WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Gravity Podcast, where we host conversations on developing a Christian spirituality rooted in love that fosters resilient faith in everyday life.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Greetings, salutations, beloved listener.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's great to be with you again.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Three weeks in a row here, after taking a little hiatus, we are publishing weekly podcasts for you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: This is the Gravity Commons podcast, my name is Ben.
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[SPEAKER_03]: This is Matt and Christy is also with us today.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, right.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's good to have you with us Christy.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I know your schedule is such that you cannot always be with us for these intros or these interviews you weren't able to be with our with us for our interview, but it's always nice to have you I was with you for the Kenneth Tanner one, but I haven't been with you for some Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it's my schedule is a little different so I'm trying to make the ones I can But yeah, I have a very important question to ask both of you okay
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, is it GIF, or GIF?
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[SPEAKER_01]: GIF is already answer, I want to see if Ben knows.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I know the right answer too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
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[SPEAKER_00]: According to the teenagers, there is.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, really?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Can anything good come out of teenagers?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, can I give a little back story to this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, please do.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so the letters GIF, their an acronym,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And they stand for graphics interchange format.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And because graphics is a hard gut,
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[SPEAKER_01]: people, uh, some people make the case that it should be gif.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It should be gif because that's the graphics, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But apparently, and I don't, I don't know, um, I don't know if this is a
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[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, developed GIFs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My name's Steve Wilhite has, has told, has, has gone on the record saying that he pronounced it's, he pronounces it GIF.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So the person who invented the GIF calls it GIF.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Controversely, I tell you that's, that's the backstory I know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so Ben, with all that historical background.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that was just, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What is your opinion, GIF or GIF?
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[SPEAKER_03]: This is hard because I feel like I pronounced it both ways in my life.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'll just try to think about historically how I've pronounced it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I think I've said GIF.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, is that your final answer?
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's my final answer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Matt, you have the right answer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What is your right answer?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's right because when Steve said that, he agreed with me in the way I'd been pronouncing it, so I go with GIF.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, all right, just think, just think the peanut butter, peanut butter, GIF.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I know there's some listeners out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We probably just lost some listeners.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're not.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They unsubscribed.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Several thousand have already just stopped listening to this, but I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that actually think it doesn't really matter that much.
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[SPEAKER_01]: No, it doesn't.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it does.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're 16, it does.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the deal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My kids told me this week that I texted very angerly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, Mom, you're such an angry texture.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, what do you mean?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then I like if you we ask you something and you put okay, period, that's like your pissed off.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, don't don't put periods.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, put periods.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But then my daughter's like, you need to put more jiffs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You need to put more emojis.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You need to put more fun things in there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So this week, I've just been practicing
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[SPEAKER_00]: any time they send me something instead of responding with words, I'm responding with pictures.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they're a little bit annoyed by that too, but at least I'm not angry now.
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[SPEAKER_03]: At least I'm not angry.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Now you're too effusive, you know, call them mom.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My kids don't use Jeff's or guess.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They use stickers.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Stickers is a big, and not sticker reactions, but stickers just in the text.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Stickers.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I hardly know anything about stickers.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I don't, it's one of the things that happened after I gave up on trying to understand that phones and communication anymore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I said, you said so old.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I really do.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'd really do.
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[SPEAKER_03]: There was some point.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I used to kind of like technology.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I had an aptitude for, you know, I like, I figured out how to write web pages early on, you know, in HTML was a thing when I was like, oh, this is fun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Let's create a web page and, you know, that kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But somewhere along the line, I was just like, I can't keep up.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot to keep up with.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, my, my kids,
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[SPEAKER_03]: And my kids are a little older than all y'all's kids.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They're all in their 20s.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things I notice is that they do not use like gifts, gifts to react to things.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They don't send a little picture of somebody nodding.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They use the use words.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, I just noticing that they never, they never send pictures.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm the only one in the family group chat that sends pictures.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm kind of entertaining myself.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I think they just tolerate it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They're just like, oh, that's it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So I feel like that's an old person thing to do now, or at least like a gen X, maybe a millennial thing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But the 20 year olds, they're not doing that anymore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, sticker.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It just send words.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And the other thing about my kids that I've noticed, that is interesting is I can send a text, I try to get an answer from them about something that I need an answer, you know, like, hey, who's coming over for Sunday night dinner?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Nobody responds forever.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I have to ask three or four times.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But if I call them on the phone, they pick up right away and we have a very nice conversation.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, this is like, we're back in boomer territory.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
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[SPEAKER_03]: We have to be a phone call to get in touch with somebody and get an answer about something But I have to call my kids Yeah, it's just not a bad.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's realizing this is a not a thing to complain about, but It sounds awesome, you know, and they pick up the phone and then they want to talk to me But anyway, I just find it all interesting, so Alright, well, speaking of talking to people
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[SPEAKER_00]: That was amazing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's incredible.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, real quick, before we get into this today, as you're listening to this podcast, we are starting our learning community.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you're listening to it on Tuesday.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm coming.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You'll know that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I signed up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Really?
