In John 14, Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus gives him a pained look and answers, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." If we want to know who God is, we look to Jesus, and when we do, we find a vulnerable God.
Pastor and theologian Kenneth Tanner joins Dennis to talk about his new book, Vulnerable God: How Jesus Upends Our Assumptions About God and Shows Us How to Be Human. Tanner argues that Jesus doesn't blend our ideas of God with our ideas of humanity. Instead, Jesus interrogates both. In his words, "Jesus is the one who shows us what power even is." That means power looks like silence in the womb, helplessness in a manger, and surrender on a cross, not coercion or force.
In this episode:
- Tanner's journey from a Pentecostal upbringing in Orlando through the charismatic movement to a liturgical church, the Book of Common Prayer, and weekly Eucharist
- Why the Word who spoke the cosmos into being accepts silence in the womb
- A fresh look at the three temptations in the wilderness as a test about power
- What the Black church's witness teaches about a God who is with us in suffering
- Resisting cynicism and false stories about God and ourselves, especially on social media
Resources:
Substack - https://kennethtanner.substack.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kenntanner/
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/churchandmain) | Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/churchandmainpod/) | Threads (https://www.threads.net/@churchandmainpod) | Website (https://churchandmain.org/) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@churchmainpodcast) | Substack (https://churchandmain.substack.com/)
Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Church and Main on your favorite podcast app, leave a review, and visit churchandmain.org or churchandmain.substack.com to read more and support the show. Send an email to dennis@churchandmain.org.
00:00:25 --> 00:00:29 Hey, everyone. Welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in
00:00:29 --> 00:00:33 the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host.
00:00:34 --> 00:00:39 In the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus is gathered with His disciples.
00:00:39 --> 00:00:45 They've finished dinner, Jesus has washed their feet, and Judas has gone out.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:50 The other disciples think that Judas is on an errand, but in reality,
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 he's on his way to sell Jesus out to the authorities.
00:00:54 --> 00:00:57 It's then that Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father, or God.
00:00:58 --> 00:01:02 And you can imagine Jesus giving Philip a pained look.
00:01:03 --> 00:01:08 Don't you know me, Philip, Jesus says, even after I have been among you for such a long time?
00:01:09 --> 00:01:11 Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
00:01:13 --> 00:01:18 Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. If we want to know who Jesus is,
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 or who God is, we look to Jesus.
00:01:22 --> 00:01:29 And as we look at this Jesus, we learn something about God, that God is vulnerable.
00:01:30 --> 00:01:35 In the second chapter of Philippians, we see that Jesus gives up his position,
00:01:36 --> 00:01:41 as part of the Trinity to become a servant, to be vulnerable.
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 It meant that he was a human, which meant that he was tempted.
00:01:45 --> 00:01:49 He was hungry. He bled. He died.
00:01:50 --> 00:01:59 Jesus shows God is not distant and unfeeling, but near and willing to show strength and weakness.
00:02:00 --> 00:02:03 God became incarnate and fleshed.
00:02:04 --> 00:02:08 Pastor and theologian Kenneth Tanner is out with a new book that actually came
00:02:08 --> 00:02:12 out this week, And it's called Vulnerable God.
00:02:13 --> 00:02:19 And I actually think the subtitle is also interesting, how Jesus upends our
00:02:19 --> 00:02:23 assumptions about God and shows us how to be human.
00:02:25 --> 00:02:29 In this book there, we have a deep meditation on the Incarnation.
00:02:31 --> 00:02:37 Tanner notes that when God becomes human in Jesus, we learn how to be fully human.
00:02:38 --> 00:02:42 So Kenneth Tanner is joining me on the podcast today to talk about the God who
00:02:42 --> 00:02:47 is vulnerable and how this God transforms our lives.
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 Before we head into the interview a little bit about Kenneth,
00:02:51 --> 00:02:55 he's the pastor of the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills,
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 Michigan, where he has served since 2005.
00:02:59 --> 00:03:02 His writing has appeared in many outlets, including HuffPost,
00:03:02 --> 00:03:06 Sojourners, Mockingbird, National Review, Christianity Today,
00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 Clarion Journal, and a whole lot more.
00:03:10 --> 00:03:15 He and his wife, Debbie, have seven children and four grandchildren.
00:03:17 --> 00:03:23 So, let's chat with Kenneth Tanner about the God who teaches us how to be fully human.
00:03:42 --> 00:03:47 Thank you for coming on the podcast today. I wanted to actually start by knowing
00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 a little bit about you and your faith background.
00:03:52 --> 00:03:56 Dennis, thank you for having me on Church in Maine. I love that title.
00:03:58 --> 00:04:04 Yeah, so I was raised in the South by multi-generational Pentecostal people
00:04:04 --> 00:04:09 who were involved in the Tennessee revivals, East Tennessee.
00:04:10 --> 00:04:14 And my mother's father was a minister in the Church of God, Cleveland,
00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 Tennessee and all over Florida.
00:04:19 --> 00:04:23 My father's side of the family were East Tennessee and they came down to Florida.
00:04:24 --> 00:04:34 And so I was raised in a Pentecostal church in Orlando, South Orlando and Orange Avenue Church of God.
00:04:35 --> 00:04:40 And it was made up of like lots of, uh, there were a lot of old timers,
00:04:40 --> 00:04:44 you know, people in their Sunday best with, you know, um,
00:04:45 --> 00:04:49 and, uh, women with, you know, in the Pentecostal thing with the hair way up
00:04:49 --> 00:04:52 and the men, you know, clean shaven and all that.
00:04:52 --> 00:04:56 And, you know, impeccably dressed and the whole nine yards.
00:04:56 --> 00:05:02 But lots of singing, lots of joy, you know.
00:05:03 --> 00:05:04 And Sunday evening.
00:05:06 --> 00:05:15 You know, I think there wasn't much difference as I see it between Black Baptist,
00:05:16 --> 00:05:20 worship and White Pentecostal worship.
00:05:20 --> 00:05:26 Yeah, there's so much similarity between like tearing, you know,
00:05:26 --> 00:05:31 praying through all of the kind of things and lots and lots of singing and of
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 course, really vibrant preaching.
00:05:35 --> 00:05:41 Jesus-centered blood and wound mysticism as my friend Chris Green talks about.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:47 Lots of blood, lots of cross, but Jesus-centered. And they were hard-working
00:05:47 --> 00:05:53 poor, you know, but they were very engaged with taking care of their neighbors
00:05:53 --> 00:05:56 and things that I wish, you know.
00:05:58 --> 00:06:03 Yeah, there's so much, I guess what I would, what I want to say is I love so much about it.
00:06:03 --> 00:06:09 You know, even though I've taken this journey and to make a long story short,
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 my, my father was killed in Vietnam.
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 My mother married five years later.
00:06:16 --> 00:06:19 Um, so I was almost four, almost five when my father was killed.
00:06:20 --> 00:06:27 When I was almost, when I was 10, you know, my, uh, my mother remarried and,
00:06:27 --> 00:06:32 uh, to a, a Pentecostal young Pentecostal minister.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 He was a youth pastor Then he was an associate pastor In the Church of God,
00:06:37 --> 00:06:43 And a few years into that He took us into more like We left the Church of God
00:06:43 --> 00:06:46 And went into more charismatic Independent charismatic He was an independent
00:06:46 --> 00:06:49 charismatic pastor In Orlando And then.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:57 He moved us to California. So I spent my high school and college years in California.
00:06:58 --> 00:07:05 And it was, it was, you know, really, and I'd always been reading theology from a young age.
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 And I was really, I liked the Keswick movement. I was really interested in,
00:07:09 --> 00:07:16 you know, that whole kind of evangelical, Jesus-centered evangelical thing that
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 the Keswick movement represented.
00:07:18 --> 00:07:26 Um and uh but you know francis schaefer and you know i read lots of people yeah,
00:07:26 --> 00:07:31 um but uh when i got to school when i the college i began to,
00:07:31 --> 00:07:37 like interrogate like a lot of i i i the pentecostal thing,
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 i i love the charismatic thing not so much.
00:07:42 --> 00:07:47 And i was a little i was concerned with the teachings in those,
00:07:47 --> 00:07:50 I was encountering in those churches, which all summarizes this,
00:07:51 --> 00:07:56 um, you know, this, the escapism of Pentecostalism, I never bought into,
00:07:56 --> 00:07:59 like, you know, we're gonna get raptured or whatever, even as a child.
00:08:00 --> 00:08:05 And they took me to, you know, see Thief in the Night and scared the hell out
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 of me. Oh, I remember that. Right. Yeah.
