Redemption Church KC Sermon Podcast: Recent Episodes

Redemption Church

Teachings from Redemption Church

In contrasting the creation narratives & cosmologies of other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cultures with those of Genesis’ writers, Tim pointed out that the Biblical narrative is unique in two key ways:
First, the gods in the other cultures emerge from nature, but the Hebrew God exists wholly apart from the creation &
Second, the creation acts in the other ANE narratives originate in violence of some sort, while the Hebrew God’s creative acts were creative & entirely nonviolent.

What do you make of these differences? What do they tell you about what Genesis conveys about the Hebrew God? What does it suggest to you about the ancient Hebrew mindset and worldview? What’s the value in holding this conception of a foreign, ancient, and, in many ways, unknown mindset as we consider our own experience of reading and engaging with the book of Genesis?

On the attached slide, Tim highlighted some important differences between the first and second creation narratives in Genesis.

What’s your response to the consideration of the dual narratives in Genesis? Is this approach to the creation stories different than what you have been exposed to in the past? If so, what do you make of it? How does the shift in how you conceive of the Bible’s telling of creation affect you? Your sense of what the Bible conveys? How to respond to and receive the Biblical narratives? What emotions, questions, or thoughts emerge for you as you consider?

Tim also said, including both of the Biblical narratives, that “creation is clearly left unfinished.” He also pointed out that neither narrative mentions perfection.

How do you respond to each of these two ideas? (Feel free to discuss them separately for simplicity’s sake) Are you aware of any spaces of curiosity as you consider each of these ideas? Are you aware of any spaces of internal resistance? What do you make of these personal responses?

Tim also taught that the Genesis telling of creation tells us that:

a) since the very beginning, God has been with us in our struggles with chaos (being overwhelmed by too much) and barrenness (not having enough of what we need to flourish).

&

b) the only way forward for all of humanity is to find a way to live in partnership with the Divine.

Spend some time discussing these ideas and responding to them as a group and as individuals.

One big idea from Cole’s sermon today, reflected in the work of Karen Armstrong, is the idea that “the gods we shape, shape us.” In other words, part of the theological work of mankind involves the creation and articulation of images and understandings of God. And those concepts, as they evolve alongside the cultures and contexts in which they exist, have an influence on the spiritual communities we create, and the way we live devout lives of faith.

Spend a moment reflecting on this idea. Where might you have seen its fingerprints in your own experiences and/or life?

In what ways has your own concept or God evolved as you have grown & changed? In what ways have those evolutions impacted the way you respond to God?

Cole taught that the texts included in the Bible reflect a time period before early Christians were able to reconcile some important theological ideas:

1) the Shema’s insistence on oneness

2) with the divine identity of Jesus (see Phil 2:6-11) &

3) the real presence of the Spirit (see Acts 2)

He said, “as the pages of the Bible come to a close…the early Christians had not really landed on a consensus about what in the world was going on with Jesus. They hadn’t really come close to anything that resembles the doctrine of the trinity.”

Cole shared Jaroslav Pelikan’s idea that the dogma of the Trinity didn’t have its origins in speculative theorizing, but instead, in the nature of the life that the early church lived as they pursued a deep commitment to Jesus. As they did so, they lived the idea of the trinity before they even understood it as a concept. It was out of that embodied truth that the language and more formed concepts were born.

Cole suggested that, like those early Christians, we are constantly living and acting in accordance with something we haven’t yet understood.

How do you feel about the idea that early Christians lived ideas they didn’t have language for or real understanding of, and that it’s those ideas we embrace today in our faith? What questions surface for you as you contemplate that reality?

In what ways do you see yourself living and acting in accordance with something you don’t yet understand? What’s challenging about that aspect of living? What’s good about it?

What do you think we can learn by living and acting in accordance with ideas we don’t yet understand? What, if anything, is the value of this dynamic in our lives?

Cole also taught about a concept of God, widely embraced in Western Christianity, which is easily used as a convenient tool of empire. This God is pure and cut off from creation, set above the concerns of ordinary life. In this theological paradigm, empire gets to control access to God and how God comes to us. This removed inaccessible God doles out peace the same way empire doles out peace, as a benevolent, fleeting gift for those who can earn or deserve it.

In contrast, an authentically communal God, a trinity inseparable from relationality, births communities in which God’s presence and peace come by way of common relationship & common life. As Cole said, “this God is a community, and participation in cruciform community is to be caught up in God.” This allows church to be about connection, rather than getting people to accept some idea, behavior, or message.

Reflect on these ideas for a moment. How do you feel about the idea that our Western concept of God is very congruent with the empire in which we live and operate? How does that make you feel about your own history with different churches and with the versions of God shaped by those communities?

How do you understand the idea that “participation in cruciform community is to be caught up in God?” Do you understand it? What questions do you have about that idea and what it looks like? What parts seem clearer? Where have you seen that in practice in your own experiences?

Today, Tim set up his discussion of Jesus’ new command (John 13:34) by sharing about the concept of pleasure v. enjoyment.

This slide outlines what he shared:

In light of this concept, Tim taught that the reason the original 613 commands of the law couldn’t transform the Israelite people was that they worked against human nature. We’re wired to seek continual opportunities for enjoyment, often found by transgressing the “commands” in our lives.

Spend some time with this dichotomy. Think of ways in which you’ve experienced pleasure, as it’s conceived of here. Think of some ways in which you’ve experienced enjoyment. Share some examples of each with your group.

Which of these experiences feels more familiar? More appealing? What do you think it is about your personality that leads you to answer in the way you are?

Tim also taught about the opportunity for enjoyment that’s provided by exclusion. He said, “any kind of exclusion makes our sense of belonging so much better.”

Where do you see/have you seen this principle at work in yourself? What groups/categories have you seen engage in frequent exclusion?

How/when have you been excluded? How did you respond to that exclusion? How did it make you feel about the crowd/people from which you were excluded?

Tim taught that Jesus’ new command (from John 13:34) leads to enjoyment in a new and different way; rather than finding enjoyment through transgressing commands, we find it through transgressing the self. This process of loving sacrificially leads to both pleasure and pain. It also provides opportunities for endless enjoyment. Tim said that, as the church, our only real command is love and inclusion.

When you think of your life in and as a part of the church, how do you feel about this sole command? What thoughts, ideas, and feelings arise for you as you take a moment to consider this command as the command for the church?

Are there [other] “commands” that you have embraced in the past hoping in their ability to create transformation in your life? How has that worked for you? Do you have commands (other than Jesus’ new command to love) that you embrace now, hoping for them to produce transformation? What fruit, if any have you seen from those efforts?

What experiences do you have that speak to the power of sacrificial love’s ability to create transformation when it’s embraced or enacted as a command? See if you can think of experiences in which you’ve been the one loving actively and experiences in which you’ve been loved in this way. Share some examples as a group. If you can see transformation that has resulted, share about that with the group.

One of Tim’s slides read, “we get to re-narrate our own stories & decide what meaning they will have for us. We can’t change the events of our past; we can change their meaning.”

How does this idea strike you? Does it intuitively make sense? Does it challenge any ideas you may hold about the meaning of events in our stories? Or about the nature of our stories themselves?

When you think generally about a person’s past traumas, experiences of disorientation, or failures, what are some of the other ways in which you’ve seen people respond to difficult experiences? What do you think of “rewriting its meaning” as one of the options? What makes it an appealing option? What makes it less appealing?

Reflecting on the ways in which Peter may have felt disqualified or defeated by his denials of Jesus, Tim taught that Jesus’ response to Peter demonstrated that God’s covenants and kingdom are those of grace, love, and reconciliation. In effect, Jesus’ demonstration of love and grace helped to re-narrate Peter’s failure as a natural part of Peter’s discipleship process, rather than a transgression for which Peter must offer restitution.

Spend a little time thinking about this, and as you do, reflect on times in which you might feel like you’ve failed in significant ways - or maybe even failed God. There’s no pressure to share your own story, but in light of your experiences, what might you imagine that Peter could be feeling as he sees this grace-filled restoration offered to him, with no condemnation or remonstrance?

To what degree do you think it might have been difficult for Peter to fully accept this second chance? What might have given him cause for resistance?

Do you feel resistant to the idea of unrestrained and limitless second chances being extended to you? Is that more true in concrete examples or in abstraction? What are the factors that you suspect could lead to any resistance felt in yourself, in Peter, or in someone else?

As Tim shared, Redemption Church hopes to be a community in which we help each another to re-narrate the stories of our lives, and to assign them meaning within the story of God, aligned with God’s kingdom of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Have you had experiences of this in your time at RC, in big or small ways? Have you witnessed it in others?

How do you think it works in the practical realities of community and relationships at church? What does it look like to be a part of this process in regards to the narration of your own stories? What does it look like to be a part of this process in the stories of others in our church? How does it feel to be a part of this work in the lives of others? To have others be a part of this transformation in your life?

Tim juxtaposed religion that packages the cross and resurrection with certitude, as a solution for the puzzle of our “sin problem” and a faith that engages with the cross and resurrection as “a mystery of how God can be born into the world through us.” He discussed the ways in which this happens on both personal and societal levels. We lack insights that, in our present form, are simply beyond us, so God is always leading us toward something deeper.

As a group, generate a list of some of the ways in which you think that, as a society, we are lacking the insight we need to address places and things that simply aren’t working for us anymore.

How do you know those are places where we, as a society, lack the insight and wisdom we need? How can they be identified?

Tim taught that the cross and resurrection help show us that in order for new things to be born, we have to let go of old ideas that we are attached to, that feel like they’re a part of us.

Do you have experiences of this principle at work in your own life? Share any examples of times in which you recognize that, in order to survive and thrive, you had to let your old way of being die, so that something new could be born.

Continuing this theme, Tim talked about how, Thomas sat in fidelity with his friends, even though he doubted their story of Jesus’ resurrection, and that this mysterious space prepared him for the ability to see all new possibilities once he did finally encounter Jesus for himself. (This idea is connected to the fact that Thomas, after his encounter, was the first to recognize and declare Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” )

Reflecting back on the examples you just shared about places of death and rebirth in your own life, can you identify any new insights and visions of possibility made possible through those experiences?

Shifting back to some of the societal challenges the group identified in the first question, spaces in which society lacks the insight to move forward and address our challenges, which ideas do you think that you, personally, are attached to that might need to die in order to create opportunity for new birth and life in our society?

As we collectively sit in places of longing to know, while not knowing, Tim taught that we have to trust God in the mystery…that that’s the life of faith that leads to new life.

What do you think of this idea in the practical? How does it work? What does it look like? If you’re “doing it,” what does that mean??

How do you feel about the prospect of allowing death to come for ideas you’ve held as part of yourself and identity that may need to die? What feelings and spaces of resistance arise for you?

After talking about Mary’s over-the-top and unreasonably lavish display of love for Jesus in John 12, Tim said that this text invites us to think about what opportunities would have been missed if Mary had cared about all the social taboos she was ignoring in her actions, and had not anointed Jesus’ feet.

Take a minute to really think through the scene and the moment. What do you think would have been missed? For Mary? For Jesus? For those who witnessed the moment? For us and others who read of it all these years later? You might address those scenarios one-at-a-time in your discussion.

Tim shared a slide that read, “we face the same choice all the time, between playing it safe…or having the courage to love lavishly, generously, holding nothing back.”

In what areas, relationships, or spaces do you need this reminder most? Where is it most difficult for you to love and demonstrate your love without holding back? With family? Friends? The marginalized? Your partner? Someone else?

In which contexts, if any, do you find it easier to demonstrate your love in lavish and generous ways?

Why do you think it is that the places that feel easier feel that way, and that the spaces in which it feels harder feel as they do? Do you see themes or commonalities in your responses that could help you become more aware of the places you hit resistance and restraint?

As he closed his sermon, Tim reminded us that every single person out there in the world is fighting really hard battles and is “armored up” as they try not to get hurt. Christians, he said, are the ones who should be out piercing through those coats of armor with love.

What do you think about this idea? What does it look like? How does it work?

What armor do you tend to wear as you live your daily life? Have you had experiences in which someone else has helped to pierce your own armor? If so, how did they do it?

Can you think of people in your spheres who you sense need someone to help pierce their own self-protective armor? What would it look like for you to begin to do that with your love? What barriers might you encounter?

Early in his sermon, Tim said, “to be human is to be self-alienated.” He was speaking about the unavoidable universal experience of humans disavowing (or, sort of, ignoring and being in denial about) parts of ourselves that don’t fit with the projected images of ourselves that we embrace as our self-concept.

He went on to say that to be human is to be a bundle of contradictions - even to ourselves. And that our persistent self-alienation shapes the way we show up in the world.

Later, when looking at the story, Tim pointed out that, before the prodigal son could be reconciled with his father and community, he is first reconciled to to an aspect of his own identity from which he’s been estranged.

First, how do you respond internally to the idea that you don’t know yourself as thoroughly as you might hope? How easy is that to accept? How do you feel about that fact?

How interested are you, in general, in learning and recognizing more about yourself? For some it may feel difficult, daunting, scary, interesting, exciting, or something else entirely! How does the prospect feel for you? How motivated are you to engage intentionally in self-discovery of this sort? How do/would you go about it? What barriers have you encountered to the process?

Have you had experiences in which, like the prodigal son, you have a sort of “aha moment” in which you recognize a previously unknown truth about your self or personality? Or have you been a witness to a similar experience in someone else’s life? If so, share about those experiences and, if possible, what the precursors to those moments were.

Tim said, at several points in his sermon, that “All exiles are self-imposed.” Thinking about the spiritual part of our lives, what does exile look like? How would you identify spiritual exile within your own life? Is this something you’ve experienced personally? Is it something you’ve witnessed in others?

How do we go about recognizing this self-imposed nature of exile while coming from a place of compassion, rather than of judgement? Does engaging with this idea compassionately feel easier or harder to do with self than with others? What do you make of that?

Tim talked about the response of the older brother, and related it to the way in which we can use religion to reinforce our “carefully curated and highly defended identities as good little boys and girls.”

In this paradigm, the idea of God’s joyful and unconditional embrace of all of humanity into God’s love and family can be upsetting. He pointed out that the story’s older brother has built his sense of self and worth around the idea of having worked to earn both his father’s love, and his position in the father’s household. When the father’s unhesitating embrace of the prodigal pairs with the father’s equally open embrace of this elder son, it throw’s the older brother’s sense of things into a tailspin.

How much do you relate to this older brother? Or do you relate more to the prodigal? In what ways? Have you or do you feel any resistance to the idea that a fortune-squandering, family-shaming child of God is as fully beloved and appreciated as God’s perfectly performing children?

If you can, think of someone you know who has perhaps squandered some fortune that could have been yours or who has shamed your family or loved one. Do you feel resistance to the idea of that person/those people as fully as beloved and appreciated as God’s perfectly performing children? Does putting someone real into that question impact your sense of resistance at all? If so, how? What do you make of your answer?

Discussing the passage for today’s sermon, Luke 13:1-9, Cole noted that Jesus seems to think the crowd expects Jesus to have “a take,” and that they may expect Jesus to respond to the story they share as either a violent revolutionary or as an elite Roman-sympathizer. Jesus, though, responds in a different and unexpected way, moving toward neither position.

Do you find it difficult to avoid thinking of others as being in one of two opposing ditches? No matter what your answer, why do you think that is?

Do you find yourself unconsciously shifting yourself toward one pole or another, either in practice or in your own sense of yourself? If so, why do you think that may be? And how do you feel about it? Are the dynamics in play in your sense of yourself different than those when it comes to your sense of other people? Why do you think that is or is not?

Do you see any value in trying to conceive of both others and yourself in some way other than all-or-nothing? Why? If yes, how might you help yourself to do so?

Cole preached about our human tendency to distance ourselves from the tragedies in and around our lives. He talked about both a sentimental response that may do that by essentially saying, “this is a lot to think about…therefore, God. [the end]” and a cynical response that may essentially say, “God’s not doing what I expected; I’m out.”

Cole then said, “I think we’ve figured out how to use God to insulate ourselves from the pain we’re experiencing.”

What is your initial response to these ideas? Can you connect to a sense of using God to insulate yourself from pain? Or a desire to do so? What do you think that’s about for you? How does it function? Do you tend more toward cynicism, sentimentalism, or something else?

Cole also talked about the role of the practice of confession, which is simply telling the truth about ourselves and our lives. And that the practices of confession and repentance help bring us into spaces in which we can help set others free and liberate them from the massive weights they may feel sitting on their chests.

How do you engage in the practice of confession? What does it look like for you? What are some ways in which you find yourself practicing repentance?

How comfortable do you feel with the ideas and practices of both confession and repentance? Why do you think that is? If you feel resistance to one or both, what do you think that’s about?

Do you see a way in which your practices of confession and repentance lead to liberation and freedom for others? To an easing of the burdens that leave them feeling buried? If so, how so? What does the through-line look like? If not, where does that lead your thoughts?

Tim taught that the word often translated as “the devil” in the “Temptations of Christ” narratives is a combination of two Greek words that, together, mean, “to throw through, in order to divide.” So, “diabolos is what we call anyone whose intent is to divide or cause division between God, self, other, and the world.”

Building on that concept, Tim later said, “the world God imagines for us cannot be established through division and violence.”

So, if our desire is to honor this and work toward creating the world as God imagines it, what does it look like to engage in personal, communal, national, or global crises without using division or violence?

Is passivity the only alternative? If not, what could active engagement look like? What might its hallmarks be? Would that Kingdom-building engagement look different in, for example, personal settings compared to global settings? Why? How so?

Tim taught that diabolos says to us that the ends justify the means, but that in the way of the kingdom, the means are the ends.

How does this principle challenge you as you face struggles and suffering - whether personally, in society, or otherwise?

How can you tell if you are engaging methods of division and violence if they’re more subtle in nature? What do you need to look for?

What are some of the ways you might engage with yourself when you realize you’re tempted to use division and/or violence to move your own agenda forward? How does that look different in personal v communal v global etc contexts?

Tim characterized Jesus’ response to the third temptation as another way of saying, “the wilderness isn’t a place for testing God; it’s a place for testing us.”

Reflect on the way you may think about the concept of the wilderness in general. When it comes to your sense of what “wilderness” is, how congruent is the idea that the wilderness is meant to test us rather than God? Does that fit? Why or why not? Do you think it should fit?

Also spend a moment considering times in your life when you’ve felt you were in “wilderness seasons.” Do you tend to think of these times as times in which you waited to see if God would “pass the test” and take care of you? Or do you tend to think of them more as times in which you were being tested? If you are the one being tested, what does “passing the test” look like?

In his message today about the Transfiguration, after talking about Moses & Elijah’s experiences with the shining glory of God, Tim said, “nobody could see God, but they could see where God had been.”

Take a moment to consider whether or not you’ve had an experience (or experiences) in which you’ve had this same sense - that you can see the evidence of God having been present in an extraordinary way. What were the circumstances? What was that “signature” of God like? How did you recognize it? What conditions might make that type of experience more possible? If you’ve not had that experience at all, what are your thoughts about why?

Tim said, “The only way to see God is to attend to the mystery…enter into the great cloud of unknowing. Yet we spend much of our lives, trying to drain the world of mystery…name, explain, control. …So maybe it’s not so surprising that it has become so difficult to believe.”

