Jesus as a synthesis)
Matthew 17-Jesus' Transfirguration
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING
Love is not just something that happens to you. It is a certain, special way of being alive.
—Thomas Merton
There are two utterly different forms of religion: one believes that God will love me if I change; the other believes that God loves me so that I can change! Ideas inform us, but love forms us—in an intrinsic and lasting way. God is always willing to wait for the lasting transformations brought about by love.
—Richard Rohr
3.3 Jesus' Temptations (and genius)
The Lenten season is a time of thoughtfulness and reflection, a call to remember who we are, and a time to get back in touch with our souls; our guide to the more of life. And Jesus' life renews all of this in every one of us.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
Our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human. We search to love and to be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to believe in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.
Frederick Buechner, The Longing For Home
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.
Romans 8:29, The Message
Jesus was able to listen to each of these voices and knew he was rooted in the strength and peace of divine love that was deeper than any other aim or attempt at significance, meaning, or strength. It is the genius of Jesus. And of us, too.
2.24 Embracing Paradox (wk5) A Pair of Doxes
Jesus began His ministry by stating a set of paradoxes that we call the Beatitudes found in Matthew 5. George focused on the first two (poor in spirit, mourning) and their relationship in our everyday lives to help us keep living from an open heart.
SLIDES GEORGE'S READ IN OUR GATHERING
When we describe God, we can only use similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve.
-Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance
We’ve substituted theological ideas for the experience of life; we are full of religious notions, but our great weakness is that for our hearts, there is no one there.
-A. W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest (1950)
We've lost our capacity for enchantment, our ability to see and experience God as a living, vital presence in our lives.
-Richard Beck, Recovering An Enchanted Faith In A Skeptical World
Opening your heart is moving to a place of understanding a deeper, wider, stronger, more enduring nature to life that is good. To open your heart is to get better and better at receiving the goodness of life as it flows toward you.
-Rob Bell
2.18 Embracing Paradox (wk4) Weak is Strong!?
Can we discover strength in our weakness? Sounds absurd, but unique to Christianity is the idea that someone is strongest in their lowest moments.
Most of us who call ourselves Christians do so on the basis of belief more than experience. We’ve substituted theological ideas for the experience of life; we are full of religious notions, but our great weakness is that for our hearts, there is no one there.
-A. W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest (1950)
The universal way to experience God “with us:” is by acting in love in the manner that you see in Jesus Christ.
-Dallas Willard
May Christ live in your hearts through faith, and as a result of having strong roots in love, may you have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth. And may we all know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that we will be filled entirely with the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19
2.11 Embracing Paradox (wk3) It Looks A Lot Like Love
What a facinating way to articulate how to really live!?Jesus: "whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it." (Matthew 16:25)
SLIDE GEORGE READ
The cross says, "The pain stops here.” The way of the cross is a way of absorbing pain, not passing it on, a way that transforms pain from destructive impulse into creative power. When Jesus accepted the cross, his death opened up a channel for the redeeming power of love. When we accept the crosses and contradictions in our lives, we allow that same power to flow.
Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox
2.4 Embracing Paradox (wk2) Two Kinds of Life (Radical Amazement)
When we describe God, we can only use similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve. We can say, “It’s like . . .” or “It’s similar to . . .”; but we can never say with absolute certainty, “It is . . .” We absolutely must maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery; otherwise, religion worships itself and its formulations instead of God.
-Richard Rohr
Anyone who loves their life [psyche] will lose it, while anyone who hates their life [psyche] in this world will keep it for eternal life [zoe]. John 12:25
It’s a matter of sequence
01
001
10
100
1,000,000,000,000
Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed. Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
-Abraham Joshua Heschel
1.28 Embracing Paradox (wk1) Dynamic Tensions
SLIDES GEORGE READ
“Any time you take a dynamic tension at the heart of human vitality and ask people to pick one or the other, you are going to have absolute madness.” —Rob Bell, Congressively Proservative
We are encouraged to hold the tension of apparently contradictory viewpoints-and we often find ourselves happily surprised at the new and larger truth that emerges as a result. That is the promise of paradox. Community can remind us that we are called to love, for community is a product of love in action and not of simple self-interest. For in community, one learns that the solitary self is not an adequate measure of reality, that we can begin to know the fullness of truth only through multiple visions. Community can teach us that our grip on truth is fragile and incomplete, that we need many ears to hear the fullness of God's word for our lives.
—Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox
1.14 Wonderfully Made
As we began a new year, George read to us Psalm 139 which reminds us we are wonderfully made and everyone is worthy of love.
SLIDE GEORGE READ
I want to feel that I am thoroughly and completely understood so that now and then, I can take my guard down, and look out around me, and not feel that I will be destroyed with my defenses down. I want to feel completely vulnerable and absolutely secure that I can run the risk of radical exposure and know that the eye that beholds my vulnerability will not step on me.
There is in every person that which waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in himself. There is in every person that which waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. And when these two sounds come together, this is the music God heard when he said, "Let us make them in our image.”
—Howard Thurman, 1980 speech at Spelman College
12.24 Christmas Eve (Advent wk4) joy's a holy thing
Christmas Eve at the Bellevue Community Center December 24, 2023.
12.17 Arrival at Home (Advent wk3) holy longing
It’s no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things.
An unquenchable fire lies at the center of the human experience. Sometimes it hits us as pain— restlessness, dissatisfaction, frustration, and aching.
At other times it’s felt as a deep energy, as something beautiful, as an inescapable pull, more important than anything else inside us, toward love, beauty, creativity, and a future beyond our limited present.
Desire can show itself as aching pain or delicious hope. What we do with our longings, both the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality.
-Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing
12.10 Arrival at Home (Advent wk2) spiraling adventure of the liturgical year
The liturgical year is an adventure in bringing the Christian life to fullness, the heart to alert, the soul to focus. It does not concern itself with the questions of how to make a living. It concerns itself with the questions of how to make a life. -Joan Chittister
12.3 Arrival at Home (Advent wk1) waiting & hoping
George-Advent is about waiting and hoping with room for many different experiences like hope & joy, longing & aching, lament & peace, woundedness & healing, darkness & light. Join us as we explore why the practice of Advent can tune our lives to the greater things to come that our hearts long for.
SLIDES READ IN OUR GATHERING
Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment. The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Advent Sermons
I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved. But there are many other voices, voices that are loud…These voices say, "Go out and prove that you are worth something. Henri Nouwen, The Return of The Prodigal Son
11.19 The Social Fabric Project (wk3) FRIENDSHIP & the underlying meaning of this everyday word
George - In some ways, we all may undervalue the depth of friendship as a vital aspect of growth and learning in the spiritual life. But understanding the deeper meaning of true friendship can have incredible healing possibilities for our lives. For me, often, poetry helps me understand the underlying, deeper meaning of words. The essay below, by one of my favorite poets, David Whyte, opened my heart and understanding to what Jesus may have actually meant when he called us "friends" in John 15.
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FRIENDSHIP not only helps us see ourselves through another's eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses, as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn.
A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, even when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them.
Real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
A close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends, we must know the other and their difficulties and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.
Through the eyes of a real friendship an individual is larger than their everyday actions, and through the eyes of another we receive a greater sense of our own personhood, one we can aspire to, the one in whom they have most faith.
—David Whyte, Consolations
11.12 The Social Fabric Project (wk2) Seeing Others as a Powerfully Creative Act
If you see great potential in me, I will probably come to see great potential in myself. If you can understand my frailties and sympathize with me when life treats me harshly, then I am more likely to have the strength to weather the storms of life. In how you see me, I will learn to see myself.
-David Brooks, How To Know A Person
"Work and look hard for ways and opportunities to make little moves against destructiveness”
-Andre Trocme
11.5 The Social Fabric Project (wk1) One New Humanity
SLIDES George Read In Our Gathering:
"We have learned to distinguish between parts but have failed to go on to reunite them. Our individuality has been undermined because we have forgotten what it truly rests on…that all things are interwoven and that each strand in the tapestry is holy." John Phillip Newell, A New Harmony
"Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater love! At the summit, you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.” -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
*Song Credit: Here's My Heart, written by Jason Ingram, Louie Giglio, Chris Tomlin
10.15 Worship In Every Direction (wk5) To Change, Fix, Convert, Or To Love?
Jesus in John 15 says, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." What's the invitation here: to change, fix, convert, or to love? As one theologian says: "Love is a transforming power when we are poised to promote the good of those in range."