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[SPEAKER_03]: I sure did.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I did not sign up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I got friends to sign up too.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Ben, can I talk to you for a second?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just we probably could be a pause on the recording here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I am not kidding these emails.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The last.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, that I signed up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: No, I didn't.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The last email I got was a person named Mary registered yesterday.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I won't tell you her whole name because I don't want to put her on blast, but I got an email at 456 p.m. Now, it's possible that that's the last registration for this, this deal job.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But that's the last email and I don't see an email about Christie registering.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I registered last week.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I think, Matt, can I talk to you over here?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we'll just go to Staten.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just stay.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just stay there.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just stay.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You only recently got added to the email group.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Whereby you would receive these messages.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So you wouldn't have known about Christy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Christy, this, I had to, I had to, I had to fight for representation.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Just as has been served, I've repented and allowed Matt to receive administrative emails.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I just didn't think you're interested in such a thing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Email equity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really not interested in emails.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That is for sure the true.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I thought I was serving you, but I was, well, the good thing is if somebody signs up today,
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[SPEAKER_03]: Matt Matt's going to get notified guys.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to get it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's really exciting.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Guys, if you would like to flood Matt's email with Matt's email in box with emails.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're just your friends.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're just your family.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're just your neighbors.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're just keep going.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Throw any emails into there.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's on that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's on that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But if you'd like to flood his inbox and, or, and maybe mostly, or if you'd like to register for our class, it starts September 15th, Tuesday, that's the day that this episode drops.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's a new reconstructing faith class that we're running over the next few weeks called Jesus and women, and we're looking at passages in the Gospels where Jesus interacts with women.
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[SPEAKER_03]: to see what we can learn about how Jesus reckons with power.
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[SPEAKER_03]: One of the axioms in our book, having the mind of Christ, says that God's love always reckons with power.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so the way that God's love is expressed toward people always has to do with power differential.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We have to learn how to see those things.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so we're gonna talk about that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Tuesdays at 12 p.m. noon eastern time is when we're doing that, but we're always going to record each class and send the out the recording to anybody who registers.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So if you'd like to register go to gravity commons.com slash reconstructing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: GravityComs.com slash reconstructing and fill out the form and you'll be able to get the zoom link and you'll be able to join us.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's an online live zoom class.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and to Chris these point, there's going to be talking in that class too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, Chris, it was interesting.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was a great transition.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be talking to people.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be talking amongst ourselves and to get back to Chris's amazing segue.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We are also talking today with Kenneth Tanner.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Kenneth Tanner is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan, where he has served since 2005.
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[SPEAKER_03]: His writing has appeared in many outlets, including Huff Post, Sojourner's Mockingbird, National Review, Christianity today, Clarion Journal, and more.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He and his wife Debbie have seven children and four grandchildren.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're talking with him today about his book, Vulnerable God, how Jesus upends our assumptions about God, and shows us how to be human.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Let's get into it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Kenneth Tanner, welcome to the Gravity Commons podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, it's good to be with you and Matt Ben and Chris Cressey.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Kenneth.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Man, I have known Kenneth for, we were just adding it up.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We saw each other eight years ago.
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[SPEAKER_03]: was the last time we saw each other, we've known each other, maybe online from before that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: A few years before that, I would say.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And Kenneth and I, I mean, we're like best friends, so we met about 30, seven seconds ago.
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[SPEAKER_03]: All right, a recent see, a recent see bias there.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What Christy is now the best friend, so.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, it's nice to have you to be able to talk
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thanks for joining us.
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[SPEAKER_03]: To talk about your book, which is all about kind of the obsession of your life, which is Jesus.
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[SPEAKER_03]: If I can put it that way, but yeah, the book we want to talk about.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, vulnerable God, how Jesus upends our assumptions about God and shows us how to be human.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought maybe we could just start with
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[SPEAKER_03]: I wonder if we could just start with a little bit of, maybe this, I hope this doesn't throw you for a loop, but what's your story of faith?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like, how did you, if you can encapsulate that for us in a, I don't know, a brief story, like, how did you come to be obsessed with Jesus?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it starts in the Deep South, I was raised by Pentecostal, you know, families, extended families on both sides.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, and my father's people are from Cleveland.