What’s your relationship to mystery? Is it a comfortable space for you? Do you feel that you encounter it often? Ever? Discuss as a group the nature of mystery in your modern life. Are there spaces or contexts where mystery feels more permissible? More accessible? What do you think of challenging any constraints you may (even unconsciously) put around the presence and experience of the mysterious?

Tim talked about the reality that the presence of God’s shining face is most often revealed through ordinary people and in our ordinary lives. Is this hard for you to believe? Do you have any kinds of informal practices that help you to better see God in the people around you each and every day? If so, share. If not, what could that look like for you? What do you think keeps you from easily seeing God in every single person around you? In other areas of your daily life?

1) In today’s sermon, Tim told a story originally told by Douglas Rushkoff about a group of billionaires seeking wisdom about how to prevent problems after what they called “the event,”basically the apocalypse.

When you’re in a place of fear, and considering worst case scenarios, what is “the event“ for you? Why do you think that is? What kinds of plans do you tend to make in your mind should “the event” come to pass?

2) Tim shared a slide that started with the question, “what makes us safe in this world?”He then listed the six most common types of answers we come up with to that question. They are below. Which of these do you tend to gravitate to First? Are there a couple that seem most right to you or are your defaults? Which are at the bottom of your list? If you’re among those that have been stressed and fearful lately, it might help to consider the types of solutions you’ve imagined for the problems you are seeing.

3) Toward the end of his sermon, Tim stated “when the church loves like Jesus did, the kingdom of the world cannot stand against us“. He then prayed that we would have “the courage to try to stay committed to love.” What does that look like in the practical? In your daily life? In places where you may be actively resisting troubling things happening around you?

When you think of Jesus, what descriptive words come to mind? If someone asked you, “what is Jesus like?,” what would be some of the things you’d say?

Then take a moment to revisit the scriptures Mandy preached over today, Luke 6:17-26.

How do his words come across to you? How, as you absorb Jesus’ teaching, would you describe Jesus in this moment, as he confronts the crowd with proclamations of the Kingdom that are very counter to what they might have hoped or expected to hear (& may be counter to what we hope and expect to hear)?

To what extent does the Jesus of this moment align with the descriptive words you listed initially? What do you make of the similarity or dissimilarity you find between your general description of Jesus and Jesus as he shows up in this passage in Luke?

In her sermon, Mandy pointed out that Jesus isn’t good news for people who want to avoid disruption. How do you see yourself in this paradigm? What’s your general orientation toward disruption? What emotions does the word “disruption” elicit for you? How do you feel about characterizing Jesus as a disruptor? Do you see yourself as disruptive in any contexts or ways? How do you feel about your answer?
Toward the end of her sermon, Mandy said, “when you embrace the idea of Jesus becoming the lowest of the low, it changes everything.”

How do you feel about this characterization of Jesus? Do you feel the desire to add qualifiers or explanatory notes to the idea of Jesus being the lowest of the low?

How do you respond to the totality of Mandy’s statement? To what extent do you think that you “embrace the idea of Jesus becoming the lowest of the low?” How, if at all, has that changed things for you? How, if it has, has it changed you?

Tim talked about Peter’s response to Jesus after, heeding Jesus’ illogical directives, he and his partners catch literally more fish than their nets and boats can hold.

For this first question, you’re invited to take the time as a group to imagine a personalized scenario similar to that in today’s passage. It may take some time, and you may need to encourage each other if you’re struggling to come up with ideas or if some are feeling self-conscious. This is just an exercise and an experiment for all of us. Help each other where needed. Have fun with it! (And if it flops, thanks for trying! 🙃 I’d appreciate your feedback either way!)

First, take a few moments for each of you to think of an area of your life in which you have some level of credible knowledge or expertise. It can be anything! Do you know a lot about how to bake cookies? To prepare to give a sales pitch? To train a dog to sit? To learn a new song on an instrument? To make a pizza? To clean a kitchen? To balance a budget? To lead a team-building event? To design a workshop? To throw a party? To lead a staff meeting? Mop a floor? Give a manicure? Teach a game? Format a report in Excel? Teach a new skill to a child? Again, it can be anything!!

Try to imagine a situation within that area in which you put in efforts that you and others have learned are best practices, in order to achieve a desired, but not guaranteed return. That return can be physical, financial, emotional, or otherwise. It might be helpful to imagine a scenario in which, for whatever reason, others are also present. If needed, help each other come up with reasonable scenarios that might make sense in their own lives.

Once everybody has an idea for this experiment, take some time for each of you to imagine a scene in which you’re at work on this specific task. Imagine Jesus approaching. Imagine him entering into the scenario, greeting you and others, etc. Then imagine Jesus gives you instructions that go directly counter to what you know to be good advice on this subject. Realism and scale are unimportant!

As you imagine the moment, get specific in your mind about what exactly he’s telling you. Imagine how you might feel hearing it. Give room to your skepticism, defensiveness, or whatever else might surface. Think about what facial expressions you might make, or you might see from others nearby. What facial

expressions is Jesus making? Pay attention to how you’re feeling and what silent thoughts you might have in that moment.

In the scene, agree to go along with Jesus’ guidance. What worlds would you use? How might your voice sound? Do you make eye contact with Jesus? Do you convey your skepticism in any way? Would it matter if others w/similar expertise are nearby? What could you notice about the others observing this moment? How do you feel about their opinions in this second? Let the scene play out with as much detail as you can.

Next, visualize yourself going through the steps Jesus prescribes. Depending on your scenario, this may be a quick moment or a longer one.

Then, imagine a shockingly unexpected outcome. This doesn’t have to be realistic - and probably won’t be!! Imagine the specific nature of a positive and outrageously abundant return. In that moment, pay close attention to yourself. What are you doing with your physical body as the outcome is happening? Are you just watching it happen? Looking around in disbelief? What’s your emotional response?

Do you look at Jesus? If so, what expression is on his face? What are his eyes communicating to you? What expression is on your face? How are others around you reacting? What are they doing or saying?

Finally, let the moment fill your awareness, and turn your full attention to Jesus. How do you respond to him? What do you say? What do you do? How are you feeling inside yourself in this instant? What, if anything, is Jesus doing? Does he respond to you in some way? Is there a larger message for you in this moment? If so, what might it be? Take a moment to really sit in this final imaginary moment of communication with Jesus, noticing your feelings and body sensations as you do.

When all are finished, share with each other about what this experiment was like, what you noticed and felt. Was there anything that left you with new ideas, new questions, new sensations? What, if anything, surprised you?

As Tim taught, Jesus’ instruction to Peter included him taking his boat and crew out into the deep waters, the place in which Jew & Gentile intermingled on the lake. Tim’s accompanying slide read, “the Jewish people couldn’t become fully Jewish without the Gentiles, blessing them was their ultimate mission.”

In what ways does this idea apply to us today? As Christians generally and/or as Redemption Church? Where does it challenge you to consider the “others” as the very people you’re meant to bless? How does it feel to consider not only those on the margins, but also those who are opposing the work we, as Christians, might see as our core calling? What do you think of the idea that loving and blessing both of those groups, as well as more, is part of our mission? How do you respond to the suggestion that we cannot become fully who we’re meant to be without those people we’d rather exclude, ignore, or condemn?

Shared on one of Tim’s slides, Dallas Willard said, “a disciple is one who is with Jesus, learning to be like him, so that I react to my world the way Jesus would if he were in my shoes.”

In what ways have you felt stressed, frustrated, violent, outraged, offended, or tried in recent weeks? Are there specific instances or circumstances that come to mind? How do you think Jesus would react in some of the specific circumstances that you’ve thought of? Are there ways in which your own reactions could be shifted to better mimic his example? What do you think about the idea of trying to mimic Jesus in some of these moments? What about it feels most difficult and why?

In Luke 4:21, Jesus says that the Isaiah 61 scripture from which he read was fulfilled “today” for his listeners, in their hearing. Cole pointed out that he says “today,” rather than tomorrow, or at the cross, or at the time of the resurrection.

What do you make of that “today?” If we’re taking Jesus at his word, how do you understand that idea? What was going on that day that was fulfilling the proclamation of liberty and Jubilee? And what do you make

of the fact that he didn’t indicate the fulfillment of the passage would be coming at the cross or the resurrection? What previously held ideas might that moment challenge?

Cole also posited that when the crowd responds favorably to Jesus, but immediately also asks, “isn’t this Joseph’s son?,” that perhaps after they see Jesus’ demonstration of power, they’re reassuring themselves that, as Joseph's son, Jesus is one of their own. And that, by extension, they can exercise some sort of control over him and feel safe from his action and activity. But, of course, they find that Jesus is on a mission of his own, and they cannot make him be who they’d like or act as they'd demand. In response, they turn on him completely.

Where do you see this same inclination in yourself? Where does Jesus demand from you something beyond what you’d like to give? Where do you find yourself tempted to jettison Jesus, even just a bit, when his way of being in the world is a challenge to something to which you’d rather cling?

Cole talked about the Transactional Belonging inherent in empire, and which is prevalent in our society today. He compared it to the only other type of system that Israel could imagine: a purity movement and a system of Obedient Belonging.

But, Cole taught, both of these systems end in violence, and that Jesus’ model of belonging was wholly other and centered on solidarity. He provided a working definition of solidarity: “a way of being together where even our differences are evidence of our shared faithfulness, hope, and love.”

Spend some time as a group talking about each of these three types of belonging. Do you have places where you’ve seen or imagined the existence of one or another in action? What does it look like to participate in a transactional system of belonging? An obedience system? Where and how can you see these systems ending in violence?

When you imagine a solidarity system of belonging, what are the features you think of? What does it look like at its core? How does it operate? What is your part in enacting that system?

In the system of the Jubilee year (also referred to as “the year of the Lord’s favor”), land, debts, and finances were to be redistributed back to an equitable baseline as orignally described in Torah. Tim taught that in inherent in this arrangement was the reality that, “nobody could ever become so rich that they could control the whole system, and make Israel serve their purposes.”

We might be inclined to respond positively to the idea of everyone having enough and no one being able to become dominantly wealthy. However, the enactment of this arrangement on a global level would likely mean that many of us would be required to have less than what we have now. Less land, less home, less cash, less savings, less stuff, less advantage, less privilege, and etc etc.

How do you feel about this idea at first blush?

If you can, think of someone you know who may have noticeably less material wealth than you do. Imagine pooling your collective resources and then splitting them exactly 50/50. Maybe spend a moment picturing the process of taking inventory of all that is owned between the two of you. Now imagine ending the process with no less and no more than your counterpart, and much of what was once yours now belonging to them.

What emotions and thoughts are surfacing for you? Where is resistance showing up? Where might your ideals and your priorities be in conflict within you? What does it look like to engage in those places of tension within yourself, and do so with curiosity and kindness?

Jesus was reordering the world not only to include, but also to center those who’d been excluded and pushed out of society up to that point. And as he lived out his ministry, his actions created and reflected this same type of Jubilee-esque restructuring.

With your group, generate a list of people-groups who, in our world today, are often marginalized, excluded, and discriminated against. What does it look like for you and/other individuals to live lives that functionally demonstrate a Jesus-like priority on and intention toward this social reorganization?

What does it look like for a church to excel at centering some of the various groups you came up with? What do we do with the reality that limits on our time, energy, and financial resources most likely preclude us from fully engaging in the Jubilee-like re-ordering Jesus describes? What thoughts and feelings surface as you consider that pragmatic idea? How would you suggest navigating that tension?

Tim shared a slide that read, “The church is meant to be the one place in the world where Jubilee is still the dominant reality.”

Yet the actions of many churches don't reflect that same value and priority. How do we love and revere the church-at-large with so many opposing ideas in our world about what a church is meant to do, and how they’re supposed to function in relationship to the rest of the world? If you can, avoid veering into a “they’re wrong/we’re right” trap.

How do you navigate the varied expressions of “Christianity” and church to which many lay claim? How do you understand it in your mind? Why are there such stark differences? How might you engage with someone whose experiences of church have left them disdainful of church in total?

Much of Tim’s sermon today talked about reframing the way we understand John’s presentation of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana.

What is it like for you to think about understanding the story, its symbols, and John’s presentation of the event in a new way? What had your understanding of that story been before this week’s sermon?

How do you feel about the idea that a story as it’s written can remain static, but the understanding we have of it - either as a collective or as individuals can shift, sometimes dramatically? How does this interact with the way you understand the Bible, its stories, and our relationships to it? How do you feel about that dynamic as it’s played out/plays out in your own life?

Tim talked about the value of being a part of an interpretive community living in the way of Jesus. How much does this connect to your reasons for being a part of Redemption Church? With or without this exact idea in view, how would you describe the value of your own present day experiences in such a community (Redemption or otherwise)? How would you explain why you go to church, why you go to this church, and how it impacts who you are and how you live your life?
Mary instructs the servants at the wedding to “do whatever [Jesus] tells you to do.” In what areas of your life do you need to listen and hear “whatever he is telling you to do” so that you can have more awareness of and access to the true abundant nature of the Kingdom of God?

What would that listening and hearing look like for you practically? Do you have any reasons you might hesitate to create that space and time for listening? Why or why not?

In his sermon today, Tim shared a quote from Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Later, of this quote, Heraclitus also said, “not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice, but that some things stay the same only by changing.”

Tim then said, “to be human is to be the kind of thing that can stay the same only by changing… to refuse to change and grow is to diminish our humanity.”

Consider Heraclitus’ original quote. What does it speak to you? Does it resonate? If so, how? If not, why do you think that is?

What does it mean to be the kind of thing “that can stay the same only by changing?” How does refusing to change and grow diminish our humanity?

What experiences from your life bear witness to these truths? Where have you seen them in action?

Tim differentiated between religion and spirituality, sharing these definitions:

Religion: submitting to a particular tradition for the purpose of human formation.

Spirituality: the habits, rhythms, and practices that help us engage with God & our tradition

He then taught that “Jesus’ spirituality led him to question & rethink his religion.”

Think about each of these definitions. What stands out to you? Is it new to consider spirituality and religion as separate and distinct counterparts in your life of faith?

What do you think about the idea that Jesus’ spirituality led him to question and rethink his religion? What might you imagine this looking like for Jesus internally? How does this connect to your own experience? Share about ways in which your spirituality has influenced your religion and vice versa.

One of Tim’s first slides read, “Christianity teaches that our emotional, spiritual, physical, and psychological well-being - as persons and communities - depend on our willingness to surrender and constantly update our working models of reality.”

His final slide read, “we must all find a way to let our spirituality call our religion into question.”

How comfortable to do you feel with the idea that disruption is essential to your well-being? How attached do you feel to the idea of keeping your perceptions of reality unruffled and unchallenged?

What do you think about the idea of your spirituality calling your religion into question? What experience, if any, have you had of this dynamic? What emotions does it bring up for you? Do you feel places of resistance within yourself? Whether your answer is yes or no, why do you think that is?

Near the beginning of his sermon, Andy talked about the essential nature of setting in any story, and how our stories are inherently linked with their setting and context.

Think a little bit about the stories of your own life that are either prominent right now or have been in the story arc of your life so far. Share a bit about the stories that come to mind and the ways in which the setting and context of the moment are/were crucial to the overall shape of the story.

Andy shared what he called a “mini sermon” in the middle of his sermon. That mini sermon was this: small is often the way of God.

Spend some time reflecting on this statement. How does it strike you? In what was have you seen its truth (or not!) in your own life over time?

How does reflection on this idea and its truthfulness affect you in this moment? How can you take this idea and apply its wisdom in the challenging and painful places in your own life today?

Andy reminded us that “Jesus wasn’t born into a sentimental and idealized version of life.”
He went on to say, “the story of Bethlehem points us to the true essence of the Gospel! The ash heap of sorrow and grief can be turned into the birthplace of the Bread of Life.”

What does it communicate to you to remember that Jesus did indeed come into a very real and messy version of reality? How does that thought make you feel?

Now reflect on the idea of the ash heap becoming a birth place for the Bread of Life. Have you seen this truth in your own life? What do you think it means for the bread of Life to be born into the ash heaps and places of sorrow in your life? What does it look like? Is it possible to see that dawning of new life take place as it occurs, or only in retrospect? Would it be possible to miss it altogether? How might one recognize it?

One of Tim’s slides in his sermon today read, “the trajectory of our lives will shape the way we react when Messiah shows up.”

How do you understand what this means? How would you describe the trajectory of your own life, relative to this concept? What has it looked like or would it look like for you to orient or position your life on a trajectory that is or would be better able to receive Messiah when Messiah shows up?

Part of John the Baptist’s message to those who came to the wilderness to hear him was that they can’t rely on their status as part of the people of Israel to ensure their ability to receive Messiah and move toward the Kingdom.

Reflect on the fact that this admonition also applies to us today. Consider that neither your status in church membership nor your embrace of Christian cultural traditions are reliable qualifications for your readiness to receive Messiah in your life. How do you feel as you sit in that idea for a moment? What questions arise for you? What ideas?

Whether you count yourself among their numbers or not, how does it feel to consider those who are in processes of deconstruction and reconstruction as people in the process of repentance? Tim called the undertaking brave and faithful. How does that tally with the ways in which you usually think about deconstruction and those in the process?

Do you consider yourself as one of the people in the midst of deconstruction and reconstruction? How does it feel to consider yourself, in that context, as brave? As faithful? As repenting?

Share about what this framework for deconstruction and reconstruction stirs in your thoughts and feelings, and how it relates to your own experience.

When Tim reviewed the story of artist Phil Hansen, he said that a doctor advised Hansen to “embrace the shame… so he did.”

Hansen’s story, when quickly summarized, boils down to a single sentence what was no doubt a drawn out time of harrowing struggle and evolution for Hansen, both professionally and personally. Yet, this is often how our own life’s stories are for others on the outside, and sometimes even for ourselves in retrospect. What we experience as a milestone period of extended struggle, crisis, or catastrophe can be told later in a simple few sentences in which it’s difficult to convey the profound and transformative nature of the time.

What experiences in my your life have become, with time, short easily summarized stories? Are you facing circumstances now that you hope will someday also be able to be seen as shorter, more easily summarized journeys? And how do you feel contemplating the possibility? What might you hope that story could sound like someday?

In Tim’s sermon today, he said that “only those who’ve cultivated a sensitivity to God will encounter God’s presence in ordinary everyday things.” In contrast, many will need some sort of catastrophe or exile experience to get them to surrender their old dying world and ready to embrace what’s next.

Do you tend to lean more toward sensitivity to God in everyday things or do you think you’re more likely to need a catastrophe to help you soften toward reshaping? Are there examples from your past that inform your thoughts on your tendencies? Are there different contexts in which you feel like your readiness for reformation may be more or less easy to access?

After saying, “some of what we think we are won’t survive [the process of reshaping prompted by catastrophe], but that’s okay, because it’s killing us,” Tim posed a question to us all: what are you hanging onto that you need to let go of? What crutch, pacifier, or way of being in the world might need to be released in order to allow you to embrace the experience of God that comes on the other side?

After sharing your response to this question, reflect on practices you might undertake to help with the process of release and share with the group.