00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 And so, you know, yeah. Wow, you know.
00:08:12 --> 00:08:17 And, you know, the first time you come home from, you know, school and,
00:08:17 --> 00:08:23 you know, the water is boiling on the stove and mom's not around. Yeah.
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 And you start running around looking for her. You can't find her.
00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 Oh, I've been left behind, you know.
00:08:27 --> 00:08:33 And all these crazy imagining. I finally found her in the backyard of our neighbor's house. Yeah.
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 Talking with one of the neighbors, you know, everything's fine.
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 But just the fear, yeah. And I just never bought.
00:08:38 --> 00:08:43 I mean, I think in my imagination, I was concerned, but it just didn't make sense to me.
00:08:45 --> 00:08:49 But the charismatic thing that bugged me was like, there wasn't an account of suffering.
00:08:49 --> 00:08:54 Like if you, if you were, you know, everything was going well in your life,
00:08:55 --> 00:08:59 and you weren't struggling with an illness or, you know, you were successful
00:08:59 --> 00:09:04 as a human being by whatever standard that, you know, fallen standard we have.
00:09:06 --> 00:09:11 You know, the blame was you didn't have enough faith or you had done something.
00:09:12 --> 00:09:14 It's very transactional. You've done something and God, you know,
00:09:15 --> 00:09:18 God was displeased and so you're suffering, whatever it is.
00:09:19 --> 00:09:22 And so, you know, there's a lot, I talk about this in the book,
00:09:22 --> 00:09:28 but basically the bottom line is that I started encountering in the first Christians,
00:09:29 --> 00:09:36 an account of Jesus that said God comes amongst us to suffer with us.
00:09:36 --> 00:09:43 Yeah. To be actually human with us in the actual situation of being human,
00:09:43 --> 00:09:47 susceptible to hunger and thirst, susceptible to pain,
00:09:48 --> 00:09:54 you know, to weather, to all the things that we, you know, you cut them in bleeds.
00:09:55 --> 00:10:02 And so I began to see that God was interested in reading the first Christians
00:10:03 --> 00:10:06 and attending an ecumenical Eucharist at the university I was going to.
00:10:07 --> 00:10:11 I began to see that God comes in bread and wine, God comes among us in the poor.
00:10:12 --> 00:10:17 Jesus, yeah, comes among us in the poor, comes among us in bread and wine,
00:10:17 --> 00:10:23 but also in these writings about Scripture and our Lord, I began to see that God loves the world,
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 and that he makes the world in love and is not interested in destroying the
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 world, but in restoring it and renewing it. Yeah.
00:10:31 --> 00:10:35 So that, you know, that was a different account of the gospel than I had been
00:10:35 --> 00:10:40 raised with, you know, Pentecostal. The one thing I would, you know, I rejected.
00:10:41 --> 00:10:47 But also, like, you know, Jesus had a hard time of being human,
00:10:47 --> 00:10:52 you know, born into a poor family, you know.
00:10:53 --> 00:10:59 And it was a carpenter, a laborer, and, you know, then he suffered as we suffer,
00:10:59 --> 00:11:03 you know, penultimately in the cross.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:09 But he enters into our actual situation of human suffering and suffers with
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 us in order to rescue us from death.
00:11:11 --> 00:11:15 Um, and that was good news. I, I, I began to encounter in the first Christians,
00:11:15 --> 00:11:23 the idea that God was interested and the desire was to, to redeem the cosmos and humanity.
00:11:24 --> 00:11:30 And so that was the journey. And that's why I'm, you know, and I worship with
00:11:30 --> 00:11:33 the Book of Common Prayer and I, you know, we have a Eucharist every Sunday
00:11:33 --> 00:11:37 and we recite the creed and we, you know,
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 I really enjoyed the conversation with Trigvie, which was on,
00:11:42 --> 00:11:46 you know, an episode back or two, right? Um, where.
00:11:48 --> 00:11:52 And for creeds. But, you know, I think the thing that really shook me about
00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 the creed was, here's the story of the world. That's what the creed is.
00:11:56 --> 00:12:00 The creed is the true story of the world. It's the story that the church has to tell.
00:12:01 --> 00:12:06 And so we tell the story of the world. It belongs to all humans,
00:12:06 --> 00:12:07 as do all the gifts of the church.
00:12:09 --> 00:12:15 It's our story together. And so, you know, I started immersing myself.
00:12:17 --> 00:12:25 In the way that the mothers and fathers of the ancient church read scripture, how they worshipped.
00:12:27 --> 00:12:31 How they thought about existence and thought about God and thought about what it means to be human.
00:12:32 --> 00:12:37 And that took me on a journey to a liturgical church that's centered in the
00:12:37 --> 00:12:41 sacred year, which also belongs to all humans. I like to call it the human year.
00:12:42 --> 00:12:50 So we enter into the human life of God amongst us in a cycle every year.
00:12:51 --> 00:12:57 And, and, and we're really entering into his, what it means to be human in time.
00:12:57 --> 00:13:05 And we mark our time, but by his human life, but also that we sacramentally enter, right?
00:13:05 --> 00:13:11 You know, to use a big word, we ontologically, you know, participate in his
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 human life by the celebration of the sacred year.
00:13:14 --> 00:13:19 So all of those things became part of what it means to be Christian for me with its center in Jesus.
00:13:19 --> 00:13:24 I'm interested in the Eucharist because Jesus is what the Eucharist is.
00:13:25 --> 00:13:30 I'm interested in baptism because it's the participation in death and resurrection of Christ.
00:13:31 --> 00:13:34 I'm drawn to the creed because it's the story of the world, you know,
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 that connects the story between God and human beings.
00:13:40 --> 00:13:46 I'm drawn to the scriptures because, well, they're just a remarkable witness
00:13:46 --> 00:13:48 when we read them with Jesus.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:54 And, you know, He opens the Scriptures for us, as He did with His disciples.
00:13:55 --> 00:14:01 They're just an endless well of wisdom read with Jesus.
00:14:01 --> 00:14:05 And so those are the reasons I'm drawn to it, is that Jesus.
00:14:06 --> 00:14:10 And so it comes full circle because Jesus was everything, you know,
00:14:10 --> 00:14:13 when I was being raised as a Pentecostal. That's kind of a, you know,
00:14:14 --> 00:14:20 longish answer to your question, but not too long. No, no.
00:14:22 --> 00:14:27 And I think it actually leads into your book, Vulnerable God,
00:14:27 --> 00:14:32 because I think one of the things I find fascinating and having grown up,
00:14:33 --> 00:14:41 I would say, in an evangelical and black church background and now in the main line is.
00:14:43 --> 00:14:47 I think growing up initially, God was kind of, you know, you heard a lot about
00:14:47 --> 00:14:51 the word God being omnipotent and all powerful. Yeah.
00:14:52 --> 00:14:54 And there is truth to that. Oh, I understand.
00:14:55 --> 00:15:02 Excuse me. But you are trying to present God in a, I won't say a different way,
00:15:02 --> 00:15:07 but seeing power differently in how God is vulnerable.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:11 God as, and Jesus especially, showing us how to be human.
00:15:14 --> 00:15:20 And what led you to kind of write the book in that way and to talk about God in that way? Yeah.
00:15:23 --> 00:15:32 I think that we have millennia of human beings writing about God.
00:15:34 --> 00:15:42 Greeks, Jews, Romans, you know, Indian cultures and Chinese cultures and so forth.
00:15:44 --> 00:15:50 And I think the church, and when I say the church, I mean, everybody's welcome.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:56 Yeah, we're not drawing boundaries around people, but,
00:15:58 --> 00:16:03 it seems that the experience of the first Christians and their witness in the
00:16:03 --> 00:16:09 gospels and subsequent apostolic witness, the men and women who follow Jesus.
00:16:12 --> 00:16:19 They tell a story about God in the flesh of the Son, in Jesus of Nazareth,
00:16:20 --> 00:16:25 in which all of our prior ideas about power.
00:16:26 --> 00:16:30 That come from culture, that come from ethnicity, that come from,
00:16:30 --> 00:16:34 you know, cult practices and come from our parents and come from,
00:16:34 --> 00:16:37 you know, all this literature.
00:16:37 --> 00:16:46 You know, those ideas about God are judged by the human words and actions of Jesus.
00:16:47 --> 00:16:51 Jesus is the one who shows us what power even is.
00:16:51 --> 00:16:55 I mean, I think we have to go back even further and say, Jesus is the one that
00:16:55 --> 00:17:01 shows us what God is. You know, no one knew God. That's the testimony of John.
