Episode 80 - Live in Austin, TX

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well this liturgist podcast was recorded live at austin texas at the liturgists gathering you've heard us talk about the gatherings on the show quite a bit whenever we have new ones to announce and now you'll know kind of what happens there we start the liturgist gathering with a live podcast on friday night and then proceed to get increasingly weird throughout the day saturday and it's about time for us to plan some more gatherings so here's what i'd like you to do if you're in portland minneapolis los angeles nashville sydney australia or melbourne australia pay special attention because we'd like to bring the liturgist gathering to you but we need a place to do so so if you've got a venue that can seat between 500 and say 1100 people we'd love to talk to you about hosting the liturgist gathering to get in touch with us go to the liturgistgathering.com and scroll to the bottom of the page where you'll see a link that says host a gathering and just fill out that form and our management team will be in touch with you quickly again the cities that we'd like to bring the gathering to next are portland oregon uh minneapolis-st paul minnesota los angeles california nashville tennessee sydney australia and melbourne australia head to the liturgistgathering.com to fill out the form and in the meantime just listen to what happens at the liturgists gathering this one from austin texas [Music] the stars at night are big and bright [Applause] you understand i've wanted to do that my whole life that was just wish fulfillment for me and i knew there was like if we tried that in seattle they'd be like what participatory communal things i don't understand i just realized there might be some of you who are here with a friend who've never heard the liturgist podcast and may i say i'm sorry uh so i think uh we'll introduce ourselves so for some of you this is redundant but hi i'm science mike my name is hilary mcbride [Applause] yes saving all of our lives i'm gonna get back on my stool after that oh and now could you open up and receive that because you can't open up and receive it i'm william matthews [Music] and william matthews has a new record coming out called cosmos yeah i'm michael gunger fish new doss so there's this amazing uh story in exodus about a man named moses and a god named god it's kind of a boy meets god through a burning bush kind of thing they hit it off immediately and god gives moses this elevator pitch like a sales pitch on becoming his spokesman which is like a pretty good gig really you know and so he's like moses you just really got to be my spokesman you got to go free my people from the land of egypt and moses like but i i'm not a good leader or public speaker and god's like no that's really kind of bullshit i've got some specific reasons why and so like put some back and forth what by the way props to moses for negotiating with god almighty so moses signs the deal it's an exclusive contract and he agrees like he's going to go and he goes and tells his father-in-law we're going back to egypt and so he and his family start traveling to egypt and then this loving god says as you go to egypt the most important thing to do is tell pharaoh that i'm gonna kill his son because he doesn't listen to me after i hardened his heart it's scripture i'm not making this up um and so i'm going to read exodus 4 verses 24 and i will not change a single word of this passage this is what the lord says israel is my oldest son i say to you let my son go so he could worship me but you refuse to let him go as a result now i'm going to kill your oldest son pharaoh hasn't refused yet god's just assuming pharaoh's going to refuse so then after getting this instruction moses leaves and this happens during their journey to egypt as they camped overnight the lord met moses and tried to kill him but zephora took a sharp-edged flint stone and cut off her son's foreskin then she touched moses's genitals with it and she said you are my bridegroom because of the bloodshed so the lord let him alone at that time she announced a bridegroom because of bloodshed by circumcision the word of god for the people of god is going to cover a couple of notes here some theological takeaways from this passage moses says i'll do it god thank you he makes the arrangements he gets a message from god about what he should say as soon as he starts the journey the lord met moses i'm assuming this time not as a burning bush as a more human-like figure i guess and tried to kill him so god tried to kill moses he didn't kill moses he had a desire to kill moses and was not able to do so why was this mur assassination attempt from the almighty against his recently appointed servant and spokesman unsuccessful because a woman cut off a child's foreskin and then touched it to moses's genitals and then said you were my bridegroom because of the bloodshed and god was like we cool welcome to the allergist podcast everybody [Music] i've said on the podcast before like i'm not really that into the bible these days but suddenly my my interest is peaked 16 years in advertising [Laughter] so we've got a text thread with the four of us and we were sending around some ideas for topics for the podcast and one of them that hillary suggested was that we would all just share our favorite bible stories and we're like that's weird let's do that um so that's what we're gonna do we're gonna talk about our favorite bible stories and why and then see how weird it is here's mine in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth now the earth was formless and empty darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of god was hovering over the waters and god said let there be light and there was light god saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness god called the light day in the darkness he called night there was evening and there was morning the first day and god said let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water so god made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it and it was so when god called the vault sky and there was evening and there was morning the second day all right i'm not going to keep reading it because you get the point you've probably heard it it goes on for six days and then god rests and god creates all of it right so here's what i like about this story it's got i've gotten in some serious trouble in my life for how i read this story but i didn't always read this story in a non-literal way and that's actually why i wanted to pick this story because there's a strange sort of conveyor belt nature of this story for me that has always been able to have a place in my spirituality as i've moved it kind of just has moved along with me so when i was a kid a story like this it's such a foundational mythic meaning making story for not just my life but really for christendom for western civilization really the idea this fun fundamental myth by myth i don't mean just false story i mean like meaning making stories kind of meta story that gives meaning to other stories gives context and meaning to other stories within it it sort of answers all the big questions that you have as a human being like why are we here who are we what is the ultimate meaning of life and this story that i was taught from when i was born was you're here because you're a creation of god and sometimes we're so inculcated in this story and by the way there's other versions of this story including scientific naturalism of western civilization which replaces the he god with it laws it's not anymore for a lot of people like a god that created but it's math that created whatever it is it's a difference of source we feel fundamentally different from whence we came and that's not true for all myths in the world talking thinking about the universe as a creation of any sort whether that's from dead laws or a personal being kind of stems from this genesis fundamental meta myth so as a kid i actually really am glad that i didn't have a myth like you know it could have been anything it could have been why are we here there was an alien warlord that spread his seed onto our planet so that so that he could raise his