When telling the story of Phil Hansen’s learned wisdom and artistic process, Tim said, “his limitation fired his imagination.”

What limitations have you experienced or are you experiencing in your life at present? Are any of these limits in areas in which you also feel like you could really benefit from some firing of your imagination?

Have you seen ways in which your Christian faith (or that of another) has been well suited to these times of limitation or disorientation? How so?

Have you had times or circumstances in your past in which a limitation has led you to creative thinking, problem solving, or innovation? To new imagination? If so, share about how that came about for you.

Within the limiting bounds of exile, Jeremiah advised Israel’s people to live fruitful lives in their new situation and station, and to seek the peace and prosperity of Babylon, as its prospering would translate to their own as well.

Rather than fall into despair and hopelessness, Jeremiah seemed to embrace an idea articulated by Hansen: when faced with a limit, one ought to consider, “how will I find a new way to flourish within the bounds of this limit?”

If these two ideas represent a spectrum of response to places of disorienting limitation, with despair and hopelessness on one end and curious exploration of new possibilities on the other, where do you tend to fall on this spectrum? Has that shifted over time for you? Are there different contexts in which one response is more likely than another for you?

Think back to any present-day limitations you thought of in response to the first question. Where are you on that spectrum in regards to those circumstances?

Tim taught that as Empire desires to shape our lives, we can lean into the Christian practices that will help us to, instead, be formed into people of peace.

He listed these practices for us to consider:

Baptism & Eucharist

Sabbath & tithing

Weekly worship & daily prayer

Community & solitude

Peacemaking & solidarity with the outcast

He then asked, “as you think about your decrescendo, what practices will you engage in during Advent to make space for the future of God to be born in you?”

As you answer this question with your group, share about any barriers that may hinder your practice(s). What might you do to avoid being stalled by these barriers?

What does it mean to be a witness?
Is there a space in my life where I feel challenged to go against culture to follow Christ?
Where does my story intersect with the story of Perpetua and Felicitas (social conventions, crossing lines, advocating for others, speaking up, resilience, hope in another kind of life, seeing suffering in a different light, telling my story)?

In his sermon, Tim talked about two parallel lines of church history. The first, the Historical Tradition, is characterized by dogmatic theologians and the general domination of men within its points of significance. In contrast, the Wisdom Tradition is characterized by mystical theologians, and women take a much more significant role in its history.

The slide showing the two timelines is below. Does one of these feel more familiar to you? Its story more known or more relevant? Are there specific people or moments of significance in either that are personally important to you? If so, share about why. Are there some that you feel led to learn more about? If so, share about why.

What thoughts are prompted by noticing the contrasts between these two timelines while also recognizing their concurrence? What influence might recognizing these parallel traditions have on your overall understanding of the history of Christian theology? Is it important to hold both of these traditions in view when considering Christian theological history? Why or why not?

Julian of Norwich’s theology was neither sentimental nor sweet. She dove headfirst into difficult topics, including the problem of evil. In doing so, she wrote about Christ on the Cross. But unlike the views of her contemporaries, she didn’t see anger and wrath in the picture of the cross, but rather God’s solidarity and love. In the cross, she saw God absorbing man’s evil and returning only forgiveness.

Consider these different ways of understanding the cross. How do they compare with your own sense? Do you think of the cross as being more about wrath & anger? Or about solidarity & love? Whether you lean more toward one of these interpretations or some mixture, share about your sense of the cross and its relevance to your own personal faith practices. How does your conception of the cross affect your overall practice of your faith?

Tim taught that Julian saw, in Christ, an invitation to bring our brokenness to God - a process that requires growing in self-knowledge. And that this process helps us to participate in God’s well-making more and more.

What are your thoughts about the link between growing in self-knowledge and God’s ongoing well-making in the world? To what extent do you tend to think of your own self-awareness work as connected to God’s redemptive processes? Do they seem linked or rather separate? What do you make of the through line drawn by Tim through the theology of Julian of Norwich? How does this influence your thoughts and feelings about the extent to which you’ve engaged in self-knowledge work? What feelings does this entire idea prompt in you? How significant does it feel?

In his sermon today, Tim talked about the ways in which St. Guinefort was embraced as an example of two of Christianity’s core values: cruciformity & solidarity.

Do you have people in your life who exemplify cruciformity and solidarity especially well in your eyes? In what ways do they do say? Why are they such exemplars for you?

In what areas of your life are these two values particularly relevant? In which ways have you moved or do you want to move more toward cruciformity and solidarity in your own life & community?

Brainstorm as a group some specific small (or large) actions you (individually or collectively) could take that will help you to further embody cruciformity and solidarity in your own life.

Tim shared a simple formula for helping us to move our lives more toward cruciformity. He listed some examples of status (see slide below for examples list & formula). Once we identify our own places of status, then we need to be intentional about not using or leveraging those advantages for our own self-advancement (as is the “mind of” our culture). But, instead, we are to pursue the “mind of Christ,” following his example of “kenosis,” emptying ourselves and instead engaging those places of status to help lift others in solidarity.

Which advantages from this status list (or otherwise) do you identify in your own life? What do you think it would look like for you pour out, make void, and self-empty in that regard, rather than exploit or leverage your status/advantage/privilege?

Do you think there should be limits to kenosis in your life? If so, how would one determine where they should be? If not, why not? What do you think influences your answer to this specific question?

Tim taught about Jesus’ parable of the sheep & the goats (Matthew 25:31-46). He pointed out that in Jesus’ teaching, “those who refuse God’s grace to others they see as unworthy, are themselves unable to receive it.”

In contrast, “those who practice cruciformity & solidarity with the excluded will come alive with a life that is truly life.”

Further, Tim highlighted that Jesus’ call to cruciformity and solidarity includes no litmus test for who is worthy of that inclusion and solidarity, saying “there is no means testing for God’s grace.”

Where are the areas in which you are most tempted to try to apply restrictions to whom “should” be able to receive God’s grace, your solidarity, and/or any other form of inclusion? Why do you think those hesitations or refusals arise in you? Do you feel willing to move toward more cruciform solidarity in those areas? If so, how might you go about that? If not, why not?

In the first sermon in this year’s Saints series, Tim taught about Jürgen Moltmann’s life, work, and theological legacy.

What jumped out at you during this sermon and its stories? What ideas impacted you or caught your attention? What were some of the big ideas you heard as you listened?

When Moltmann, interred in a POW camp, first read the Bible, and read about Jesus’ cry from the cross, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” he thought, “here is a fellow who understands me.” He described Christ as “…the divine brother in need, the companion on the way…the fellow sufferer who carries you, with your suffering.”

Consider this view of Christ. To what extent does this align with the way you tend to this of the Son? Is there anything in this description that feels particularly resonant for you? Anything that feels kinda off? What, if anything, might you modify, add, or subtract to articulate your own sense of Christ more closely?

What emotions or thoughts are prompted in you when you spend a little time considering Christ through this lens? Does the hope that surfaced for Moltmann feel relatable? Accessible?

Following are three of the Moltmann quotes Tim shared. Read through them as a group (all at once or one-at-a-time), and discuss your thoughts on each. What’s stirred up for you? How is your sense of hope impacted? What resonates with your own experiences of hope and/or its absence?

Is there anything here you needed to hear or of which you often need to be reminded? Is there anything in these words that inspires intention or action within yourself?

“Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”

“Hell is hopelessness.”

“[the cross] encounters us as the great promise of our life and this world: nothing will be in vain…We are called to this hope, and the call often sounds like a command - a command to resist death and the powers of death, and a command to love life and cherish it: every life, the life we share, the whole of life.”

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In her sermon, Marina McClure spoke about the often unconscious assumptions we might make while we read the Bible. She specifically pointed out assumptions we might make about the underlying motives behind social interactions and/or the tone of voice being used in different exchanges.

What are your thoughts about these ideas and the examples she gave from today’s scripture reading? To what extent have you considered tone of voice when reading Biblical dialogue? How often are you aware of assumptions you might be making when you read? How often do you explore ideas about the different possible underlying social norms and subtext?

How easy or difficult does it seem to integrate this kind of slowed-down and curious exploration of different possibilities as you read the Bible? How appealing is it for you? How valuable does it seem?

In a couple places in the scripture’s story, Marina suggested alternative ways of understanding Jesus’ experience of the moment, or a variety of ways of interpreting what’s being communicated.

What’s it like for you to encounter alternative frames for understanding often familiar Biblical stories or ideas? Do you experience any resistance or does it feel interesting? Does it seem difficult to consider things in that way? Are there things about your own personality or background that might be especially congruent with your response to this way of thinking about the Bible?

Marina invited us all to try to engage with the Bible in a way that intentionally looks for questions and tries to practice active wondering as we read.

What thoughts & feelings surface in response to these suggestions? How do you feel about the idea of intentionally seeking things you can’t easily clarify? What do you think it might look like to try to engage in more “active wondering” as you read the Bible? What kind of impacts do you think this orientation toward reading the Bible could have for your own experience of the Bible and/or your faith?

Today, Nick Pickerell taught about Zacchaeus’s repentance and immediate commitment to making reparations as told in Luke 19. He paralleled some of Zacchaeus’ likely activities as a tax collector to some of the unjust practices of excluding and exploiting black people, native people, and other people of color that have long been codified in our country’s governmental and social structures.

How did you feel as you listened to Nick reciting the list of some of the unjust policies and practices that he shared as examples? What emotions came up for you?

If possible, try to recreate that moment in your memory & share about your experience of it as you listened. Were there thoughts or ideas that surfaced for you as well?

Reflecting back on the moment, what observations can you make about your own internal responses? Do you have any thoughts about how you responded and what your own experience of that moment was?

Nick pointed out that, in response to Zacchaeus repentance and commitment to enacting justice, Jesus declared that, on that day, salvation had come to Zacchaeus’s house.

What do you make of this apparent cause-and-effect moment? What is it about Zacchaeus’ actions that allowed salvation to come to the entire household?

What wisdom for your own life today can you find in this moment of both Zacchaeus’ commitments & Jesus’ pronouncement? How is this relevant for you today? What questions or ideas does this part of the story prompt in you?

Nick had us discuss a few questions together in smaller groups as he prepared to close his sermon. He first asked us to identify and name different systems of injustice which we’ve seen, participated in, or been made aware of. He then asked for us to identify different ways - big and small - in which we personally can impact or have impacted these and other unjust systems in our lives and communities.

Spend some time as a group responding to those two questions. You can share what your group discussed during church if you were there and also come up with new examples and ideas together.

Make a written list, as a group, of ways to engage. To whatever degree possible, generate a list of resources, organizations, or engagement opportunities you’re aware of so that you can work together as a group to help support and inform each other’s efforts to engage and enact justice in whatever capacity is possible for you as a way to remind yourselves that, as Nick said, every action matters and helps to bring wholeness to our communities.

Pastor Tim Keel began his teaching today by framing some ideas around politics and citizenship. He said:

“Politics is about…

How we belong to each other
What we owe one another
What we owe society &
Who holds ultimate loyalty”

What do you think of these summarizing statements? Does one or another capture something significant in your view or just jump out to you? Which and for what reasons?

Are there any of these that seem more or less relevant to our present moment in history? More or less relevant in our lives as Christians? Share about how so or why not.

Tim also added that what we’re really talking about with all these ideas is citizenship, and added that the a key question is, “when there is a conflict in loyalty, who wins?”

Many of us know that our ultimate loyalty is “supposed to be” to Christ, and yet living our lives in that way is often much simpler in theory than in practice.

What are some of the areas in life in which your divided loyalties are most likely to present themselves? Where do you most struggle to choose a path that honors your ultimate identity as a Christian rather than another loyalty or identity? Share about those spaces, what characterizes them, and the ways in which you experience the tensions between different loyalties that you hold.

Are there contexts in which you feel like the idea of Christ-as-ultimate-authority is especially relevant? What about contexts in which it may seem like Christ’s authority is or should be less a factor in your decision making or actions?

Tim also talked about the impact of Emperor Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as the state religion of Rome, and the far-reaching impacts on Christianity’s relationship to politics and power. He said that, for the many centuries since, Christians have tended to believe that the Church needs the power of the state.

What are your thoughts about this idea? What have you observed about the threads of this concept in the Christianity you see around you?

Is there some extent to which you think that Christianity does need - or, at least, could be aided by - integration with powers of state? Alliances with powers of state? Is this something that’s shifted for you over time? Share about your views & experiences.

Considering these ideas, how do you then understand and integrate Paul’s directive to “pray for those in authority…so that we may live peaceful and quiet lives?”

In what ways does the idea of “peaceful and quiet” living align with your sense of living out your Christian faith and fidelity to Christ?

Are there ways in which you feel some measure of resistance to or dissonance resulting from the idea of “peaceful and quiet living” as an ideal Christian way of engaging with secular authority? Share about your thoughts and feelings with the group.

In his sermon about the story of Hagar in Genesis 16, Dr. Taylor Johnson talked about the difference between anxiety and fear.

Of anxiety, he said, “Anxiety is a response to a potential threat that may or may not occur at some point in the future.” He also noted that anxiety gets its power from the unknown, and that we often try to give ourselves a sense of control by predicting the future - even though the accuracy rates for our predictions are abysmal.

What are some examples from your own past? Share about a time in which the unknown and its accompanying anxiety drove you to try to figure out the future. How accurate were your predictions? In retrospect, how do you feel about the energy you invested into making them, considering them, and carrying anxiety about them?

When you’ve done this type of predicting to try to gain a sense of control, has it worked? Has it helped? What are other ways you might have tried to create a sense of control? And are they any more or less helpful in the long run?

Taylor also taught about the concept of liminal space, using Richard Rohr’s words as a definition: “liminal space is where we are both betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence.”

Taylor talked about the liminal spaces in which Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar all most likely suffered.

Think about, and if you’re willing, share about a liminal space in which you have found or presently do find yourself. What was/is your experience of that space? (And it can be a liminal space of any significance, size or importance; there’s no need to compare your experience to Abraham’s, Sarah’s, Hagar’s or anyone else’s).

Are there things that made or make it less bearable? More bearable? Do you feel able to consider your own liminal experiences and discomfort in light of the compassion and curiosity Taylor talked about? Are you able to access compassion & curiosity when it comes to the liminal spaces of others? Is that easier or harder? Why?

Dr. Johnson spent some time re-narrating the stories of Abraham, Sarah, & Hagar - all with an emphasis on highlighting the pain they each must have experienced in their own liminal spaces.

What’s it like for you to reconsider these stories in this way? How does it impact your feelings about these stories? These people? Your own journeys through life and liminal spaces? God?

What are you learning or reflecting on bevause of the stories of these three people after and because of Taylor’s sermon today?

In his sermon on Mark 8:22-35, Dr. Brady Braatz pointed out that this story, in which Jesus restores sight to a blind man, stands alone as the only miracle Jesus performs in the gospels in which he has to give it a 2nd try to fully complete the miracle.

What do you make of the fact that Jesus essentially tries again in this story? What do you think the different groups of people (disciples, onlookers, etc) around him might have thought or felt in those moments? What about the blind man himself? What do you think could have been happening for Jesus?

Brady then taught about the expectations that the disciples (and many others) had for a messiah. He also talked about the fact that, after Peter shares that the disciples think Jesus is the messiah, Jesus doesn’t confirm or deny that for them.

Dr. Braatz said this type of (non) response probably led to an explosion in the imaginations of the disciples - specifically because of their likely well-developed expectations for the long-awaited messiah.

Take a second and let your mind imagine that moment between Jesus and the disciples. What tones of voice do you hear? How would you characterize Jesus’ questions? Why do you think he’s asking? What about Peter’s responses? Spend some time imagining the moment knowing that there are no right or wrong answers. Then share or brainstorm together as a group about some of the different possible versions of that exchange.

Are there any perspectives or imagined characterizations that surprise you? Any you think of as less or more likely? Why do you think certain versions resonate with you differently than others?

What about the tail end of that story, when Jesus predicts his death and resurrection only to be contradicted by Peter. As Jesus responds to Peter by rebuking the accuser or Satan, how do you imagine the tone of that interaction? The responses of those witnessing it? What do you think was happening under the surface in that moment for Jesus? For Peter?

Finally, Brady tied these two stories together and suggested that we may be able to see parallels to our own lives of faith in each of them.

As we contemplate the story of Jesus’ 2-step healing of the blind man ,and that of Peter’s confession to and subsequent rebuke by Jesus, we might also see instances in which - like some of those in the stories, we struggle with a moment that goes against our expectations of God or things of faith.

Think about this dynamic in your own life. Can you share an occasion on which you struggled to let go of your pre-existing ideas in favor of a new understanding of some part of your story of faith?

What other experiences do you have that relate to the idea of only partially “getting it” in your life of faith? What has been your experience of seeing things a new way or of shedding old expectations and understanding? What have the impacts of these examples been on your relationship to God and to your practice of life as a Christian?

1. What might you discern, in this final third of the year, that God might be asking you NOT to do?

“Stress is a perverted relationship to time…we become [time’s] victim.” John O’Donohue

She also asked (paraphrased) “do you think the way you live your life (and the way you engage with time) reflect God’s vision for your life in the world?”

“You are not a machine. Your life is a garden, and it’s a life that needs to be tended.”

“Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” - Dallas Willard

“Hurry and love are incompatible. All my worst moments…are when I’m in a hurry - late for an appointment, behind on my unrealistic to-do list, trying to cram too much into my day. I ooze anger, tension, a critical-nagging - the antithesis of love.” - John Mark Comer

“Love requires a slowness… love requires margins…love requires hospitality.”

God prunes both the branches that are not bearing fruit AND the living branches… all in order for us to bear more fruit. (Re: John 15:1-2)

What in your life needs to get pruned right now?

2. What might you discern that God is asking you to continue to do?
What in your life needs you to give it time to faithfully tend it?

3. What new thing do you discern that God might be asking you to plant?

“Whatever you plant in your life will be the thing that grows.”

Where’s the deficiency in your life right now?

“When you step into that spacious place, what is God trying to tell you?”

Pastor John Bowles centered his sermon today on John 12:28. This verse includes this succinct prayer from Jesus: “Father, glorify your name.” John shared that this prayer can make him feel uncomfortable at times. He attributed that to the fact that, a lot the time, this doesn’t align with what he really wants. Then he asked us all a simple question to begin: how does this prayer make you feel? Share your response to this initial question and your thoughts about why your response may be what it is with your group.

John also asked this question: If glorifying God is to make God real and show his substance in a way that makes him real, how are we doing with that? Reflect on this question. What catches your attention in this shorthand definition of what it means to glorify God? What response does it provoke in you? Then reflect on the question itself. What are your thoughts? Do you feel personally engaged in this type of glorification? Do you think it is something you’d like to be a part of more? or less? or at all?

How do you conceive of the links between individuals engaging in this type of glorification and the big picture community-wide and church-wide glorification of God? Which feels more urgent or important for you? Which feels easier to imagine or engage in?

John shared this quote from CS Lewis: “All the loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that this world contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale agains the least moment of the joy that is felt in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all.”

What do you think about this quote? Does it ring true for you? Does it stir up objections for you? Agreement? What feelings does it prompt in you? When you think about the things that weigh on you as your own “loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings” in this world, what kind of emotions surface in you as you reflect on this perspective? What thoughts?