00:17:02 --> 00:17:07 The son, the only son who is in the bosom of the father has made him known.
00:17:08 --> 00:17:11 Yeah. And so, you know, I just, I straightforwardly accept John's testimony.
00:17:11 --> 00:17:14 No one knew God until this human being shows up.
00:17:15 --> 00:17:20 And so what's interesting about that is, well, Moses encounters God in the wilderness.
00:17:20 --> 00:17:27 This, yeah? And the three Hebrew children, it sounds like Jesus is in that furnace with them.
00:17:28 --> 00:17:35 And Jacob's wrestling the angel who's the Lord, and the Lord visits Abram in
00:17:35 --> 00:17:36 the form of the three strangers, yeah?
00:17:36 --> 00:17:42 So, there are these encounters with God, and so what's happening?
00:17:42 --> 00:17:46 Well, we began to see, as Christ opens our minds and understands the Scriptures,
00:17:47 --> 00:17:52 that Jesus is the Lord who is speaking, the angel who is speaking,
00:17:52 --> 00:17:58 who's wrestling with Jacob, who's speaking from the bush that is fully engulfed,
00:17:58 --> 00:18:01 but not being consumed, not being destroyed.
00:18:03 --> 00:18:11 And so we began to see that Jesus gives us what it is that we trust about God to begin with.
00:18:12 --> 00:18:19 And then, from what he reveals about God, we begin to interrogate all of our
00:18:19 --> 00:18:21 preconceptions and projections of God.
00:18:23 --> 00:18:27 And he shows us what it even means to be human. When we say Jesus is,
00:18:27 --> 00:18:29 here's one of, this is what we do.
00:18:30 --> 00:18:37 I think that's the problem is we say, we confess Jesus is God and man, God and human. Yeah.
00:18:39 --> 00:18:43 But we have these preconceived ideas about what it is to be God.
00:18:43 --> 00:18:46 And we have these preconceived ideas about what it means to be human.
00:18:47 --> 00:18:52 And we invest those. And so we say Jesus is the amalgam of those two things.
00:18:52 --> 00:19:00 Instead of starting with Jesus and what he shows us in his words and actions
00:19:00 --> 00:19:04 that are about the revelation of the eternal conversation that's happening between
00:19:04 --> 00:19:06 him, the Father, and the Spirit.
00:19:08 --> 00:19:13 He's making known the invisible God. He is the visibility of the invisible God.
00:19:13 --> 00:19:20 I don't say anything I don't hear the Father saying. I don't do anything I don't see the Father doing.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:26 And, you know, he, you know, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
00:19:26 --> 00:19:29 So, you know, if we're going to take John's witness seriously.
00:19:30 --> 00:19:33 And so, and I think we absolutely should.
00:19:35 --> 00:19:40 So he's the one who shows us what it is to be God. And all of our previous ideas
00:19:40 --> 00:19:42 about God have to be interrogated by this person.
00:19:43 --> 00:19:45 He also shows us what it means to be human.
00:19:46 --> 00:19:54 So all of our ideas about what it might mean to be human have to be interrogated by this person.
00:19:55 --> 00:19:59 So examples, because you're talking about power.
00:20:03 --> 00:20:09 Power with Jesus is He,
00:20:10 --> 00:20:17 who we confess, is the Word through whom all worlds, all the vast cosmos is
00:20:17 --> 00:20:19 spoken into being, right?
00:20:19 --> 00:20:27 He's the Word of the Father who creates through His voice, yeah? Spoke and then it was.
00:20:28 --> 00:20:32 This is, you know, our wisdom about the way the worlds were framed.
00:20:33 --> 00:20:38 He accepts the condition of silence in the womb of the virgin.
00:20:39 --> 00:20:43 The word becomes silent in the womb of the virgin.
00:20:44 --> 00:20:49 And dwells there and then is born into the world speechless.
00:20:50 --> 00:20:58 Not able to address anyone. And has to learn how to speak from the woman who
00:20:58 --> 00:21:00 bore him and his stepfather.
00:21:02 --> 00:21:07 And so he goes through this process. And so when he is born,
00:21:07 --> 00:21:08 he's laid in the feed trough.
00:21:09 --> 00:21:14 And so the framer of worlds, the one who speaks all things into being,
00:21:14 --> 00:21:21 is reduced to silence and stillness in the feed trough, maybe flannel is little arms and legs.
00:21:22 --> 00:21:28 And he's holding the wood of the manger together as God.
00:21:29 --> 00:21:34 And he's looking up into the sky that he formed. Yeah. But he is helpless and
00:21:34 --> 00:21:36 dependent upon these two other human beings.
00:21:37 --> 00:21:41 I love how, you know, if we really start, I mean, you know, this obviously takes
00:21:41 --> 00:21:46 some contemplation, but we start to think about like human mammals are the most
00:21:46 --> 00:21:47 fragile mammal there are.
00:21:47 --> 00:21:51 It takes, you know, some mammals are born and they just right out,
00:21:52 --> 00:21:56 right out the gate there. They can do everything they need to do to survive on their own.
00:21:56 --> 00:22:00 Some of them need a little bit more attention, but human beings for years have
00:22:00 --> 00:22:06 to be fed and coddled and rocked and, you know, before they even turn over,
00:22:06 --> 00:22:11 yeah, months, yeah, and then walking his ears and so forth and so on, talking his ears.
00:22:16 --> 00:22:23 So, power for this God is, you know, it is making himself small,
00:22:23 --> 00:22:28 making himself silent, making himself, and it's truly powerful.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:34 Like, you know, like it is what holds everything in breath.
00:22:34 --> 00:22:38 His humility is what holds everything in breath and everything in movement and gives life.
00:22:39 --> 00:22:42 You know, he's the light of all human beings. He's the one who gives life to
00:22:42 --> 00:22:47 all in the smallness. The other image we have, the major image that Christians
00:22:47 --> 00:22:51 have, not just the crush, but the other major image is a human being nailed to wood.
00:22:53 --> 00:22:57 Yeah. So surrendering to our violence.
00:22:59 --> 00:22:59 And.
00:23:02 --> 00:23:05 Not calling on angels or calling on the powers to help him.
00:23:06 --> 00:23:12 He dies. And it's his dead body on the cross.
00:23:12 --> 00:23:17 That Roman centurion had seen many, many people executed. But there was something
00:23:17 --> 00:23:19 about this person's death.
00:23:19 --> 00:23:22 This must be the Son of God.
00:23:23 --> 00:23:31 And it is tremendously powerful. The veil of the temple is torn into the, there's an earthquake.
00:23:32 --> 00:23:37 People in the moment of his death, it says that people ignore this in Matthew,
00:23:37 --> 00:23:40 but you know, it says that the saints come up out of their tombs.
00:23:40 --> 00:23:42 Resurrection begins in the moment of his death.
00:23:42 --> 00:23:46 I don't think black preachers miss this, but we do.
00:23:46 --> 00:23:53 Yeah. And so there's this, there's a tremendous power, but it's in great weakness.
00:23:53 --> 00:23:57 It's, you know, he's not just dies. He's buried. Yeah, he's put in a tomb and
00:23:57 --> 00:24:05 he's lying cold and stiff, you know, on that stone, you know, in that hewn.
00:24:07 --> 00:24:16 Grave, yeah. And it is from his stillness in the grave that we confess that,
00:24:17 --> 00:24:27 the cross and his death and his descent to the dead is really the way that the axis mundi, the world,
00:24:28 --> 00:24:30 is rotating on the cross.
00:24:31 --> 00:24:35 The language in John is the cross is the foundation of the cosmos.
00:24:35 --> 00:24:38 The throwing down of the cosmos is the cross.
00:24:39 --> 00:24:43 So power looks really different. It's not coercion.
00:24:44 --> 00:24:49 It's not force. It's not Oz. Yeah, like, you know.
00:24:50 --> 00:24:57 Like, kneel before me because I'm so great. You know, God is small.
00:24:57 --> 00:25:01 I mean, all the language in Isaiah, you know, he's, you know,
00:25:01 --> 00:25:08 the tradition, you know, Celsus says, you know, hey, he was kind of a small
00:25:08 --> 00:25:11 guy and he wasn't much to look at, yeah?
00:25:11 --> 00:25:15 And he says, so these Christians are worshiping this, you know,
00:25:16 --> 00:25:22 short person who wasn't very attractive, not like Adonis, not like Apollo,
00:25:22 --> 00:25:24 who was nailed to a cross, yeah?
00:25:24 --> 00:25:27 And one of the, you know, one of the ancient.
