Become all you're meant to (Wk 3: You Need Allies) - Vince Brackett
SPEAKER NOTES
Leaving our Ordinary Worlds for the Kingdom of God
So for my talks here on Sundays this winter we’ve been talking about the innate human attraction to ::stories of leaving the ordinary for the special:: —> A character leaves comfort and predictability and enters into a big and sometimes scary new world full of danger, trials, hardship… BUT, along with those, there is also new friendships, new discoveries, purpose, transformation, spiritual fulfillment.
This is the pattern of so many of the hero’s journeys and fantasy stories that we all love (from Harry Potter to Les Miserables, Lord of the Rings to Finding Nemo), and they grab us for a reason — they are stories of coming alive.
We’ve been working this really rich theological idea that I love, which connects the departure-initiation-return pattern of these stories to the life that Jesus invites people into with his famous encouragements to follow him, to be his disciple, to pick up our crosses and consider his path a template for our own, to seek the Kingdom of God.
::Jesus put it this way:::
“Truly I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for [the sake of the Kingdom of God] will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.” -Jesus (Mark 10 / Luke 18)
There it is — leave our ordinary worlds (represented by the families we come from, our culture, our status and money and possessions) for the sake of a special world — which, for Jesus, is the Kingdom of God — where life is shot through with God and with higher purpose, if we can trust what we cannot see — it’s also where life is shot through with persecutions, trials, and challenges… but it can bring us 100 times what the ordinary world offers.
::Departure-initiation-return:: is not just for fantasy stories. It’s for real life!
So what ::ordinary world:: is God inviting you to leave right now for the sake of the Kingdom of God? Last week we talked about consumerism as a major baseline part of all of our ordinary worlds as people living in America — maybe your journey right now has something to do with discovering the purpose and fulfillment of a life beyond consumerism?
Or what ordinary world is life pushing you out of? When that is the case, God is on the other side trying to pull us into the Kingdom of God, so we don’t fall into despair or disenchantment. Some weeks back I talked about life pushing me out of the ordinary world of my childhood when my mom got cancer and died. God was there to pull me into the Kingdom of God, and that became a journey of me discovering prayer and spirituality and connection with Jesus for the first time. Maybe life has pushed you out of an ordinary world?
Or more recently my journey has been helping to lead this church — when we first started the church and still today God is encouraging me to leave behind a small, safe life that doesn’t challenge me for a life that challenges me every week and sometimes pushes me to my brink, so that I can grow and be shaped into the person I’m meant to be. Does that sound like it for you?
Maybe it has to do with leaving behind the status quo of how you’ve always done things, and doing something daring like pursuing a dream or pursuing love?
Maybe your journey right now has to do with leaving behind the ordinary world of patriarchy or white supremacy?
What if we refused to bow to the fear or cynicism that tells us all not to dream, not to hope, not to strive for our ideals because we’ll be disappointed or because we’ll be embarrassed or because it’s uncool to be innocent and wide-eyed and being hardened and closed-off is safer — what if we refused to believe that life has to be small and ordinary — that that’s all there is? What if that’s NOT all there is? What if we believed in Jesus’ Kingdom of God vision for our lives and for our world?
That’s what we’re working on trying to believe in this series. And my specific question for us today for each of our journeys is:
::Who are your allies?::
You need allies
The band of allies is core to every hero’s journey. Every character on a journey into a special world finds peers, guides, and protectors. And they’re not just “nice to have along for the ride” — they are essential. Without them, it would be impossible for our heroes to accomplish their purpose or be transformed.
For our favorite heroes
::Harry Potter:: has Hermione and Ron as peers (among many others), he has Dumbledore and Lupin and Sirius as guides, and he has Hagrid and his mother and (most intriguingly) Snape as his protectors.
::Luke Skywalker:: has Princess/General Leia and Han Solo as peers, he has Obi-Wan and Yoda as guides, and (again intriguingly) the remorseful father Darth Vader as his protector.
Or I’m thinking a lot about ::Moana:: right now (my next talk in this series on Feb 16 is going to zoom in on Moana in specific) — Moana has Maui as a peer, she has her grandmother as a guide, and she has the ocean as her protector. ::And she also has Heihei her chicken::.
The band of allies — People to encourage, celebrate, guide, love, stand-with you along your way.
For Jesus
::Jesus:: began his public ministry by filling out his band of allies — the 12 who would follow him most closely, and the dozens more women and men who would call themselves his disciples and follow him from town to town.
And when Jesus sent out his disciples to further this message, he sent them out 2 by 2 — no one without an ally.
For you
So… ::that brings me to my first takeaway for this morning.:: Think again about what ordinary world you’re leaving, about the Kingdom of God journey you’re on, and ::ask yourself:::
Who’s your band of allies? Your inner circle?