army and someday he will come back and harvest the best soldiers for his war that could have been the myth like that could have been like that's what we're all preparing for the great warlord to come back to defeat alien civilizations but that wasn't the myth that is it could be i just i'm screwed yeah you could work in the lab maybe or something but what i was handed was that i am part of a good creation and there's actually something quite lovely about that i in that is i am part of all of this in that story i'm part of the the creation of the trees and the sky and the waters and i'm it is good it is good so i like that that was frame but then as i became a teenager i began to notice things about the story that didn't quite line up with other things that i learned in school or just kind of looking around like how could there be day and night if there were no sun or moon or stars and why how how does that how are there trees before stars and all the like the story doesn't make any sense if you try to take it as like a literal scientific thing like this doesn't and then it says it again like in the next chapter it says it differently you're like what is the deal with this and so that cracked open something that imperfection of what i wanted this story to be a modernistic scientific account that fully explained existence it didn't work as that it created some tension it created attention of okay i can either like kind of close my eyes to and just assume there are vaults and that the world is probably fl like the cosmology that this implies is absurd i can either kind of just like pretend that it doesn't say that really try to bend the words come up with all these elaborate explanations of why we can see stars that are millions or billions of light years away if the universe is only six thousand years old or i could just like embrace the tension of maybe this isn't supposed to be literal and that opened a nuance that kind of broke through some fundamentalism all of a sudden this text was actually kind of a doorway into wow what if i approach my faith and read and learn about metaphor and learn about hear things in a little more nuanced deeper way than just assuming that what i first hear at first glance is what it is on the surface so that's what i did in my teenage years first the end of my teenage years and then in my 20s as i was able to kind of let that nuance open up and start hearing other things from the text then some sort of account of cosmology or scientific account of the creation of the universe i started being able to find other things in it like the image of god let us make humankind in our image in that image was this desire and ability to sort of be co-creators of our world that we could imagine what kind of world we want to live in and actually work with the creator and the story to make it happen and the story in the genesis story humans are tasked with naming the animals and it's sort of this cooperative situation and there's this creating order and and so for that it kind of i got all these ideas that kind of inspired creatively as an artist i can it's kind of like fundamental to my nature to create and that's what it means to be human on some fundamental level and i could get that from the text and the story and there was all this richness in that and also it sort of opened the door for a more universal way of seeing all god's children god's children weren't just the people relegated later in the story that ended up following this specific religious narrative but all humans were created in the image of god all of them regardless of sexual orientation regardless of race regardless of the circumstances of their birth whether they are considered able-bodied or not it all reflects the image of god and then in my 30s i have been inspired to see how we as humans create gods in our image and we see this god at the beginning who is separating light from dark and see from land and all these different divisions and eventually good from evil that's what we do right like we're born with no differentiated anything we have no words no concepts to separate light from dark but we come kicking and screaming into this world suffering and we try to make sense of it and we try to like make it more bearable by putting names to things by trying to control it and fit it into something that's understandable and controllable and we separate light from dark day from night and so now i see in this story this how we actually have this tendency as humans to reify our egos to the point with our stories where we project them into the sky and we create these gods and stories in our image of what we want the world to be something that we can control and we can know what's good and evil and we can name this and do this and control it and be the gods who rule the earth and subdue the earth and that says a lot to me about human nature so it's taught me about impulses within myself that i have found and what i love i guess overall about genesis 1 is that in its perfect imperfection it has left cracks and room and space to be able to evolve with it and let it continue to speak [Applause] [Music] if you were to talk to your girls about the genesis one story what would you say i would say here's a story that humans have told for a long time just probably tell them the story ask what they think about it and have a conversation and see where they're at on the conveyor belt as far as i mean amelie my oldest i have two one is four one who's seven the seven-year-old i imagine with all the things that we tell her already would already have some like thoughts about it you know i think not painting it as a literal thing that happened but as a story that people can find meaning within and as a good starting place to talk about what does it mean to be alive and what do you think it means to be alive and where do we come what do you think that all of this is i think that's an interesting place to start the conversation i'm kind of wondering how many people here went on a journey maybe through uh understanding evolution that helped kind of deconstruct like that genesis one thing is there wow yeah i patted my heart because they're my people nice yeah it's crazy trees came from stars man trees came from stars trees are stars [Applause] um it's it's crazy how those two things have been put in odds against each other that if you are to be a person of faith or a christian then you have to interpret this genesis one text as literal and therefore you know believe in a young earth creation style um i'm trying to be gracious guys i didn't want to bash ken ham right now but uh he bashed us i mean did he oh yeah but he said we're of greater danger to christianity than atheism i think that was what the liturgies was yeah winning anytime anytime anyone on this panel gets labeled dangerous or a heretic i'm like winnie [Laughter] yeah but it's it's funny how for so many of us that was the deconstruction pill i just kind of wanted to point to that i'm sorry i just thought of a joke and it's late ham shot first my star wars nerds know what's up sorry wait wait no explain this what han shot first is a is a difference in two cuttings of the star wars films so that became like a major point of contention on the internet did or did not han solo shoot first in a particular bar scene so i made a a similar sound pun by saying ham shot first as in ken ham shot first in our internet controversy that guy knew you were talking about that guy right there you guys should hang out later i'm in that's some deep web stuff it's that 3 am google search reading you're on reddit that's literally true so as a person who grew up in the protestant church this was something that i wouldn't expect myself to read in luke 1 verse 26 in the sixth month of elizabeth's pregnancy god sent the angel gabriel to nazareth a town in galilee who virgin blood pledged to be married to a man named joseph a descendant of david the virgin's name was mary the angel went to her and said greetings you are highly favored the lord is with you mary was troubled at his words and wonder what kind of greeting this might be but the angel said to her do not be afraid mary you have found favor with god you'll conceive and give birth to a son and you were