00:25:31 --> 00:25:37 Graffitis in Rome shows Jesus that, you know, the head of an ass,
00:25:37 --> 00:25:40 and he's, you know, he's crucified, right?
00:25:40 --> 00:25:47 And so, like, and the inscription is, this is, and it names a Christian's God, you know?
00:25:47 --> 00:25:50 It's like, this is just foolishness to them, yeah?
00:25:51 --> 00:25:57 And so, am I getting the message across? You are. Power is...
00:26:00 --> 00:26:08 Only known true power, genuine power, authentic power is the power of the manger
00:26:08 --> 00:26:11 and the power of the cross and the power of the tomb.
00:26:12 --> 00:26:21 And so, but we project a God that is, you know, like just stronger than every
00:26:21 --> 00:26:25 other, you know, he's, he, you know, when he returns,
00:26:25 --> 00:26:29 he's going to make all the generals of history look like chumps, yeah?
00:26:30 --> 00:26:35 And the slaughter will be, you know, like nothing that's ever happened in the
00:26:35 --> 00:26:38 history of the world. That's how some people read Revelation.
00:26:39 --> 00:26:44 And, you know, it's not wise, it's not based on the cross, but,
00:26:44 --> 00:26:47 you know, he's the one who says, put your swords down, you know,
00:26:47 --> 00:26:51 don't take up the sword, love your enemies, you know, pray for those who are
00:26:51 --> 00:26:52 misusing you and all these kinds of things.
00:26:54 --> 00:26:59 So it takes a complete, it takes all of our projections and all of our imaginations
00:26:59 --> 00:27:04 and all that we've been taught and it puts it under scrutiny, you know.
00:27:06 --> 00:27:12 And so this is why I, you know, I feel like, especially in our moment,
00:27:12 --> 00:27:14 I think there's other moments in time where we've forgotten this.
00:27:15 --> 00:27:18 But I think especially in our moment of time, it's really important that we
00:27:18 --> 00:27:25 remind ourselves as Christians in the Catholic Church, in the mainline, in orthodoxy.
00:27:26 --> 00:27:31 It doesn't matter. This disease of projecting a God who is, you know.
00:27:33 --> 00:27:39 Powerful on our standards, you know, is what infects the bishops in Russia who,
00:27:40 --> 00:27:46 you know, bless the jet engines and the bombs and the things that are headed to Ukraine, right?
00:27:47 --> 00:27:57 And it is in the hearts, broken hearts and broken minds of people who look to our military to bring,
00:27:58 --> 00:28:02 God's wrath on all the evildoers and so forth.
00:28:02 --> 00:28:09 And think of this country as, you know, somehow God's instrument of,
00:28:09 --> 00:28:11 you know, of judgment, you know.
00:28:13 --> 00:28:18 Is profound prophetic critique, you know, of this notion.
00:28:19 --> 00:28:25 And it infects Catholicism, it infects Orthodoxy, it infects Protestantism.
00:28:26 --> 00:28:33 And we got to get back to the original gospel and its signs,
00:28:35 --> 00:28:42 which are that captives are set free from prison, that the hungry...
00:28:43 --> 00:28:49 And the thirsty, you know, are satisfied, that the sick are visited and taken
00:28:49 --> 00:28:57 care of, that those who are behind prison walls, you know, are visited, you know,
00:28:57 --> 00:29:01 and all of that means solidarity, that the, that the, the word,
00:29:01 --> 00:29:05 the language is stranger, but it means immigrant or refugee is,
00:29:06 --> 00:29:09 is embraced and that they remember.
00:29:10 --> 00:29:16 And we remember because we're in, we're in that story too, that we were delivered
00:29:16 --> 00:29:24 from death, not Egypt, not the natural country of Egypt, but Egypt as death where we were enslaved.
00:29:24 --> 00:29:30 And so we do not, we do not oppress, you know, the immigrant.
00:29:30 --> 00:29:32 We do not oppress the stranger.
00:29:34 --> 00:29:44 Because God has shown us that this is the false way of being human and that it is opposed to love.
00:29:45 --> 00:29:52 And we're here to embody that cruciform love and life that our Lord Jesus Christ
00:29:52 --> 00:29:55 shows us. This is the way to be God. This is what it means to be God,
00:29:55 --> 00:29:57 and this is how we're human.
00:29:58 --> 00:30:07 And so, yeah, I really felt like I wanted to tell this story in this way to
00:30:07 --> 00:30:11 do whatever I can to overturn the false projection.
00:30:14 --> 00:30:19 That kind of reminds me of the you write a little bit on one of your chapters
00:30:19 --> 00:30:25 of Jesus being in the desert and his temptation with the devil and,
00:30:27 --> 00:30:31 Thinking about that over the years, how much that is a temptation about power,
00:30:31 --> 00:30:35 that the devil is constantly doing, you know, turn stones into bread,
00:30:36 --> 00:30:40 you know, fall down from this tower and have the angels catch you.
00:30:40 --> 00:30:47 It's showing power in the way that we would expect a God to show power.
00:30:47 --> 00:30:52 And Jesus again and again is saying, no, that's not the way that I do this.
00:30:53 --> 00:31:00 And unfortunately sometimes in our culture we're still we kind of fail the test,
00:31:02 --> 00:31:07 and you know yeah yeah yeah and I think it's so insightful what you said that,
00:31:08 --> 00:31:14 this is at the heart of all three of the temptations is.
00:31:16 --> 00:31:20 Because the devil is trying to ascertain,
00:31:21 --> 00:31:25 You know, what manner of human being is this, you know?
00:31:26 --> 00:31:36 And like he is one of the ancient pastors says, you know, he's seen John the
00:31:36 --> 00:31:39 Baptist say at the Jordan River,
00:31:39 --> 00:31:43 you know, this is the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Yeah.
00:31:43 --> 00:31:47 And, uh, you know, he has seen these miracles and these things,
00:31:47 --> 00:31:51 but doesn't really know like what's going on with this human.
00:31:51 --> 00:31:59 He suspects he's a God, like a lower case, you know, with a G, yeah. Lowercase G.
00:32:00 --> 00:32:06 And so he's testing to see like, is he a God? But the, the, the victory of Jesus
00:32:06 --> 00:32:11 is that he shows that he's God, not a God, but God.
00:32:11 --> 00:32:17 And so, you know, he respects the created nature of rocks.
00:32:19 --> 00:32:24 Rock is a rock, George MacDonald says, you know, and he's not going to turn a rock into bread to.
00:32:27 --> 00:32:31 Feed his hunger. He's not going to perform a magic trick. Yeah.
00:32:32 --> 00:32:39 And so in same thing with the Pentacle Temple, you know, he he's he is the Lord of gravity.
00:32:39 --> 00:32:43 He knows its goodness that it gives you and I the capacity to,
00:32:44 --> 00:32:49 to to be here with the illusion that we're still,
00:32:50 --> 00:32:55 and talking to each other, even though we're hurtling at the edge of this galaxy
00:32:56 --> 00:32:59 in a helical cone following the sun.
00:33:00 --> 00:33:07 Unimaginable speed and everything. And gravity is the thing that keeps us all
00:33:07 --> 00:33:12 on the surface of the earth instead of flying out into space.
00:33:13 --> 00:33:15 And so he knows the good of it.
00:33:16 --> 00:33:19 But he also trusts implicitly his relationship with the Father.
00:33:20 --> 00:33:25 And so one of the things I keep saying in that text is that that particular
00:33:25 --> 00:33:29 chapter is that he is God when he remains human.
00:33:30 --> 00:33:43 You know, it's like, you know, and, you know, he is being human. He is being as God is.
00:33:44 --> 00:33:48 And so for Jesus, they're one and the same thing. Of course,
00:33:48 --> 00:33:54 it's easy to go to the final temptation, which is he shows him all the kingdoms of the world.
00:33:54 --> 00:34:03 And I think that was a kind of America, you know, in the 21st century,
00:34:04 --> 00:34:08 Rome, Byzantium, you know.
00:34:10 --> 00:34:13 The various dynasties in China and all this stuff.
00:34:14 --> 00:34:16 And he is basically, you know, tempting him, says,
00:34:18 --> 00:34:23 All that man has made within this, you know, all of these kingdoms can be yours, you know.
00:34:24 --> 00:34:31 Because he, you know, I mean, let's face it, he is the reason any of it exists, yeah, as God.
00:34:32 --> 00:34:36 So you can't really be tempted with, but like all of this power that you see,
00:34:36 --> 00:34:39 and, you know, Jesus sees right through that, yeah.
