If we use oral health & hygiene as an analogy, becoming anti-racist isn’t taking your tonsils out, it’s brushing your teeth — we have to commit to ongoing, everyday work.
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Hayley, Kyle, and Vince discuss “shoulds” and false “right” pictures of community, American metaphors vs New Testament metaphors for community, practical ways to do community right now in the midst of shelter-in-place, and obscure references from the show Friends.
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Continuing his series on becoming all we’re meant to, Vince shares how embracing the risks of journeying through Jesus’ Kingdom of God brings healing to our un-dealt with pain by unpacking the theology of the movie Moana, how Moana is a Christ figure, and how we are all Te Ka.
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Just like our favorite fantasy stories and myths, Jesus’ message of the “Kingdom of God” is an invitation to us to leave our ordinary worlds, and step into a bigger reality that is outside our comfort zone and includes threats and danger, BUT will transform us into all we’re meant to be if we stay the course.
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Kyle takes us to some familial conflict from the life of Jesus, and suggests some ways we can learn from and experience healing from the God who knows what it's like to come from a family.
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Because Jesus understood in a deep way where he came from, he was able to be creative about where he was going - incorporating the good of his tradition and also departing from or reimagining his tradition when it ran counter to what he knew of God's heart for humanity. Kyle reflects on how Jesus has led him in his own version of such a journey.
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Even though he didn’t grow up spiritual, Vince found himself experiencing faith in a powerful way as he reached college age. But he slowly started to feel like a cultural outsider in churches. That led to some tension… until he discovered a new way to think about faith.
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What is our assumed picture of God? Powerful? Glorious? Up in the clouds? With a quiver of lightning bolts? The picture of God that Jesus shows humanity is an inversion of this. What should our assumed picture of God be? One who lays down power to benefit others. That’s particularly hard for Americans to digest, but when we try, it can change us profoundly.
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Self-sacrificial love is incredible. So many of the books and movies and tv shows that grab us are proof that it touches something deep in the human heart. The 40 days of Lent, which turn our attention to Jesus’ self-sacrificial love, are a wonderful time to lean into this. Vince suggests that, yes, in the age of the internet, there are more inputs than ever before to make us feel despair, but there are also more inputs than ever before to see Jesus through the story portrayals (and real-life examples) of self-sacrificial all around us.
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When you hear or see something that strikes you as racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, Islamophobic, or cruel in any way, do you feel tempted to just be silent, for fear of discomfort? Or do you feel ready to speak up, but you’re not sure how? Jesus was never silent, and when he spoke up, he’s described as being “full of grace and truth”, or, we might say, “full of humility and courage”. Kyle offers some ideas on how we might pursue that balance.
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