to call him jesus he'll be great and will be called the son of the most high the lord god will give him the throne of his father david and he will reign over jacob's descendants forever his kingdom will never end how will this be mary asked the angel since i am a virgin the angel answered the holy spirit will come on you and the power of the most high will overshadow you so the holy one to be born will be called the son of god even elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age and she who is said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month for no word from god will ever fail i am the lord's servant mary answered may your words to me be fulfilled and then the angel left her so for those of you who know a little bit about my stories i've talked about it my struggle to understand that my body that i could be good is something that i've struggled with for a very long time it was something that at one point on several occasions almost took my life when i think about how i read the scripture now i see how differently i see myself as being reflected in my interpretation but for those of you who grew up in the church where women's bodies were bad and caused men to sin isn't it interesting to think that maybe god would come to all of us through the body of a woman so i grew up in churches where i was told you don't wear spaghetti straps you certainly don't dance like we were dancing earlier because it would cause somebody else to sin i was told that my body was a weapon that it was dangerous that it was something to be ashamed of that my body brought sin into this world that my body that my identity as a woman actually caused sin to enter the world and when you grow up hearing over and over and over again he he he he father father father king king king and the only stories that you're told about women are primarily about how women brought sin into this world and are dangerous to men that starts to take a toll on how you see yourself i would say that that is a result of the way that we've created and constructed the narrative of god through a patriarchal lens i don't think that women's bodies are actually bad but as it goes with constructs when we reinforce them and retell them over and over and over again even though they're constructs they feel real no person of color is actually less actually less valuable than another person when you behave in such a way that they are the experience of oppression is real the experience of silencing and marginalization that experience is real even though you're not actually any less valuable so we get these two images of women the madonna and the whore this comes up in feminist narratives and feminist deconstructions of patriarchal narratives of women women are perfect and the virgin like mary or they are mary magdalene or eve women's bodies are bad or they're perfect and they're virgins so where does that leave us if we're also told that we can never be perfect where does that leave us if we're told that the virgin birth was impossible and that we could never be good except if we had the dead body of a man to tell us that our sin had been washed away so we get these two narratives madonna and the whore and that's where often i see a lot of women in counseling talking about their experience of being moms and sexual feeling like how do i reconcile these two things because i was always told if i was a mom that i was like the virgin mary but if i was sexual i was like eve what happens when our sexuality and our goodness and being a parent and being a child and all of these different identities collide we start to pull apart the seams of the stories that we were told so we get madonna and the whore the other thing that we also get a lot of is virginity is the only way to be a good woman and a really interesting fact that i came across is that virgin didn't used to mean that you hadn't had sex with someone virgin meant a woman who belonged to herself and not to somebody else wow that's a tweet someone pull out your phone right now and tag me in that so if we're told that being a virgin is the only good way to be a woman but virginity is actually defined by sexual experience with a man then everything about women's bodies is about men actually so growing up in a protestant church because we don't have a great doctrine of mary or don't have a lot of fascination with her that we see in more liturgical or more catholic communities of faith i never really paid much attention to the mary story i actually thought it was kind of laughable i think i really didn't understand when people really had a high view of mary what that was about but i was always told well there's no way to god but jesus so why would you deify anyone who wasn't a member of the trinity but as my views on spirituality have changed and as my views on my body have changed i've started to see this story differently i've started to see that although women were told that they brought sin into the world we get to claim that we also brought god into the world and it was through our vulvas [Applause] [Music] so what does that mean if god took up resonance in the body of a woman what would this story sound like if i said to you there was a disabled trans person who was in a wheelchair and god showed up in their body what would happen if i told you that the person who looked different than you said that god showed up in their body so depending on where you are in terms of how you understand scripture and what it means to you there's something for us to take away here particularly in a narrative of that our relationship with the divine that has been largely constructed through patriarchal narratives where god is intellectually related to god is far away god is bigger than god is transcendent and yet through incarnational theology we see that god is imminent god is now and god is actually in the body so when i read this story i think thank goodness that we get this story in scripture where often it's misinterpreted scripture is misinterpreted as being harmful to women in some ways it is harmful to women and people who are minorities and yet we got these other stories about actually scripture saying lots of things about people who are minorities and on the margins actually being just like everybody else but here we have a story of a woman's body that held god and whether that's literal or that's a metaphor what does that mean for you and what if it was to say as well that the way that pain came into the world was also the way that god would come into the world so what if this was about more than just women but about being human that the people that we say cause the problems are the sinners are also the people who god chooses to enter through [Music] it's like really interesting to me for so much of the american church which is based on devotion to scripture and reading the bible a lot how shallow and superficial an encounter with the bible must be to yield a madonna whore dichotomy so that even though patriarchy is incredibly present in the biblical arc and language as would be pretty culturally appropriate for the time it was written there was very imperialist notes it's a it's a work of its time there are incredibly powerful dynamic women in scripture there are women who literally lead the culture in times of crisis there is one particular story i enjoy of a woman who killed an oppressive man in his sleep by driving a tent peg through her head i think it's pronounced jl that doesn't fit very cleanly into a madonna whore dichotomy and yet so often that is the biblical air quotes depiction of women and femininity in our society i don't remember do we get special glasses that filter out parts of the bible when we join a church i think i had a pair how does that occur i mean it's crazy there's a poem i wanted to read that i forgot to read i found god in myself and i loved her i loves her fiercely that's my note sake shanghai i was gonna do this the merry story but i'm glad i didn't now because you killed that just wanted to throw that out there so do you have any place um with mary in your own in your spiritual life no hillary is it it makes me think about just through the metaphor that maybe i'm like mary i really don't think that much it feels more