Peaches the Donkey

[00:00:02] Speaker A: From Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. This is behind the message, this podcast. We take you behind what we teach here at Westside. I'm Ben Fleming. [00:00:17] Speaker B: I'm Evan Earwicker. And we're barreling towards Palm Sunday this weekend. Barreling. Happy Palm Sunday. [00:00:24] Speaker A: Barreling toward Palm Sunday, or. Yeah, Palm Sunday. An interesting Sunday in the teaching realm. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Right. [00:00:32] Speaker A: This funny little celebration before everything happens. It always feels weird to me. [00:00:37] Speaker B: Well. And probably it speaks to the story, right? [00:00:40] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. [00:00:41] Speaker B: Bit of a whiplash. The crowds love him. And then they hit him. Yeah. I always remember, and I probably told this story a hundred times, but coming to church, and we used to have the kids department would bring a donke, a live donkey, in, and I thought. [00:00:59] Speaker A: You just called it a donk. [00:01:00] Speaker B: A donk alive. [00:01:03] Speaker A: I'm doing that. [00:01:04] Speaker B: A live donkey each year. Peaches was the donkey's name. Rip Peaches. Rip Peaches. And I think it was a mule, actually, which is larger than a donkey. [00:01:16] Speaker A: Is it? [00:01:16] Speaker B: I think because a mule is a horse and a donkey. [00:01:19] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, of course. [00:01:20] Speaker B: Combined. [00:01:21] Speaker A: I would have assumed Emile was smaller for some reason. Yeah, but you just broke that in my mind, finally. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Yeah, but before we were on staff, I was on staff. Alyssa and I got to church late, and we were blocked by Peaches the donkey. Jesus on top of the donkey, and a bunch of kids with palm branches in the parking lot. And we're like, we can't find parking. Okay. And so we left, and we didn't go to church that day. [00:01:43] Speaker A: Jesus and Peaches. [00:01:44] Speaker B: Yep. Jesus and Peaches blocked our way into church. [00:01:47] Speaker A: Why did we stop doing that? Was it the death of Peaches? [00:01:49] Speaker B: It was the death of Peaches. It's hard to deal with a dead donkey. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Yeah. A lot of donkeys around here. Donkeys are mules. [00:01:55] Speaker B: A lot. I've seen some mini donkeys on farms, like hobby farms with mini donkeys. [00:02:00] Speaker A: Do they have mini mules, too? [00:02:02] Speaker B: I don't know, but the mini donkeys are pretty adorable. [00:02:05] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. I bet those big eyes have big, gorgeous eyes. [00:02:08] Speaker B: I feel like all I had seen was mini donkeys. And then I saw the mule, and it was like, oh, my goodness. It looks like a giraffe in comparison. [00:02:16] Speaker A: You know, big old long mule neck. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Also, giraffes, surprisingly large. When you see them at the zoo, I always think of them like, you know, like a horse, but taller. They're large. [00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Huge. Ginormous. Gotta reach for those tall, tall trees. My daughter's favorite zoo animal, by the way. Giraffes really? She always wants to see them more than anything. [00:02:39] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:39] Speaker B: Lindsay, you just went to the Oregon Zoo. This is why people tune in to hear our thoughts on the zoo. [00:02:47] Speaker A: Lindsay's been, like, almost doubled over in. I'm gonna say pain from donk. [00:02:52] Speaker C: Like, I can't move on. It's just getting me so good. Justin and I have been fighting for our lives back here. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Trying to keep talking. [00:03:02] Speaker C: Oh. Trying to regain composure. And then you guys just keep going like it's nothing. And anyway. [00:03:09] Speaker B: Yes. [00:03:10] Speaker C: I went to the Oregon Zoo recently. [00:03:12] Speaker B: Any donks? [00:03:13] Speaker C: I didn't see any donks. Nope. I can't. Oh. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Not a lot of donkeys at zoos. I don't think they carrying donkeys around the donkey exhibit. Who would go? Who would go? There's the penguins and then there's the donkeys right over next to. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Was it the pangolin? Wasn't that Covid related? They thought it was a pangolin. Isn't that like a. It's like a armadillo adjacent animal. Yeah. [00:03:47] Speaker A: And it's a penguin. [00:03:48] Speaker B: And they were originally, like. I don't know if it's conspiracy theory or like, an actual fact, but they were saying maybe it originated in a pangolin. [00:03:56] Speaker A: Okay. Nice. Some interesting breeding practices going on somewhere. [00:04:02] Speaker B: Zoology. Yeah. Behind the message. [00:04:04] Speaker A: Zoology. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Hey. [00:04:05] Speaker A: It was part of the story Palm Sunday. So. Yeah. You kind of. If you don't do Good Friday, it's another reason to do Good Friday. I'm glad that it's part of the tradition. You just show up on the Sundays, you get two celebratory hosanna kind of celebration moments. Right. Which makes it interesting. It's really important to have that burial time in the middle. [00:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And where we've been in the Book of Mark, it shifts it a little bit because there wasn't. The entry into Jerusalem isn't the big deal. In Mark's narrative, we go right from the alabaster pouring out into the Last Supper. And then Jesus. Betrayal in the garden. So changes up a little bit the natural way, which would be to do a Palm Sunday message this week. Instead, you're going to talk about Peter and his denial of Christ and kind of his journey, which, of course, the Gospel of Mark is all about. [00:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm actually really excited for this message. It will create that kind of longer form downward spiral for the disciples. And then the death and the burial of Jesus. It'll kind of make the whole week feel that weight a bit more, which, again, I think is important. And we'll acknowledge Palm Sunday and And talk through a bit of that. But yeah, I'm