00:34:39 --> 00:34:45 I mean, you know, he only has what we've made of the world to offer to Jesus,
00:34:45 --> 00:34:48 not the world itself, yeah. That belongs to God.
00:34:49 --> 00:34:55 So, but it's all about like, you know, you'll be, you know, powerful and the
00:34:55 --> 00:34:58 devil just doesn't understand power. Yeah.
00:35:00 --> 00:35:02 And so, and then we, you know, we've listened to his lie about power.
00:35:03 --> 00:35:07 And, you know, from the first family onward, it leads to murder and it leads
00:35:07 --> 00:35:10 to separation, alienation,
00:35:11 --> 00:35:16 to warfare, to greed, to envy, to avarice. Yeah.
00:35:16 --> 00:35:23 Um, so yeah, it, it's, uh, it runs through the whole story of Jesus and it's
00:35:23 --> 00:35:27 just a version of all of our ideas about.
00:35:31 --> 00:35:37 What do you think the book, when you're writing this, what do you think is the
00:35:37 --> 00:35:44 message that you would want people to get about who God is today?
00:35:46 --> 00:35:48 Again, because I think we have this,
00:35:50 --> 00:35:57 in some cult, in some corners, an image of God that is one of dominance.
00:35:59 --> 00:36:06 But if we read Scripture, and especially look at who Jesus is,
00:36:06 --> 00:36:08 that doesn't seem to be the case.
00:36:09 --> 00:36:12 So maybe more of my question is, why do you think there is a mismatch?
00:36:15 --> 00:36:27 Yeah i mean we're human and and part of that is that we listen to you know and entertain lies and um,
00:36:29 --> 00:36:35 i i want to be clear about the story though and that is the story starts not
00:36:35 --> 00:36:39 with are listening to lies that are being made in the image of God.
00:36:40 --> 00:36:46 So it's not a humiliation for God to become human. It's a natural thing for God to be human.
00:36:47 --> 00:36:51 We're already made in His image. God can't become what is evil.
00:36:52 --> 00:36:55 God can only become what's good. He makes us good. He makes the creation good.
00:36:56 --> 00:37:00 And He calls us good. So all of that is true before.
00:37:00 --> 00:37:07 So that generosity is the true image of every human being.
00:37:09 --> 00:37:15 And it's, and, and, and avarice is the lie. Yeah.
00:37:15 --> 00:37:23 So, um, and peace and being a peacemaker is the, the image in which we're made.
00:37:24 --> 00:37:27 And then we're tempted to warfare.
00:37:27 --> 00:37:32 You know, it's an infection, you know, jealousy and envy and avarice and,
00:37:32 --> 00:37:40 and, um, you know, violence are not at the essence of who the human being is.
00:37:43 --> 00:37:46 We're not created in the image of sin, we're created in the image of God.
00:37:48 --> 00:37:54 So we want to start there, but we also want to recognize that obviously,
00:37:55 --> 00:38:00 we've forgotten that we're made in the image of God and we have listened to
00:38:00 --> 00:38:03 lies about what it means to be human.
00:38:03 --> 00:38:07 And so we want celebrity. We want power.
00:38:07 --> 00:38:15 We want notoriety. We want to be, you know, all these things we acquire to hoard, whatever it is,
00:38:17 --> 00:38:22 because we've forgotten the one in whose image we're made and that we're united
00:38:22 --> 00:38:25 to, you know, our natural state is being union with God.
00:38:26 --> 00:38:28 There's an infection. We're infected with death.
00:38:28 --> 00:38:35 And it leads to tremendous harm, you know, to ourselves, to,
00:38:35 --> 00:38:42 you know, to our families, to our communities, within our nations, and so forth.
00:38:42 --> 00:38:47 And so, there is a spiritual warfare that is going on between,
00:38:48 --> 00:38:53 you know, our remembering in whose image we've made and our buying into lies
00:38:53 --> 00:38:54 and living out those lies.
00:38:56 --> 00:39:02 It's a warfare, yeah? And so, my hope is that as we encounter the human God
00:39:02 --> 00:39:08 and we're listening to him and learning from him, Athanasius says it this way.
00:39:10 --> 00:39:16 On the Incarnation. He says that God comes to, well, in the book before that,
00:39:16 --> 00:39:21 Contra Gentius, it's a two-part work, he says that God becomes human in order
00:39:21 --> 00:39:24 to lend his permanence to the creation and to us.
00:39:24 --> 00:39:26 Yeah. He doesn't, he's not, he doesn't.
00:39:27 --> 00:39:34 He's not envious of anyone. He's not jealous. He's not stingy with existence.
00:39:35 --> 00:39:36 He wants us to give.
00:39:37 --> 00:39:40 He wants to give to humans and to the world his existence.
00:39:42 --> 00:39:46 I just love that. But also, he says he comes. He comes for many reasons.
00:39:46 --> 00:39:52 But he also comes because every human being is a perfect portrait of the unseen God.
00:39:53 --> 00:39:57 But like grime and dirt and oxidation
00:39:57 --> 00:40:05 and smoke, all these kind of things have marred the image of God.
00:40:05 --> 00:40:12 And Jesus comes in order to, like a master restorationist, to restore the full vibrant color.
00:40:14 --> 00:40:21 An image that is below in the depths of every human being so that it's brought back to the surface.
00:40:23 --> 00:40:27 And so, you know, that's the work of the Lord.
00:40:28 --> 00:40:32 That's the work of God in our present situation, always by the power of the
00:40:32 --> 00:40:38 Spirit, to remind us that we're made an individual God, that Jesus is our human
00:40:38 --> 00:40:42 brother, and that the way to be human is to die so that the world might live.
00:40:44 --> 00:40:52 And so that's the vocation of human beings is to join the human God in laying
00:40:52 --> 00:40:55 down our life, you know, for the world.
00:40:57 --> 00:41:01 And so, yes, it's very real to me. It's very at the center.
00:41:02 --> 00:41:10 I'm astonished by the story, for one thing. I feel compelled by the story in all my imperfections.
00:41:10 --> 00:41:13 But I do think it's the world's true story.
00:41:14 --> 00:41:17 It's the story that makes sense of the world, of human existence,
00:41:17 --> 00:41:23 of what it means to suffering, the disorder of the world, and so forth.
00:41:24 --> 00:41:27 And there's one who wants to heal us and set us free.
00:41:28 --> 00:41:31 Part of your question was like, where is God? Well, you know,
00:41:31 --> 00:41:35 I think, you know, God is, you know,
00:41:36 --> 00:41:41 in, if we want to see the face of Jesus now, I mean, we can encounter him in
00:41:41 --> 00:41:44 the bread and wine of the Eucharist, but he tells us in Matthew 25,
00:41:44 --> 00:41:47 if we want to see the face of Jesus, it's the face of the poor,
00:41:47 --> 00:41:50 the face of the immigrant, the face of the prisoner.
00:41:53 --> 00:41:57 You know what I'm saying? The face of the sick. The first Christians understood this, and.
00:41:59 --> 00:42:04 This is what converted the empire, yeah, is that they built the hospitals,
00:42:04 --> 00:42:05 they built the orphanages.
00:42:07 --> 00:42:12 They weren't ashamed, and they weren't frightened. They didn't think that if
00:42:12 --> 00:42:16 they hung out with prisoners and the poor, that they were somehow infected,
00:42:16 --> 00:42:17 which is what the Romans thought.
00:42:17 --> 00:42:20 You get around somebody that's had an unfortunate existence,
00:42:20 --> 00:42:25 and that misfortune is going to jump on you. So you stay as far away as possible.
00:42:26 --> 00:42:31 First Christians, they entered into that trust that now that Jesus has come
00:42:31 --> 00:42:33 and lived the human life that he lived,
00:42:35 --> 00:42:41 that the real story of the world is now his human life and how he lived it.
00:42:42 --> 00:42:46 And so that resurrection is the actual story of the world, regardless of how much death there is.
00:42:46 --> 00:42:51 And that healing is the end of the world, despite how much disease is in it.
00:42:51 --> 00:42:54 That peace is the end of the world instead of war.
00:42:54 --> 00:43:00 And that, as Martin Luther King understood, is like a trust.
00:43:00 --> 00:43:04 You have to trust in that despite what you see,
00:43:06 --> 00:43:12 and then you begin to live out of that trust and you become part,
00:43:13 --> 00:43:19 of the resurrection that is working its way into the world like leaven and bread
00:43:19 --> 00:43:22 like leaven and a loaf of bread yeah it's slowly,
00:43:22 --> 00:43:27 making its way so that the entire Their world will be covered with the glory
00:43:27 --> 00:43:29 of God as the waters cover the sea. So.