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[SPEAKER_02]: uh... and we're involved in the revivals there and my mother's father was a minister in the church who got having been a price fighter before that and uh... so i was raised in a very jesus satirated
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, obviously, it's a holiness when I cost all an environment.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And for my mother, that environment was very restrictive but she didn't pass that on to us.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And my memories as a child are just like, of, you know, people in their Sunday best, you know, decked out and going to church and singing and joy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And Chris talks a lot about like blood wound mysticism, yeah, the connection of Jesus is the blood of Jesus, you know, and people had tremendous passion for Jesus.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And they were mostly poor.
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[SPEAKER_02]: working class people, but they were their best and they loved well, they took care of their neighbors and the poor even though they were for.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There were aspects of it that, you know, men have to have their hair clean shaved and women wear their hair on the top of their heads, you know, all the things that can get a little boring.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know,
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[SPEAKER_02]: on me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't really experience too much of the extreme of that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I did experience the joy and then centered being centered in Jesus.
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[SPEAKER_02]: My father was killed when I was not quite five in Vietnam.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that led my mother was, you know, unmarried for five years, widow, and then she married a young man.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He was a minister in the church of God.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so he became my dad and lovely man.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And he took us out of that Pentecostal thing into more like charismatic and prophetic circles
16:15.428 --> 16:24.971
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was a big shift, and so for years, I was, you know, they were doing the prophetic, you know, charismatic thing.
16:25.551 --> 16:27.592
[SPEAKER_02]: And I did feel some alienation from that.
16:28.472 --> 16:35.034
[SPEAKER_02]: And to make a long story short after a year of college at an assembly of God's school, I ended up at our Robert University.
16:36.408 --> 16:40.392
[SPEAKER_02]: Most people don't know, but all Roberts was a fantastic school.
16:40.412 --> 16:53.543
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, when they founded it in the 60s, late 60s, people from Brown and Missouri and all kinds of tenure people that were Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, you name it.
16:54.104 --> 16:59.309
[SPEAKER_02]: Left these positions and went to teach at the first charismatic university in the world, yeah.
16:59.809 --> 17:01.110
[SPEAKER_02]: So the faculty were amazing.
17:01.611 --> 17:08.698
[SPEAKER_02]: We were reading Abraham, Heshal, and you know, I mean, it was incredible experience.
17:09.278 --> 17:13.542
[SPEAKER_02]: But this spirituality by the mid-80s was quite weird.
17:14.103 --> 17:14.363
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
17:15.104 --> 17:18.767
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I mean, basically the just of it was if you were
17:20.653 --> 17:27.535
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if everything was going well in your life and you were success and you were well and all these things.
17:28.155 --> 17:30.636
[SPEAKER_02]: These were signs that God was with you and God.
17:31.196 --> 17:45.240
[SPEAKER_02]: And the absence of that was either your lack of faith or you've done something that's, you know, made God mad, which is so weird and transactional and really not anything like what happens in the gospels.
17:45.320 --> 17:47.001
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was resisting a lot of that.
17:48.099 --> 17:50.923
[SPEAKER_02]: But it kind of came to a head when I was there.
17:51.504 --> 17:57.351
[SPEAKER_02]: And I started finding life in the writings of the early Christians.
17:58.092 --> 18:02.718
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, there was this crisis moment that I write about the book that I won't go into here.
18:02.839 --> 18:04.901
[SPEAKER_02]: But just suffice to say that I,
18:08.265 --> 18:14.449
[SPEAKER_02]: I just couldn't do, I couldn't go further down that road of crazy.
18:15.710 --> 18:29.820
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what I found in the first Christians were people who were saying that God became human to suffer with us, you know, that God became human to redeem a creation that he loves.
18:38.380 --> 18:46.584
[SPEAKER_02]: He becomes what he makes in order to lend his permanence to all the things that he makes, man.
18:47.805 --> 18:50.066
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, wow, yeah.
18:50.426 --> 18:57.450
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just, I was like, OK, there are other Christians who lived in a different time and in different cultures.
18:58.745 --> 19:04.606
[SPEAKER_02]: who weren't as gaypist, you know, who were concerned about this world, yeah.
19:05.607 --> 19:11.968
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, who took care of the poor and took care of orphans, and all these things, these marvellous thing.
19:12.308 --> 19:18.710
[SPEAKER_02]: But they also wrote about a God who was in solidarity with human beings at a radical level, you know.
19:29.292 --> 19:40.835
[SPEAKER_02]: So I embraced that and that led to there was also a group of young sort of liturgical Christians that are you and they were having a vests per service on Sunday evenings.
19:40.895 --> 19:54.158
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I started going to that and encountering the person of Jesus sitting bread on a table and you know wine in a cup and with a with an acumenical group of Christians.
19:54.918 --> 20:18.425
[SPEAKER_02]: and began to see through the writings of the Christians and other Christians that I was in dialogue within people I was reading, that there's a vast deposit of wisdom through the centuries, contemporary wisdom and ancient wisdoms, people who have struggled and wrestled with existence and with God and what it means to be human and it's beautiful.