like an experience of feeling like maybe i could be like married to you maybe i am like mary maybe i have god inside my body i'm really into matryoshka dolls right now so those russian stacking dolls where the smallest ones are on the inside and because i've been getting more and more into reading literature about the divine feminine and god as mother and all of these these kind of images that i didn't really see growing up again as i was mentioning before about the idea of god as male and being transcendent and god as being more feminine and being more imminent it seems that whenever i read these stories about the divine feminine matriarcha dolls come up so i started been kind of noticing them and thinking about them and maybe wanting to get a set and then my mom was in russia a few weeks ago and came home and without us even talking about it presented me with this set of matryoshka dolls and they tell a story so there's five dolls stacked within each other the largest one that holds all the other dolls has this basket of fruit in her hands when you open that up there's another doll inside that holds an apple and then you open up the next doll and she's got jam and then you open up the next doll and she's holding seeds and you open up the last one and she's holding a butterfly and the butterfly often symbolizes transformation and new life and i remember being so struck just immediately tears coming to my eyes when i saw this because i saw the largest doll containing all of these other dolls and transformation was on the inside at the very center and so i think about mary and me kind of like mary holding transformation holding the potential for new life holding the divine on the inside of me but also this intergenerational piece which reminds us that we're all connected to each other and and that god is also the mother in my opinion that holds me it's like an escher painting you don't know where it starts and where it ends but like if god is in me and i am god just kind of go around and around and around am i the doll on the inside am i the doll holding the doll on the inside and it feels like it doesn't really matter which one because they're all true what if we extend that metaphor to a we um and even christianity itself over the last while i and i'm still would check the complicated relationship status box with christianity on my profile but i i see within christianity not just now but historically people who have questioned some of these fundamental like it's in the creeds that mary was a virgin there's some damage i think in that way i see things if when especially when we interpret virgin as means you've never had sex and that's what pure means that's where god can come if you have if you haven't had sex um and so there's fundamentally all the patriarchy of that and then in the structure of the church there's fundamentally for most of the church for most of time you can't be a priest unless you're a man and you can't there's so much it's so like in the bricks um patriarchy is and honestly that's a big part of why i have i don't we don't go to church and i have these girls that you mentioned before and while i love so much of christianity's there's so much even you talking about the virgin birth and what you can get out of that i see that historically it's not just people today doing it there always have been people reimagining reinventing and they're holding this potential of what this could be and you got all this other junk that you have to like yeah i know this is where we've come but we're gonna retell the story and reimagine what it can be and i'm curious of those of you that would still consider yourself within the tradition within the faith just how how you navigate that tension of seeing the patriarchy in the bricks in the in the very substance of so much of the structure but still being able to reimagine and and see enough beauty within it to keep going keep telling the story with new imaginative innovative ways can i add to that and just say i've really in my own personal life like wrestled with the virgin birth in that understanding of it being this you know someone who's never had sex therefore god could come i always kind of thought the story would have been better if mary had a child out of wedlock that's just in my own person i'm surprised i'm confessing this right now but like in my own personal like revisioning of that story i always thought not that it's dirty but like how much more powerful it would be if that even in the taboo in the stigma of you're an unwed woman who you know has had pre-marital sex that god would still be redemption in that or or manifest himself herself through in and through that i've always thought that was a more better telling of that but i mean so what do you picture kind of adding to michael like now do you do you think that it needs to be literal to in order to have faith and believe whatever that means i heard pete rollins talk about a joke a jewish joke where two hebrew scholars are arguing about the interpretation of scripture they're arguing and arguing and they keep praying god show me show me the interpretation show me what's true and finally god is like ah okay i'll come down and i'll tell you what's the true interpretation and god shows up and says that and the hebrew scholars are like what do you don't no we don't want to actually know we love arguing about it we like asking the questions and we don't want to stop asking the questions it's not about arriving at something and then that being the way that it is it's a starting point to have conversation so i actually feel more life in that passage because of the questions that you're asking and the potential for us to challenge the narrative from different perspectives than i do feeling like it matters one way or the other like let's talk about what happens if it's not literal what happens if it is literal how does that change things and let's have the same conversation next week i'm not interested in deciding i'm interested in asking questions and considering how it might subvert what i already thought i knew that was yeah that was really beautiful give it up for hillary seriously that was gorgeous [Applause] yeah i'm getting lots of exposure to the thing that i fear most which is being seen unknown [Laughter] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists okay so my story do you guys remember elijah in the bible yeah yeah the prophet right you got to say it like that the prophet the miracle worker right and all these like tales and stories and you know there were oil running out of pots and you know he was healing people and he had this like magical mantle that he was you know given to his you know the next generation but i wanted to tell the story about uh elijah on mount carmel um so in the context i guess it's 9th century bc they say there was this king named ahab and ahab married a woman named jezebel who here has ever been called jezebel in church raise your hand so this is actually not about you i just want no just trigger warning this is not about you when you have a jezebel spirit were you told you had a jezebel spirit that's what the music minister said when i was a senior in high school true story how progressive of him to call a man jezebel too for conservative christians that's progressive you know the jezebel spirit isn't just for women there's men that have it too show snap snap snap like you know what i'm talking about oh i've never thought of that before that's yeah like they were really progressive for spiritual warfare people right like that was wow man so there was a king named ahab who married a woman named jezebel here's the thing though jezebel the scripture that the king james version the new king james version i had they called her cosmopolitan meaning she worshipped many gods so supposedly she you know worshiped the god of baal and she was bringing this influence into israel now far as i can understand which basically is what wikipedia told me come on y'all know what i'm talking about it's just as good as encyclopedia britannica was it's just as good y'all it's gotten there that's right i remember looking up menstruation in there do you remember what it said no but somebody had said something about that i