excited to talk through Peter's experience in denying Jesus some that we talk about a fair amount. But there's, it's so interesting and complex to me how it comes out in the story of Mark and the really quick story of shame that Peter goes through in the middle of that. [00:05:40] Speaker B: And I always feel like whenever we touch on shame, it is such a resonant theme. And I think people feel so much shame that whenever we begin to talk about how Jesus confronts and relieves us of shame, I mean it opens something up for so many people that I think are really even this past Sunday talking about the story of the Last Supper. And when Jesus says someone's going to betray me and all the disciples say, is it me? Is it me, Lord? Maybe it's me. Something about that I could tell. Even conversations afterwards, people have that feeling when it comes to their faith, like am I not enough? Am I the enemy? You know, such a resonant theme. And I think that's that kind of religious guilt or shame that people wear all the time. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Not Jesus intention of course to create this religious shame. But especially you see people in times of crisis or something's just going wrong around them that's connected to them, a family member or something, there's this grasping for. It almost feels better if we could discover that it was us. [00:06:43] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:43] Speaker A: It's a lot harder to sit in the room and know that something is up and wonder how that came about or why it is. And some of these are great mysteries, health issues and problems. I've seen a lot of religious shame around. I can't get healed, I can't get fix, I can't figure this out. And I think it would be easier actually for a lot of people to say, well I smoke two packs of cigarettes a day for X amount of time. Of course I have. But in so many situations and it's not even just a health crisis, any crisis at all. We can't really pinpoint the source of it, which is that makes it heartbreaking. And then we get insecure right in the middle of faith. I think that's what you're touching on. That's resonating. [00:07:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And for Jesus context it's a shame and honor based understanding and culture. Right. For us we don't have that in like whatever post enlightenment Western society. It's not shame and it's not the main driver. It's more rational, success based understanding of how the world works. And so for us, I Think in our moment in church, where a lot of people have come to the realization, like prosperity gospel kind of understanding of, if I do this, God's gonna transact with me in a certain way. Once you set that aside, because we don't have a deep sense of what is shame and honor, I feel like sometimes we become adrift in not understanding when things go wrong, how to address that or how to assign that. And so when we're preaching about shame, I think it's a relief to people who are trying to wrestle with, like, why did something go wrong in my life? Or why did I screw up in my behaviors and how does that affect my relationship with God? A lot of that isn't baked in. And so if we don't address it, I think people just quietly suffer under the weight of it. [00:08:30] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's a good call. And I even talked about it. We had a teaching meeting while you were gone, where I said, yeah, what you guys are talking about makes me feel like I really want this message to be about shame that's coming up next week. And I said, did we just do that? Did we have a long series on shame or something like that? And we actually looked it up, and there really hadn't been much for around a year or so. But I think it's because of what you're saying. Everyone shares this. This weight of shame. And then, of course, by virtue of shame, then we hide it. And so when it does come out, it's like this finally breath of fresh air. Oh, my gosh. You said the thing, and you named the thing that I've been walking through and dealing with. But it seems to require a certain amount of regularity. Because you're right, there's never a time that we talk about shame where it just kind of goes past people and it's like, oh, that was a nice little message. Thanks for the info. As you exegete, mark it, it's a huge, monumental moment for so many people. [00:09:26] Speaker B: And, you know, Jesus on the cross, which we're about to get to, especially on Good Friday. Central to it, especially in the way that Paul talks about Christ on the cross, is him embracing shame in our place on our behalf. This is different than the sense of, you know, God's mad and so Jesus is going to take God's punishment. That's in Paul's writings, too. But I think really central that sometimes we miss as Westerners, is Jesus is embracing humiliation and the shame of dying on a cross to absolve and absorb the shame that we all Feel naturally, you know, so it's not just do we recognize we're sinners, it's can we identify that we are carrying shame on us and that Christ embrace that shame and humiliation on the cross to do something profound in healing us of that, healing that wound at the deepest levels of who we are. [00:10:24] Speaker A: You know, and there's a lot of pictures that you see in scripture that I find difficult to relate to because of cultural context and history. The scapegoat, one that Jesus takes on pretty intentionally, you see in early Old Testament, Leviticus, they literally have the scapegoat that they heap the sins of the community on before they sacrifice it. And it's this cleansing feeling that's supposed to come out at the end. And this is Jesus taking on the scapegoat. While all the sins certainly belong to all the people in this moment, you can throw them and heap them on me. And I think we still just need, we need that reminder that all these things that certainly belong to us have been poured out upon. And it's, it's cathartic, it's beautiful. It's a release that we get that we don't often find anywhere else because we're so used to. If shame comes and knocks at the door, we are pretty ready to let that belong to us and we'll know. I'd rather hold that for myself instead of going out and assigning it somewhere else or giving myself grace. It's. There's a short term comfort that comes with just simply embracing it. And it kills