20:19.765 --> 20:22.206
[SPEAKER_02]: And we need all of it,
20:23.404 --> 20:31.751
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we need to to let all of it encounter us in order to see and we can never see entirely, but a fuller.
20:33.006 --> 20:54.157
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, picture of Jesus as Aaron is as that wonderful illustration, you know, that about mosaic floors, yeah, they used to make these mosaic floors and, you know, wherever it was, Damascus or and then ship it to Jerusalem or in Constantinople and ship it to Antioch or whatever.
20:55.058 --> 21:03.249
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there would be like, you know, the artist who was making the floor from stones had a hypothesis that you would write on the back of the stones and you'd create the stones and ship it.
21:04.130 --> 21:07.875
[SPEAKER_02]: So wherever you're going to lay the floor, and these beautiful Roman homes.
21:08.908 --> 21:21.752
[SPEAKER_02]: And what Erineus says, let's say this, Erineus is an early Christian pastor for people who, you know, are familiar with you he is and really the church's first theologian, yeah.
21:21.952 --> 21:24.372
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's very, very close to the early disciples.
21:25.092 --> 21:33.555
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he's telling the story and he says that what happens with some teachers of the gospel is they arranged the scriptures,
21:35.025 --> 21:48.794
[SPEAKER_02]: in such a way that when you put the floor together, you get the image of a fox or the image of a predator, instead of the image of a good shepherd.
21:50.035 --> 21:56.960
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's really important that we read the scriptures with wisdom, that we meditate on the cross with wisdom and that we do that.
21:58.325 --> 22:05.328
[SPEAKER_02]: as a community of, you know, with the church, with the whole community of humans following Jesus.
22:06.408 --> 22:22.714
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I came to understand that the fullness of the beauty of the floor that I needed connection with every sort of antivaptists and, you know, orthodox, you know, Presbyterian, you know,
22:25.615 --> 22:34.342
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, with young and old and with across cultures, African, Asian, European, and so forth.
22:34.482 --> 22:36.764
[SPEAKER_02]: And being dialogue with them, and I, you know, get to make sure sure.
22:36.784 --> 22:41.027
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a short way of saying it's been a journey of pilgrimage.
22:41.107 --> 22:42.048
[SPEAKER_02]: It's ongoing.
22:42.788 --> 22:50.874
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't ever see it ending in this life, I'm still asking questions, I'm still as, you know, they say it, so I'm found when I'm looking for.
22:51.615 --> 22:56.398
[SPEAKER_02]: And, uh, the greatest YouTube song apart from whether or not you.
22:57.159 --> 23:03.844
[SPEAKER_02]: And, um, you know, it's, uh, we're, we're trying to, uh, pursue the face of,
23:05.134 --> 23:10.658
[SPEAKER_02]: God, yeah, in the human Jesus.
23:11.219 --> 23:12.980
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's beautiful.
23:13.240 --> 23:14.961
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for sharing that little bit of your story.
23:19.505 --> 23:24.388
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, kind of maybe as we get into this book you've written, it's all about the incarnation.
23:25.829 --> 23:29.292
[SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned the church fathers who care a great deal about the incarnation.
23:31.637 --> 23:45.900
[SPEAKER_01]: some of our theological formation around the incarnation, unfortunately, is often reduced to Jesus was God because only God could sacrifice necessary to resolve the problem of our sin.
23:46.821 --> 23:53.882
[SPEAKER_01]: And so incarnation gets sort of collapsed into a essential component that makes the atonement work.
23:54.923 --> 23:56.343
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's unfortunate.
23:56.730 --> 24:03.336
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I wonder if you could maybe just share with us like, why does the incarnation matter to you?
24:04.777 --> 24:07.059
[SPEAKER_01]: And how is it deeper or more expansive?
24:07.960 --> 24:16.608
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I understand you could write a dissertation on this, but what peaked your interest about the incarnation to really plummet steps?
24:20.451 --> 24:27.356
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, there's lots of leads up to this, but there was a moment when I was praying with the cyanide pontocarder.
24:27.417 --> 24:43.009
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an ancient icon painting, egg tempura, it was painted in the sixth century, and what is now instant bowl, but in the time was constantly at noble.
24:43.449 --> 24:46.652
[SPEAKER_02]: Commission by the Emperor for as a gift,
24:47.432 --> 24:58.685
[SPEAKER_02]: to a group of monks that for hundreds of years at that time have been taking care of the better in populations around Sinai, baking bread, saying prayers, and so forth.
24:59.606 --> 25:05.953
[SPEAKER_02]: And he commissions the Sikon and it is still hanging there in the chapel.
25:07.614 --> 25:09.815
[SPEAKER_02]: at St. Catherine's at the foot of Sinai.