was like and then i'm like i have no idea what that is [Applause] up to the britannica when no one's around young michael's going to the britannica what is menstruation okay so right she worshipped this this god named bale um you know the origins of baal is are not fully known which basically means i refuse to dig deep enough to figure that out right that's what i said you know they're not fully known but you know you know because it's just a podcast um sorry we're not an authority if you thought we were we're not um but one thing is clear that wikipedia says is that at first the name baal was used by the jews for their god without discrimination but as the struggle between the two religions developed the name baal was given up by the israelites as a thing of shame and they actually changed you know a certain name that was called forgot uh you know jeruba bell and they changed to uh jerible chef which means shame so what was the evil of baal why was jezebel and all of this you know why were they so bad this guy that wikipedia told me about named bratty kelly said basically i guess they were into occultic sexual practices which for the ancient world could really destabilize a whole community right especially you know and science mike has talked about this many times about hunter-gatherer societies and you know anyway and what marriage represents to that so here's the story this is the context so elijah with all this corruption going on elijah the prophet goes to see ahab the lord calls to him and says go see the king so he goes to see the king and this is what he says so obadiah who was the palace facilitator uh went to meet ahab and told him to meet elijah when he saw elijah ahab said is that you you troubler of israel i have not made trouble for israel elijah replied but you and your father's family have you have abandoned the lord's commands and have followed the bales now summon the people from all over israel to meet me on mount carmel and bring the 450 prophets of baal that's a lot of prophets and the 400 prophets of ashira who eat at jezebel's table not you mike i dislike this story so ahab sent word through all of israel and assembled the prophets on mount carmel elijah went before the people how long will you waver between two opinions if the lord is god follow him if baal is god follow him and the people said nothing then elijah said i am the one and only of the lord's prophets left but baal has 450 prophets get two bulls for us let bale's prophets choose one for themselves and let them cut into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it i will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it then you call in the name of your god and i will call in the name of my god the lord the god who answers by fire for he is god then all the people said what say is good they like we good okay well let's do that what you say is good okay all right anyone right now want to get an audio version of the bible read by william [Laughter] thank you for giving me my next project i've never thought about that they called on the name of baal from morning till noon they'll answer us they shouted but there was no response no one answered and they danced around the altar they had made at noon elijah began to taunt them shout louder he said surely he is a god perhaps he is deep in thought or busy or traveling maybe he is sleeping or must be awakened i mean this is shade right here y'all like he was like oh where he out here here oh i thought you said he was gonna be here though really really though really that was some pettiness right there so they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears well as was their custom i guess because they were under the you know the blood sacrifice and the sex cults midday pass they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice but there was no response then elijah said to all the people come here to me they came and he repaired the altar of the lord which had been torn down elijah took 12 stones each one represented the tribes descended from jacob to whom the lord had come saying you shall be israel with those stones he built an altar in the name of the lord and he dug its trench around the large enough to hold two seas of seed he arranged the wood cut uh he he basically did it and then he said do it a third time and he did and at the time of sacrifice the elijah prophet step forward and pray lord god of abraham isaac and israel you know you and your mama used to pray she used to call on like all the ancestors the lord the faith of my father and my father's father no one's okay that was my mom let it be known today that you are god in israel and that i am your servant and have done all these things that your command answered me and so these people will know that you are lord basically the fire came and then once the fire came like elijah went and like slaughtered everybody like the 450 prophets of baal gruesome story made the lord had a blessing to the reading of his word okay so i'll just say this real quick and be done because that story is just it's crazy so did he do it by himself just him he just yeah he says elijah slaughtered them yeah by himself yeah four that's that is badass y'all 450 people just like they stood in line they didn't fight back like what was what's going on i need to know the practical dimensions of how they were slaughtered um it was like matrix he's like flying through the air slow motion well he was a prophet and a miracle worker so um yeah so this story registers to me because have you ever felt like you were like the only one elijah was like i am the only prophet of the lord left right you've been in this situation where there's some corrupt things going on or there's some people doing some shady stuff and you're like you see it and you're like i'm the only one that knows and and i've gotta call it out have you ever felt that zeal don't leave me hanging y'all please not or say yes okay right you felt like elijah and i that's why i love this story right because i get like that so i'm like you know especially if you are an intuitive person or you know for those of you that are really deep and spiritual you would say you're prophetic you know you know like you feel things from god or from other people and so you're like this is right and that's wrong and you feel it's so strong and then you challenge the powers right so imagine this here comes elijah he was a prophet during the reign of king ahab it's always crazy that god raises up prophets especially when they're most needed and usually in the bible it's when men set themselves up as kings over other men prophets according to walter brugemann represents the alternative consciousness they provide us with the voice of god which is always the counter script to the false narratives of empire right sound familiar there's always a fight for the truest name of god especially as other names become known and associated with evil right so here's ahab and they're mixing kind of this other thing with the name of god right and and that's where the tension lies so what happens when a word or a metaphor or a perfectly good name becomes convoluted when a meaning or a metaphor becomes twisted to promote evil instead of good again sound familiar what happens when the truth fails in the public square and the ones in power are corrupt do we call it fake news and continue on our steady diet of entertainment and apathy like literally what do we do it is in these conditions that god raises up prophets those who cannot take the knowing insanity of cognitive dissonance the ever so slight buzzing sound that you can't quite place mainly because it's buzzing all around you but the thing about elijah that i love is that truth eventually has a showdown and elijah's brave act ended up bringing about the restoration of a whole nation and my other favorite thing about this story is after it all happens and after he does the brave thing he runs away like a little child jezebel's like oh i'm gonna get you you did what you killed all my prophets and then he runs into the wilderness and he runs into a cave and he's he basically goes into deep depression and suicide have you been in a situation where you spoke truth to power you said the thing that needed