John also talked about the positioning of this prayer within the book of John; it’s smack dab in the middle. He framed it as a fulcrum in the life of Jesus with the time preceding this moment as a time in which Jesus’ public ministry and profile were growing in both size and prominence. After this point of transition, Jesus moved more into a space of letting go of all that, and of living in a way that was more solely focused on what God desired of him.

John suggested that as we pattern our lives after Jesus, each of us undergoes this type of transition as well. We may spend the first parts of our lives doing and building, but we then experience a time (often in midlife) of loss and transition in which we can learn that all those things we worked toward aren’t really ours and aren’t who we are. At that point, we move into a space in which we become more focused on something beyond ourselves.

Where do you see yourself in this process? How does it correspond to your physical age? If we grant this process is accurately described, what do you think about it? John mentioned that many of us may resist this process. Do you feel resistance to it (or to the idea of it) in yourself? Whether your answer is more “yes" or more “no," why do you think your answer is what it is?

In his sermon, Andy shared about the three Transcendentals: The True, the Good, and the Beautiful. He taught that the true is correlated with the practice of Christian apologetics, and that apologetics should be the articulation of the view that Christ is the truth. He also said that much of discipleship in the modern church has been focused on a misapplication of apologetics, in which the focus is more on convincing people that the doctrinal claims of your church are correct.

What’s been your experience with apologetics? If you’ve had exposure to the idea or practice of apologetics, share about it with the group, including ways in which it may have evolved with time. What are your current senses of and feelings about apologetics as you’ve understood it? Consider the pursuit of apologetics as Andy framed it: the articulation of the view that Christ is the truth.” Does that shift anything for you? How so?

After he spoke about both apologetics and ethics/justice, Andy spoke about beauty. He talked about Christian Aesthetics and the ways in which they can help to lead us into an encounter with God, using architecture as an example. He also talked about other forms which beauty can take, including nature, theater, painting, sculpture, song, poetry, and literature. Which forms of beauty tend to affect you most? What’s your experience of beauty helping lead you into an encounter with God? If you have any memorable experiences you’d be open to sharing, please do.

Andy reminded us that our capitalist society teaches us that worth and value are connected to function and utility… but that, in truth, beauty doesn’t have a to serve a purpose. How does this reminder impact you? What thoughts and feelings surface? Does this feel like something that’s easy for you to hold onto, or something more easily forgotten? Do you have resistance to it in anyway? What do you think would happen in your own life if you put greater emphasis on having experiences of beauty? What might impact do you think that could have on your faith?

Andy put forth the question, “What is Christian beauty?” He gave his own answer as, “Christian beauty is nothing other than cruciform [in the metaphorical shape of the cross], because Christian beauty is found on the cross and in the resurrection.” He went on to say that the cross is beautiful because it is where human sin does its worst and divine love does its best.

Share your response to this idea with the group. What surfaces for you? Does this seem challenging in any way? If so, how?

Now consider spaces in your own life where you experience regular beauty. Do you see cruciformity in those places? How so? Alternatively, where you wish you could experience more beauty? Can you imagine ways in which a cruciform form of beauty could be brought into that space in a greater degree? What might that look like?

In his talk today, Jonathan Foster shared this definition of love:

“Love is an uncontrolling, nonbinary, non-violent, non-scapegoating energy in relationship with God and others, meant for the flourishing of everyone.”

Consider this definition. What are some of the ideas and thoughts that surface for you? If you were able to hear his sermon, what did you think when you first heard the definition?

As Dr. Foster expanded on the specific parts of this definition, what stood out? Where did you find yourself particularly in agreement? What parts left you feeling uneasy? What parts left you with questions? What are those questions?

Jonathan said, “some people use the words of the Bible to define love; some people use love to define the words of the Bible.” He went on to strongly endorse the latter approach.

Spend some time as a group articulating these two approaches in your own language. What do they mean? What does each look like in practice?

What are your words thoughts and opinions about embracing the latter over the former or vice versa?

Toward the end of his sermon, Jonathan invited each of us to take this definition of love into our worlds and embody it in our lives.

Where do you see the strongest need for this kind of love to be embodied in the places and relationships with which your life intersects? How might you accept Jonathan’s invitation and embody this love in your life? Are there circumstances in which you can imagine this clarity & definition especially functioning as an asset? Share with the group.

Christina taught today about the relationship between place, YHWH, and Israel. She suggested that the land is a co-partner in the covenant between Israel and YHWH, and taught us that part of the significance of the land is that “the land is the place that Israel exists

with

God.”

With that as background, Dr. Bohn asked, “What does it look like to co-partner with the land as Israel did?” She asked what it would be like if we saw the land not as a space to pass through or own, but instead as a place in which to partner with the land and with Israel.

Reflect on these ideas and questions and discuss your thoughts with the group. Have you ever considered the role of the land in the covenant? In the relationship between God’s people and God? How does this idea sit for you? What thoughts does it prompt for you?

Christina shared a quote from Willie Jennings: “Owning can never be a way of belonging.”

What’s your initial response to this idea? What surfaces as you consider it specifically related to land?

With the concept of being a “landowner” so prominent in the political and social history of our country, what would it mean to stop thinking of ourselves as potential landowners, and instead as people in covenant relationship with the land?

What does that shift and mean for you or your neighbors, whether your homeowners, renters, experiencing homelessness, or in another situation?

Christina also talked about rootlessness and its relationship to space, place, and the land. What does it mean to be rootless?

She shared a quote from Walter Brueggemann: “it is rootlessness, not meaninglessness, that defines us.”

What do you think this quote means? What’s Brueggemann identifying about our experiences in life? How true does it ring for you?

What’s the wisdom to take away from this idea if we’re looking at places in our own life that may feel meaningless? Could the idea of the land and our relationship with it factor in here? If so, how?

Quoting Walter Brueggemann, Tim taught about the “doable character of Torah,” and that this nature “frees the community of the faithful from from excessive preoccupation and anguish about how and in what ways obedience might be done.”

How does this resonate with your own experiences of Torah, whether that’s been over this summer at RC, over the last five summers, or in other contexts? How “doable” does it seem to you? How has your sense of the Torah evolved over the course of this time studying Deuteronomy and in the past?

In his sermon, Tim pointed out that what was true for Israel so long ago is still true in our lives today: “God isn’t the only one making offers of blessing.” Some of the examples of other offerers he shared are (a) individualism (aka “rights & freedoms”), (b) consumerism (aka “the economy”), and (c) nationalism (aka “national security.”

First, as a group name some of the blessings on offer from the “-isms” above. What specifically is being offered?

How real do you think these offers are? In what ways can these offered blessings be delivered? What and how do these “-isms” and others fall short of what’s promised?

3.. Tim shared the following quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”

What are same trains that you are on today or have been on in the past where you perhaps are trying (or did try) to run the corridor in the opposite direction?

What do you think of Bonhoeffer’s observation? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?

What are some of the reasons it can be difficult to exit those misdirected trains? If you feel like you’ve had an experience of exiting this type of metaphorical train in your own life, how did you do it? Are you glad you did? What are some of the outcomes (positive, negative, or neutral) of de-boarding one of these “trains?”

When making the decisions alluded to in Deuteronomy 28:3-5, the decisions that lead to life and prosperity or to death and disaster, Tim reminded us that “today is always the day this choice is set before us.”

How hard or easy is it for you to believe this? Does it seem true? Are there places or situations in life when you feel like it’s too late to change your choices?

Does the idea of “you get to choose again every day” feel more true for others than for you? Share about what this idea prompts for you internally as you consider it.

Tim talked about a couple very significant words in scripture, referencing Exodus 2:24: “God shema’d (hear, listen, respond) their cries, zakar’d (remember) his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob….”

He went on to say that “every time it seems like there’s no hope for the world, the story turns on the memory of God.” He then gave numerous examples of God remembering some of the major figures in the Old Testament during their times of need and crisis.

Take a few moments to consider the idea that, in the present day, God continues to help humanity reconnect with and re-member the forgotten promise of wholeness and flourishing.

Think of the list Tim provided, instances in which God remembered Noah, Abraham, Rachel, Joseph, and God’s covenant. Can you imagine your name and life added to that list? What’s it like to imagine God remembering you, individually, just as God did with those whose stories have been passed on for so many generations? How easy or difficult is it to connect to that idea?

What impact do you think it could have if you and those around you could easily see themselves as part of this same ongoing story of God remembering God’s people in times of hopelessness? Can you come up with ways in which, perhaps, God has already done and is doing that remembering in your life? If so, what has that looked like?

Tim also talked about the many places in scripture in which we are told to “remember, do not forget….”

What does this look like in the practical? Which practices most help you to re-member and reconnect to the forgotten promise of wholeness and flourishing?

Are there contexts, relationships, or times in life in which this remembering work has felt more difficult? Less difficult? Share about those experiences and the practices that did or maybe could have shifted the experience for you in the midst of them.

Tim closed his sermon sharing a bit about the principles and purposes underlying his upcoming sabbatical.

Regardless of your vocation, we all have areas in our lives in which it may feel impossible or impractical to have an actual sabbatical or even protracted times of sabbath. These could be hands-on responsibilities like parenting, caretaking, your job, etc or more internal “labors” like planning for future needs, worrying about things like finances, contemplating future unknowns, processing relationships, and the like.

How can we embrace the principles of sabbatical in places and settings in which it may not be actionable or possible in our lives? How do we respond to this practical limitation? What can we do to try to incorporate sabbath practices even in contexts in which it’s not really feasible? Are there ways we can create similar opportunities for freedom even without a structured sabbatical or sabbath schedule?

One of the slides in this week’s sermon read as follows: “Our economic system is designed so that corporations and billionaires can: avoid paying a living wage to their workers, turn your honest day’s work into cash, and keep most of it for themselves while avoiding paying taxes they expect you to pay, using their profits to buy political muscle, and to distract the working class with never-ending culture wars, knowing if they can keep us fighting each other over social issues, we’ll never come together to demand systemic change. That’s our system.” Of this, Tim said, “This is how a system with no access to wisdom organizes itself.” And (paraphrasing), “if the people of God organize themselves like the empires of the world, they cannot bear the image of God.” Discuss: How do you respond to the idea that our current world’s systems are the result of a lack of wisdom? What do you think of the idea that our empire-patterned systems are incongruent with our purpose to bear the image of God? What’s the impact of a Christianity that patterns itself after Empire-driven values and ideas?
A passage from Deuteronomy 16 read, in part, “…and for the people, they are to do justice (mishpat) with righteousness (tsedakah).” Tim expanded on the Hebrew concepts behind these two words. Re justice (mishpat), his summarizing slides read: “Systems that govern actions Maintain social relationships that are human, humane, and humanizing” and “What needs to be done in a situation: a set of actions that must be taken in order to restore God’s ideal” Re righteousness (tsedakah): “The standard by which other things of the type can be measured; how we know we’re doing right by somebody in a given context” And “The state of affairs that constitute that ideal; what you aim to achieve, only embodied in people & relationships.” What thoughts and feelings arise for you as you absorb these ideas and summaries? Do these definitions shift your own understanding of justice or righteousness in any way? If so, how? When you consider your own life, both in everyday matters and in larger extraordinary contexts, how conscious are you of trying to live in accordance with this wisdom? Where does that seem most natural? Where is it most difficult? Where/when do you think it matters the most?
Where do you find examples of people living out God’s instruction to “do justice (mishpat) with righteousness (tsedakah)?” Are they more plentiful in some contexts than in others? Share about some of the ways - big or small - that you see “justice with righteousness” alive in our world. Where does this type of systemic way of being begin? Where can you find its seeds in our communities and lives? How can you encourage its embodiment in yourself and in others?

In his sermon, Tim discussed two parallel narratives in scripture and the stories and framework that lead into each of the two. These stories are the flood story in Genesis and the conquest narratives in Deuteronomy. Tim pointed out that in both of these stories, instead of shalom, there is chaos, barrenness, violence, and war. He went on to say that, in scripture, violence is a creation-level problem that is portrayed as the fundamental human problem and that this violence results in humanity being unable to fulfill its intended purpose of bearing the image of God. To what extent do you feel that violence in our world and culture today impedes our collective ability to bear the image of God? To what extent do you feel that violence within yourself and your world impedes your ability to bear the image of God?
In helping us to engage and grapple with the portrayals of divine violence in Deuteronomy, Tim suggested we can work to deepen our reading of scripture, and to find more depth and sophistication in our understanding of how scripture functions. Tim said that in the Bible, we have “the inspired testimony of the Hebrew people, as they were coming to know their God over many centuries.” He went on to say that, “God let God’s children tell the story, and they get it wrong as much as they get it right.” Suggesting we remember the way a child’s description of his father and mother evolves over the course of a lifetime, Tim reminded us that the stories about God in Torah are not told by fully grown, theologically mature cultures. Later in his sermon, Tim also said, “Scripture is this incredible narrative that shows us what happens when they get God right, and when they get God wrong.” He also said, “The Bible is the testimony of a people who wrestled with God over thousands of years. They did their best to try to tell the story faithfully," and that, "when they failed, they tried again and failed better.” What’s your response to these ideas? How do you feel in response to this framing of the Bible? What thoughts come to mind? What kinds of feelings rise to the surface as you consider and reflect on this set of ideas and how you relate to scripture today and/or how you have in the past? Are there different statements among the above that most engage your imagination?
In his closing prayer, Tim prayed for us as “we struggle with our own violent hearts.” What surfaces for you in response to being (implicitly) asked to acknowledge and struggle with violence within yourself? When you think of violence, what first comes to mind? Does it feel like something far away or something more immediate? When you think of violence within yourself, what does that mean to you? What ideas and feelings surface for you? How do you understand it? Who do you first think of as the recipient of that violence? Who or what else might come to mind?

In his sermon today, Tim used several ideas to help illustrate the difference between Israel’s law and what we might naturally think of today when considering the idea of law or laws. In doing so, he said that, for Ancient Israel, the purpose of the law was relational, and that its terms were formational. He also said that “the goal of the Jewish law was wisdom - to form a people who were wise.” What thoughts and ideas surface for you as you consider this? What questions surface? If this is a different way for you to conceive of Israel’s law, how does this paradigm shift strike you? What ideas or concepts that you’ve held in the past might be impacted? How significant does this shift seem to you? Why?
Tim contrasted the key characteristics of statutory law and those of common law. (That slide is below/attached). Go through some of the different comparisons on this chart and discuss with the group ways in which you see outcomes of this statutory legal system at work in our world today. Next, spend some time trying to imagine ways in which our modern society might look different if, somehow, we were instead still founded on a common law premise. What would be some of the potential positives? What would be some of the potential drawbacks? How easy or difficult is it to even imagine such a thing? Why might that be?
Tim said that Jesus’ (wholly Jewish) way of life fulfilled everything that Torah was trying to do. As a result, when we consider our own need for intentional engagement with habits, rhythms, and practices that lead to wisdom, we can look to Christ’s way of being as a guide to help transform us into a kingdom of people doing the work of mediating God’s presence to the world. As you consider the ways in which you attempt to embrace practices and rhythms that embody and embrace Christ’s way of being in the world, how does it feel to think of your own personal practices today as being in direct continuity with the nation of Israel as it stood at the base of a burning mountain, agreeing to embrace a covenant with God? Through your discussion as a group, see if you can help each other to find some sort internal connection to those ancient people. Can you imagine yourself as a part of that ancient people? What surfaces for you as you try to put yourself “in their shoes” more concretely? What might shift if we, as 21st century Christians, were able to see ourselves as some of the direct inheritors of this moment and all it communicated about the relationship possible between God and God’s people in the world? Can you get a sense of ways in which there could be shift for you personally? What might that be like?

As Tim expanded upon and reframed our understanding of quite a few words in this week’s sermon, how are you left feeling? What impact on your own sense of “understanding” the Bible are you experiencing?

If our English translations and, as a result, our understandings of crucial words and concepts such as love, listen, heart, soul, strength, and Jehovah are incomplete, flawed, or misguided, what does that mean for us as people who look to the scripture as a primary resource in our lives of faith?

What might it look like for you or for us to wrestle and engage with the reality of these apparent disconnects? How do we stay honest with ourselves about the gaps in our own understanding while also acknowledging that we can probably never become aware of all of them?

In examining some of these critical Hebrew words in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Tim started with the word “shema” itself. In short, the meaning of the word is “hear, listen…obey.”

He also talked about a word often translated into English as love: “ahavah.” Tim taught that this word’s meaning is not only affection, but specifically affection paired with action.

With both these of these words, Tim gave numerous examples of familiar passages in which they’re used in the Old Testament.

Recall (or look up) a few of these verses (list below) as a group, and reconsider their meanings in light of these more nuanced definitions.

Are there places where what your understanding of these verses shifts significantly with your new understanding of the words “Shema” (translated as hear, listen) and “ahavah” (translated as love)? How does it impact your understanding to know that both these words include with them a sense of active response?

Psalm 27:7
Exodus 19:5
Deuteronomy 7:7-8
Deuteronomy 4:37
Deuteronomy 10:18
Jeremiah 31:3
Deuteronomy 10:12-13

Tim also contrasted the idea of love in a sentimental sense with the idea of a love that inherently includes action. He talked about the relevance of this difference not only in how we love God, but also in how we love our neighbors, immigrants, orphans, and other groups of people that are often outcast in our society.

What does it mean to love these people with sentimentality? What’s different about loving them with “ahavah,” with affection AND action? How does this look in our everyday lives? How does it look in your everyday life?

Now consider some of the other relationships in your life. What’s the significance of affection paired with action when it comes to loving your co-workers? Your spouse? Your friends? Your families? Your neighbors? Does this idea shift anything for you? Why or why not?

As we head into the book of Deuteronomy, how are you feeling about? Do you look forward to these summer studies in the Old Testament? Is this your first?

Prior to this sermon, how much did you know about the book of Deuteronomy? How important does an understanding of this book seem to you? Why? How are you feeling about it after this first introductory sermon?

Tim outlined the meaning of the Hebrew word be’er. Essentially, it means re-interpretation… making clear, reiterating, and adapting. Tim also said that, “this be’er (reinterpretation) of Torah (teaching, laws) was assumed to be both necessary and faithful.”

He also said (paraphrased) that “the easiest way to fail at faithfulness is to refuse to do this work, either by ignoring the faith or attempting to preserve the external form of the faith unchanged from a previous era.”

What’s your experience with this idea? What surfaces for you, both intellectually and emotionally, as you contemplate the idea that what it looks like to embody allegiance and fidelity to YHWH will and should change over time? How much does this align with what you have been taught about Christianity and faithfulness to God? What do you make of any disparities or similarities you find between this idea and whatever you’ve thought before?

Tim put up the following slide (attached) toward the close of his sermon. Slowly re-read and digest its words and discuss, as a group, the different ideas, feelings, and responses that it prompts in you.

What experiences do you have that connect to ideas here? Share what you’ve seen and learned through those experiences.

While discussing the tension between independence/individualism and the interdependence inherent in both Christianity & the trinity, Tim pointed out that our culture drives us toward independence while Jesus calls (not drives) us toward interdependence.