SLIDES GEORGE READ
We are created for love. There is no other energy that can truly bring together what has been torn apart by fear and hatred.
John Philip Newell
“So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.”
Philippians 1:9-11 MSG
10.8 What Do You Want The Church To Care About? (Adam Buzard)
About Operation Andrew Group:
UNITE. PARTNER. LOVE.
We seek to unite the Body of Christ as we partner with the local church to love God and our neighbors.
Operation Andrew Group, in partnership with the Charis Foundation and Barna Group, generated the State of Nashville, a demographically representative study of Nashville residents. This comprehensive study can be found here.
operationandrew.org/the-state-of-nashville/
10.1 Worship In Every Direction (wk4) About God, For Us (your brain on God)
So what happens when you worship the creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished in Jesus? Because you were made in God’s image, worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive. -N.T. Wright, Simply Christian
Neuroscientific evidence of the best ways to maintain a healthy brain: -smile -stay intellectually curious & active -consciously relax -yawn -meditation & prayer -dialogue with others -faith
Book George Referenced in this Sermon:
How God Changes Your Brain, Andrew Newberg, M.D.
9.24 Worship In Every Direction (wk3) Gospel, Grape, & Grain
In this teaching, George reflected on the practice of communion and the thought that the grape & grain in the elements, remind us of why all human labor necessary for human flourishing is SACRED.
9.17 Worship In Every Direction (wk2) Eucharist: Temple to Table
“If Jesus died for this kind of inclusion at the table, why would we constrict it after his death instead of expanding it? It’s like saying: Only well people are allowed to receive God’s medicine. We want everyone to come get the medicine except the sick—only whole people can receive the meal that mends all our brokenness.” David Fitch
SONG CREDIT: Christ is Lower Still | Sanctuary Songs, The Porter's Gate
9.10 Worship In Every Direction (wk1) Introduction
George explored the question: What are we doing here? Worship is so much more than what we do on Sunday mornings for an hour. Nonetheless, what we do in that hour is vital and significant to what it means to worship with our lives. Romans 12 says that we are more than offering our individual selves to God when we gather to worship. We are actually creating some larger together. Singing matters, but that isn't even the point--the shared experience is!
WORSHIP IN EVERY DIRECTION
We pursue lives of joy, hope, gratitude, appreciation, creativity, wonder, and awe. We worship with our lives in these ways.
We are learning to serve one another and love others. We share, sacrifice, and give, living for more than just ourselves.
We are compelled that honesty, generosity, simplicity, humility, forgiveness, compassion, and kindness are all a better way to live.
8.27 RECALIBRATE (wk6) accepting hardship as a pathway to peace
In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul lists several hardships he's faced, yet after a whole passage of naming them, it doesn't end in despair. Somehow, accepting hardship was a pathway forward to peace which helped him see life in its wider perspective.
SLIDES GEORGE READ
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.” -Matthew 11:28, The Message
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking the world as it is, trusting that You will make all things right.
Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer
8.20 RECALIBRATE (wk5) The Gifts of Margin, Limits, & Simplicity
In this teaching, George talks about the lack of margin many of us live with leading to chronic overload and exhaustion. The American Psychological Association says 7 out of 10 U.S. adults feel completely overwhelmed with life. Jesus says we can learn the unforced rhythms of grace to live more lightly and freely.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
In emotionally healthy churches, people understand the limits God has given them. They joyfully receive them as a gift. As a result, they are not frenzied or covetous, trying to live a life God never intended. They are marked by contentment and joy. Emotionally healthy churches also embrace their limits with the same joy and contentment. Not attempting to be like another church. Exhaustion, anxiety, burnout, superficial spirituality. These are usually signs that we are living outside of our God-given limitations. Pete Scarzero, Emotionally Healthy Church
Jesus wants us to know that we don’t need all the things or experiences we think we do. Simplicity creates margins and spaces and openness in our lives. Simplicity asks us to let go of the tangle of wants so we can receive the simple gifts of life that cannot be taken away. Simplicity invites us into daily pleasures that can open us to God, who is present in them all.
Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practice That Transform Us
*SONG CREDIT “Take It Easy” by Matt Maher
8.13 RECALIBRATE (wk4) Story of Failure, Loss, & Transformation (Justin & Trisha Davis)
Justin and Trisha Davis share vulnerably and honestly about the failure of their marriage. What followed was a 4-year journey of pain, grief, and ultimately the restoration of their relationship.
LEARN MORE ABOUT JUSTIN & TRISHA HERE
8.6 Back-to-School LITURGY of Love Over Fear
What a special Sunday gathering to start a new school year! We created some sacred space for prayer: for our schools, teachers, administrators, counselors, support staff, coaches, SRO’s, custodians, bus drivers, parents, & students. Some members of our community lead us in some beautiful ‘prayers of the people.’
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING
I have come to think that much public prayer in the church is careless and slovenly, and that what passes for spontaneity is in fact lack of preparation. Thus, I believe that public prayers must be "well-said" in an artful way, not to call attention to the artistry itself but to mobilize and sustain the attention of the praying community.
Awed To Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Walter Brueggemann
* SONG CREDIT
Mark Hummon, Prayer of the People (feat. Bittersweet)
7.23 RECALIBRATE (wk3) Three Mile An Hour God
One of the mantras of our modern world is DO more, BE more, HAVE more which can lead us to live a hurried life. In this sermon, George talked about how hurry is incompatible with the love, joy, and peace that are right at the center of Jesus’ vision of life.
God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is “slow” yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love.
-Kosuke Koyama, Japanese theologian
7.16 RECALIBRATE (wk2) Smartphones & Social Media Triage
Let's talk about our phones and the 2nd book of the Bible and a story that's thousands of years old and how they're related. Is your phone the first thing you reach for in the morning and the last thing you touch before bed? Do you frequently pick it up "just to check it?” Today, just over a decade since smartphones entered our lives, we're beginning to suspect that their impact on our lives might not be entirely good.
Want to explore this further? Check out the Netflix Orignal
The Social Dilemma
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN GATHERING
"Instead of turning to our devices, we can lift our eyes to see where we are, who we are in proximity with, and we can begin to wonder at being wholly present and prayerfully open to the unexpected. May something so small as lifting our eyes up from our devices be our first act of faith, trusting that our human presence has been ordained, in any given moment and place, to be meaningfully purposed as the hands and feet of God's profound love for humanity and all of creation."
-Felicia Wu Song, Restless Devices
7.9 RECALIBRATE (wk1) Shaping Our World By Creative Cultivating
The Bible’s first idea of what it means to be human is that we've been given a calling to participate with God in the ongoing work of creation, to bring it forward, and to make something of the world we live in.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING:
Once upon a time men took into your temple the first fruits of their harvests, the flower of their flocks. But the offering you really want, the offering you mysteriously need every day to appease your hunger, to slake your thirst is nothing less than the growth of the world born ever onwards…
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Mass On The World
And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story a worldview leading the way with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom.
-N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus
Do not be dismayed by the brokenness in the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, and unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.
-L.R. Knost
6.11 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk10) the forgiveness of sins
Part 10 of the Apostles' Creed. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
There is an expanded sense of sin as anything we do to damage the world. It’s like air pollution—all of us contribute to it, all of us suffer from it.
-Frederica Mathewes-Green
“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”
-Henri Nouwen
6.4 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk9) the communion of saints
Part 9 of The Apostles Creed
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
The church is God’s answer to our existential need for belonging, community, acceptance, support, and love. You don’t ever have to be alone. If you are part of a church, you are to take this seriously. It means looking around to see who is alone, who may need a friend, who needs encouragement. It means inviting people to sit by you, or asking if you can sit by them. It means checking on and caring for those who need someone.