00:43:31 --> 00:43:36 Yeah, I just want to reorient people to the story of the human God,
00:43:37 --> 00:43:40 understanding who God is. We're understanding who we are.
00:43:41 --> 00:43:47 And then we can begin to, by grace and by the Spirit, you know,
00:43:47 --> 00:43:50 live as God lives in the world. Yeah.
00:43:53 --> 00:43:56 Where does the role of suffering fit in all this?
00:43:56 --> 00:44:01 And you kind of touched on that with Martin Luther King, and King had a lot
00:44:01 --> 00:44:10 to say about what suffering meant and kind of its redemptive power in some ways.
00:44:11 --> 00:44:15 But where does it, you know, the importance of a God who suffers?
00:44:15 --> 00:44:20 Because I think that that's also something that's so different in that we have
00:44:20 --> 00:44:25 this God who, as you talked about earlier, went through crucifixion,
00:44:25 --> 00:44:29 which was considered an embarrassing way to die.
00:44:29 --> 00:44:36 Not just any old method, but the most embarrassing and most dehumanizing for the Roman Empire.
00:44:36 --> 00:44:40 And what does that have to say, that suffering God have to say to us today?
00:44:42 --> 00:44:48 Yeah, I think that God—I,
00:44:50 --> 00:44:57 think the main issue with suffering, whether you've got a child who has a cancer diagnosis,
00:44:58 --> 00:45:06 or you have a son who is in jail or,
00:45:07 --> 00:45:15 you've lost your job or you're in a situation like they are in Mariupol or in Gaza,
00:45:16 --> 00:45:21 you're just fending for your absolute existence every day, whether it's food
00:45:21 --> 00:45:24 and water or dodging bombs. Yeah.
00:45:27 --> 00:45:33 I read somewhere it's just it's just heinous, like the life expectancy of a
00:45:33 --> 00:45:38 Russian soldier on the Ukrainian front is 35 minutes. Yeah, it's it's horrible.
00:45:39 --> 00:45:45 Yeah, yeah. So all of that, like we want an explanation.
00:45:46 --> 00:45:52 For why it's happening. And the history of theology has tried to say,
00:45:52 --> 00:45:54 this is why this is happening.
00:45:54 --> 00:46:01 And I think that suffering is, there's no explanation for that.
00:46:02 --> 00:46:06 What there is, is a God who enters all of our sufferings with us.
00:46:06 --> 00:46:12 And I mean, every human being, that's the mystery of the cross is,
00:46:12 --> 00:46:19 and only God can take all of that suffering into himself and heal it.
00:46:20 --> 00:46:27 But it is that he comes alongside us and is with us, you know, in the suffering.
00:46:28 --> 00:46:32 The ancient texts in the scriptures of Job, yeah, you've got these friends that
00:46:32 --> 00:46:35 come along and they're trying to explain why this is happening to him.
00:46:35 --> 00:46:42 And, and, and, and we find out like all of that is just, you know,
00:46:42 --> 00:46:45 I can't use the word on your, your error, but you know, it's,
00:46:46 --> 00:46:49 you know, and so, you know, I mean,
00:46:50 --> 00:46:56 what, what we need is a God who not only enters our suffering with us and is
00:46:56 --> 00:47:01 in our suffering with us, but is in it with us in order to deliver us from it.
00:47:02 --> 00:47:04 Yeah. And.
00:47:08 --> 00:47:12 You know, the black church understood this. They sang it. They lived it.
00:47:14 --> 00:47:21 And within this particular culture, they are the, I'm just going to say it,
00:47:21 --> 00:47:26 they're the leaven that has kept us from completely going off the rails, yeah?
00:47:27 --> 00:47:32 Is that, you know, this memory within the black church that God is with them
00:47:32 --> 00:47:37 in their suffering and is going to deliver them from it so that they are not.
00:47:38 --> 00:47:42 You know, they're very, it's like an intuitional.
00:47:42 --> 00:47:46 And this is not to, you know, like to say that the black church doesn't have
00:47:46 --> 00:47:49 any issues. Of course, the black church does, and you could speak to those.
00:47:50 --> 00:47:56 But within the church, there are kind of leaven that says God is with us in
00:47:56 --> 00:47:59 the suffering and he is going to deliver us from it. Yeah.
00:48:00 --> 00:48:04 And so we don't have, I mean, we are going to work for a world of justice and
00:48:04 --> 00:48:09 we're going to work for a world where, you know, everyone is understood to be
00:48:09 --> 00:48:12 created in the image of God as we,
00:48:12 --> 00:48:15 you know, confessed in our Declaration of Independence,
00:48:16 --> 00:48:18 you know, but we're going to work towards that.
00:48:18 --> 00:48:23 But we, you know, we also understand God is the one, no matter what we do,
00:48:23 --> 00:48:26 march, you know, do whatever it is we do.
00:48:26 --> 00:48:30 God is the one who has delivered us from death, you know.
00:48:30 --> 00:48:38 And so he's not only with us in the suffering, but he is and will.
00:48:39 --> 00:48:44 He he has delivered us he is delivering us and he will deliver us from the suffering
00:48:44 --> 00:48:49 so but the suffering doesn't i mean i'm i'm very skeptical of this idea that they,
00:48:49 --> 00:48:55 i don't think god uses suffering i don't think god um i don't think god is in the suffering,
00:48:56 --> 00:49:02 yeah um i i think it's it's his evil the suffering itself is evil but.
00:49:03 --> 00:49:11 As with the cross, God can convert it to like an infinite goodness.
00:49:11 --> 00:49:17 Yeah, I mean, he can take the suffering of the cross and make it infinitely
00:49:17 --> 00:49:20 good. And he can take our suffering. Doesn't need it.
00:49:20 --> 00:49:24 Doesn't bring it. Doesn't desire it. Doesn't make it.
00:49:25 --> 00:49:31 Doesn't testing us, you know, with it. But he is in it with us to deliver us
00:49:31 --> 00:49:33 from it and to show it to be.
00:49:36 --> 00:49:40 The nothingness that all evil is. Yeah, I mean, it has no future.
00:49:40 --> 00:49:45 War has no future, despite the evidence of our eyes.
00:49:48 --> 00:49:49 Greed has no future.
00:49:51 --> 00:49:55 Disease and pestilence have no future.
00:49:56 --> 00:50:01 In the world that God is bringing to this world and to the cosmos that he is
00:50:01 --> 00:50:08 going to renovate, all of these things are absent, including tears and pain.
00:50:09 --> 00:50:11 And so, you know.
00:50:14 --> 00:50:20 How does the slave get through? Well, the same way Joseph got through, the same way, you know,
00:50:21 --> 00:50:29 how does the abused mother or wife, spouse, you know, get through?
00:50:29 --> 00:50:33 You know, how does the person battling with breast cancer get through?
00:50:33 --> 00:50:35 You know, well, if you're going
00:50:35 --> 00:50:37 to listen to the witnesses of the black church, God's with you in it.
00:50:38 --> 00:50:43 And God is going to deliver you from it. Now, that may mean...
00:50:45 --> 00:50:50 It always does mean death. Like, you know, anybody that gets healed,
00:50:50 --> 00:50:55 and I trust, you know, we lay hands, we anoint people, and I've seen unbelievable
00:50:55 --> 00:50:56 things happen in dentists.
00:50:56 --> 00:51:02 I mean, when we do that, you know, but every person who receives a healing in
00:51:02 --> 00:51:04 time will eventually die, yeah?
00:51:05 --> 00:51:12 So, you know, we need someone who can deliver us from illness in the grave, yeah?
00:51:12 --> 00:51:16 And so that's the gospel is like, you know, eventually,
00:51:16 --> 00:51:21 perhaps in this life, but certainly trusting that there is a world coming to
00:51:21 --> 00:51:24 this world where we'll be raised and,
00:51:25 --> 00:51:28 there will somehow, in a way that we don't completely understand,
00:51:28 --> 00:51:31 we'll be embodied, but introphy will no longer be an issue. Yeah.
00:51:33 --> 00:51:39 And pain will no longer be an issue. Yeah. And so, and they trusted that and
00:51:39 --> 00:51:40 that's how they got through. Yeah.
00:51:41 --> 00:51:50 It reminds me of a scene from the movie Amistad, where two of the characters,
00:51:51 --> 00:51:55 who are enslaved, they're awaiting this maybe a trial.
00:51:55 --> 00:52:03 And one of them basically has been given a picture book of the story of Jesus.
00:52:04 --> 00:52:09 And he just shows the other person the story of this man.