25:10.835 --> 25:17.557
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had encountered this icon in the mid-90s and it was praying with it.
25:17.837 --> 25:28.079
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things that's really interesting about that icon, first of all, it survives because of the air climate and the desert, and because of Sinai's remote.
25:28.119 --> 25:29.660
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the most remote places on Earth.
25:30.600 --> 25:52.835
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when there were these controversies about making images of God and in his son happened in the church and they were destroying all this wonderful art it got preserved by the climate and by its remoteness from craziness yeah people destroying art which is always supposed to be labeled as a form of insanity and they had also protected.
25:54.625 --> 25:58.068
[SPEAKER_02]: Muhammad when he was, you know, on the run.
25:58.909 --> 26:02.492
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they have a letter from Muhammad in his own hand.
26:02.532 --> 26:09.317
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the signature was a, you know, tracing of his hand, you know, saying don't mess with these people, yeah.
26:10.298 --> 26:12.200
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it still exists there.
26:12.220 --> 26:15.983
[SPEAKER_02]: But the image itself is so interesting because the eyes aren't symmetrical.
26:19.386 --> 26:38.591
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm not the brightest bulb in the door, but I sat with us for a long time and I was like, there's something, why would this artist paint an imperfection into the image of God in flesh?
26:39.991 --> 26:43.632
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I sat with that, I realized that the art was really
26:47.313 --> 26:57.579
[SPEAKER_02]: because Isaiah says that Jesus was not attractive in the sort of fallen sense that we have of what is attractive sometimes.
26:58.820 --> 27:06.165
[SPEAKER_02]: And that to look upon him, we wouldn't be automatically drawn to him.
27:07.586 --> 27:10.588
[SPEAKER_02]: And that I had this kind of,
27:11.742 --> 27:17.064
[SPEAKER_02]: flanographs, dig figure, Jesus, yeah, that I had inherited.
27:18.104 --> 27:24.966
[SPEAKER_02]: But the icon, I began to realize, wow, he really became one of the susceptible to cuts.
27:25.146 --> 27:32.169
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, I should have known this thinking about the crucifixion or whatever it was, but susceptible to drowning, susceptible to hunger,
27:39.591 --> 27:54.624
[SPEAKER_02]: susceptible to anxiety as we know he was in the garden or susceptible to anger, but all without, you know, sin and so we can be anxious without sin and we can be anger without sin and all these things we can be human differently.
27:55.925 --> 28:11.737
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but it doesn't, you know, everything about what it means to be human and he doesn't just, he does assume a particular body in the body of a particular woman, and Aaron AS says, because this was already a controversy well before.
28:12.658 --> 28:17.002
[SPEAKER_02]: our contemporary time is, you know, how do both sexes participate in the incarnation?
28:17.062 --> 28:19.865
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, a man has to be born of a woman.
28:19.885 --> 28:22.747
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the only way he can get both of them involved.
28:22.787 --> 28:32.816
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've so suppressed her, right, within all of the story and, you know, her role in the incarnation of redemption and prophetic.
28:33.497 --> 28:43.264
[SPEAKER_02]: beautiful liberation, voice, and person who teaches the wordless one, who is the word, how to speak.
28:43.524 --> 28:46.706
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know what I mean, where he just get down and get real.
28:47.306 --> 28:50.168
[SPEAKER_02]: But he becomes one of us in a very real ways.
28:50.188 --> 28:59.615
[SPEAKER_02]: He's skeptical to everything that human beings are from emotions to the world, to nature, to what it means that have a body.
29:00.772 --> 29:16.337
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and he does that in order to make sacred, to make holy every stage of human development, and what it means to be a child, what it means to be an adolescent, what it means to be an adult.
29:16.557 --> 29:21.838
[SPEAKER_02]: Even in his time, living to 30 was Middle Ages, so an older human being, but he also takes on
29:28.320 --> 29:33.143
[SPEAKER_02]: in every way that everyone has ever been human, yeah.
29:33.703 --> 29:40.667
[SPEAKER_02]: So he takes on the humanity as only God can collectively of us all, yeah.
29:41.047 --> 29:48.171
[SPEAKER_02]: And so Matt, I could keep going like you said, I can write a dissertation, but our nice thing, you can begin to see that there's so much more
29:50.478 --> 29:55.305
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, well, this is how we get this particular theory of a tone that's done, right?
29:55.946 --> 30:01.916
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, and we could go on and on about it, but as I've sat with all of that,
30:02.938 --> 30:10.485
[SPEAKER_02]: I do believe that the cross is where it all starts from.
30:10.505 --> 30:11.406
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
30:12.287 --> 30:18.333
[SPEAKER_02]: And so as Athanasia says, it's at the cross that God becomes full of humans.