us over the long term. [00:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah, there's an I deserve this, I did this, I deserve this. That is maybe natural to people. And part of embracing Christ is to allow him to take our burdens. And that takes humility. Right. The more independent you are, the more self sufficient you are. Oftentimes the harder it is to embrace the work of the cross and going back to the rich young ruler conversation. The more we have it figured out, oftentimes the harder it is to actually inherit the kingdom and find ourselves embraced by Christ. Not because he's not willing, but because we are unwilling to open ourselves up to that kind of redemption. And what a challenge for us, independent, ambitious, got it all together kind of people. [00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah. I wonder, as we head to Easter, this is good that we get closer to this, that we remember how important that it is Jesus, who's the only one that can actually take on these things. Because I think maybe we do have some practice in this. Now that my brain is turning a little bit of throwing the blame onto something else. Politics does that I think I talked about maybe on this podcast. I listened to the Rabbit Hole podcast that I think the New York Times came out with during the pandemic. And it was talking about people that really got caught up long term into a YouTube algorithm or really subscribed to this extreme conspiracy theory. The characteristic that all of the different people shared in their research was that almost all of them were extremely lonely or, and or poor. Just had lost a job. Like something went wrong. And it was almost like the brain wanted to go. And I have to put this on the Republicans, the Democrats. It's gotta be on someone. I have to subscribe to this. And we throw it in these different places. I think about the story of the Chicago Cubs. You guys know they didn't win a World Series forever. And then they were close in 2007, they're in the playoffs. This fan reaches out and blocks a left fielder from the ball. And Moises Alou gets all mad. That other team scores six runs the rest of that inning. They lose the series. The team that beats him goes on, wins the World Series that night. That fan has to be escorted out. He's having stuff thrown on him. It's pizza, it's beer. He's scream, they have a police escort. And then he has to move and change his whole life because he reached out and touched this ball. And there's a documentary where they bring in a priest to talk about this. They said that was the scapegoat. They put all the sins of 100 years of losing upon this man who cannot hold it, who does not deserve this and cannot do anything with all of this scorn. And yet Jesus remains the one that we actually can bring all this shame to. [00:14:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting that in lieu of putting our burden on Christ, if we feel shame, there's a natural bent towards projecting it onto perceived enemies or others. I think oftentimes when you talk about like the political realm or polarization society wise, a lot of that is I feel shame. I don't know what to do with that. It's not going to project what shame I feel onto some other person or some other group. And that's going to somehow make it okay how I feel. Christ steps into this mess and this cycle of shame and says, I'm willing. I'm Matthew 11. I'm the one that will share this burden with you and I'll carry this yoke. And my burden is light. And it's a beautiful thing that flies even in the face of the image of God sheltering us from an angry God or Jesus sheltering us from an angry God. It's Jesus taking on the burden that we're carrying that allows us to freely interact with the love of God for us, as opposed to this. God is so angry at you, Ben. And Jesus is going to kind of step in the middle of that. What if the vision that we have, which is first, John, God is love, is that he is desperately trying to get to us, and so he sends Christ to take the burden that has weighed us down, Man. [00:15:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so good. Really, really good. And, yeah, it gives us that third option that's outside of, okay, this shame. I'm just gonna hold onto it for myself, which is what Judas basically does, right. He goes and he feels. He gets isolated, goes and kills himself following the betrayal of Jesus. And then you have a lot of the Jewish people at the time that are saying, well, we're going to heap this onto Rome. That's our other option. It's their fault. And then Jesus provides a third option. And maybe that's the big thing. You have people in our audiences that hear a discussion about shame that have used what they think are the only options to them and still find themselves wanting or missing something. Jesus provides the better option. [00:16:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And the imagery that's there even in this past week, talking about Passover and the Last Supper, is a Passover meal with Jesus and disciples. And that whole ancient Old Testament picture is of this Passover lamb being slaughtered. And one of the comments that came up in my research of the Last Supper is that present in the Lord's Supper every time we gather and share in communion or the Eucharist, whatever you want to call that, it represents, as we take that bread, that something had to die, a plant or an animal had to die for this meal to be provided. And all of that is baked in, going all the way back to Moses, that, you know, Jesus and his disciples would have grown up every single year thinking about and remembering how God delivered his people and turned them into a free people. And then Jesus takes that same meal, but then he puts himself into the middle of that story, which, again, for his moment, is blasphemy. [00:17:32] Speaker A: It's edgy. [00:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's. He's like kind of making some bold claims here, and he puts himself in the middle of that table, which that alone would get you killed in his moment. And then it becomes not only looking back to the provision and the deliverance that God provided, but now looks forward to the redemption of all things that Christ represents both now in his death and resurrection, and on that day when heaven and earth collide, you know, so there's all this imagery and redemption