00:52:10 --> 00:52:16 And how all the things that he did and then how he died, but yet also...
00:52:18 --> 00:52:25 Rose again and it's interesting as he is as they are going to their trial um,
00:52:25 --> 00:52:29 they see a picture of these mass of a sailing ship,
00:52:30 --> 00:52:37 and they look as if there are three crosses and i've always kind of interpreted
00:52:37 --> 00:52:44 that as a sign that he understood that this person that he didn't understand who who this person was.
00:52:46 --> 00:52:48 Understood what they were going through.
00:52:49 --> 00:52:54 And it was really a sign of God being with them. So beautiful. That's so beautiful.
00:52:55 --> 00:52:59 Did Spielberg do that one? Yes, he did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:52:59 --> 00:53:03 He's got some really insightful movies. Munich is a really insightful movie,
00:53:04 --> 00:53:09 where he's in a train station, the bomb maker is in the train station,
00:53:09 --> 00:53:12 and he says, I can't do this anymore, just retribution.
00:53:12 --> 00:53:17 I can't do it anymore. I'm losing my Jewishness, you know, by,
00:53:17 --> 00:53:19 by, by, by seeking vengeance.
00:53:20 --> 00:53:24 And that's, that's all I have. That's all I am. That's if I,
00:53:24 --> 00:53:29 we lose that Abner, what, what, what, what is left? Yeah.
00:53:29 --> 00:53:34 And it's a, it's a really powerful, you know, indictment on,
00:53:35 --> 00:53:38 you know, we can't do anything by violence.
00:53:38 --> 00:53:44 And if there's 11 that the black church represents in America, it's.
00:53:46 --> 00:53:52 This adherence to nonviolence, which is also the path of the first Christians,
00:53:52 --> 00:53:55 the first 300 years of the church, is they refused to sort.
00:53:57 --> 00:54:00 And so we are going to overcome by our prayer.
00:54:00 --> 00:54:07 We're going to overcome by our witness. We're going to overcome by marching.
00:54:07 --> 00:54:12 We're going to overcome by raising awareness. We're going to,
00:54:12 --> 00:54:15 you know, we're going to overcome by telling the story.
00:54:16 --> 00:54:21 Yeah. And but we're not going to pick up the sword. And so my hope.
00:54:22 --> 00:54:29 For the church in America is very much centered in God-leaven,
00:54:30 --> 00:54:35 you know, working its way through the whole of church and to,
00:54:35 --> 00:54:40 you know, get us back to the, you know, where we are,
00:54:42 --> 00:54:49 you know, we are living and we're trusting in the words we say in the creed. Yeah.
00:54:50 --> 00:54:55 And that we're, you know, We're putting our bodies and our minds and our hearts
00:54:55 --> 00:54:59 where, you know, our mouth is, you know, when we confess, you know,
00:54:59 --> 00:55:01 that this is the Son of God.
00:55:02 --> 00:55:11 And so, yeah, I hope, you know, I hope it plays a small part, you know, and overall.
00:55:13 --> 00:55:17 Let's start remembering who we are, you know, as human beings.
00:55:17 --> 00:55:25 And that all of us are in that story together and that we're all invited to the table and that we,
00:55:26 --> 00:55:33 you know, that God is wanting to, you know, unite us to himself.
00:55:36 --> 00:55:42 Yeah, I think maybe one of the things that is needed today is a reminder of
00:55:42 --> 00:55:48 who God is, because I think we,
00:55:49 --> 00:55:53 for various reasons, have forgotten that.
00:55:53 --> 00:56:00 And either we've kind of have said that there isn't a God or,
00:56:02 --> 00:56:04 we've kind of made God,
00:56:06 --> 00:56:11 maybe into our own image that is not who God is.
00:56:12 --> 00:56:17 And in doing that, we've also forgotten who we are as human beings.
00:56:18 --> 00:56:23 And it's interesting, the summary that you just gave of our situation,
00:56:24 --> 00:56:27 in every point, is in the garden story.
00:56:27 --> 00:56:30 Yeah, it's all there.
00:56:31 --> 00:56:35 We believe a lie about ourselves, And we believe a lie about God,
00:56:35 --> 00:56:39 lies about God and lies about ourselves instead of trust.
00:56:41 --> 00:56:46 And if we answer that, if we answer evil and we answer that,
00:56:48 --> 00:56:48 that,
00:56:51 --> 00:56:56 false light with the sacred darkness of the one who, you know,
00:56:56 --> 00:56:59 spoke all things into existence,
00:57:00 --> 00:57:06 you know, and who, from the same time, stillness in the grave causes all things
00:57:06 --> 00:57:09 to have life and be in movement.
00:57:10 --> 00:57:18 You know, we get back to that and remember that's going to be,
00:57:19 --> 00:57:25 you know, our salvation. Our salvation is remembering who God really is and who we really are.
00:57:26 --> 00:57:29 So, you know, I think it's important.
00:57:29 --> 00:57:38 And, you know, clearly the powers, which I am thinking we wrestle not against flesh and blood, right?
00:57:38 --> 00:57:41 But the powers are interested in elevating within our social media,
00:57:42 --> 00:57:46 elevating within our politics, elevating within our conversations,
00:57:46 --> 00:57:50 elevating within our entertainment, elevating within our sports, whatever it is.
00:57:51 --> 00:57:56 A false narrative of what it means to be human. And, you know,
00:57:56 --> 00:58:02 that is about the spotlight being on me, me acquiring everything I possibly can before I die.
00:58:02 --> 00:58:11 And, and for, you know, pay attention to me and all of the, all of the destruction
00:58:11 --> 00:58:16 that that sort of existence inherently brings. Yeah.
00:58:17 --> 00:58:21 All the negation that comes from living that kind of existence in the world,
00:58:22 --> 00:58:28 and then you multiply that out by billions of us now, it can get pretty rough.
00:58:30 --> 00:58:34 When we begin to remember who we are and who God is.
00:58:37 --> 00:58:46 But we have to be honest that it's always coming at us the lie is always coming
00:58:46 --> 00:58:50 at us and so we want to keep speaking the truth,
00:58:53 --> 00:58:57 toward it and I've been thinking lately like,
00:59:01 --> 00:59:07 Uh, you know, it's the burning bush on Sunday. Yeah. And, and Moses is in nature. Yeah.
00:59:08 --> 00:59:14 And, and, and he sees this fantastic site and then he has encounter with God,
00:59:15 --> 00:59:17 you know, even though he's afraid to look at his face.
00:59:18 --> 00:59:24 And like i think conversations like this and your listeners listening to us
00:59:24 --> 00:59:27 and joining in their own conversations about this,
00:59:28 --> 00:59:34 um and being in the natural world and being in face-to-face conversation with people,
00:59:35 --> 00:59:40 is part of what's going to help us remember the image of god because the earth
00:59:40 --> 00:59:44 and the world you know is singing the praise of god yeah,
00:59:45 --> 00:59:49 and when we're in communication with people actual human beings and we're in
00:59:49 --> 00:59:53 relationship with actual human beings those lies have less.
00:59:55 --> 01:00:01 You know purchase on our imagination on our minds and hearts yeah but this thing,
01:00:02 --> 01:00:08 if you're not careful yeah you're gonna get 15 ideas a day.
01:00:09 --> 01:00:17 That are so cynical and destructive and harming that if you let them into yourself
01:00:17 --> 01:00:24 and start to do whatever dark work, you know, whatever evil work it wants to do, you know, in you,
01:00:25 --> 01:00:27 I think this is where spiritual warfare comes.
01:00:27 --> 01:00:29 I'm just not taking that idea into myself.
01:00:30 --> 01:00:32 I'm not taking that lie into myself.
01:00:33 --> 01:00:38 You know, I'm not going to believe this about this entire group of people.
01:00:39 --> 01:00:43 Yeah. I'm not going to scapegoat this person. Yeah.
01:00:44 --> 01:00:48 I am not going to cast blame or aspersion. Yeah.
01:00:48 --> 01:00:52 Which is what, you know, the cynicism and these messages that are coming out
01:00:52 --> 01:00:53 all the time. Now, don't get me wrong.
01:00:54 --> 01:00:58 Well, before there were typewriters or phones or computers or whatever,
01:00:58 --> 01:01:00 we got ourselves in plenty of trouble.
01:01:01 --> 01:01:10 But also, this amplifies, you know, the lie. And we have to actively resist
01:01:10 --> 01:01:15 it, I think. We have to say, nope, I'm not taking that in.
01:01:16 --> 01:01:22 And especially if it's contrary to the wisdom, you know, that we encounter in the person of Jesus.