30:18.353 --> 30:24.599
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have, and I'm following John Bear here and others as they read the early Christians, but you know,
30:25.340 --> 30:36.422
[SPEAKER_02]: You get that moment with pilot the whole deep the man throw pass not man behold the human right as the way it should be translated Yeah, so all right behold
30:37.413 --> 30:46.718
[SPEAKER_02]: the human, which is male and female, right, is all contained in what it means to be God and what it means to be human.
30:47.538 --> 30:49.599
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's everything.
30:50.080 --> 30:59.024
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he takes on what it means to be at African in the third century, or a Japanese person living in San Francisco in the 21st
31:04.027 --> 31:13.668
[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of humanity yeah, and so he becomes human he's to shares in the nature that we all share yeah, so he as creator
31:15.778 --> 31:20.181
[SPEAKER_02]: The word of the Father, who speaks all things into being, is that human beings are handcraft.
31:20.201 --> 31:25.886
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not spoken into being, but nevertheless, create or everyone before everyone we meet.
31:26.266 --> 31:33.552
[SPEAKER_02]: He's whether they're running from it, agnostic about it, embracing it, but also there's human brother.
31:33.592 --> 31:42.259
[SPEAKER_02]: Before we ever say one word, but the gospel God has already related himself by becoming human to every human person as the creator and human brother.
31:44.039 --> 32:01.011
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but I really do think that starting with the cross is the way that, you know, there's that sense that the full humanity is shown in dying for the world that God loves.
32:01.231 --> 32:03.072
[SPEAKER_02]: John's also the God loves the world.
32:04.033 --> 32:08.376
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he comes into the world in order to make the world that he loves permanent.
32:09.668 --> 32:31.409
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I think sometimes we can talk about incarnation in a way that Mrs. everything I was talking about and the man was trying to draw out, but also that says, well, he was born and we don't need to need the cross, but you know, I mean, it's just just look.
32:32.512 --> 32:50.914
[SPEAKER_02]: at the world, yeah, and we definitely need the intervention of God, yeah, and so he takes all human, it's, it's getting to think about it, yeah, because we've, we've, we've unleashed so much chaos in the world.
32:51.867 --> 33:12.892
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, the child is blown apart and Mary Opel, or, you know, last decade in Aleppo or this decade, you know, and someplace like, you know, in some place like Gaza City, you know, he is entered into all their death and has died with them.
33:14.695 --> 33:28.267
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and so it's not just about, you know, entering into the being born into being a human and existing is being a human, but he's entered into the death of every human in order to raise every human back to life.
33:28.307 --> 33:36.154
[SPEAKER_02]: So the cross is really, you know, the foundation, it says, you know, the cross is thrown down at the beginning of the world.
33:36.214 --> 33:36.455
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
33:36.935 --> 33:38.176
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is the story.
33:39.197 --> 33:41.618
[SPEAKER_02]: of what it means to be God and what it means to be human.
33:42.438 --> 33:51.240
[SPEAKER_02]: And okay, I'm going to stop there because in and I mean, it's like, he could just talk about this for a long time, but it's way more.
33:51.980 --> 33:52.180
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
33:52.540 --> 33:54.961
[SPEAKER_02]: Then a trade.
33:55.001 --> 33:56.921
[SPEAKER_02]: I was touching on this and then Matt was touching on this.
33:57.221 --> 33:58.441
[SPEAKER_02]: Is all this transactional?
33:59.142 --> 33:59.522
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
33:59.562 --> 34:00.722
[SPEAKER_02]: That has nothing to do with the god.
34:02.575 --> 34:14.163
[SPEAKER_02]: I do this in order you're going to do this, I heard some kid, you know, and I just don't even understand it anymore, but he was saying, you know, it was one of these clips, you know, trying to do a hot take or whatever.
34:15.044 --> 34:19.867
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like, you know, God is standing at the door of permanent.
34:19.907 --> 34:20.748
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not what he said.
34:20.788 --> 34:22.869
[SPEAKER_02]: He said standing at the gates of heaven or whatever.
34:22.889 --> 34:28.153
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's going to ask every person, you know, whatever you've done that I can let you in here.
34:28.453 --> 34:30.635
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just thinking like, man, that is.
34:31.868 --> 34:42.958
[SPEAKER_02]: that's, you've lost the plot, man, you know, it's not, you know, it's, this, this has got desire that we interpermanence, yeah.
34:43.138 --> 34:46.421
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, there is a human being who has done
34:48.058 --> 34:53.903
[SPEAKER_02]: what needs to occur, yeah, and order for all of us to inherit this permanence.
34:54.683 --> 34:58.206
[SPEAKER_02]: And we get to, you know, participate in that and all sorts of ways.