going on in such a short span of time. But also in Mark's gospel, he doesn't spend much time on these stories. It's just, you know, a couple verses here, and then they're on to the next couple verses. We talked about that this morning. [00:18:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:17] Speaker B: How it's frustrating at the end. John spends, you know, what is it, John 13 through 15, like, chapter after chapter talking about the discourse of Jesus around the table. And it's all beautiful. And Mark's like. And then Jesus said, someone's going to betray me. And then they sang a hymn and then they left. And, like, is that all I got to preach with? You know, And I was so tempted last Sunday to like, oh, man, I wish I could just go into John and take a couple of those passages to round us out. [00:18:43] Speaker A: I'm doing that this next week. [00:18:44] Speaker B: I really felt like I'm going to use some in John, but I got to stick with how Mark is telling it because he's telling it for a reason. That brief and that. That condensed. Right. But it's harder to preach. [00:18:54] Speaker A: Yeah. This is the challenge that you set yourself up with, that exegetical series. It's a relief because you basically know what you're doing every week. It's laid out for you already. But then this is the challenge on the other side when the text leaves you wanting a little bit. I was like, oh, it's missing resolve. Like something. Matthew finishes with this great. Behold, I'll be with you always. Even to the end of the age. It feels like the end of a movie. And John does it with breakfast on the beach after the resurrection of Jesus. Oh, this is. [00:19:24] Speaker B: Good job, guys. [00:19:25] Speaker A: Good job. Matthew and John. Mark, what on earth ran out of paper? I don't know what happened at the end of this. There's got. I would imagine there's intention behind it. [00:19:34] Speaker B: And if you look in your Bible, Mark, Chapter 16, halfway through, stops with. And the women were terrified, and they told no one of what they had seen at the tomb. Right. And then in your Bible, it says, earliest manuscript stop here. And then there's later manuscripts that kind of filled out the rest of the story. But the earliest account, likely written in Peter's day by Mark, ends very abruptly, almost frustratingly abruptly. And, you know, why is that? It's the first Gospel, but I don't know. Lindsay, what do you Think about, like, the fast pacing and kind of the hard stop in Mark. [00:20:15] Speaker C: It frustrated me until I read a book that had a theory that really was intriguing to me and I can get behind. The book is called Reading Backwards by a biblical scholar named Richard Hayes. And he proposes that Mark held the fact that Jesus was Messiah as such a sacred thought, as such a holy thought, that to write it felt too brazen or blunt or even presumptuous. And so it's out of a respect and a reverence for Christ's being and incarnation. And he writes it in this way to allow the reader to draw these conclusions for themselves. And so passages where Jesus says, don't tell anybody what you saw, or, you know, keep it quiet, don't tell anyone I'm the Messiah. Those have always. That has never sat well with me because I'm like, what the heck, Lord? Like, don't you want everyone to know this? Isn't that the whole point? But it's Mark recounting this event in a way that the reader can put together these things and draw the conclusion for themselves. And so viewing it that way softens it a little bit for me, and I kind of dig it, but it's been frustrating for me up until this point. [00:21:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Super interesting to think of Mark writing this first, too. So he doesn't have any previous gospel to kind of like compare against. And so he's holding this sacred thing, the story of Jesus the master, the Messiah, with no template. And so that is a sacred trembling thing. It sounds like, as this author is saying for Mark, which maybe by the time Matthew and Luke come out there, they're a little bit more comfortable, maybe with these stories that have been going around now for a few decades. But with Mark, it's like. It's raw and it's real and it's dangerous. Not that it wasn't dangerous for the rest of the apostles, but, yeah, there's an urgency and a. It's so fresh in the Gospel of Mark. Right. [00:22:34] Speaker A: So who added to those manuscripts on the back end? [00:22:37] Speaker C: Oh, I don't know. We need Dr. Brandt for that. [00:22:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Gotta get somebody in here with that real education on it. I just imagine, like, them getting. Getting this manuscript and going, well, I mean, I was talking to Matthew, so I gotta help you out here a little bit, Mark. [00:22:53] Speaker B: This is just. [00:22:54] Speaker A: You're so close. So close. That's a tough ending. [00:22:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that is a good question of are these manuscripts amended or added to, like, in the age of the apostles, in the early church, or is this 2, 3, 400 years later, as the canon is put into place and all that. [00:23:13] Speaker A: Well, I could throw out an armchair theory of these were being passed around a bit. Right. So you wonder if you get a couple different accounts at the time when the church is in hiding, that there aren't people literally adding on little bits and pieces here and there because it's so scarce. And if you're about to lose this manuscript or pass it on to the next group or whatever, it might be helpful to have more information inside of one writing as opposed to waiting for the next one to come around. But that is completely unfounded. It's just. I do like the thought exercise, though, of thinking about a church in hiding passing notes. [00:23:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:51] Speaker A: To communicate the Gospels. That's what it was. That's what the Gospels were. They were little notes that were kept in secret. And fascinating how the evolution happens in the middle of that community that's fledgling and trying to make it happen. [00:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And is, you know, is the scroll torn? Is it really codex missing a page, you know, or is that the assumption? It's like, well, clearly there's more story we have from Matthew and Luke that. Okay, well, let's round it out. You know, so very, I think literary wise, like, super fascinating. Think of these ancient texts and how they come to be in our. Our language and our possession now in the shape they are. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Do you guys feel like it's blasphemous ourselves to even talk like that? I think there was a world in which I would have thought this discussion would be not okay. [00:24:43] Speaker B: Sure. [00:24:43] Speaker A: Or is that just weird and way out of bounds I would even think and consider that. [00:24:47] Speaker B: No, I'm sure to a lot of people like the. It's hard to reconcile a view of absolute inerrancy with the fact that early manuscripts didn't have a whole chunk of the end of March they could tear. But here's the news, guys. Look in your own Bible and it's going to say the earliest manuscripts didn't have these. And it's the same with. Is it John, chapter eight, the woman caught in the act of adultery. That's not in the original manuscripts. These are the realities of the text. So, you know, got to deal with it. I'm sure people have lots of opinions about whether it's okay or not to talk about this. [00:25:22] Speaker A: It makes it better and more interesting to me, the idea. It puts real people into the story again, which again helps me connect with this faith as a real thing, as opposed to kind of the sterile idea of what our Bibles are and that they came from this publisher. And that's how it's always been. And let's not pay any other attention to what might be on the curtain. It just makes the faith more. Much more real and earthy and textural to me. [00:25:54] Speaker B: And it speaks to reading and trying to understand the Bible in its own world and its context, rather than trying to wrestle it into the shape of our modern context. Because a straight, flat reading, a literal reading for US in the 21st century, we're going to come away with a whole bunch of different conclusions because we are absolutely not familiar with what it was to be around in the second century in the Greco Roman Empire. That is not our context. And so the more serious reading of Scripture is not to read it so flatly on the surface is to try to understand what was the world in which this was, was written in. And I don't think that should scare us or there should be any sense of, oh, you know, you're not a true believer because you're trying to understand the context in which it was written. No, I hope that means we're more serious students of Scripture, not less, when we try to understand it on its terms rather than wrestling it into, you know, Evan's 21st century understanding. [00:26:57] Speaker A: And I kind of long for that understanding. We don't understand Passover very well. And I thought about that this morning we were talking. I thought about it when you were preaching yesterday. It's like you said, for Jesus to put himself in the middle of this story, the blasphemous idea of it. Yeah, we don't get that. Do we like that statement? Because we're coming at it from this side of history and we're looking back on that. It feels normal, a part of the story. I wish I could understand and feel the weight as the disciples would have around that table as he's describing this process to them. And maybe that's why Mark is a little bit simple in this. He breezes past that. There's no flashback from Mark to the original Passover. And this is why. And try to explain. He knows that his readers at the time, the weight of the words that Jesus is saying. And so what you're talking about, to go through the Scripture and understand it in its own context, I don't see it happening in a way to crush Scripture or the power of it. I see as a way of enliving it and breathing real, new, fresh life into us. If we could understand Passover in this example way that the disciples did, I Feel like our love for Jesus would shift and change and grow. It would be more powerful moment than ever. That's a beautiful process to walk through. Yeah. [00:28:09] Speaker B: And this is, you know, preaching 101. But then you take it from, hopefully a better contextual understanding of its world and then you apply it to our world. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Right. [00:28:18] Speaker B: That is the step. Like, we don't. We're never going to live in their world, but we can try to understand it as best we can. So then we can say, now what implications does that have for me? And I don't think for us, you know, in our Western American life that we're probably going to embrace all the ancient practices that Jesus walked through and that that's the ideal form of Christianity. No, I think Jesus would always be bringing God's way and the kingdom into the context where people were actually living. And we see that through the parables and the way that he heals. He's not saying, hey, come cloister off with me and experience this thing from Moses day. No, he's meeting people in the fields and talking about their world and saying, this is how the kingdom collides with you. And so I do think step two is to take the scriptures with a better understanding and say, and now what does that actually mean in the 21st century? Because we've learned something about what it meant in the first. And this is harder work than just saying, no, we're just going to read it really basically. And, and that's it. We hopefully let it sink in deeper. [00:29:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And maybe we use our longings a little bit better. Some of the things that we naturally encounter in our lives, I think about the longing that all of us have in Bend right now to get from winter to spring, that natural, seasonal calendar time where we can feel it in our bones, where we're going, oh, 39 again, like, oh, I just can't. I don't know how much longer I can do this. And maybe we can't fully see, see and experience that kind of resurrection moment, but the longing of our souls to go from dark and cold and winter into spring is just a whisper of this greater truth that Jesus is bringing into us. And so we, maybe we can't understand the Passover. We can understand a good meal. You talked about that on your trip in the Northeast. Going from heated up chicken nuggets or chicken fingers to all of a sudden it was like the world was performing for you immediately around a good meal. And spring was