to be said not out of a place of rebellion but out of a place of love and then you ended up being the one that ran away and got afraid like that resonates right but what are we called to do we're constantly called to speak truth in that square we're constantly called to call down fire and to tell the truth at any cost because it's the truth regardless of the popular opinion even when you know jezebel's gonna come get you you tell the truth and you speak truth to power and that's what i love about that story you know you said in that kind of run so what do we do and a little report came out recently that white protestants have the lowest support for accepting refugees into the country of any social group in the united states and the prophet of austin jenn hatmaker said in response [Applause] and i i pretty close to quote time to burn it all down i'm trying to get on the organ [Laughter] it's the little bass [Laughter] [Laughter] no but right so true where what do we do about truth in the public square do you guys feel like you're sort of going insane like quietly like am i crazy for saying that like you see the shit going on and you hear it and you hear the lies you hear the deceit right and there's always lies in to see no one's saying this is new but it's ramped up to a whole nother level and you're called to like they want us to normalize it and say it's okay and you know god's in this and we just got to be quiet and i'm going who does that work for that only works for the status quo it only works for jezebel and ahab that's who it works for and all the prophets of baal who stand and posture themselves with lies it says they're frantic prophesying and their lies and there's people that are set up in institutions that do this stuff constantly that basically create fear around refugees and immigrants and the people that the church is called to love these false prophets though i think they're well-meaning people oftentimes are buying into the ahab jezebel bullshit so what do we do what do we do because the dissonance is getting louder and we're all going a bit crazy we all are can we we can own that i don't have the answers but i'm saying it's getting louder y'all and we've got to start coming up with some real solutions real quick [Applause] i was waiting for you to jump up head down there and just start preaching right there just thank god justify like just let's get it done that's my that's my granddaddy and my daddy i don't do it like that y'all but you're getting there i am i'm gonna be that old like crocketty guy like and the lord says like that is gonna be me i guarantee it so i'm headed there so just pray my strength in the lord y'all i just feel like i wanna actually make space around us thinking about that like i i'm just feeling the weight and the conviction around that i think it starts with telling the truth james baldwin said not everything can be changed but if we do want to change things we have to face them to paraphrase like we have to face it we can't lie about it or demean it or say it's not what it actually is like it's not to demean people but you have to call racism racism you have to it's funny i feel very biblical about that you have to call sin sin yes you know knowing that the sinner can't be redeemed right like no they're not going to hell but like we have to call it what it is we have to call corruption corruption we have to call pay for pay pay for play like you know if we don't call it that then what is democracy like what is representation of the people other than some type of kleptocracy and i don't want to live in that like not to get super political but you know but like i don't want to live in a nation that's dictated by corporations and wealthy people and it's particularly white wealthy christians like that's right come on so we got to put our little petty side bullshit together and like figure out some type of mobilization to be the change that we want to see and to change our cities on a local level and on a state level and on a national level like we've gotta call the thing a thing i don't know for some of you that feel like you're going crazy i just want to give you strength tonight and say you can call a thing a thing and you can keep calling and you've probably been elijah and maybe some of you are elijah right now and you feel weary and you feel like you're in the cave you had to run away a bit to get yourself together to do some self-care and to heal but ultimately right the lord comes and visits elijah he comes and vision says what are you doing where are you like where are we in the fight we got to give our lives for something otherwise it's just for comfortability like i don't i'll die for this you know i won't take a life for it but i will lay down my life for this will we do that for each other we need to keep speaking truth we have to keep being consistent and faithful in love to speak truth to power and to each other and to our family members and to our communities like and why don't we fear yeah yeah we're gonna get you a mic we want you to say that no the institutions that we have know how to deal with us they take us out one by one it's not us standing up alone we die if we do we die if we do if the church will be the institution it's supposed to be and stand up against these other institutions and say no more yes [Applause] i'm thankful my science might just did a run hey i'm thankful for the parts of the church that have stood up and have resisted and said no but we need more like you're saying we need more people like somebody told me a friend of ours kirk crew in portland he said the church is the only institution in the world really in america particularly but the world that is built to repent because government is not going to repent like industry's not going to repent facebook's not going to repent for their sins like really like they're not they'll do a nice cute commercial right to make you feel good about still using their platform [Music] you know so but the church is the only institution and we're the church i'm not just talking about jerry falwell and all those god bless some stuffy people like you know like i'm talking about like us the people like the church god's people like michael was saying earlier about the love and the inclusion of all people like we're god's children collectively not just the people who ascribe to a certain belief system of christian orthodoxy like we've got to stand up and we've got to name it and we've got to say it and then we've got to call those institutions like fox news and say no no stop with the anti-blackness no stop [Music] she says because we tell christians they have to be nice i'm tired of nice nice got me nowhere nice got me very apathetic and internal and stuffing my feelings in order to belong i'm i'm of the school of thought i'm like let the rage scream through you like because the insanity is real and you're not wrong for feeling that because that's what's being marketed to you and that's what's being anyway i'm done too i'm not suppressing myself but i'm just saying i'm done but we didn't plan this william and i well what did you do this is just serendipity uh matthew 8 5-13 when jesus had entered capernaum a centurion came to him asking for help lord he said my servant lies at home paralyzed suffering terribly jesus said to him shall i come and heal him the centurion replied lord i do not deserve to have you come under my roof but just say the word and my servant will be healed for i myself am a man under authority with soldiers under me i tell this one go and he goes and that one come and he comes and to a policeman don't shoot and he does not and i say to my servant do this and he does it when jesus heard this he was amazed and said to those following him truly i tell you i have not found anyone in israel with such great faith i say to you that many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with abraham isaac and jacob in the kingdom of heaven but the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth then jesus said to the centurion go let it be done just as you believed it would and his servant was healed at that moment and for most of my life as a good white evangelical i understood that we this persecuted minority