Take a moment to consider those two ideas within the context of your own life & experiences. In what ways do you feel or have you felt driven toward independence by the world and culture in which we live? Are there settings or areas in which that feels most true or applicable?

In what ways do you feel/have you felt called toward interdependence by Christ and your Christian faith? Are there settings or areas of life in which that feels most applicable or relevant for you?

One of Tim’s slides read, “the smallest unit of health for humanity is not the individual, but the community.”

Spend some time considering this idea. What surfaces for you? Where does it feel “right?” Where does it evoke discomfort? Tension? What would you say to support the trustworthiness of this idea? Are there things you’d say to contradict it?

The second half of that same slide finished the idea within a Christian framework so that the whole slide read, “the smallest unit of health for humanity is not the individual, but the community…modeled on God’s own way of being…a community of self-giving love.”

Many of us might first think of God’s self-giving love as being exemplified by Jesus… and maybe only or mostly by Jesus.

How does thinking within the context of the trinity shift your understanding of self-giving love? Discussing together, try to put some language to what it means for God’s self-giving way of being to be exemplified by the community of the Trinity. (No wrong answers! Just brainstorming language & ideas!)

Tim shared the following/attached slide in his sermon. Even if you’ve heard these ideas on multiple occasions, how easy is it for you to recall & connect to these concepts when you consider or discuss Christianity? If there has been (or is) shift in how you relate to these ideas, please share about that evolution in your own journey with the group.

For reference, the practices Tim shared alongside these ideas are: baptism, sabbath, weekly worship, community, peacemaking, communion, tithing, daily prayer, solitude, and pairing with the outcast.

It might be easy to list ways in which you see the church at large “getting it wrong,” but there are also ways that we sometimes get it right - in addition to the many historical examples Tim shared.

Where are examples of that “getting it right” lodged into your memory and mind? What instances and expressions of Christ’s Spirit - big or small - have you seen in your life?

After your group spends some time reflecting on these “getting it right” examples, what feelings are rising to the surface for you?

How similar to or dissimilar from the feelings you usually feel about the church at large are the feelings surfacing in this conversation?

What do you take from the Walking Wall metaphor*? Discuss the concrete ways you've seen that apply to the church (as Tim shared?

How might it apply to your faith personally? Or to your life generally? Where else might you find it a useful use?

*If anyone in your group isn’t familiar, please take some time to help explain the metaphor & its major points. If you’re not sure where to start, you can just let Tim do it via video from the sermon on YouTube (time stamps aren’t yet set as I’m writing this, but he starts showing slides of the wall just as he starts talking about it).

One of the slides Tim put up during his sermon read, “part of what it means to be a Christian involves learning to contemplate the true nature of love.”

What do you think this really means pragmatically and in our day to day lives as Christians? How do we engage in this practice? If someone sought your advice about how to contemplate the true nature of love, what might you say?

Another slide said, “Love (after Christianity) is self-sacrifice… to elevate someone else, in importance, over myself.”

Tim also pointed to a cultural conception of love that is about “finding yourself.” In contrast, Jesus taught a love that was more about “losing yourself.”

How do all these ideas strike you? In what ways do you feel resistance to them? Do you have other ideas and priorities that conflict to some degree with these concepts?

How do you process the tensions that exist between Jesus’ example of self-sacrificial love and other things like meeting our own physical needs or perhaps a need for boundaries in our relationships? Where does that get difficult to navigate? Are there limits to what that self-sacrifice is meant to be? How do we negotiate how self-sacrificial love takes shape in the actual living of our lives?

In his sermon, Tim said, “[love] has a way of drawing out of us the things we don’t want to know [about ourselves.]”

What’s your experience of this idea? In what relationships and ways has love drawn things out of you that you might have preferred not to see or acknowledge?

In the long run, what have been some of the positive byproducts of this dynamic? What have some of the beneficial byproducts of this principle-in-action? What have been some of the painful or hurtful byproducts?

Considering your collective answers, is love worth it? What might you say to someone who’s doubting that it is?

In preaching about the passage from John 14 in which Jesus says, “I am the True Vine,” Mandy discussed what it means to “bear fruit,” and suggested several related questions.

So, what do you think? What does it mean to “bear fruit?” And, if you can, share a bit about how you arrived at your answer or, perhaps, what influences led to your conclusions.

What is it that you think God wants from you (personally & individually)? How does it differ from with what you think God wants from us, as the Christian body of the church?

Finally, what do you think God wants from us, as the collective of humanity. Compare your answer to the answers you provided in the previous two questions.

What do you notice when observing the way these answers (yours & those of the group altogether), compare to one another?

Mandy preached about the intended interconnectedness of not only people generally, but also in our lives as Christians. She shared a quote from Nadia Bolz-Weber that ends by saying, “dependence is not a matter of personal morality or preference; it’s a matter of life and death - branches that refuse to cling to the vine die.”

Of this, Mandy said, “That’s not a threat; it’s just what happens.”

Do you really believe this? That we affect each other in crucial ways? That we need each other, really? That the point of your Christian existence isn’t really about you?

How much do your answers to these questions line up with the actuality of your calendar and life? How connected & interconnected do you feel to the people around you? To your church? To “the” Church? Where are the biggest disconnects between what you “believe” and how you live your life? How do you understand those incongruities? Respond with kindness to what surfaces in you as you contemplate them.

In the scripture passage for today, Jesus urges us to abide in him.

Before moving on, briefly discuss what that means to you or what it might mean.

Mandy gave us some different phrases in exploring what it means to abide: to tarry, to stay, to cling, to remain, to depend, to rely, to last, to persevere, to commit, to continue, to tolerate, to endure, to acquiesce, to accept, to hang-in-there-for-the-long-haul, and to make ourselves at home.

Read this list out loud slowly a few times as a group. Spend a moment considering and listening.

Which of these comparable phrases jumped out to you? Which caught your attention?

How similar or dissimilar are these concepts to what you discussed about what it means to abide?

Do you see, as Mandy suggested we might, a tension between our own proclivity for activity, adding more and what may be intended in this direction to abide in Him? What surfaces as you consider this dynamic in your own life?

Without reading ahead to the questions that follow, come up with a mental list of things and people to which you have an authentic fidelity.

How do you know? How were you able it identify these things?

To what things would others who know you say that you have fidelity, based on what they can see of how you spend your time, your energy, and your money?

What do you think of these lists? How similar or dissimilar are they? Why do you think that might be?

Whoever you may have thought of as “hired hands” during this week’s sermon, “they” aren’t the only ones who act as hired hands, holding fast to ideologies
over relationships. We do it too. All of us.

Where does that propensity show up most frequently for you? In what contexts and situations do you find it most difficult to forgo some aspect of your own power, privilege, comfort, or authority in favor of a sheep or a relationship right in front of you?

Where do you find yourself most likely to choose your own benefit, your own voice? When might you be most likely to skip out on fidelity when it gets uncomfortable or challenging? In what relationships and dynamics do you most easily and quickly come to the end of what you’re willing to do to act as a shepherd?

Tim also preached about the problems we have today in both Christian & civic leadership. He talked about how we are responsible for the leaders we choose in not only society as a whole, but also in our homes and workplaces, our neighborhoods and families, in our churches, and in our communities.

What does it look like to steward that responsibility? What ways can you (do you) utilize your own agency to identify, install, and support leaders who embrace and embody the good shepherd of the kingdom to the best of their ability? What’s at risk should we choose (individually and collectively) to abdicate our responsibility in these spaces?

In the context of discussing “the lack*,” Tim said, “Part of the role religion plays is to maintain the barriers between us and our sacred objects.”

What’s your response to this idea? Tim suggested it might make us a little uncomfortable. How do you think that function of barrier maintenance works? In what way does religion maintain barriers? Is it intentional or incidental?

Share a bit about your experiences in which religion has functioned as or supported barriers between you & objects of your desire? How did that work? Were you consciously aware of religion’s role in any way? How do you view that dynamic and its impact as it’s played out in your own life?

There was a slide accompanying today’s sermon that read, “Emmaus is the road we walk amidst the wreckage of all the hopes and dreams that don’t pan out.”

Take a few minutes to considerthis and share about some of the Emmaus experiences of your life. What have you learned through those experiences - good, bad, or ugly? What have the paths journeying away from those spaces afterward looked like?

The second part of that same slide said, “God meets is on that road.”

Has this been born out in your Emmauses? What has that been like for you? If you are in an Emmaus space now, or remember clearly that space, what is it like to try to believe that God is meeting you in that place on the road as you’re in it? How does that idea impact your emotions and feelings about the difficulties in those disillusioned spaces?

Tim closed his sermon by reminding us that “there is no sacred object that isn’t a scam; the Lack is never going away… it’s there to turn us toward each other.”

In your experiences with the lack, what are some of the sacred desires that have attracted your hopes and longing? Are there certain types of things that you tend to put into that space of “sacred object?”

When those sacred objects have failed you, what has that turning toward others looked like? Is that your default?

Turning to others sounds easy, but often isn’t. What diversions and blockades tend to disrupt that process of disillusionment turning us toward each other for you?

What types of connection help salve that place of Emmaus pain inside us? How might we better cultivate them? How might we lean into them in times of need? And, finally, how might we ensure that we’re available to be someone who is turned to in another’s time of hurting and disappointed lacking?

*If you need a refresher on the terms from the sermon, see the slide image below; hopefully it’ll provide some clarity about the general framework of the sermon.

Tim preached about the need for our approach to our doubts to be neither indulgent nor avoidant, but to, instead, be creative. He talked about stewarding the tool of doubt.

What experiences do you have with indulging in doubt and avoiding doubt? Tell your group a bit about those parts of your story - or as much of it as you may have to tell at this point in your faith travels. (You’ll get a chance to share about your experiences stewarding your doubt in a bit.)

How do you feel about your doubts? How do you feel about the doubts of others? Maybe those closest to you? In what context does doubt feel scariest for you? In what contexts does it feel more approachable?

If you’re unsure of how to answer these questions, perhaps consider that - at times - fear can lead to avoidance. Perhaps considering those “ditches” Tim mentioned: indulgence & avoidance, can help clarify where you might have doubt hiding underneath your acknowledged awareness.

What does it mean to steward our doubt? What does that look like? If you were to give advice to a friend about engaging with their doubt, what would you tell them?

What fruit have you either experienced for yourself or seen in the lives of others after intentional engagement with doubt?

Share some stories of big or small instances in which you’ve utilized doubt as a tool (even if you didn’t know that’s what you were doing!). What had come about as a result of this creative engagement with doubt?

In Tim’s sermon today, he talked about the symbolic opposition Jesus presented to three related spheres of power & influence that shared control of their world at large. Those Spheres of Power were Economic, Military, and Religious.

As a group, discuss the following: What spheres of power & influence do you see as dominating and sharing control in our world today? Which, if any, of these remain? Which, if any, have shifted out of dominance? What, if anything, should be added to the list?

As Jesus entered Jerusalem, the crowds shouted, “Hosanna,” a phrase that, at the time had political connotations. It meant, “save us now!”

To what (or to whom) are you tempted to look for saving, aside from and outside of God and God’s Kingdom?

What do you think drives you to look to these other sources? Are there ways and/or times in which it might be appropriate to look for other “saviors?” If so, when/how? If not, why not?

Our last question is the same one we asked looking for answers to share on “the Wall:”

Imagine you are a mentor to a younger person that asks for your advice about how to embody the way of the Kingdom as they participate in this year‘s election season, what advice would you give them?

It would be great if you would follow/share this link so that you can share your answers to this last question with more of us. They’ll be posted (anonymously) on the Wall in the atrium. Thanks!

https://redemptionchurchkc.churchcenter.com/people/forms/686513

Cole’s translation of John 12:25 is as follows:
“Anyone who maintains their life will lose it, while anyone who comes to the end of themselves in this world of violence and corruption will keep it for the eternal kind of life.”

What do you take away from this translated version? What does it mean - in concrete terms - to maintain your life in the sense of this passage as it was taught?

What does it mean to “come to the end of yourself?” What might that look and feel like? Have you had experiences that you see as coming to the end of yourself? How easy or hard is it believe that these experiences are gateways to an eternal kind of life?

Cole shared a quote from Dr. Cornel West: “What the cross is is unarmed truth.”

Spend a little time discussing as a group what is meant by the term “unarmed truth.” What is “unarmed truth?” How is it distinct from other things we might call truth? What are its identifying characteristics?

Does the West’s quote tally with the understanding of the term you’ve generated as a group? Looking at West’s quote as a whole, what is being communicated? What does this powerful statement mean?

Cole suggested that maybe the obsession Christians seem to have with determining who is “in” and who is “out” isn’t about theology, but, instead, is about privilege.

What’s your experience with that question, who’s in and who’s out? Have you spent time in a religious community that was particularly interested in it? If so, what do you see as the impact that a focus on that question may have had on that community and your experience of it?

To what extent is that a question you still wrestle with? How often does it surface in your mind, either in regards to someone else or to yourself?

What do you make of Cole’s suggestion that persistence in answering this question might be about privilege? What surfaces for you in response to that statement?

If this is a question that takes up significant space in your mind, how would you feel about surrendering it and ceasing to engage in the question? What comes up for you if you consider simply never trying to answer that question again?

Cole also shared an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community.”

“We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together. And you can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the other.

“Jesus confronted this problem of the interrelatedness of evil one day, or rather it was one night. A big-shot came to him and he asked Jesus a question, what shall I do to be saved?

“Jesus didn’t get bogged down in a specific evil. He looked at Nicodemus, and he didn’t say now Nicodemus you must not drink liquor. He didn’t say, Nicodemus you must not commit adultery. He didn’t say Nicodemus you must not lie. He didn’t say Nicodemus you must not steal. He said, Nicodemus you must be born again. In other words Nicodemus, the whole structure of your life must be changed.

Now that is what we are dealing with in America. Somebody must say to America, America if you have contempt for life, if you exploit human beings by seeing them as less than human, if you will treat human beings as a means to an end, you thingafy those human beings.

And if you will thingafy persons, you will exploit them economically, and if you will exploit persons economically, you will abuse your military power to protect your economic investments and your economic exploitations. So what America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.”

After reading the excerpt, Cole posed a rhetorical question: “Is this a call for every Christian to be a Civil Rights activist?”

Well, what do you think? Is it? Discuss as a group.

One of the slides from Tim’s sermon today read, “People will choose a low level of chronic anxiety & stress, even though it’s more withering, over temporary acute pain that deals with the root cause.”

What is your initial response to this idea? If you agree, why do you think people seem to operate this way?

How true does it ring for you personally? Where have you seen this principle at work in yourself?

If you’re aware of ways in which this has been true for you, but in which you have also eventually dug into those root causes, what motivated you to delve into that space of temporary acute pain? Once you did so, how “worth it” has that work been? Do you wish you’d done it sooner? Never done it at all?

Tim talked about his observation that the process of deconstruction & reconstruction often leaves us without a sense of hopefulness and without a strong belief that God is still working in our world, and that the Spirit of God is still living, active, and taking us somewhere good.

Take a moment to reflect on this idea. Have you gone (or are you going) through a process of deconstructing & reconstructing big pieces of your faith’s foundation? If so, how relatable is this observation? Where is your own sense of hopefulness right now? How easy or difficult is it to believe that God is at work in your world and that the Spirit of God is living & active & taking you somewhere good?

Now, rethink this idea relative to someone you know and about whom you care. Do you believe that God is at work in theirlife? That Spirit of God is leading them somewhere good?

Is it easier or harder to believe in God’s active role in that person’s life than it is to believe in it in your own? Why do you think that might be?

Nearing the end of his sermon, Tim said that we all have to have to make the same choice into which Nicodemus was being invited: We’ll have to decide if we’re going to draw our lives not merely from a clear-eyed assessment of the mess we’ve made in the world, and, instead, let go of a life we’ve gotten used to in order to endure the acute pain of new birth.

This, Tim said, is the way to let a new kind of fully alive life be born into our lives. It’s also the way to transmit to the coming generations a sense of hope, and a faithful expectation that God actually can show up and make a difference in our broken world.

How does this very significant invitation sit with you? How willing do you feel to “let go,” delve into the painful process of examining root causes, and find a new kind of eternally alive life? How realistic or do-able does that actually seem? Where might you begin?

Tim used Hans-Georg Gadamer‘s concept of horizons throughout this week’s sermon, articulating the idea that we can sometimes have two clashing horizons (or orientations toward the world) challenging our working models of reality.

Gadamer believed that the clash of horizons is the pathway to wisdom…if we’re willing to interrogate both horizons with curiosity and make adjustments.

Share a bit with the group about times in your life when you’ve seen this concept at work in yourself. What have some of the new “alternate horizons” been that have entered your world and instigated a “clash of horizons?” What comes to mind first for you? Clashes that have been more momentous or examples that are more subtle? What have those experiences and times been like for you? How do you feel as you reflect back on them?

In today’s scripture reading from John 2, Tim said that “Jesus really instigates a clash of horizons.” His actions shift the footing for those who witness the events and actions in the temple.

As we journey through the season of Lent, are there places or ways in which you sense Christ instigating or intensifying a clash or horizons for you right now? Whether on a large or a small scale, how might that be occurring?

If you chose to give up something or take on a new activity for Lent, is that practice factoring in to whatever possible horizon shifts you may be sensing as either imminent or ongoing? Share with the group about your experiences.

Using today’s scene in the temple as an example, Tim talked about the idea that the love of God and the wrath of God are essentially the same thing.

He taught that the Kingdom of God is like a river that flows with its own momentum, trajectory, and force.

Whether we are going with or against that flow will make the difference in whether we experience certain things as God’s love or God’s wrath.

How do these ideas strike you? How do you feel about the idea that God’s love & God’s wrath can actually be the same thing and that it’s us and our orientation toward the movement of the Kingdom’s horizons that can be the differentiator?

Do you have places in your own experience in which you’ve seen these ideas in action? Have you had times in which you were unwittingly being drained and bedraggled by moving against the flow of the Kingdom, experiencing forms of God’s wrath?

Have you had times in which you’ve had the opposite experience: moving in concert and cooperation with the flow of the kingdom, providing an experience of God’s love?

Have you ever had a situation in which you feel like you’ve moved from one to the other? Share about any stories or situations that arise for you when you consider these ideas and principles.

The central theme of Mandy’s sermon today centered on what it means for us to “take up our cross[es]” and follow Christ.

How clear is this concept for you? What about it seems easiest to grasp? What seems hardest? Has any of that changed for you over time? Are there elements that are shifting for you currently in your life as you learn to more and more embrace this idea?

If a child asked you “what does that mean?,” what would you say?

If a child asked you, “how do you do it?,” what would you say?

Mandy juxtaposed the idea of a “theology of glory” with that of a “theology of the cross.” She noted emphases on things like prestige, winning, and domination as hallmarks of a theology of glory. On the other hand, selflessness, serving others, and losing our lives were noted characteristics of a theology of the cross.

Looking back on the story of your own life, are there different times in which you’ve seen one or the other as more prominent in your life?

Are there different situations, relationships, or contexts in which one seems more likely to be a default for you? Do you see any themes or patterns as you consider these different theologies and ways of engaging in the world and how they may ebb and flow in your own life?