In my opinion, every person should shoot for having at least two people (not including a romantic partner) that can form a bit of an inner circle. Friends who truly feel like an ally to you in your journey.
If a person or two don’t immediately come to mind for you, I wonder if this might be what is next for you in life.
Because I think if you have this, you have a really good foundation in place to maintain the mental health and resilience necessary to journey forward through the trials of a higher purpose and becoming all you’re meant to.
And when I think of the times in my life when it wasn’t clear to me who my inner circle was, I felt perpetually under-resourced. In a way that had nothing necessarily to do with me or my capacity. It was just because I, like every human being ever, need allies — and the same is true for you if you’ve ever felt this way — you need deep friendships, to share struggles, get encouraged, get prayer, feel celebrated.
For me, right now my inner circle is filled out through two different groups of guys. Not that it always needs to be people of your own gender; that just happens to be the case for me right now.
First, I have two friends I’ve known for over a decade, and the three of us live and work in three entirely different arenas, but we’re all living very “leaving the ordinary world for a special world” lives, and we’re all in the Chicago area, so we get lunch once a month to share our struggles and encourage one another. And we keep up a text message thread in between. I talk about leading this church and trying to stand for progressive values in Jesus’ name, my one friend talks about his political activism, and my other friend talks about his efforts to try to influence positive change within his organization that feels static. Different but alike struggles — shared struggles. Different but alike visions — shared vision.
And, second, I have my every-Friday morning men’s coffee group through this church — we’re a rotating bunch, we’re not always all there every week, but having a somewhat regular touch point to share “this is what’s hard this week” and have other guys pray for me is an incredible help to me in the week-in week-out stresses of my life.
I feel very fortunate with these relationships in my life right now, but there have been seasons when this was not the case for me. I think it’s fair to say feeling like “I have the allies I need” is not most people’s experience most of the time.
Because, in modern adult life, it can feel so difficult to establish such relationships if you don’t already have them. Establishing new friendships based on shared interest can happen more easily, but new friendships based on shared struggle or shared vision take time and intentionality and vulnerability.
This church tries to help with that as much as possible —
- We facilitate groups (my Friday men’s group is always open to new guys, just FYI, and we’re also currently in the process of launching some brand new co-ed and multi-generational dinner and prayer groups, and a POC gathering for discussing the challenges of participating in our predominantly white church and influencing our church to be more welcoming, so ask us about any of those on your connect card!)
- And, in addition to groups, we also just try to equip people with language and space so it feels more natural and safe to be vulnerable and try to get such relationships off the ground.
A friend of mine, who moved abroad recently but who I met through this church, is a huge inspiration to me in this: his and my relationship started based on shared interest, just like most friendships, but eventually, he found himself really wanting our friendship to be about more, and so he just said that to me. He was vulnerable and said, “I’m going to put this out there not knowing how you’ll respond, Vince, because I don’t know if you want the same thing I do, but I really need a deep friendship, where I can talk about the hardest things in my life, and I’d really like to have that with you.”
I did want that, and him being willing to be vulnerable enough to ask for it got us there. We no longer live in the same city, but he remains, I think, the best friend I’ve ever had.
So perhaps you feel helped by my friend’s model of being vulnerable, and perhaps you feel helped by being in this space this morning, where we try to provide a level of safety so more-vulnerable-than-usual interactions can occur — if so, take advantage of being her this morning. Try some vulnerability if it feels right.
(PAUSE)
But it’s ::important to note:: that filling out our band of allies isn’t a one and done process.
Who your allies are will change and evolve over the course of your journey, and that’s healthy.
For eight years straight when I was in my twenties, I celebrated my birthday every year by hosting a broomball tournament.
(For those of you who don’t know broomball, it is maybe the greatest sport on earth. It is ice hockey, but with broom-shaped sticks and a ball, and you’re on gym shoes not skates… so agility is out the window. The greatest of athletes are brought down to the level of the rest of us, and who shines? The gym class all-stars — the people like me, who loved playing team sports but were never good enough for varsity.)
Anyway, I loved doing this because it was a yearly time that brought together like 30 to 40 friends from all of the various circles of friends I was a part of (work, church, high school, college, neighbors, family, pickup basketball friends, fantasy football league friends, friends through my wife, friends of friends).
And I remember recently looking at pictures from each of those successive eight years, and there were a few people who were there for nearly all of the tournaments, but the faces also changed a lot every year.
And I tried to think about each year on its own and wondered: who was closest to me that year? Like, who were my two inner circle people that year? What stood out to me was: it was different a lot of years! People came and people went from my inner circle.