popping, right? [00:30:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And not exaggerating, I mean, that first meal in the basement of that museum was the worst. And the meal we had, you know, the lobster ravioli, it was as good as I talked about it yesterday. And I loved that contrast in a real world illustration of the contrast, hopefully, that we have when we've experienced bad religion. You know, a table that is not prepared by Jesus and what it looks like then to step around Jesus table, the community that he intended the church to be. And I do, I liken it to walking out of a basement, to the best meal with the best people at the edge of spring. You know, I mean, I don't know if that resonated for everybody. I think it did. I could tell in the room, you know, you can tell. People can go, oh, and when I was describing that meal, maybe they were hungry. The later we got in the morning, the more were responding. [00:31:21] Speaker A: The mechanisms that you used, the foreshadowing and then the callback at the end around an actual meal in a text of scripture is brilliant. That's fabulous. Preaching is what it is. Because that's exactly what you're talking about. It's bringing this ancient thing into this modern context, using our senses. I'm a big fan of whenever you can be taste into a sermon, if you do it well, it enlivens because everyone's just thinking of listening and then they're kind of watching you. But then all of a sudden you bring in the rest of our senses and longings and desires into it. It's great. [00:31:58] Speaker B: I wish in a perfect world that as people left the atrium would have just been a giant long table with just Hawaiian sweet bread and the best wines and couldn't do that for obvious logistic reasons. But that's, I think, the idea that I was trying to convey. And so a little sad when when you talk about a meal like that and you're like, and now we're going to go to the tables for communion and take the little cracker, dip it in a little juice. And that's a stand in now for the meal, which again, for the earliest versions of Christianity, they would sit around these tables and have a full meal. And it would be a thing of nourishment and joy more than we get when we reduce it to just kind of these religious elements which are important. I love the liturgy, but trying to convey like this was what they would call a love feast. I mean, it was a place where the neighborhood would show up to enjoy like we would at a holiday meal, you know, and we miss some of that. I think in our weekly practice here yeah, it's whispers. [00:33:05] Speaker A: It's whispers of this greater thing that's happening in and among us. We get glimpses of sometimes the greater picture that. We talked a little bit about worship that week that you were gone. And it is that this idea of experiencing heaven, this unified group doing anything in unison is powerful. Right. You remember when the flash mobs. People were doing that in malls and stuff like that. And I remember, like, feeling emotional over watching some of those stinking YouTube videos, and I couldn't get. I think that's it, though. I think it is just watching massive groups of people do something in unison because it feels right. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:50] Speaker A: If our souls are allowed a moment to search that out, that feels right and beautiful and. Yeah. So communion is that the wafer is a whisper into something that we do then do experience sometimes. [00:34:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:01] Speaker A: Maybe it's not this Christmas, but it's six Christmases from now because that happens. That environment is there. [00:34:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:09] Speaker A: We don't always have those at our disposal, but the whispers along the way is still valuable. [00:34:13] Speaker B: I was remembering the beginning of COVID when everything locked down. We're talking about COVID so much. I don't know why. It's been years. But a video came out from Italy and they started singing building to building all these apartments. They'd open their windows and they began to sing in Italian, and it would carry through the piazza or whatever. Super moving, though, because you have a world shut down in fear, and yet this humanity sings, you know? And what a picture of what I talked about this past week of how the table is a protest against the violence and ugliness of the world that we sing into the dark. We feast in the presence of our enemies. Like Psalm 23 says. I mean, this is the heart of redemption. And if all we ever get out of it is like, I'm so bad because of my sin, and I hope that I don't go to hell, Man. We have missed out on the whole picture, which is beauty in ugliness and a song in the dark. I love all that imagery. We can just talk about that. And maybe I will talk about that on Easter, but I had a guy. [00:35:23] Speaker A: At service yesterday describe what you're talking about, except for. He said it was coming out of COVID and the first Bend Elks game that they let anybody go to. And he said there was almost nobody there because everyone still felt really, really locked in. But they were serving beer. He said it was just the greatest day of my life. I sat in a. He said. He literally said it might as well, have been Wrigley Field in Chicago at that moment. I felt so good about the Bend Elks game. Yeah. But that's it, right? That's. Yeah. Elk Stadium feels like Wrigley Field, the cracker. In moments when we're reminded, it feels like fresh bread and community and family. Yeah. And we long for that. [00:36:05] Speaker B: Everybody, you know, nobody sets out to be isolated and alone. And you can say, well, certain personalities, they're introverts, they need to be alone. Yeah. But nobody sets out to be lonely. I don't care how much alone time you enjoy. A life in isolation is for no one. We're not wired that way. And so to find that Jesus has created space in this world where the lonely find connection. And, you know, going all the way back to the Old Testament where he talks about, you know, the widow and the orphan and finding family, and that's what God's world looks like, is people stepping out of isolation and finding that God has created a space where we belong to each other. That's as much about what the church should be as it is about us being right with God. It's