34:58.226 --> 35:04.792
[SPEAKER_02]: And he tells us how he says, if you want to find me, go to a prison and visit.
35:05.352 --> 35:07.914
[SPEAKER_02]: The person who is suffering behind bars.
35:08.274 --> 35:09.616
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to encounter me now,
35:10.593 --> 35:33.805
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, go and find the person who's just gotten here from wherever, trying to make money for their family back home or whatever it is, and help them get a shelter, help them get, you know, we need them here to help, you know, with us, but also God has said, if you want to find me look for the stranger, the immigrant and our current language.
35:34.625 --> 35:56.073
[SPEAKER_02]: find the poor, you know, find the naked, and so people can be actually in need of clothes or food, but that can also be a spiritual emptiness, yeah, or the need to be clothed in the right mind again, yeah, so you can be in prison in your mind, you can be prison behind bars, you can be in prison in whatever situation I'm preaching now.
35:56.314 --> 35:59.235
[SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, I'm just going to shut up unless you ask
36:03.196 --> 36:05.978
[SPEAKER_02]: who ever interviews me, as I don't have enough?
36:06.979 --> 36:15.025
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, maybe we can continue this, because you argue that we are to be called fully human, the way that God is human.
36:15.906 --> 36:22.070
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, how does that reframe some of the traditional teachings and holiness and sanctification?
36:22.090 --> 36:23.952
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you can double-click on that for a second.
36:24.932 --> 36:25.893
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:26.934 --> 36:30.937
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I think God invites us into his way of being human.
36:32.255 --> 36:51.027
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the way that works is he says to Matthew going to no more, you know, to excuse me to tax collector, yeah, you know, Matthew was, but you know, there's also, you know, that that key is and so forth, but he says going to no more.
36:52.504 --> 37:03.495
[SPEAKER_02]: To this woman who, you know, wears the man or whatever, but they're going to kill her, you know, because she's, you know, I don't know, some projection that they have of their own.
37:04.902 --> 37:05.462
[SPEAKER_02]: fall in this.
37:05.502 --> 37:08.863
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're going to kill this one woman to expiate their own guilt.
37:09.824 --> 37:12.985
[SPEAKER_02]: And he says to her, don't, you know, don't send anymore.
37:13.005 --> 37:13.445
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
37:13.865 --> 37:18.727
[SPEAKER_02]: But he's not saying that the either of them as I was really ashamed of you.
37:19.287 --> 37:25.169
[SPEAKER_02]: And you really were, you know, making me angry and the way you were living, don't go do that anymore.
37:26.229 --> 37:38.565
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a promise, you know, as Heschel says, you know, we go from with Jesus, we go from the words, you know, you shall have the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbors, yourself is no longer a command, but a promise.
37:39.806 --> 37:43.030
[SPEAKER_02]: So the words of Jesus to the woman and to the man,
37:44.097 --> 37:45.078
[SPEAKER_02]: are going to know more.
37:45.419 --> 37:55.431
[SPEAKER_02]: But with that sentence, he gives them the capacity to do what he is saying to them.
37:55.932 --> 37:57.994
[SPEAKER_02]: He's granting them that capacity.
37:58.795 --> 38:00.557
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think while we
38:01.611 --> 38:15.222
[SPEAKER_02]: are all of us, you know, in need of the kind of ministry that Jesus provides, that's a schizophrenic man in the, in the, you know, it was wandering around in the tombs, you know.
38:15.963 --> 38:24.270
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, where we were put in our right mind, and we're, you know, closed, everybody's in in need of this kind of healing touch.
38:26.990 --> 38:31.112
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the potential of every human being to be human is God is human.
38:31.192 --> 38:32.513
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so much greater.
38:33.654 --> 38:37.816
[SPEAKER_02]: And this might be the Pentecostal in me or the Wesleyan or the Eastern Christian.
38:37.876 --> 38:39.677
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a whole path.
38:39.857 --> 38:55.786
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Wesley was affected by the Eastern Christians all the early Pentecostals were, as well as this belief that the potential of every human to be human is God is human as well beyond our limits we place on ourselves and on other people.
38:57.312 --> 39:07.436
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all God, it's all God's activity, and us, but he's actually inviting us into you, you can be human as I'm human.
39:07.936 --> 39:11.258
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what he was, his love, as I've loved you.
39:11.518 --> 39:13.158
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, at the last supper, yeah.
39:13.799 --> 39:20.161
[SPEAKER_02]: And I always got hung up on that, because how can I love as God loves, yeah?
39:20.401 --> 39:24.563
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, but I can love,
39:25.690 --> 39:32.936
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, as my human brother loves and by doing that, I participate in the divine life.
39:33.436 --> 39:34.657
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, by great.
39:35.058 --> 39:36.979
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the potential is much greater.