And that’s okay!
If we are taking steps to journey out of our ordinary worlds into whatever Kingdom of God journey is out there for us, then we will likely experience various transitions and changes in life, which will present us with different needs, maybe different places, and therefore different allies along the way.
It is okay for someone to have been an ally to us in the past but now no longer. This can happen for any number of reasons. Sometimes those reasons are hard, like growing apart or people changing in unexpected ways, but often it’s more innocuous reasons: somebody moved and despite best intentions it’s just not reasonable that person can still be in your inner circle.
So ::my second takeaway:: for us this morning is ::this.::
Resist clinging to past versions of your band of allies, and trust God to provide the next version.
Particularly if you are lucky enough to have had a season of life as a young adult or as a child that was rich with community and deep friendship, it can feel so hard now because nothing will ever compare to that.
That may be true, but it’s also true that you can still find the allies you need now!
(PAUSE)
And yet, what we will likely experience between past and new versions of our bands of allies is ::loneliness.::
Loneliness is part of stepping out beyond the ordinary world. We have to leave people and contexts we know, ~~ as Jesus said.
In my ongoing story of stepping out of my ordinary world into my journey of helping lead this church, I have gone through many waves of loneliness. Because this journey has meant that my purpose is to stay in one place — but the story of so many people who find their way to our church is that Chicago is just a way-stop on their journeys — and that means I get to make wonderful connections, and get to help people grow spiritually, and get to see people take big life steps, and then I often have to say goodbye.
Not infrequently those goodbyes have been to people with whom I’ve grown deep relationship. And each time that happens I find myself clinging, tempted to shut down or throw my hands up because, ugh, I have to say “yet another goodbye,” and I find it hard to trust that God will continue to provide the allies I need.
(PAUSE)
There’s this passage at the end of the 5th book in the Harry Potter series, The Order of the Phoenix, that moves me so much.
Harry’s Godfather and biggest father-figure in life, Sirius, has been killed right in front of him, and he feels numb and alone, so much so that he doesn’t even want to talk to his closest friends, Hermione and Ron, because he knows everyone will want to talk about Sirius. So he’s avoiding everyone.
And as he is avoiding everyone he runs into one of the most odd yet gentle characters in the series, a classmate of Harry’s named Luna Lovegood, whom Harry initially thinks (and we the readers with him) that he also would like to avoid.
But then Luna says something that reminds Harry she also knows loss deeply, that she has lost a mother. ::The way JK Rowling writes it is just so gutting and beautiful:::
“That man the Death Eaters killed was your godfather, wasn’t he?” [Luna asked]…
Harry nodded curtly, but found that for some reason he did not mind Luna talking about Sirius. He had just remembered that she, too, could see Thestrals.
“Seeing Thestrals” in the Harry Potter world means that you have seen and known death up-close.
Friendship forged by shared struggle — forged by the shared loneliness of loss. And therefore, it’s no longer loneliness.
The ally Harry needed in this moment was a role only Luna could fill. It is unexpected to us as readers, and it was unexpected to Harry, but there was the ally he needed when he needed it.
It is the same in real life. In our Kingdom of God journeys, when we feel lonely, it will be hard, it will threaten to break us, to numb us, to harden us.
But then we run into a Luna Lovegood — not who we would expect, but just who we need.
More than that though, Luna in this passage is a wonderful picture of Jesus, I think. Of Jesus’ desire to be close to us not only via other people (though that is often the way many of us will feel Jesus’ presence), but close to us himself, directly via the Holy Spirit —
The God Jesus shows us is well acquainted with loss and loneliness. If anyone can build with us friendship forged by shared struggle, it is Jesus.
Jesus is the God wants us to feel that we are ~not alone~ — wants us to feel that in our very core.
So ::my final takeaway:: for this morning is ::this:::
Consider Jesus among your band of allies.
I want to ask again: what journey out of the ordinary world and into a special world do you feel like you’re on?
Whether you’ve made a courageous choice to depart, or you were pushed out and you’re making the courageous choice to journey forward instead of succumbing to despair or disenchantment…
These journeys will sometimes take us through lonely places. And loneliness is a terrible thing. I don’t know if anyone is in a lonely place right now. If so, I’m so sorry.
But when that is the case, Jesus is one of your allies. Jesus knows loneliness. I love the lyric from Frederick Whitfield in the hymn “O How I Love You Jesus”. Jesus is the one…
Who, in each sorrow, bears a part that none can bear below.
In my experience, that feels true. There is a connection and understanding and love I feel in prayer from Jesus that no person, not even my closest allies, have provided me.
Prayer
And I would love for us to experience some of that, even now. Stand with me, and I’ll pray for us.