represented a modern-day israel direct spiritual descendants from first century jews and that it was our job to stand up to the liberal secular media of rome and stand up for truth and for love and for justice meaning spiritual warfare justice and not things that inconveniences suburbanites in any possible way and that's my spiritual heritage a roman who believed with sincerity that he was a jew there's a funny thing jesus was a marginalized man of color living under the thumb of empire and when he stood up and spoke truth he was publicly executed as a warning of the consequences of speaking truth to power there was nothing exceptional about messianic cult leaders in the first century they were a dime a dozen there were lots of messiahs in the time of christ and there were lots of crucifixions but i've learned and as i've told many of you before on the internet that i am not a jew i'm a roman because when i say to my servant go do this they do when i say to my congressman you better listen he does so what does that mean it means you asked earlier what do we do with a religion that's so tied up with patriarchy and colonization and heterosexism and sexism and anti-feminism and anti-blackness how do we redeem that matthew 8 holds the key centurion call the marginalized lord because they are the descendants of the role of israel in society they have the embodied spiritual experience to understand that the gospel is not a get out of hell free card and the gospel is not a license to claim the world for yourself that the gospel is a demand to lay down what you have for the healing of the world and anything less is not good news so there's this crazy asshole named saul and he kills christians and he was a jew but he was like a different kind of jew he was a privileged jew he was a ruling elite in his society and he was also a citizen of rome and paul went from killing christians to being one of them because he saw a bright light and heard a voice it's a cool story bro and and then paul publicly works out like his phariseesical greco-roman hellenized worldview through a mystical experience in a very public and messy way paul began to act with decisiveness and authority far before he had things figured out but what happened when paul would go into a town and say things that weren't popular to be said to power he was not crucified because he was a citizen of rome he was warned he was arrested he was imprisoned he was exiled you know why because even though paul said some really terrible things about women he would not give up on the idea that god was made flesh for everyone and that the only way to embody that was to take up your cross too to voluntarily lay things down and i say that because the liturgist podcast has literally millions of listeners and a very large percentage of them are white people going i think i care about this stuff but what do i do you take up your cross you don't stop talking and you get warned and you get arrested and you get exiled but you never get by on the idea that god's justice is for everyone because and this is truly disgusting and ironic but without paul the good news of christ would have never conquered an empire so we're we are an interesting place my white friends of having to be followers and i believe it is essential in justice movements that white people are followers in racial justice that straight people are followers and issues of lgbtqi justice i think it's important that when marginalized people describe their experiences the most important thing in the room is not how we privileged folks feel about it that when disabled people describe their experiences that their voices are most important but our role is to be the ones who can say to our servants go and they will go and our congressmen vote and they will vote and our police departments we will not tolerate state-sanctioned murder of black people tonight's a good night to look up who your congress person is if you don't already know yeah i've taken several trips to dc and they get those voicemails they get those faxes and when issues pop up and it's about all sorts of things and their offices get flooded it shuts down their offices if they start getting a bunch of emails a bunch of like incessant phone calls and a bunch of faxes that's how they know what their constituents want to like them to represent it's an amazing thing that we get to be a part of something that we have a voice the ancient world they didn't have a voice we get a voice we can actually bring change in a relatively short amount of time by doing those simple things that hillary's talking about finding out who your representatives are who your senators are and then actually look at the issues actually look at what isis doing look at the families that are being ripped apart like actually get on the ground and see what is happening to our country right now and the spiritual harm that is happening to actual people it's real this is texas y'all we gotta get ted cruz out of here like [Applause] oh you know they're like i'm sorry like like we've got to do something about mass shootings in this country like that's just we've got to start talking about it and we've got to start finding solutions and dialoguing and and holding politicians accountable the reason why they get away with this stuff is because we don't hold them accountable we don't we don't care like i've got my netflix queue with all my shows that i love and my spotify playlist that i love to just you know like i know more about that stuff oftentimes than i do about things happening in my own community right like something is twisted and sticking our culture we've got to put the focus back on like mike was saying the people who we see christ through like the crucified class of society like we have to see them again and and not dismiss them anymore and because how can we say we even would even be on a path of spiritual enlightenment if we can't even see the people in front of us [Applause] as a person of color there's an exhaustion that makes you just want to hunker down and survive the next few years and possibly four years after that and then figuring out like how you handle the fact that america's pandora's box has sort of been open you can't close it anymore but there's still a desire and an obligation to fight alongside people and push for what we believe is true just there's there's more days than not where the only energy i think i have is just to worry about my husband worry about my kids go to bed wake up do the same thing over again and that isn't a practical way to live and it's not it just it just seems lacking so any advice there i think would be helpful i i definitely come from a privileged place of being a single guy so i don't have a spouse or kids you know to not help navigate those things because that takes so much of the uh attention span so i actually think about that oftentimes how i know where that comes from i mean i feel so first thing i do feel the exhaustion that you're talking about like we all do i hope i want you to feel that i don't want you to not feel that like i've i used to feel like i had to put on a front for people you know for the people and be this and let them know you're okay and you're doing better and it's like no i'm angry i'm really angry and i'm exhausted and i'm tired of fighting i want to live in adjustable peace peaceful society and i think we can do that so i don't i don't know like i have so much compassion from for families and mothers and people that just during the day-to-day grind of work and paycheck to paycheck like i i have i understand why we're often so sluggish to wake up because it's the grind of empire and that's why i think we've got to start caring and doing the theological work of deconstructing who we are our identities and that placement inside of empire because here's the thing empire wants you to be apathetic empire wants you to be sluggish they want you to be weighed down so you can't think about the political system and in your community and how to create you know better schools for your children and and better neighborhoods you know that include all people like they don't want you to think about that they want you to live paycheck to paycheck and i'm not saying that some