Mandy closed her sermon by leading us all in reading the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi together. The closing section reads as follows:

“For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

Which of these three idea seems easiest to embrace and to live? Which seems hardest? Share about any experience you may have pursuing these ideas as realities in your own life. What has that looked like? What has it felt like?

As you listen to one another, what ideas, themes, or words are jumping out to you? What’s capturing your imagination as you listen to and learn from these friends around you?

When talking about ancient practices around the Holy of Holies, and the fear God’s people felt about approaching God, Tim said, “When the children of God isolated God inside the temple, they cut themselves off from the source of life.” He juxtaposed that by noting that, in the Biblical stories, when someone had an experience of God while out in the wilderness, it was definitely one that didn’t have any of those isolating & estanging layers.

Consider some of the stories from the Bible that stick with you most, some of your favorites. Are there Biblical stories of people encountering God that particularly speak to you or feel most important or special when called to mind? Are they stories in which God is more secreted away, inside the holiest of holy boxes? Or are they stories in which, out in the wild, people encounter God without any buffers. As you consider this question, what thoughts and feelings surface for you about your own expecations for encountering and seeking with God?

Still considering these contrasting places for and ways of encountering God, but reflecting on your own life experiences, how “true" do these ideas seem to you? In what ways have you experienced a shut-away God, carefully enshrined in reverent, yet remote boxes? Has that orientation toward God left you feeling cut off from your life source? How so?

What about your experiences of encountering God while in the wilderness… How do your wilderness encounters with God differ from experienes of God in those more sanitized and secured settings? How have those types of experiences been for you? What types of feelings come up when you think back to them?

How do you feel about the idea of these types of encounters in the future? Are there ways or contexts in which you might prefer to encounter God in a more removed way? If so, why might that be?

Tim shared a slide that read, “God’s rightful place [is] down in the fray with God’s people, immersed & imminent in [our] everyday lives…like water.”

Is this how you think of God’s “rightful place?” in the fray? Do you feel aware of an instinct to keep God separate from the fray of your life? Or to keep the most “frayed” parts of yourself separate from the parts of yourself that engage and connect with God? What comes up for you as you consider these questions?

Let’s consider the metaphor comparing water to God’s presence… considering water’s ubiquitous presence in our lives, and its essentiality to our very existence. How does that feel different from the ways you conceive of God’s presence in your life? How does it feel similar? If you’ve got thoughts, ideas, or places of curiosity that surface as you consider this, share with the group.

Toward the end of his sermon, Tim talked about Lent as a season in which we choose to enter the wilderness for 40 days, letting go of some of our “little crutches” and letting go of things that we let stand as layers between us and God, helping to prop us up apart from God. Later, Tim remarked that Lent isn’t meant to be oppresive, but rather it can be a sort of personal adventure.

Have you given up something for lent (this year or in the past)? If so, how have you gone about deciding what to give up? For you, how resonant to this idea about giving up your crutches? If you haven’t given up somethihng for Lent, have you ever considered doing so? What’s gone into your decision making process?

For anyone who’s either given something up or undertaken other Lenten practices, what impacts you felt, if any? What expectations & hopes do you have for this year’s Lenten season? Does Lent feel more like a seasons of oppression or a season of adventure for you? Why do you think that is?

In today’s sermon, Tim talked about the way in which, “In attending to life’s measurable realities, we seem to have lost the ability to recognize life’s immeasurable realities…” He also spoke of God as, “not a mystery that is unknowable, but rather endlessly knowable.”

How do these ideas sit for you? What do they make you think of and feel?

Remembering that there are no bad answers, reflect on how important measurable, concrete realities are in the way in which you understand and show up in the world. How much space is allocated for the mysterious and unknowable in your life and in yourself?

When does it feel more natural or comfortable for you to interact with and engage with an immeasurable and endlessly knowable God? When does it feel more natural or comfortable to relate to God as more finite, certain, and calculable? What do you take away from these comparisons?

One slide from today’s sermon read, “God can be most easily lost by being thought found.”

Does this resonate for you? Do you have experiences in which you feel like you’ve learned this lesson, in whole or in part?

In what ways or contexts do you find yourself most likely to eelate to God as “found” in this sense? What are some of the ways in which you’ve learned to help yourself to lean into the mysteries of a mysterious God when you might be more comfortable with a certain and fully clear God? Are there other practices that help keep you engaging with the “endless unknowability” of God in general?

Tim talked about the concept of the “great cloud of unknowing” as a place in which we can have an encounter with God. He said that one of the places we most often encounter this cloud is in other people.

Do you have experiences in which someone else has unexpectedly brought you into an encounter with God? Share about places you’ve seen God through unanticipated or surprising experiences with other people.

What conditions make it easiest for you to
“love each other as if God is actually living through and in each other?” Which conditions make that harder for you?

Tim talked about Jesus’ symbolic move from the synagogue, which we see unfolding between last week & this week’s scripture passages from Mark 1. Tim talked about understanding this movement as a lesson: the problems in the synagogue are leaking out into the village. No shalom in the synagogue = no shalom in the home…or in the individual (physical) body.

Think about and discuss this idea with the group. How does this baseline idea strike you? As part of your discussion, consider this concept’s application today. If we are paralleling this concept in our lives & world now, what stands in the position of the synagogue? Do home and personal body/self remain in that other position, or is more rearrangement needed? What are some alternate ways of stating this same idea with today in view?

One big idea Tim shared was, “God doesn’t promise to fix the world for us. God is trying to fix the world through us and with us.”

What does this mean for us? What’s the difference between relating to and engaging with God with an expectation that God wants to fix the world for us versus an expectation that God wants to fix the world through us and with us?

How do these different baseline understandings & expectations show up in the different ways we engage with and relate to God directly?

What’s practically different for an individual person engaging with God under one idea versus the other? What’s different for a group or community?

How do the words we use in prayer, in worship, in discussion, and study shift moving under one idea or the the other?

Tim talked about the Greek word “daimon,” which is often translated into English as “demon.” He suggested a different modern concept might be a good word to use instead: ideology. He said, “Jesus seems to want us to participate in naming our ideologies and casting them out.”

Take some time as a group to do just that. What are some of the “daimons” you might name as ongoing struggles both in yourself and in communities to which you contribute?

As you think through some of ideologies and daimons that you see most impacting you and others today, consider, too, Tim’s teaching that along with an invitation to name these daimons, we’re also given the power & authority to finally deal with them. What surfaces for you in response to this idea?

Considering that “Jesus charged his followers to take responsibility for the peace of our world,” which daimons seem like the priorities to you? Why? Which do you feel like you have the most ability to impact right now in your life and world?

Early in the sermon, Tim talked about the power of naming and names. He also talked about a name’s power to connect, connote, create meaning, and conjure memory.

Think about your own experience of and relationship to naming and names. Have you ever named a person, pet, project, or something else? What did it feel like to have that responsibility/power? How did you go about choosing?

What about your own name? Or nicknames you’ve had? Do you have thoughts or feelings about not only the names themselves, but also those who bestowed them? Share with the group about different ways in which you see the dynamics Tim talked about showing up in your own experiences of naming and names.

In his sermon today, Tim talked about the way in which ancient Jews at the time of Mark’s gospel generally dealt with people & things that were unclean and out of sorts. They tended to isolate and exclude these people, and create distance between themselves and these situations. Tim also pointed out that we tend to do the same thing.

Where are places in your world that you may tend to try to isolate from, exclude, or simply avoid these types of challenging people and situations? How does that dynamic shift and change when the people & circumstances are closer-to-home or more distantly removed?

Tim preached about the fact that Jesus focused his rebukes and challenges on corrupted institutions and social codes, and when it came to personal failings, he simply offered grace. At the same time, he noted that many Christians today tend to do the exact opposite.

Why do you think that is? Where do you see that tendency in yourself? How much comfort and reassurance do you find in your sense of your own personal piety? How does that relate to the degree to which you feel a duty to challenge those same cultural institutions and codes that were present and are present in many (if not all) spheres? Does one feel more important? Does one feel more urgent?

Tim taught about the Greek word “metanoia,” which is translated into English as “repentance.” This word wasn’t a religious word for the ancients. Instead, it means to change direction in your life, and has an implied meaning of changing allegiances as well.

Are “repentance” and “repent” words that you use with any regularity in speech, thought, or prayer? What do you usually mean by them when you use them? Is that something that’s changed over time? Keeping in mind the non-religious way in which the word was used during the time periods in which Bible’s books were written, what might shift in how you relate to the word? Do you feel more or less open to using it or thinking of things in those terms?

When are times in your life (any part of your life, not just spiritual/religious) during which you have “metanoia-ed?” When have you had a “radical break with business as usual?” Are there milestones you can point to and say, “I really changed course in my life here?” If so, what led to those shifts, and how consciously chosen were they? If not, what might that help you understand about your own journey? Share whatever comes up as you reflect on changes in direction and/or allegiance in your life.

Tim talked about the phrase “fishers of men,” as well as the widely accepted interpretation that this phrase means recruiting converts. The reading he shared reached back to multiple references from the Old Testament prophets, in which the same idea of “catching” people instead means identifying and censuring people for the ways in which they perpetuate systems of injustice.

Imagine yourself for a moment as a fisherman/woman approached by Jesus. Imagine that as you’re hard at work, casting your nets into the waters, he catches your attention and invites you to set aside what you’re doing and, instead, go out into the world to identify and work against people and systems that oppress those in the margins, perpetuate injustice,and by virtue of that work, build God’s kingdom here on earth.

How does your heart respond to that invitation? Do you feel hestitant? Entusiastic? Wary? Motivated? What crops up inside as you imagine being part of that exchange? Are there places of resistence? Places of empowerment?

Now imagine Jesus approaching you in the midst of whatever work and labors take up your time in your daily life today, and extending the same invitation. What surfaces as an initial reaction? What’s your gut-level response? How much does it have in common with your response in the previous imaginary scene? What shifts? Explore with curiousity the similarities and differences between how you feel about the two different scenarios. Share with the group.

Toward the end of his sermon, Tim pointed out that part of the work involved in overturning the existing order of power and privilege is being caught ourselves. He reminded us that our task is not to avoid judgement, but that instead, in the paradigm of the kingdom, judgment is just an opportunity to change directions and grow. In the long run, that judgment is a type of grace.

Generally speaking, how motivated are you to avoid judgment (divine or otherwise)? How much does the avoidance of judgment drive your choices and behaviors, whether consciously or unconsciously? Limiting the conversation to holy or divine judgment, how do you feel about thinking of judgment as a grace, a gift, and an opportunity?

When you are re-directed or asked to shift by those you trust in your life, how do you tend to respond? With a gracious thank you for the opportunity to change course and grow? Or someting more…human? :) What do you think about paralleling these two ideas? How are they similar? How are they different?

Tim talked about the Fig Tree as a Jewish symbol. In some senses, it represents a promise of safety, security, and provision. In others, it is used as a symbol of Nationalism, used to give license to kill, sometimes in the name of God.

Calling back to the Bible’s first mention of a fig tree, in the story of Adam & Eve, Tim also talked about the way these symbols can represent the human temptation to hide, and to avoid our own nakedness and vulnerability.

In both senses, Tim likened the Jewish Fig Tree to the American “stars and stripes.”

Reflect back on your own life to date. Whether the fig tree, the American flag or something else, where are places in which you’ve rallied behind/under a powerful idealogical symbol and used its cover as a way to exert your will upon others, in whatever way and to whatever scale? In other words, where have you acted (or supported others to act) to overpower or subdue someone else’s voice/ideas/intentions/humanity and felt justified in doing so for reasons of “Christian righteousness?”

Likewise, where are places in your story that you’ve perhaps taken cover under the banner of an idealogical frame or symbol in order to avoid and hide from the painful and vulnerable realities of human existence, either your own or that of others?

Tim talked about the nature of American Nationalism and the ways in which the story of America is often tethered to the storyline of Christianity. He shared the idea that the identities of many American Christians are more American than Christian. He cited Stanley Hauerwas’ observation that many teach their children that being a Christian is their choice in a way that being an American is not.

How does this idea strike you? If you are an American by birth, does it feel more or less immovable than your identity as a Christian? If you were born into a Christian American family, how does your experience line up with Hauerwas’ observation?
And how do these two signifiers of identity function within you today (if you are both American & Christian)? Does one feel more or less fluid than the other? Share about why you think that might be.

(Final infographic included below as a memory refresher) In the latter half of his sermon, Tim walked through Richard Rohr’s idea of a human’s spiritual journey through life. The journey starts with a period of intense ascent, followed by a time of crisis, and then either a path of continued ascent in pursuit of building our towers, or by a leap from our tower into a period of descent in which we are no longer trying to win or conquer, but are, instead, learning to die to ourselves and pour out our lives for others in love. “Love,” Tim said, “is always a fall.”

Reflect on the potential trajectories laid out by Rohr and their differences and outcomes. Share about your own experiences of the stages described (so far in your life): ascent, crisis, then continued ascent or descent.
Which feel familiar? Current? Elusive? Confusing? Do you see yourself on one of the trajectories Rohr describes as leading toward either “old fool” or “holy fool?” How so or why not?

.Tim said that in the season of Epiphany, we ask ourselves two questions:

The first is “what is being revealed here? About God?…about humanity?”

The second is “how should we respond… as God’s faithful people?”

Consider the things going on in your own life right now. What’s requiring your attention? What are the present headlines of your personal world?

Then consider how you might answer these questions about the things that came to mind: “what’s being revealed here?” And “how should [I] respond?”

Share with the group about both what those top-of-mind things are, and how you might answer these questions in response to them. This is a great opportunity to tell the truth about your real life if that kind of vulnerability can be difficult for you.

Through his sermon, Tim shared some of the ways Jesus’ contemporaries saw him:

Some Jewish people saw him as a voice for expression of their grievances.
Some Jewish leaders saw him as a threat to the status quo.
Herod saw him as a rival for the throne.
The Magi saw him as a sign of hope for all nations.

Tim then closed his sermon with a direct question to us all: what do we see in Christ? A threat to kill or domesticate OR a king to worship & rejoice in?

Obviously, we all know the “right” answer is the second one. But consider the idea that, even if our first or dominant response is to see Christ as king, there are probably parts of each of us that can respond to Christ as a threat to our status quo, comfort, or power.

What parts of you might be threatened by Christ?

If that feels impossible to answer, consider Tim’s comment that Christ will ask each of us to leverage our power and resources to try and include others, and to extend peace to all nations. In which areas of your life might you resist including others and extending peace? In which parts of your life would you prefer Christ not ask for acts of inclusion or extending peace?

Tim also talked about the contrast between Jesus and Herod that exists through the stories of the Gospels and of Christmas.

If we think of Herod as representing something more genuine than a boogeyman or caricature of evil, what might be his equivalent in our world today? What are the things that, in your mind, might stand as a contrast to Christ if the Christmas story were to unfold today for the first time?

The goal isn’t to find people or institutions to vilify, but rather to identify some places in our own world that might be likely candidates for opposition to the presence of God revealed through Christ. Some may be people or institutions for which we have affection.

Remember: there are no wrong answers. See what ideas you, as a group, can generate without blame or judgment.

(Bonus question for the over-achievers and/or quick discussers) Do you think of Herod as a part of “the Christmas story?” If so, when did he become a part of the story for you or have you always understood him as a part of the narrative?

How do you think it changes “the Christmas story” to include him? How does it change the story to exclude him? What might these answers suggest about why he’s often omitted from the primary narrative?

1. Toward the beginning of his sermon, Tim “Oak of Righteousness” Suttle talked about our tendency to disengage from reality by moving into either cynicism or sentimentality. Using two Oscar Wilde quotes to help clarify, he defined a cynic as someone “who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing,” and a sentimentalist as someone who wants to “have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.” Which of these two ditches do you most lean toward? Are there certain situations in which your tendency changes? In sharing about your answer, feel free to share examples of times in which you’ve seen yourself veer into one space or the other. Tim suggested that, if we can avoid the appeals of both cynicism and sentimentality, we can find a middle road, on which we see both the wind of God at work and the pain of the world around us. He named this orientation as one of hope. How accessible does a stance of hope feel for you? In what ways does it feel more natural? In what ways do you feel more resistance? Why do you think that is? 2. Tim also used Phyllis Tickle’s idea of a “great rummage sale of wisdom” occurring every 500 years, pointing out that these big perennial shifts and evolutions in thought often result in some sort of split within the church at large. How does it feel to think of your “normal life” existing in the context of one of these enormous milestone eras? Is that an easy idea for you connect with, or does it take some considering and evaluating? How does it feel to conceive of your world and all of us living - right now - as being in the middle of an evolution of epic proportions? Scary? Exciting? Put some feeling words to your own internal responses. 3. Tim put forth the idea that, in our time, God is “reaching into the center of Christianity” and pushing down with his finger to make a “new gravitational center.” He talked about this new gravitational center’s way of pulling us across boundaries and making irrelevant divisions that used to separate us. He talked about how this can pull us toward each other and toward God, and, with that, out of all the divisions, fighting, & chaos that we’ve known. He also talked about reasons why some might resist this new gravitational pull: In this paradigm, there’s no place for delineating who is in and who is out. There’s not easy access to control. Winning and affluence aren’t the hallmarks of God’s hand at work. For some, these shifts might be uncomfortable and unappealing. What about for you? It might be easy to name the appeals of a cultural shift that puts a greater emphasis on Jesus’s way of life, long-standing church tradition, contemplative prayer, self-sacrificing love, a rejection of violence, and people of different religious traditions joining together in common purpose. But what are the aspects of this new vision for now that might stir up resistance in you? You may not be super motivated by dividing people into “in” and “out,” or the splash of prosperity promised by some. But a gravity that pulls us toward the things emphasized above also asks new things of us. What might you be asked to give up that you’d rather hold? What might you be asked to step into that you’d rather not approach? Put some thought about the possible “down sides” of the kingdom view Tim called to mind. (Because, if there were none, we’d all be doing it already). Share and discuss with the group.