-Adam Hamilton, Exploring The Apostles’ Creed
Any hope that you can know yourself without accepting the things about you that you wish were not true is an illusion. Until we are willing to accept the unpleasant truths of our existence, we rationalize or deny responsibility for our behavior. Only after we genuinely know and accept everything we find within ourselves can we begin to develop the discernment to know what should be crucified and what should be embraced as an important part of self. It is in the depths of your self that God waits to meet you with transforming love.”
-David Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself
5.21 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk8) the holy catholic (all embracing) Church
The word "catholic" in the Apostles' Creed is not a name brand for the Roman Catholic Church--although it may include it. It means the universal Church, from across all times and places, throughout history, which includes us in the 21st century. Any particular Christian community can realize only a fragment of the catholic whole.
SLIDES READ IN THIS GATHERING:
But Christian unity does not mean the obliteration of all differences; it means the harmonizing of all differences in a larger unity; it means concentration on the Christ who unites rather than on the systems and the theologies which divide. There is the tolerance which comes from the certainty that God fulfills himself in many ways, the tolerance which refuses to be arrogant enough to believe that any man has an exclusive grasp of the whole truth, the tolerance which is quite sure that a great many things on the circumference of the faith can be left fluid so long as the center - which is Christ - is right.
William Barclay, The Apostles’ Creed
5.14 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk7) We Believe In The Holy Spirit (breath of life)
We are moving along on our journey through the Apostles' Creed to the line: "We believe in the Holy Spirit." We started with the understanding that something holy and sacred begins with the breath of life breathed into us by God at creation that animates our lives. The Christian tradition calls this Creative Power the Holy Spirit.
SLIDES READ IN OUR GATHERING:
When we speak about the Holy Spirit, we are speaking of God's active work in our lives; of God's way of leading us, guiding us, forming and shaping us. And in listening to this voice and being shaped by this power, we find that we become most fully and authentically human.
-Adam Hamilton
To trust life means having faith that the flow of life will always bring us what we need, though not always what we want. If we really trust in life, we will not waste our energy on resentment, on wishing that our life's circumstances were different from what they are; rather, we will use all our energy for responding appropriately to the given situation-to bloom where we are planted.
-David Steindl-Rast
5.7 BAPTISM SUNDAY (water + sacrament)
This Sunday we were all immersed in God's love, and some by water in baptism. Water is symbolic of our trusting in the “buoyancy of God” to hold our lives upward so God’s life can be lived in us. Water is also sacramental; not just something we do but also something God does in and through the water.
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING ABOUT BAPTISM:
It certainly doesn’t mean “Now you’ve got all your Christian understanding together, so we can baptize you.” In the New Testament, baptism often happens very early in somebody’s life, like the Ethiopian eunuch who had been a believer for only five minutes before he was baptized by Philip.
It takes a lifetime to figure out what your baptism means.
—N.T. Wright
*SONG: Baptized, Mac Powell & Matt Maher
4.16 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk6) Theories of At-One-Ment
The Apostles' Creed says that Jesus was "crucified, died, and was buried." This is a world-altering moment in the Jesus story that has captured the imagination of Christians for two millennia now. There have been different ways we have made sense of Jesus' death through what historically has been called atonement theory. In this teaching, George explores a few of the ways people think about this.
4.9 EASTER (Letting Go of the Old to Rise Up)
Easter is an opportunity to celebrate being alive. The whole physical and biological universe affirms resurrection all the time, everywhere. This is not a one-time miracle. It's a statement about how reality works with Jesus as a trusted guide for the journey.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
“It is absolutely gorgeous. You see the Earth as it exists with the whole universe in the background. You see the thin blue line of the atmosphere. And what you realize is every single person you know is sustained inside of that. You don't see borders. You don't see religious lines. You don't see political boundaries. And you see that we're way more alike than we are different.”
Artemis II Astronaut, Christina Koch
“Real despair is the belief that nothing new can happen to us. We are in deep tombs, behind a wall of stone. Worst of all, in the end, we have given up hope. The resurrection tells us it is never too late. We must believe that the stone will be rolled back to begin breathing resurrection air.”
Ronald Rolheiser, Our Deepest Longing
3.26 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk5) The Wonder + Mystery of a Virgin Birth
Miraculous births were common in the ancient world. Is the virgin birth mentioned in the Apostles' Creed any different? Must we believe in a literal virgin birth to be biblical? Must we reject it to be reasonable?