us in community with each other. And when we miss that, I think we become self righteous because it's just about me and God and how much better I can be than all of you. You flip that on its head when you realize, like, no, the table means that it's about us together. And my relationship with you is just as important as my relationship with Jesus. Because if it doesn't manifest what I know from Jesus in communion with him, if it doesn't manifest in my relationships, I'm probably doing something wrong. Right. [00:37:29] Speaker A: Could be why so much art is about finding family and home and the journey. That's Star Wars. That's planes, trains and automobiles. That's all kinds of the best things that we enjoy and engage in. It's home alone, Right. It's about finding family. And then even in unconventional ways, it's the loss that you experience of, you know, your biological family and then the finding of another community. And that's Jesus. That's the Old Testament. That's the wandering and the searching for home. And Easter is that it should reflect in our teaching and our attitude and our experience that this is a homecoming celebration of the ultimate home that won't move or leave because we just don't. We just don't have it. [00:38:18] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a clip from. I don't even know if I've watched the whole movie. I think I might have. I think it's Called Storks. It's a animated. [00:38:26] Speaker A: Dreamworks are short? [00:38:27] Speaker B: No, it's like a Dreamworks film. Anyway, the reason I bring it up, there's this scene and I think the plot is this baby gets separated from her family. And the whole. It's a journey of like her trying to find her identity and family. And the scene I'm remembering is she finds this house where she thinks she belongs. She knocks on the door, afraid that she's not gonna be welcome, whatever. And she opens the door and she has bright red hair. She opens the door and one by one all these red haired people pop out until there's like 30 of them in the doorway. Right? And it's like this, this, it speaks to like, you found your family. And I think of that when I think of the church. Like people feeling isolated and lost and alone to walk into a space and they don't find their biological connection. They find a spiritual family that says from the get go, like, you Bel, you belong with us. I was talking to a young guy yesterday at service, his first time here at church. And he was saying, I don't have any background in faith or religion or Christianity. He's like, but I just have felt like I should do something. And so I downloaded the Bible app and he said, I just started reading it. And even doing that, I don't know how to say it. He was very apologetic for not knowing how to articulate everything. I don't know how to say it, but I just feel like I wasn't alone. When I started reading it, I was. [00:39:51] Speaker A: Like, oh, it's amazing. Wow. [00:39:53] Speaker B: You know, what a beautiful thing that somehow God through. Yes, through his word, but through this community, gives isolated people a sense like, you're not alone. [00:40:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:03] Speaker B: You know, I think that's what it's all about. [00:40:05] Speaker A: That's good. Oh, God bless the meals that we share. Easter food. Easter food. Anybody have preferences? Strong opinions. [00:40:14] Speaker B: I think it's a ham. Is that traditionally for our family, Is that true? [00:40:18] Speaker A: We always say ham growing up. [00:40:20] Speaker C: Yeah. Easter ham. Oh yeah. With deviled eggs. [00:40:22] Speaker A: With deviled eggs, sure. Why? [00:40:24] Speaker C: Love a good deviled egg. [00:40:25] Speaker A: Where did ham. There's gotta be a reason for this, right? Or is it just a holiday food? [00:40:32] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:40:32] Speaker C: I do not know. [00:40:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. [00:40:35] Speaker A: Cause it's not like the greatest meat ever, right? [00:40:40] Speaker B: A good ham I would put up there with any other meat. [00:40:44] Speaker A: Whoa. Any other meat. You're lying right now. [00:40:47] Speaker B: Now if all you've ever had is dried out ham, ham jerky no, but a turkey or like a. What's the circular cut? [00:41:00] Speaker A: Spiral ham. [00:41:01] Speaker B: Spiral cut honey ham. [00:41:04] Speaker A: Yeah, look, I like ham. [00:41:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:41:07] Speaker A: There's like 10 other meats I'd put above that particular cut. Right. It's a little bit like Thanksgiving. It's like, oh, cool, turkey. We're still doing this, huh? [00:41:16] Speaker B: Yeah, Turkey is garbage. Garbage meat. [00:41:19] Speaker A: Ham's better than turkey for sure. [00:41:20] Speaker B: Honestly, turkey, I wouldn't eat any of it. [00:41:24] Speaker C: But. [00:41:27] Speaker B: What'S the top of your list? [00:41:28] Speaker A: Oh, I mean, any kind of beef. [00:41:30] Speaker B: Yeah. What cut, what cuts? [00:41:31] Speaker A: Your favorite? Well, if you're doing a big family feast, that brisket kind of comes to mind. It's. It's easy. It comes out right. It's a huge portion. I don't know about cooking individual steaks for each person on an Easter. Right. [00:41:47] Speaker B: Yeah. You can keep your prime rib. If anyone's out there preparing a prime rib for Easter, don't invite me. [00:41:53] Speaker A: Shockingly overplayed the prime rib. I don't understand people do that. They go, oh, my gosh, we're going to this thing. They're serving prime rib. And I'm like, is that like a huge selling point? Does it just cost a lot? And that's it. Like, I've had some tasty prime ribs, but I wouldn't say it's a slight dump. [00:42:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know. It's been hit and miss in my life. [00:42:12] Speaker A: I can tell you've been wrong to buy the prime rib. [00:42:15] Speaker B: I think there is a word prime in there. Makes it sound like it's the best and the highest. But I, you know, I'm with you. A nice brisket. [00:42:25] Speaker A: We don't go pork chop on Easter. [00:42:27] Speaker B: Oh, no. Pork chops. Ugh. [00:42:30] Speaker A: Oh, you gotta get some fatty pork chops. So good. Or pork, but pork butt. [00:42:34] Speaker B: Pork. What? [00:42:35] Speaker A: Pork. What? [00:42:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I