As Tim taught about preparing the way f1. As Tim taught about preparing the way for God and what that involves for us all, he said, “We cannot prepare the way of the Lord from a place of power, pride, or privilege.” He added, “we can, but we won’t….” When you consider your own life, circumstances, and self, which of these looms largest for you: power, pride, or privilege? Explain your answer. What does it mean to be someone who is handed power & privilege automatically by virtue of things a person can’t readily change or surrender (things like race, gender, educational history, socioeconomic background, etc), and also want to prepare the way of the Lord? What’s the difference between having power & privilege and acting from a place of power & privilege? Where does pride factor in? What does it mean to come from a place of pride? What does it look like to operate differently? To what degree do you feel like this is work you, personally, need time do? 2. In his sermon, Tim talked about the reality that God doesn’t come in the form of what we often think of as “blessings,” and that in fact, God comes in the form of brokenness and weakness. He then said, “It’s totally possible that we’ll think we’re having encounters with God when we’re actually missing him altogether.” Think for a moment about this big statement. Reflect on your own history with God and the things that have and do influence your experience of God. What do you think Tim is saying here? How do you understand this idea? In what ways might it apply to you? What thoughts, feelings, and memories surface for you as your consider? 3. Tim also talked about the things we often reach for so that we “don’t need God to show up in the world.” Some of the examples he gave are personality, intellect, beauty, a 401k, righteousness, good works, your job, health, children, power, prestige, capacity for hard work, or your competency. In this vein, he asked, “What do you need to let go of so you can make room for God?” Add to his list. What are the trappings you tend to put your trust in when those moments come? “What,” as Tim asked, “do [you] reach for so that [you] don’t need God to show up in the world?” Once we can identify some of these things for ourselves, what does it look like to let them go as we try to make way for God? What steps might a person take? What steps might you take? or God and what that involves for us all, he said, “We cannot prepare the way of the Lord from a place of power, pride, or privilege.” He added, “we can, but we won’t….” When you consider your own life, circumstances, and self, which of these looms largest for you: power, pride, or privilege? Explain your answer. What does it mean to be someone who is handed power & privilege automatically by virtue of things a person can’t readily change or surrender (things like race, gender, educational history, socioeconomic background, etc), and also want to prepare the way of the Lord? What’s the difference between having power & privilege and acting from a place of power & privilege? Where does pride factor in? What does it mean to come from a place of pride? What does it look like to operate differently? To what degree do you feel like this is work you, personally, need time do? 2. In his sermon, Tim talked about the reality that God doesn’t come in the form of what we often think of as “blessings,” and that in fact, God comes in the form of brokenness and weakness. He then said, “It’s totally possible that we’ll think we’re having encounters with God when we’re actually missing him altogether.” Think for a moment about this big statement. Reflect on your own history with God and the things that have and do influence your experience of God. What do you think Tim is saying here? How do you understand this idea? In what ways might it apply to you? What thoughts, feelings, and memories surface for you as your consider? 3. Tim also talked about the things we often reach for so that we “don’t need God to show up in the world.” Some of the examples he gave are personality, intellect, beauty, a 401k, righteousness, good works, your job, health, children, power, prestige, capacity for hard work, or your competency. In this vein, he asked, “What do you need to let go of so you can make room for God?” Add to his list. What are the trappings you tend to put your trust in when those moments come? “What,” as Tim asked, “do [you] reach for so that [you] don’t need God to show up in the world?” Once we can identify some of these things for ourselves, what does it look like to let them go as we try to make way for God? What steps might a person take? What steps might you take?

Early in his sermon, Tim talked about his sense that, as we start Advent this year, there’s a unique heaviness in the world. He shared some of the large scale things he worries about (like worldwide authoritarianism, climate change, racial injustice, income inequality, and more) and other underlying dynamics that may be contributing to an overall sense of bleak disorientation and grief.

How does this perspective settle for you? Do you share the same sense inside that our world is especially pained right now? Especially disarrayed? If so, in which ways do you experience this sense? Emotionally? Physically? Intellectually? In other ways?

If not, how do you experience your sense of the world right now? Share about how you orient yourself in the many layers of global experiences.

Tim talked about Isaiah’s sense that God’s hiddenness is to blame for the painful realities of his time, and that it’s because of God’s elusiveness that people don’t believe in God’s power.

Tim taught us about the concept of “deus absconditus,” or “the hidden God” and the way in which this very quality of God has been the long-standing frustration of humankind.

How much do these ideas resonate for you? To what degree does God feel hidden & silent for you right now? To what extent does God feel present and active?

Have there been times in your life where God has seemed more or less hidden than the way you presently experience God? What might be some of the things shaping or contributing to those changes in your experience?

Tim talked about the hiddenness of God as not just a mis-calculated perception, but instead as an intentional and purposeful part of the way God makes Godself known to us.

How do you understand that sense and experience of God as hidden - and that it might be purposeful? Does that make sense for you? What emotions surface for you as you sit with the idea that God’s hiddenness might not be only accidental or your (incorrect) perception? How do you feel about the idea that the painful and confusing experience of God’s hiddenness might be by design & on purpose?

Spend of a few moments reconsidering the powerful visual experience of watching the clay be shaped, worked, and molded by the potter. Tim talked about the need for textual irregularities (bubbles) to be slowly worked out - through pressure - in order to avoid eventual explosion & destruction. He also talked about the fact that different pieces of clay have different qualities & that skilled potters respond to the clay itself as they work to shape and form it.

Consider yourself, as Tim prompted, as clay in the active & engaged hands of a Masterful Potter. Try to absorb that idea for a moment, and share about what surfaces for you. What emotions come to the fore? What fears? How comfortable are you with seeing yourself as the clay in this enduring metaphor? Why do you think that is?

In his sermon about the life of St. Anthony the Great (and the desert fathers), Tim outlined some of the core practices of the desert fathers and those who came to learn from them: Silence Solitude Prayer Fasting Meditation Contemplation & Testing Which of these most catch your attention? Why do you think that is? Do some feel especially unappealing? Why do you think that is? When you consider this list, do they make sense for you as individual practices? For example, how do you understand silence to be different from meditation? Or contemplation different from meditation? Do some of these automatically go together for you (e.g. silence and solitude) or do you see different ways to engage in them that might be less obvious? Share your imaginings with the group.
Tim emphasized St. Anthony’s specific engagement with the practice of silence. Though it might sound simple, silence can be very hard to come by in our busy world. St. Anthony sold his possessions and retreated to an abandoned tower in the desert to pursue his spiritual practices and engage with his own inner demons. How does this scenario strike you (other than hot and uncomfortable)? Is it extreme? Necessary? Both? Neither? How difficult is it or would it be for you to carve out quality space for silence and inner-work in the midst of the busyness of your regular life? How valuable do you think that might be? In a practical sense, what might it look like for you to engage in some of the wisdom St. Anthony’s example gives us while also remaining an active participant in your own life?
Timhared some clear instruction from James 3-4 and posed some questions to us all. Review those paraphrased questions below and ask/answer those that feel most engaging for you and/or your group. “Submit yourselves to God.” - Who and what do you submit yourself to in your life? What are we actually risking to submit ourselves to God? “Resist the devil. - What are we doing to resist? Are we living and deciding consciously? Or just resigning ourselves to whatever comes and giving in? “Draw near to God.” - How do we do that? As Tim said, “You don’t become a Christian through osmosis.” “Cleanse your hands” - How are the things we do with our hands shaping us? “Purify your hearts.” How do we live in a way that doesn’t just look Christian, but actually engages our hearts in the deeper work of purification? 4. The final instruction from the passages in James is “Humble yourself.” Of this, Tim said that Anthony’s discovery was that if we take James’ words to heart and do the hard work of facing our own demons while adopting the simple practices of the desert fathers, we can become friends with God…and then the means by which other people become friends with God. St. Anthony said, “Our life and death are with our neighbor. If we gain our brother, we have gained God.” Share the thoughts and feelings that arise in you as you consider these ideas.

In his sermon today, Tim shared the story of the Monks of Tibhirine, whose faithful lives in the midst of the Algerian “black decade” (1992-2002) inspired the French language film, “Of Gods and Men.” What were your responses to the stories of these men? What details, sentiments, and elements stood out to you as you listened to their story, and the scene of their ongoing dialog Tim presented to us? What thoughts, questions, or feelings rise in you now as you take a few moments to reflect on their legacies? 2. Tim said that the story of the Tibhirine Monks reminded him of an exchange that centers in Joshua 5:13-15. In this moment, Joshua and the Israelites are cowed in the face of the fortress at Jericho. As a man, later identified as as the commander of the Lord’s army, appears, Joshua asks, “Are you on our side, or that of our enemies?” The Lord’s representative responds with, “Neither!” When Joshua then asks the man what he has to say to Joshua, his servant, the man replies, “Take your sandals off your feet because the place where you are standing is holy.” Tim talked about how we can feel like we, ourselves, are being asked, “Are you on our side or on the side of our enemies?” He paraphrased the representative’s response as, “You think there are sides?” Calling to mind Cain & Abel, he reminded us that all humankind are our family, and that all killing is fratricide. What strikes you about this exchange, especially in light of Tim’s sermon today? Where in your life have you faced (or are you facing) this question? Where do you feel compelled to pick sides? What happens inside when you consider the representative’s response:“You think there are sides?” Are there situations in which sides feel like they are truly required? What might it be like to challenge that conclusion? What thoughts & feelings surface for you as you consider these ideas in light of larger global issues, like the current crisis in Gaza? What shifts when you think of the idea of “there are no sides” in relationship to some of your own more personal conflicts and “wars?” Share about what comes up for you. 3. Tim shared part of the last letter left by Christian de Chergé, the abbot at the Tibhirine Monastery, and one of the 7 of his brethren who were beheaded in the midst of the conflict. In the letter, de Chergé said that his life had “no more value than any other…nor any less.” de Chergé wrote of his desire to forgive “with all [his] heart the one who would strike [him] down.” He also went on to address and thank the person responsible for his eventual adieu, and to commend that person “to the God whose face I see in yours.” Tim taught that de Chergé and the other monks of Tibhirine challenge us to look into the faces of our own personal enemies and seewGod in them. Tim reminded us that though we may be tempted to fall into either a camp that insists on fighting or another that flees the conflict, the monks give us the example of a third way: we can move close in peacemaking to live in solidarity with friend and enemy alike. He said, “This is how the Kingdom comes.” Take a moment to imagine yourself confronted with someone who may be the one to take you life. Is it possible for you to connect with de Chergé’s sentiments of forgiveness and love in that space? Why or why not? Share about what you’re experiencing as you consider it. Consider, too, the conflicts in your own life - both those personally close and those more global and farther afield. What might it be like for you to actively pursue that third path, and move close in peacemaking? What does it feel like to consider the idea? What might that look like in real, practical life? How do you feel about the possibilities?

In her sermon about poet Jane Kenyon, Christina taught that, early on, Kenyon learned poetry wasn’t afraid of emotion. Although she’d grown up in a family that resisted giving one’s self over to anything completely, Kenyon did, through her life, give her self completely to both the ministry of her art, and also to the work of telling the truth of emotion through it.

How do you hear and receive these ideas? What does it mean to give one’s self over to something completely? In your view, is that something to be resisted, or embraced? When or in what settings? Explain your answer.

What about emotion? Where in your life do you have space to engage with the truth of emotion? Of your emotions? In your own life & view, what is the role of your emotions? The emotions of others?

As Kenyon lived with bipolar disorder, cancer, and other challenges, she asked the question, “is God trustworthy when I don’t understand what he’s doing?”

What’s your initial reaction to this question? How resonant is it for you? Is this a question you feel like you’re actively asking in your life today, or have asked in the past? What are some of processes and ideas you’ve engaged with as you’ve asked your own versions of this question or as you consider it now?

Christina led us through a spiritual practice, very similar to lectio divina, with one of Jane Kenyon’s poems.

What was this experience like for you? How comfortable was it for you to listen to the poem and then take time in silence to listen within for more? Do you have experience with this type of spiritual exercise? If so, share about its value for you. If not, share about whether or not you might like to participate in this process again. Then share about why.

In his sermon about William Wilberforce, Tim taught about the “methodists” of Wilberforce’s day - a set of Anglicans serious about their faith, sometimes called “enthusiasts,” though it wasn’t necessarily a compliment.

Toward the end of his sermon, Tim talked again about the enthusiasts, and noted that we often resist actions that might get us labeled as extremists or modern-day enthusiasts simply because we don’t want to rock the boat.

He asked, “how much are we personally risking” to help change the systems of injustice at work in our communities today?

For the purposes of group discussion, try to set aside judgment of yourself (or others) and reflect on your own actions and places of inaction.

How motivated are you by a reluctance to rock the boat? In what settings does that feel most true and in which is it least true?

Where there are places that you opt not to lend your social credibility and voice to issues of social justice, what are the barriers for you? What feelings surface as you reflect on these questions?

When William Wilberforce re-engaged his Christian dedication to the work of abolition, he first thought that he needed to leave politics and focus his energy in vocational ministry.

Like the friends and advisers who counseled Wilberforce to remain in Parliament, Tim encouraged us all to remember that “ministry is less about what we do, and more about how we do it.”

Take some time to consider the various places you put forth effort and work in your life at present - whether it’s a role in which you earn a paycheck or otherwise.

How do you show up as a minister in these places and spaces? How do you do the work of the Kingdom aside from places of “professional” ministry?

As you consider, how difficult is it for you to think of yourself in active ministry in the spaces and ways you’ve described or thought of? Why do you think that’s how you feel about it?

For Wilberforce’s contemporaries, the British slave trade was largely unknown and invisible. As a result, part of Wilberforce’s abolitionist work was helping inform and educate the public about the horrors and tragedies of the middle passage - and then bringing public attention to the people and institutions who gained as a result of these inhumane realities.

Either in our own lives, or in the lives of loved ones, many of us have been impacted by injustices, horrors, and socially inflicted harms that are generally unseen by and unknown to the larger public.

Take this chance to share about some of these with your group. What places of injustice, large or small, do you wish were more widely known and understood? If you feel reluctant to share, remember that your sharing helps equip those sitting around you to love people in their world better.

Early in his sermon, Tim described the disconnection we experience from ourselves, from God, from each other, and from creation as part of the human reality.

He described Christian spirituality as “learning a set of stories and practices that cultivate a new imagination and way of being that can, rhythmically and over time, reconnect those fractured relationships.”

How much does this idea of essential disconnection resonate for you? Does it feel or seem true to you in your mind and/or experience of life?

When you consider yourself In relationship to yourself, to God, to each other, and to creation, does one of these stand out as feeling more or less connected than any of the others? Why do you think that might be?

Alongside your sense of disconnection (whatever it may be), do you have a parallel sense of reconciliation, recreation, and redemption as a part of your experience of living? Share about how you do, have, or might hope to experience this type of active re-connection in your life. What feelings surface as you imagine and sit with this vision of active reconnection as a part of your self and your life?

Tim taught that “loneliness is inner emptiness” that is sad and afraid. Solitude, by contrast, he described as an “inner fullness” that is “calm and brave…and, honestly, powerful.”

He also talked about the need most of us have to be witnessed and companioned in community so that we can feel safe enough to move into practices of true solitude.

What is the state of your relationship to solitude? What feelings surface for you as you consider and imagine the practice of solitude?

What is the state of your relationship to community? To what extent do you feel that your needs for community are or are not being met at this present time in your life?

What do you make of the causal link Tim described between community and solitude? Does it tally with your own experiences in any way? Share about how it does or does not.

If you feel that you would benefit from more time in solitude and or more authentic community, what things stand as barriers between you & those aims? Are there actions you are considering that might help to shift some of those things out of your path?

Over the last 4 weeks, we’ve learned about some core Christian practices:

Sabbath & tithing
Peacemaking & solidarity with outcasts
Weekly worship & daily prayer
Community & solitude

As Tim talked about the “prayer merry go round” that many experience as the basic cycle of their prayer practice (Try —> Fail —> Avoid —> Guilt), he observed that most people fall into one of two camps: those who don’t pray, and those who don’t feel good about how they pray. He also said there are a rare few who fall into a third camp: those with a rich & meaningful prayer life.

Which of these descriptors do you identify with most? What has your own journey and experience with prayer been like through your life? Do you relate to the “prayer-y go round?”

As you consider your relationship to and with prayer, what factors and influences stand out as significant in your own story and experience?

In looking at the meaning of the word “liturgy,” Tim explained that - quite literally - the words of weekly worship & daily prayer are “the work of the people [of God].”

Spend a few moments considering this idea. If you’d been asked (w/o this knowledge) to describe the work of God’s people, what might you have said?

Etymology aside, what - at least prior to this week - have you thought of as liturgy? What has the working definition been in your own life? How does liturgy show up for you, and do you easily identify it as such? Or is that a new framework for you?

How much does the idea of “working the words” resonate with your experience of liturgy so far in your life (whether those liturgies are intentional or recognized in retrospect)?

Tim gave us all an assignment for this week: set an alarm for noon each day &, at that time, join with the many others praying in a time-zone driven wave from East to West across the globe. He also suggested some resources for easy access to long-standing liturgies and prayers available for all to share in.

What was your initial response or reaction to this homework? Did you set the alarm on your phone? If so, why? If not, why not? Have you or will you participate?

Have you had experience with using the Common Book of Prayer, the Psalms, or other pre-written liturgies and prayers in your own personal prayer practice before this week? If so, how did that come about? How has it been for you?

What’s your general attitude toward pre-written prayer? Is it more counter-to or in-line with the way your first learned to pray? What feelings and expectations arise in you in response to being assigned habitual prayer, even if just for a week? How do you feel about incorporating pre-written prayer into your own personal practice - whether it is new or old habit for you?

In Mandy’s sermon today, she talked about messages she received in her early life in churches, but shared that - among all the teachings she remembers, there are none focused on peace-making and resisting the temptation to violence.

What is your experience in this area? Did you receive early messages about the Christian practices of peacemaking and non-violence? If so, what were they like and how did you internalize and incorporate them into your life as a Christian?

If these ideas weren’t a part of your early Christian experience, when and where did you first start encountering these ideas? How much space have you given to these practices in your own Christian life practices and priorities? How much space do they occupy now?

Mandy preached about the difference between “fake peace” that’s rooted in dishonesty, denial, or accommodation. In contrast, she challenged us with questions about peace-making that is willing to break some things in the process, pursuing a peace that might be called more authentic or more true.

What experiences do you have of peacemaking (either your own or that of others) that, in its practice, disrupted and discomforted others? That “broke some things?” As Mandy asked, when was the last time you rocked the boat and created and/or allowed discomfort in your own life in pursuit of authentic peace?

If you’ve had experience with that kind of effort, what has it been like for you? How has it been received by those around you and those impacted?

If you haven’t participated in that type of intentional peacemaking action, how are you feeling as you’re being challenged to do so? What things present themselves as barriers to you engaging in practices intending to create “real peace [that] is worth the struggle?”

If a Christian friend or family member who doesn’t embrace the ideas of resisting violence or proactive peace-making asked you to explain why they should pursue these practices, how might you respond? What parts of the practice and creation of true peace are most compelling for you? Why do you think that is?

If your discussion continued, how might you explain the embrace of marginalized people and outcasts as part of this approach to peacemaking? How do you conceive of this radical inclusion within yourself?

Tim talked about the mainstream pursuit of “bigger, better, higher, stronger, faster.” He connected these pursuits to the “Empire of More.”

Take some time to think of ways in which you pursue the achievement, consumption, and conquest of more. What things do you find yourself constantly trying to have more of? What type of things gets you motivated to pursue bigger, better, higher, faster, or stronger? Include not only material things, but other more subtle/sophisticated ways you might be driven for a success that’s rooted in an empire-building mindset. As you consider your answers, reflect, too, on the why behind these drives.. Below are some ideas to help you brainstorm. Though not all of these examples are “success"-driven by definition, some may be for you.

a bigger bank balance

a more impressive garden

a better golf handicap

a better dressed family

a fancier phone

more public recognition from people in authority at work

more people seeing things your way

more popularity in any given setting

better grades

a nicer car

more compliments from your children’s teachers

more friends and followers online

a fancier menu next time you host a meal

a greener lawn

Tim said that, “the way of the kingdom is always subversive…it doesn’t want to destroy its enemies, it wants to win them as friends.”