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING
Mary is not an icon to be reverenced, but the pattern for how the incarnation is to continue, for how God continues to take on flesh in this world. And that pattern is perennially the same: we must say “yes” to the Holy Spirit giving birth in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
—Fr. Ronald Rolheiser
3.19 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk4) A New Vision of Power (Christ, God's Son, Our Lord)
What makes a better world? Jesus gives us a new way of understanding power to make a better world. The Apostles' Creed says: "We believe in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our LORD." The title of Lord, is the title of the God whose power is love.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
To call Jesus “Christ” is to say that human categories are too small to contain him, and to affirm our faith that nothing less will do than to say that God was in Christ. It is to affirm that we believe that in Jesus we are in the presence of God, that through him alone we fully know God.
The Apostles’ Creed (William Barclay, 1967, 1998)
Faith in Jesus as OUR LORD finds expression in one's commitment to the ultimate authority of Love to which he bears witness in the world. Without this commitment, Lord is an empty title, but to make this faith commitment has vast practical implications. If divine love embodied in Jesus is our ultimate authority, we will have to question the claims of all other authorities.
Living The Apostles’ Creed (David Steindl-Rast)
3.12 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk3) Jesus Is Love Revealed + Embodied
If "God Is Love" why is the word love not written in the Apostles' Creed? Because it might just already be assumed by the writers. When it says, "We Believe In Jesus," it is saying "We Believe In Love."
Jesus is love revealed. Love here is not abstract or theoretical. It is not a feeling or a concept. It is love embodied.
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
As Jesus expressed it, we’re created with two overriding aims in life: to love God with all that is within us and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So sin is anything we do in thought, word, or deed that is inconsistent with loving God or neighbor or ourselves.
—Adam Hamilton, Creed
3.5 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk2) Evolutionary Creation
In this teaching, we explored the second line of the Apostles' Creed "creator of heaven and earth." George talked about the biological process of creation and the theological story of creation given to us in Genesis.
The creed is an ancient way of narrating a particular story about reality that Christians have trusted for a millennium and a half. We want to root our community in this story and simultaneously ask new questions about it for our modern world.
SLIDES GEORGE USED IN THIS GATHERING
We have come to see that these chapters are poetry and not science, that they are religious symbolism and not history. They do not tell us anything of God's method of creation; they do lay down the one supreme fact that life came into being through the power of, and by the will of, God. Whatever the method of creation, God remains the Creator without whom life is possible.
William Barclay
In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received.
Augustine of Hippo
2.26 ANCIENT FUTURE (wk1) Credo
George-the Apostles’ Creed's first line begins with “I believe in God, the father…” Credo “I believe” in Latin means "I give my heart.” The word has the same linguistic root as love. May we all find our hearts drawn not just in ideas or beliefs but in trust and love of the God the Creed calls “Father.”
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
The Creed is a statement of faith, not of beliefs. There are many beliefs, but there is ultimately only one faith: faith in God. May the Creed help you find new meaning in the words and—deeper than words that divide—the faith that unites all human beings. -David Steindl-Rast
2.19 EPIPHANY (wk6) Love Is The Epiphany of God (Stacia Freeman)
Stacia Freeman-Our actions of love make the invisible visible. God's love not only unites us with God but with all of humanity. God who comes in human form teaches us that we must search for God's love in flesh and weakness. Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.
2.12 EPIPHANY (wk5) Wedding That Almost Crashed
John 2 - Jesus changes water to wine. The story of this wedding is actually about transformation. Yes, the water is transformed into wine, and we are transformed into people made in God's image and who reflect his glory by being fully alive.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING:
So John is saying: you are here in a trinitarian universe not just for survival but for thriving. There is an overflow to everything, and this is about how to live with that overflow so new life is spilling over. It’s about joy, vitality, creativity, radiance, your heart bursting forth in love and service to self and other and for the world. -Alexander John Shaia
The glory of God is every person fully alive! -Saint Irenaeus
GRACE: “It’s the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person— having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful heart will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping.” - Unknown