put pork chops up there with, like, lamb on my no list. [00:42:45] Speaker A: Lamb's on the no list? [00:42:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:46] Speaker A: Oh, I like lamb. [00:42:47] Speaker B: Do you? [00:42:48] Speaker A: Duck, Easter duck. [00:42:50] Speaker B: I don't know if I've had duck. [00:42:52] Speaker C: I've had duck once. It tasted very holiday, like Christmasy. Maybe it was that time of year, but it tasted like Christmas to me also. I just can't move past eating duck mentally. It's a mental block. [00:43:05] Speaker A: Duck is one of those ones where people go, oh, my gosh, you would love duck. We do bacon wrapped duck. And I go, ah, bacon wrapped duck. So that's it. [00:43:13] Speaker C: You like bacon? [00:43:14] Speaker A: Yes, of course. Yeah. Spiral something up in a little bit of bacon. And I'm sure I'LL eat it and feel pretty good about it. Duck itself is not ideal. [00:43:23] Speaker B: Do you have a problem with other birds? [00:43:26] Speaker C: I'm not a big meat person. This is the wrong conversation, really. [00:43:30] Speaker B: So when you think of a duck, is chicken in a different category? [00:43:33] Speaker C: I guess chicken is in a different category, but I don't love chicken either. I know. I'm sorry I'm not your girl. [00:43:39] Speaker A: Chicken doesn't get a holiday. [00:43:41] Speaker B: What's that? [00:43:42] Speaker A: Chicken doesn't get a holiday. [00:43:43] Speaker B: I think chicken has every other day, I guess. [00:43:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I suppose that's right. I mean, chicken's great. [00:43:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:49] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:50] Speaker B: Well, it's so versatile. [00:43:51] Speaker A: It's so versatile. Oh, my gosh. And it's just not massive. That's the problem with the turkeys is so massive. [00:43:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:58] Speaker A: I'd rather do four chickens instead of. [00:44:00] Speaker B: One turkey, which you can do. I mean, we've had those holidays, you know, like get several rotisserie chickens on Thanksgiving, which is. It's a better choice. [00:44:10] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:11] Speaker B: Yeah. The turkey dries out so easy and. Yeah. Makes you sleepy. [00:44:16] Speaker C: I like the sleepy. I'm a texture person, so if I get a funky bite of meat, it's over for me. Ruins the whole meal. [00:44:23] Speaker A: Do you ever eat it again? [00:44:25] Speaker C: Not that meal. Like, I'm done. Yeah, sorry. It grosses me out. Yeah. [00:44:30] Speaker A: That's kind of like Rebecca. She holds grudges against food. [00:44:33] Speaker C: I can't do it. [00:44:34] Speaker A: She can have it. It'll be great. 20 times the 21st time it's gone wrong and she's like, like, I swear, never again. [00:44:39] Speaker B: Never again. Did you have any exotic meats when you were in Turkey this past year? [00:44:44] Speaker A: We didn't have anything exotic. We had the huge kebab experience where they basically just put some naan bread and the meat in huge piles in front of you and just say, the hand washing station's over there. We'll see you later. And so there were six of us around. I think we ordered four, you know, meals of it or something and it just came in a huge pile and you grab it with your hands and you put it on the bread with your hands and you just keep going. They have like a little seasoning if you want to add to it, but no sauces, no anything else. You're just grabbing it with your hands and going. So that was. It was so good, you guys. It was so good. I don't really want to eat just with my bare hands with Brenton Gonz ever again. But, you know, one time it was worth it. [00:45:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And pretty, pretty common. Like Middle Eastern, North African. I've had Ethiopian food, Moroccan food, and it's all. Oftentimes everyone's eaten finger foods from the same. Same stuff. And yeah, it's a whole experience. [00:45:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it was awesome. No, no particular exotic meats, but I was amazed at the soups and the stews in Turkey that I just wouldn't have pegged that nation particularly as making a great stew. And that was. Oh my gosh, I don't know that. [00:45:59] Speaker B: I would have ever thought about it. Turkey has great stews. [00:46:03] Speaker A: I thought about it. [00:46:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:06] Speaker A: I'm getting on the flight going, I wonder if this is a stew nation. That's. God, I haven't had a good stew nation. [00:46:12] Speaker B: What about cold soups? Do you think Istanbul has cold soups? [00:46:15] Speaker A: Probably Istanbul, for sure. Istanbul's got everything. That place is cool. But stews, I usually put on the western Europeans, right. It's the Scots, the Irish, the English. [00:46:26] Speaker B: What? The Scots have cold soups. [00:46:27] Speaker A: Oh, stews. Sorry, I was off the cold soups. I glanced off the cold. [00:46:31] Speaker B: They're in the wrong area of the world to be eating cold soups. I think hot soups are their kind of their jam. [00:46:37] Speaker A: Sorry. Back to stews. [00:46:38] Speaker B: Back to stews. Yes, of course, of course. [00:46:40] Speaker A: I'm making this conversation really hard to follow today. [00:46:43] Speaker B: It's all right. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Okay. Lindsay's not a meat eater. Yeah, now we know. [00:46:47] Speaker B: Do we actually say, what do we have plans for Easter? Easter lunch? Have you made plans for the menu? [00:46:55] Speaker C: I. We are go over to Eric's parents, people and whatever they make. [00:46:59] Speaker B: Whatever they make. [00:47:00] Speaker C: And it's usually delicious. Yeah, a whole spread. My mother in law kills it. She does a great job. [00:47:06] Speaker B: Yeah, she kill. She actually kills the ham, the pig. [00:47:10] Speaker C: She kills. Easter brunch for Easter lunch. [00:47:13] Speaker B: The way you said it. She actually kills it. It's amazing. [00:47:15] Speaker C: She kills it. [00:47:16] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, we'll be back next week for our final lint behind the message. We're almost there. [00:47:26] Speaker A: See you then. [00:47:27] Speaker B: Bye.