When you consider relationships in your life where you would like to prompt change or transformation in other people or your relationships with them, to what extent do you embrace and embody this subversive approach? When are you more likely to default to means of power, control, and conquest? Where are you more likely to engage methods of loving kindness, surrender, and love?

Now consider your internal self. Are there places and ways in which you would like to prompt change or transformation within? Consider your approaches to encouraging these changes in yourself.

In your relationship with you, do you lean more toward forcefulness and power or gentleness and surrender? What else surfaces for you as you consider this question?

Tim talked about DELIGHT as a good equivalent for the idea of Sabbath.

What practices and activities bring you pure delight? How easy or difficult is it for you to come up with responses to that question? Why do you think that is?

How much space in your life and sabbath is there for actively and intentionally delighting? What barriers get in the way of sabbath practice for you? What things are catalysts for sabbath practice?

When talking about the practice of tithing, Tim said that it’s about losing financial control.

How does the idea of losing financial control sit for you - both generally and specifically related to tithing? Why do you think your responses are what they are?

What feelings come up or you when you think, specifically, about your own personal practice of tithing (whether you do it faithfully, have never done it, or just learned what that word means today)? How has your relationship to tithing (either in practice or the idea of it) changed over time?

In Colossians 3, we get a list of virtues Paul is encouraging his Christian audience to pursue:

Compassion

Kindness

Humility

Gentleness

Patience

Bearing w/each other (forbearance)

Forgiveness

Love

Peacefulness

Gratitude

Tim framed these virtues as the ideal “habitus” of a Christian community, defining habitus as “embodied dispositions that determine how we perceive & interact with the world.” He also emphasized the fact that our habitus are embodied in our actions, not simply a minister or a worldview.

When you consider the list above, which virtues catch your attention? Why? Do you have a sense for what each of these virtues might look like embodied & in action?

Which are those that are already more a part of your lived way of being? Which would like to be more prominent in your automatic reflexes?

Tim taught that “there’s always - almost always - a community behind any virtue.” He also said that all communities shape the habitus of their individuals, although we often participate in that process without doing so intentionally or consciously.

Think about the different communities and groups of which you are a part or have ever been a part. Be sure to include informal, small, or otherwise nontraditional communities too.

Where do you see connections between some of your more strongly embodied virtues (or vices) and these communities in which you have participated? To what extent have you been aware of these formational influences?

What else surfaces as you consider this often-under-the-radar connection between the ways we learn to exist in the world and the communities in which we participate?

Tim primed us for the coming conversations we’ll be having about ten of the Christian practices that have been and are important in the life of Redemption Church:

Baptism

Communion

Sabbath

Tithing

Weekly worship

Daily prayer

Community

Solitude

Peacemaking

& Pairing with the outcast

He shared that these practices are aimed directly at subverting powerful cultural influences to which we are all exposed.

In looking at this list, which practices have been important in your Christian journey to this point? Are there some that you’d like to practice more or in a different way? Why?

Are there any practices on this list to which you feel resistance? Why do you think that might be?

As Tim taught in this week’s sermon, “Numbers is about failure and lessons learned and character being forged not through success, but in the crucible of pain and struggle and wilderness.”

What’s been memorable for you from this time spent studying Numbers? What ideas, lessons, insights, questions, or challenges have stood out for you and/or remained with you?

What has spending this time in the book of the wilderness taught you about seasons or experiences is wilderness? What has it taught you about the formation processes that can come with these spaces?

A crucial feature of Israel’s formative experience in the wildness is its complete dependence on the Spirit of God which exists at the literal center of their communal life. The 2nd generation, that which is poised to enter the promised land, has spent their lives looking to God for all they need and learning from His spirit how to show up and do the business of living and being. Tim pointed out that they’ve had a radically different experience than that of their parents, whose lives centered around the ways of empire.

In which ways does your life seem more like the 2nd Generation of Israelites in the wilderness, centering and depending on God’s Spirit? In which ways does your life center more around ways of empire? Do you find certain areas of your life more “stuck” in ways of empire? Why do you think that is? What wisdom have you gained as you’ve thought about these types of ideas?

Toward the end of his sermon, Tim placed some challenging questions be for us all:

How do we steward our energies of commitment? As people and as a community?
How do we steward our time? Our attention? Our devotion & our allegiance?
And finally, what’s gets your best energies & allegiance?

Take a few moments to consider these questions. What surfaces for you as you ponder? Which question challenges you the most?

As you listened to the story of Redemption Church’s first 20 years, what caught your attention or imagination? What details stuck out for you? What were some “takeaways” for you as you listened?
As you reflect on your own life, are there mirrors or parallels to the story of RC? Places of disorientation, places of unmooring, places of finding new life in accidental journeys? In what ways might parts of your own story harmonize with the story of RC so far?
Tim talked about some of the lessons and big ideas that have been cultivated through RC’s collective experiences and history.

One big idea was that of God who meets us in places of weakness.

What do you think about this truth? Where have you seen it in your own history? How do you feel about a God who meets us in weakness?

What’s it like to leave behind the idea of a God who rescues in power & might in favor of this different, shifted conception of God? How does that sit with you?

In his sermon, Cole taught about Giorgio Agamben’s understanding of sacredness. He described it, in part, as something that can make us recoil in uneasiness because of its set-apartness. He gave the example of pastors telling people at parties what they do for work - only to have people respond with less than enthusiastic interest.

What is conjured up in your mind as you consider this understanding of sacredness? Does it ring true for you in some ways? Or not as much? What examples can you identify in the world in which you operate?

Even if we haven’t experienced it ourselves, most of us know stories of people who’ve gone from lives with some measure of status, access, prominence, and reputation to lives where subsistence is the primary hallmark.

What thoughts & feelings come to mind when you contemplate this type of personal story? What types of futures do you envision for people with that type of reversal of fortune in their lives? What unconscious assumptions or ideas might be lurking around the edges of your mind as you consider?

(2b) Now zoom out to consider cultures, subcultures, and people groups that have, through long (or short) arcs of history moved collectively from places of rights and privilege to positions in which they’re seen more as things than people by those with power.

What examples come to mind? How similar or dissimilar are your internal responses when considering people groups rather than individuals?

What observations might you make about how these two different types of examples can impact our perceptions of and expectations for these people? What else do you notice?

Toward the close of his sermon, Cole talked about his wish that we can continue to form Redemption Church into a place to which others turn when seeking refuge.

When & how have you experienced RC as a place of refuge - for yourself and/or for others? If RC as a place of refuge doesn’t resonate for you, what would it look like for a church to be a place that feels like refuge from your personal vantage point?

How prominent is this idea in your own conception of RC and/or churches in general? Why do you think that is?

In what ways do you see yourself as a part of creating safety and refuge in the Redemption community? To what degree does that translate to other spaces in your life? Why do you think that is?

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Tim shared this quote from Rick Mullins:

“God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and He had been speaking through asses ever since. So, if God should choose to speak through you, you need not think too highly of yourself. And, if on meeting someone, right away you recognize what they are, listen to them anyway.”

Reflect on and share about a time when you heard God speak to you through someone you once sized up to be roughly on par with Balaam’s donkey.

Tim taught about the practical reality that at the point at which they were viewed from Balaak & Balaam as the two men stood high on a hill looking down at the twelve tribes, Israel was probably pretty bedraggled, rough, and worn. Yet, Balaam speaks words of God’s blessing and bounty as he gazes upon them and sees a miracle flourishing in the dessert wilderness.

Consider the idea that, in your past or present wildernesses, you might you see yourself as bedraggled and ratty while someone looking from a far, reflecting God’s own vision and with an eye toward the future, might see you as a miracle flourishing in the wilderness.

What does that idea bring up for you? Does it shift anything for you in regards to your current struggles? How easy or difficult is it to look at your struggling self through that lens?

How easy or difficult is it to see the people close to you through that lens? And what about the people you encounter to more distantly?

Tim taught that “we have a tendency to feel threatened by the success & flourishing of those with whom we share significant social space.” He highlighted three themes often wrapped up in this dynamic: comparison, scarcity, & fear.

In closing the service, Tim invited us all to share on the wall what our triggers for comparison / scarcity mentality and/or fear are. How do you answer that question? (Don’t forget to jot it on the wall next time you’re at church!)

Think of some places where you have some authority or power. Some examples might be your family, your home, your workplace, a friend group, or an organized or informal community. In whatever way possible, try to conceive of yourself as standing in Moses’ role in that context, at least at times. If you can’t come up with any external situation, allow yourself to see yourself in Moses’ role as a leader to your, helping represent God’s voice to your own heart and mind.

What’s it like for you to think of yourself in the role of mediator and leader in these spaces? How comfortable is it? How does it feel to compare yourself to Moses, on whatever scale you’re imagining? How familiar or foreign does that position feel?How natural or awkward is it? Do you see yourself as someone standing in that role in spaces in your life? What about for yourself?

Let yourself imagine some type of threat- akin to the lack of water experienced by the Israelites - that would invite you into active mediation and action on God’s behalf in one of the contexts you’ve imagined. Can you come up with examples - big or small - that have had a similar feeling for you? Share about how those times have been or what you’ve seen and learned in similar situations.
When challenges or conflicts arise, what type of leadership do you tend to fall back on? The approach symbolized by Moses & his staff in Numbers 20, an approach that ultimately relies on force and might? or the approach embodied by Jesus, embracing humility and speech as a pathway to peace?

What factors in the situation or in your own role/position in the situation influence whether you’re more inclined to engage the force of the staff or more inclined to travel down a path of peaceful resolution and speech? Share about what comes up for you as you consider this question.

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Tim taught about the psychoanalytic concept of repetitions: “little compulsive speech habits that reveal some disavowed aspect of the self.” Most of us have little words or phrases we often say (or think). What are some of yours? What things or themes do you think some of them might point to? What’s your response to the idea that some of those little sayings might communicate something to others that you are unaware you’re sharing?
Tim taught about Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s reading of Numbers, a framework that suggests that Israel’s repeated desire to return to Egypt reflects the collective widespread traumas they’ve endured during the process of their emancipation from slavery and their fear of freedom. What do you think about these ideas? How do they impact what you’ve thought and felt about the Israelites, their story, and their repetitive groaning? What shifts for you? Does it bring up compassion, as Zornberg (and Tim) suggest it maybe should? Why or why not?
Consider your responses to the previous question. Do you see any parallels between the way you view the Israelites and their struggles in and against the formation of the wilderness and the way you see yourself as you experiences spaces of wilderness and struggle? If you found yourself considering the Israelites in a new light, how might those shifts be re-applied in how you view your own rebellion against God? The ways you begrudge the process of formation? And your doubt in the eventual goodness of God’s plans for you? What surfaces as you sit with this idea? Do you find doorways to more compassion looking at yourself in this way? Why or why not?

Listen to Cole talk about the book of Numbers.

Early in his sermon, Cole talked about family as an institution that is contentious, tumultuous, and fraught with complexity. He paired that fact with the reality that - at the same time - it’s also a unit that is rooted together and helps shape and form who each of us are for the rest of our lives - independently and together.

For better or for worse, what are some ways in which your experience of family has shaped and formed you? As you look at your uniqueness and your you-ness, what has family meant for you and who you are today? How has your experience shaped what you understand family to be?

How does what you shared intersect and interact with Cole’s reminder that this message was delivered on Family Sunday - a Sunday that isn’t about elevating families within the church, but is instead about acknowledging and being together as the family that is the church?

Cole taught about Moses, Aaron, and Miriam as a sibling triad of important prophets and leaders for the Hebrew people. He also talked about the differences between the way Jewish Rabbinical texts remember and emphasize the the three as a triad and the way it contrasts with both the accounts in the Torah, and Christianity’s remembrance of these three individuals.

What are your thoughts and feelings about the fact that there is a difference in the way these legacies are recounted? How comfortable are you with the idea that there may be people you know of from scripture that aren’t fully or holistically represented in the surviving scriptural texts? What assumptions or beliefs do you have about the people in scripture? Does anything shift, change, or expand as you consider that we may only know small slivers about who they were and what they did?

Cole closed his sermon by reminding us that we all have a part to play in this church. When it comes to deciphering what that part might be, he said “God will speak to you through the events of your life.”

What are your thoughts at this point in your journey about you and your part in the church? What have the events of your life, so far, spikeb to you? You can share about what your understanding is (or isn’t) of what your part may be, or you can share about what surfaces for you when you think about the truth that you do, indeed, have a specific and personal part to play.

Join us as we listen to Christina talk about the book of Numbers.

Join us as Tim walks us through the book of Numbers.

In the pursuit of wisdom, Tim provided a list of human capacities and cultural gifts that can lead us toward it in our journeys. That list is below. What jumps out at you from this list? Which things challenge you or surprise you? What experiences have you had that bear witness to these different things in action as you’ve grown in wisdom in your life?
Tim taught that “most of the time, the path of wisdom will feel a bit like wandering.” Take a moment to let that thought sink into your soul. Consider places or times in your own life that have felt thick and heavy with wilderness and wandering, maybe some that do presently.

Separate from the struggles and subject matter that may be the catalysts for new seasons of wandering, what is it like for you to encounter the wandering itself? What’s your response to the reality of the need for struggle and failure in your own personal evolution and maturation? When it comes to encountering places or times of wandering, what in your own experience and self have you found to be helpful? What has been less supportive and useful in the process? With that reflection in mind, what advice might you give to others or to your future self as new places or times of wandering show themselves on the horizon?

As he talked about our human inclination toward “fast, fun, and easy,” Tim reminded us that “Almost everything [we] want in life is born of failure.” He also said, “Every good thing we want is born of struggle.”

How does this set of ideas strike you? To what degree do you find yourself inclined toward fast, fun, and easy? Share about places in your own past where you can now see or appreciate the good things birthed through difficulty and wandering? To what extent did you see those births in process as they happened?

Then, take a moment to truly consider the idea that the good things you hope for and want in your life from this point forward might require repetitive, slow movement through failure and struggle. What feelings and thoughts surface for you as you ponder?

Come join us as Tim walks us through the book of Numbers.

Come join us, as we discuss the book of Numbers.

Come and join us through the book of Numbers.

Using the passage from Numbers 2 as a foundation, Tim taught that who we count, how we count each other, and how we arrange our communities matters. As he used Kansas City’s history of redlining, and the explicit racial exclusionary zones in Johnson county as examples, what came up for you? Did you notice your own neighborhood on the maps? How do you see the historical decisions about arrangement & counting showing up today in your present life and the people in your circles if exposure?
Tim stated that, “following Jesus has made [him] less certain of [his] truths.” How true or not true does this statement feel for you? Share about why, and what thoughts this idea prompts for you.
In teaching, Tim said that our wrongness and our mistakes are not our wilderness; they are not our problem. The problem is the separation that we enforce between those we consider “our people” and everyone / anyone else. How does this idea strike you?

Have you used or do you use some form of the “wilderness” metaphor applied to your own life? If you use the framework Tim suggests, what are the times and places of wilderness in your own life and world? What do these reflections prompt in you?

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Earlier in her sermon, Mandy said “We don’t need to understand the trinity to participate in the life of the trinity.” She drew a parallel to the sun, reminding us that we don’t have to understand how the sun’s energy works in order to get a tan.

With this metaphor in mind, where do you see the “rays” of the trinity in life and/or in your own life? Where are the impacts of its presence and energy? If that questions brings up a lot of nothing, share about that too. What might the signature of the trinity look like in your world & the world in which you participate? How might we learn to better recognize it?

Mandy shared this statement: “Adam alone is not Adam in the image of God.”

What surfaces for you with this idea?

Consider some of the prominent messages in our individualistic society; consider some of the ideas that have been imparted to you about the reasons for the creation of Eve. What have you been taught it meant when God said it was not good for man to be alone. What are some other ways of understanding that statement?

In Mandy’s sermon, she said “Community is a verb.” Is this a new idea for you? What do you think it looks like “to community” (as an action)? Where have you community-ed in your life’s story so far? Are there places where you’d like to act out that verb differently? Or lessons you’ve learned about how to community well? Share about these ideas.

For further study:

One of Tim’s slides this week read, “Christianity was never meant to be a religious belief system. It has always been about a new way to be a human.”

Consider for a moment your own thoughts and ideas about belief itself. What is the role of belief, or even “a belief system” in your own faith story aim years passed and today? Where do you find belief to be important? Where do you find yourself saying/thinking, “I believe…?”Where might belief be over-emphasized or under-emphasized? And why do you think so?

In discussing the likely familiar ideas that we (as the people of the kingdom of God) are “salt and light,” Tim told us that our task is to:
“draw out a sensitivity to the God who is already present and active in the world.” (Salt) &- “to orient everyone in the space, helping them see their way.” (Light)

If someone were to ask you how to go about drawing out sensitivity to God & orienting people in the spaces of life? What skills or capacities do you think might best equip people - including you - for these important tasks? What might it look like to do these things - in big picture roles and small everyday encounters?

Take a moment to revisit as a group “walking wall” metaphor. What ideas, thoughts, memories, and feelings does this metaphor evoke in you? What are some of the lessons you have learned, are learning, or hope to learn from looking through your faith through this lens? What questions and spaces of curiosity surface?

You might also share about some of the “rocks” you’ve carried forward, repositioned, and maybe even wrestled with as you’ve worked to carry forward the wall in your own life.

Lonnie Cole McGee

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Christina Hubbard

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Rabbi David Glickman is a proven leader dedicating his professional career to creating communities of meaning. He has crafted a rabbinate rooted in Torah and relationships and has cultivated innovative programs utilizing cutting edge human and technological resources with relevant learning experiences, bringing timeless wisdom to the current day.

He formerly served as an associate rabbi in Dallas, Texas, where he spearheaded a new, independent-style minyan in the far-north suburbs. He has also served as a congregational rabbi in Biloxi, a student chaplain in Seattle and a program director at Camp Ramah.

Rabbi Glickman received a BA in Jewish Studies from the University of Michigan, studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He participated in the Synagogue Transformation and Renewal (STAR) program, where he continues to be part of the alumni network.

He serves as the Rabbi of the synagogue. He teaches Adult Ed classes, Downtown Talmud Jam, and oversees curriculum at the religious school.

Rabbi David Glickman is a proven leader dedicating his professional career to creating communities of meaning. He has crafted a rabbinate rooted in Torah and relationships and has cultivated innovative programs utilizing cutting edge human and technological resources with relevant learning experiences, bringing timeless wisdom to the current day.

He formerly served as an associate rabbi in Dallas, Texas, where he spearheaded a new, independent-style minyan in the far-north suburbs. He has also served as a congregational rabbi in Biloxi, a student chaplain in Seattle and a program director at Camp Ramah.

Rabbi Glickman received a BA in Jewish Studies from the University of Michigan, studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He participated in the Synagogue Transformation and Renewal (STAR) program, where he continues to be part of the alumni network.

He serves as the Rabbi of the synagogue. He teaches Adult Ed classes, Downtown Talmud Jam, and oversees curriculum at the religious school.

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Mandy Hill

Cole McGee

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Brady Braatz

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Dr. Paul Hoard

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Guest Speaker: Jessi Marcus

rckccomm.com

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Guest Speaker: Jessi Marcus

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