like conspiracy theory like they the man the what you know what i'm saying like like but i'm saying it like from a theological framework right like that's that is the the beast system it's that's the mark of the beast it's the economic system that keeps you enslaved and in bondage to where you can't be free to worship and free to see the beauty of god and all things and all people they keep you down they give you a number they get your nine to five you go to work you type you know you get the kids you get to the house and then you struggle and then you wake up what happened i don't know like i'm 70 now and especially for people of color that hits us harder hits us so much harder and our communities have been literally disseminated by those things and then throw on like mental health and drug epidemics and we've been we're done and we're looking at a situation where in the next several decades that the medium wealth for black families is going to be zero how do we what that's not individual responsibility that's not people not wanting to work or have dignity for themselves that's the empire telling you you don't you don't matter so let's take your wealth and let's give it to the top one percent so like so for me i i don't know how to answer your question but i know that we've got to get away i'm old school where i used to go and you just pray fast turn off the tv you know right like you like and you get educated like that's what my family did we didn't have like like my grandma was like that's what we did like you prayed and you fasted and you got together with the community and you figured it out and you figured out how to how to make that difference and if you have to say no to worldly pleasures whatever that is and i i know about those worldly pleasures uh you know you do that because that's what matters because i want to leave a world where your children and my you know nieces and nephews can can actually have something to build on when you were talking i was thinking about this thing that happens in choirs when enough people sing together and someone takes a breath you don't hear them take a breath because everybody else carries the tune so when we think about power with instead of power over and we see that we are not alone in something and we intentionally find communities and groups of people who remind us that we are not alone they can carry the tune when we catch our breath we're not meant to face the empire alone we're not made to meant to face even our pain from that alone and so community i think is is what needs to happen in the church but also for survival second thing is that a lot of times when we're tired we do things that help us not feel so we scroll on our phones we watch a show that doesn't make us think we eat until we can't think straight right we do things we use substances behaviors to numb ourselves out but those are not restorative to us they just stop us from feeling feeling tired for a little bit so whenever i talk with people about the fight or whatever they need to face how do they sustain the intensity of their toddler's tantrum when you have a break you do something restorative you intentionally go find the things that fill you up and you make space for them the problem with that is that it takes a little bit of energy to do that to roll out the yoga mat to buy the book of poetry to listen to the cosmos album but in the end it's the only thing that's restorative so we have to find the things that are restorative and we have to choose them and if it takes just a little bit of energy to choose that we may fear that we will be more tired but in the end we will be restored [Applause] let's feel what just happened and let it take root if you want you can close your eyes if you want you can let your gaze soften onto the floor i'm going to ask you if you're able to to put your feet both flat on the floor and normally we want to go right to our breath but sometimes when we're anxious sometimes when we feel overwhelmed our breath is hard to catch and then we feel more anxious i want you to go into your feet if you're very still and very quiet on the inside you might feel some sensation right where your feet touch the ground and i want you to imagine for a second that that's something from the earth body coming up into your feet [Music] that maybe there are stories that have come before you that can energize you in this moment and the vibration that you feel in your feet is the reminder you are not the first and you will not be the last and there's a whole of human history that you can draw upon and everybody's touching the same earth but the same buzzing your feet is the same buzzing in the feet of the person next to you [Music] and you can draw on something to imagine roots that go deep [Music] and as we know with roots they bring things up into the trunk of the tree to spring forth life from the top so if you feel tired imagine drawing resources up from the roots if you are in the place in your story where you have the energy that you need you let that life spring forth up the top and you can be both rooted and expansive at the same time so now attend to your breath and if you need to tuck some things away from what we talked about tonight because you don't know what to do with them yet imagine that you can take them and put them in your pocket or bookmark them in your mind to come back to another time and if you're ready to do something hold on to that energy and save it so that when you get home tonight you can talk to someone that you need to talk to you can email someone that needs an email you can read an article that needs to be read you can find the thing that restores you so that tomorrow when you're tired it's not so hard to find that and if at all during the gathering you feel tired put your feet on the floor feel your feet buzz as they sense the energy from the earth body and draw that up knowing that you don't have to do it alone when you're ready you can come back to the room [Laughter] in the quiet i had a another one of these verses from the scriptures come to mind and we live in such urgent and tense times we see such darkness in places of authority in the systems the powers that oppress control value some lives more than others it calls to my mind those tensions that the bible was written out of and it was written out of tense times as well there was oppression and violence and slavery and it was tense there was tremendous work that needed to be done and this verse just came to my mind out of uh old paul paul pants but he says your enemy isn't flesh and blood at all for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers against the authorities against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil and heavenly realms and you know you can take that literally and go harry potter world with it or you can see that behind the literal people that are in power there are forces there are mimetic trends in human psychology and in cultural consciousness that have evolved and there's big things going on and it's always been the temptation for human beings that see the injustice that see the oppression the work that needs to be done to personify it in that guy and in my family who i'm going to be meeting with this sun memorial day and and it so easily crosses into actually being about flesh and blood and when when it becomes about flesh and blood it never actually resolves anything so that just came up in me that in times like this when the fervor and the passion for justice and for things to be right come up humans generally in history make that about flesh and blood and blood is the first answer that we have from either side we nail people to crosses or we use crosses to hold up in our crusades and i don't think that's the answer [Applause] [Music] well we hope you've enjoyed this episode of the liturgist podcast if you're not in the room and would like to engage with us more deeply you can do so by going to the liturgists.com podcast facebook.com the liturgist or at the liturgist on twitter and instagram this episode was scored by matasowski with some extra tracks by tom crouch your hosts have been mike mccarg michael gunger hillary mcbride and william matthews thanks for listening everybody [Applause] you