01:01:25 --> 01:01:28 Yeah, it is, you know.
01:01:29 --> 01:01:33 I always think that social media is kind of a double-edged sword.
01:01:33 --> 01:01:36 Yeah, I love that. I mean, I try to put good words out on it, yeah.
01:01:37 --> 01:01:43 But it's very easy to be, as you said, very cynical and also present.
01:01:44 --> 01:01:50 I would say, the view of the world, which is of power and of domination and all of that.
01:01:50 --> 01:01:53 And you have to just learn to resist it.
01:01:53 --> 01:01:57 Yeah, and there's all these narratives that are coming at us from it. Yeah.
01:01:57 --> 01:02:03 And some of the worst storytellers, you know, in the history of the world, yeah,
01:02:04 --> 01:02:11 who are just absolutely spitting to large audiences, really skewed views of
01:02:11 --> 01:02:13 whole groups of people, of individuals.
01:02:14 --> 01:02:18 And so that's what I mean, like encounter God in the creative order,
01:02:18 --> 01:02:27 encounter God in actual conversation with each other as an anecdote and also say no.
01:02:27 --> 01:02:31 Don't let every thought in yeah just say no,
01:02:32 --> 01:02:36 that's again i can't use the word you know on the air because there might be
01:02:36 --> 01:02:39 a little child walking through the room while somebody's listening to this but
01:02:39 --> 01:02:43 you know it's it's it's a you know i would love to use a really scatological
01:02:43 --> 01:02:45 term but it's terrible yeah,
01:02:46 --> 01:02:51 and so yeah i've got this little book right here written by this princeton philosopher,
01:02:52 --> 01:02:56 and i think i know which one you're talking about yeah and so we could just show it because then we,
01:02:57 --> 01:02:59 you know. Yep. And I've read that book.
01:03:02 --> 01:03:06 One of my favorite little books. Yeah. And, um, so yeah, we,
01:03:06 --> 01:03:12 we have to do, we have to resist, you know, and there's a thing in you and there's
01:03:12 --> 01:03:15 a thing in me that's remained in the image of God.
01:03:15 --> 01:03:17 We see a sentence and we know.
01:03:19 --> 01:03:25 Like we have discernment and like, I should not let that in my head and let
01:03:25 --> 01:03:31 it do its, you know, evil, you know, in my heart and mind. I need to resist this idea.
01:03:32 --> 01:03:36 And some of them are really shiny, you know, and you want to pick it up and
01:03:36 --> 01:03:40 look at it and, you know, and then, you know, next thing you know,
01:03:40 --> 01:03:43 you're, you believe in something that's not helpful. Yeah.
01:03:45 --> 01:03:51 Well, if people want to know more about you, where should they go?
01:03:51 --> 01:03:53 And I do know, and I do actually have the book.
01:03:54 --> 01:03:58 Oh, cool. They got it to you. Yes, they did. I'm so, they're really on top of
01:03:58 --> 01:04:03 it. I've been really blessed by Brazos and what they're doing,
01:04:03 --> 01:04:07 you know, in helping me. And so that was great. I'm glad you have it.
01:04:07 --> 01:04:11 I've got it too at the back of the book.
01:04:12 --> 01:04:17 Substack's a good place to connect with me. It's at Kenneth Tanner,
01:04:17 --> 01:04:20 all lowercase. Yeah, so it's my first and last name.
01:04:21 --> 01:04:24 But Instagram's also a pretty decent spot to connect.
01:04:25 --> 01:04:31 But that's K-E-N, Ken Tanner. Because I was a late adopter of all of my social
01:04:31 --> 01:04:32 medias are Kenneth Tanner.
01:04:33 --> 01:04:41 Except Instagram and what's that? Threads, yeah? Okay, yeah.
01:04:42 --> 01:04:44 Because I didn't adopt them, you know, soon enough. And so, uh,
01:04:45 --> 01:04:50 I'm Ken Tanner on the, but Substack and Instagram are the best.
01:04:50 --> 01:04:56 I really cross publish across all of the main ones, even Twitter.
01:04:57 --> 01:05:03 Um, but, uh, as crazy as that platform is, but Facebook, I don't really encourage
01:05:03 --> 01:05:07 people to, because the comments on Facebook when I post are just,
01:05:07 --> 01:05:11 that's what I mean. It's like, you know, it's just crazy.
01:05:11 --> 01:05:16 In a way that Instagram and threads and Substack just aren't,
01:05:17 --> 01:05:20 it isn't like that, you know? And so I, yeah.
01:05:21 --> 01:05:25 So follow me on Substack and Instagram if you're interested in what we've been
01:05:25 --> 01:05:27 talking about. And yeah, the book Vulnerable God.
01:05:28 --> 01:05:33 Um, you know, how to, how Jesus upends our assumptions about God and shows us
01:05:33 --> 01:05:36 how to be human, which is, you know, the, the subtitle that they,
01:05:37 --> 01:05:41 my subtitle, there's a, their subtitles is really the right one.
01:05:41 --> 01:05:46 My subtitle was becoming human as God is human, which is great.
01:05:46 --> 01:05:51 I like it. You know? Yeah. I like it too. But this is, they were right.
01:05:51 --> 01:05:54 There's things that you think that you're right about and you find out later.
01:05:55 --> 01:05:57 No, the, the group, the group was right.
01:05:57 --> 01:06:01 And uh yeah september 29th but you can you know you can pre-order it anywhere.
01:06:02 --> 01:06:06 You like to buy books and if you like if you're okay feeding the beast that's
01:06:06 --> 01:06:11 amazon or you know but if you want to like independent bookstores i like nooks
01:06:11 --> 01:06:14 in pennsylvania and um you know
01:06:14 --> 01:06:18 a great little bookstore there and you know there's uh um.
01:06:20 --> 01:06:25 Eight day books and you know wichita kansas and they you know they'll you know,
01:06:26 --> 01:06:29 you'll pay a little bit more but you'll be helping out the people that run the
01:06:29 --> 01:06:30 store and you know real humans,
01:06:31 --> 01:06:36 but uh and with the break the brazos website has it and bookshelf and barnes
01:06:36 --> 01:06:40 and noble you know so whatever you like and if you really like what you're hearing
01:06:40 --> 01:06:44 you start reading it um you know ask for it in barnes and noble because that'll help it you know uh,
01:06:45 --> 01:06:50 get out there and if you like to book write a review so okay i'm done with i'm
01:06:50 --> 01:06:53 done with my promotional thing.
01:06:53 --> 01:06:55 Sorry about that, Dennis. Nope, that is okay.
01:06:56 --> 01:07:01 Well, Ken, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been good and I hope
01:07:01 --> 01:07:04 to have you back again soon. Yeah, that'd be great, Dennis.
01:07:04 --> 01:07:07 I'd love to be on with you again. I've enjoyed the conversation.
01:07:35 --> 01:07:41 If you have thoughts about the episode, ideas that you want to share, please send me an email.
01:07:42 --> 01:07:48 And just a reminder that you can now send it to a specific email.
01:07:48 --> 01:07:55 That is dennis at churchandmaine.org.
01:07:56 --> 01:07:59 Again, that's dennis at churchandmaine.org.
01:08:00 --> 01:08:05 And again, if you have thoughts, feel free to share them.
01:08:05 --> 01:08:10 I look forward to hearing from you. I will definitely put a link to Kenneth's
01:08:10 --> 01:08:13 book in the show notes for y'all.
01:08:14 --> 01:08:19 I do hope that you will consider buying the book. I have read it and actually
01:08:19 --> 01:08:24 just finishing it up. It is very good. My congregation will be reading it.
01:08:24 --> 01:08:28 Our book club at my church will be reading it next month.
01:08:29 --> 01:08:33 So please, I hope that you will consider giving it a read.
01:08:34 --> 01:08:39 If you want to learn more about this podcast, listen to past episodes or donate,
01:08:40 --> 01:08:44 again, as usual, check me out, churchinmain.org.
01:08:44 --> 01:08:48 You can also go to churchinmain.substack.com to read related articles.
01:08:48 --> 01:08:55 I do also post these episodes on Substack a few days after they go live on the main site.
01:08:57 --> 01:09:00 Please consider subscribing to the podcast on your favorite podcast app and
01:09:00 --> 01:09:04 leave a review because that helps others find the podcast,
01:09:05 --> 01:09:10 that is it for this episode of church in maine i am dennis sanders your host
01:09:10 --> 01:09:14 as i like to say thank you so much for listening take care everyone godspeed
01:09:14 --> 01:09:16 and i will see you very soon.