39:37.960 --> 39:49.049
[SPEAKER_02]: Our predicament is very severe and I don't want to get in the ditch of ignoring that, but the potential is also well beyond what we imagine.
39:49.790 --> 39:51.711
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where I would sit with that
39:54.245 --> 40:02.311
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, trusting the potential of everyone to be human as God's human is a newer kind of thing I've been sending with for a while.
40:02.392 --> 40:02.652
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:02.952 --> 40:04.854
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I don't know if I'm expressing it.
40:05.334 --> 40:05.574
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:07.095 --> 40:13.801
[SPEAKER_02]: Very well, but that's how I would talk about sanctification to gift like everything with God.
40:13.861 --> 40:14.061
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:14.101 --> 40:14.601
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a gift.
40:14.942 --> 40:15.162
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:16.068 --> 40:16.408
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
40:17.529 --> 40:19.470
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that for any wants to give it to us.
40:20.630 --> 40:22.812
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he's not, uh, he didn't get it.
40:22.832 --> 40:23.692
[SPEAKER_03]: Not for stingy.
40:23.752 --> 40:24.493
[SPEAKER_03]: Jesus into it.
40:24.953 --> 40:26.494
[SPEAKER_02]: Arthur asks his is so beautiful.
40:26.514 --> 40:28.034
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, and it's in the country.
40:28.054 --> 40:29.055
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in contragent.
40:29.095 --> 40:31.596
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, God is not stingy with his existence.
40:32.237 --> 40:32.517
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
40:33.855 --> 40:42.359
[SPEAKER_02]: He, it's gratuitous, he wants his whole creation and all humans to exist as he exists.
40:42.959 --> 40:46.941
[SPEAKER_02]: The desire of God, in my trust is that God gets what he desires.
40:47.161 --> 40:56.785
[SPEAKER_02]: And through all of our crazy and through all of our violence and through all of our reduction, and he will get what he wants.
40:57.645 --> 40:59.006
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a good thing.
40:59.366 --> 41:01.047
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good thing for you and me and everybody else.
41:02.775 --> 41:02.975
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
41:04.136 --> 41:10.563
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that phrase actually shows up quite a bit in my own sermons.
41:11.324 --> 41:13.386
[SPEAKER_03]: Kenneth and I have you to thank for that.
41:13.426 --> 41:18.951
[SPEAKER_03]: That our call is to be fully human as God is human because I do think it reframes.
41:20.313 --> 41:21.734
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it reframes what it means to be God.
41:22.635 --> 41:34.321
[SPEAKER_03]: and it refrains what it means to be human for people I think in really fruitful sort of disruptive ways that we're not becoming the human part of us is not the bad part that is that needs to be eliminated.
41:34.981 --> 41:37.102
[SPEAKER_03]: The human part of the human learning to grow into.
41:37.570 --> 41:40.171
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a humiliation for God to become human.
41:40.211 --> 41:43.452
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what's very strange idea.
41:44.092 --> 41:45.612
[SPEAKER_02]: We're made in the image of God.
41:45.853 --> 41:47.393
[SPEAKER_02]: Human beings are made in the image of God.
41:47.473 --> 41:50.814
[SPEAKER_02]: It's glory for God to become a human being.
41:51.434 --> 41:53.135
[SPEAKER_02]: God can't become what is not good.
41:53.975 --> 42:15.903
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, some of this is so elementary that we lose the plot, yeah, you can't, God cannot become what is evil, yeah, and so he's becoming what is good, and what is inherently good, yeah, and so we have, we have this idea that to become human as humiliation, the humiliation,
42:16.823 --> 42:29.387
[SPEAKER_02]: is to experience what we do to God, you know, and on the cross, and to submit to our violence, that, you know, that's a humiliation, the shame of that, but not to become human.
42:30.427 --> 42:36.589
[SPEAKER_02]: And so part of the problem is that we start with an abstraction of what it means to be
42:40.997 --> 42:55.459
[SPEAKER_02]: lots of infections because we've gotten away from the real and the real is the son of God Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter, the worker woman's son who shows us what it even means to be God.
42:56.181 --> 42:58.122
[SPEAKER_02]: and shows us what it even means to be human.
42:58.762 --> 43:09.207
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's only one place in the world where God and the cosmos have met and creation and material creation is met, and that is in the person of Jesus.
43:09.827 --> 43:10.688
[SPEAKER_02]: And in Jesus,
43:11.686 --> 43:20.290
[SPEAKER_02]: He's drawing all the creation and all human humanity back into, you know, full union, you know, with his person.
43:21.351 --> 43:29.055
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the movement is to toward resurrection, toward, you know, restoration, towards, you know, I love what the Nazis is.
43:29.715 --> 43:56.148
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there, yes, there's dust and there's dirt and there's, we've lost the color, but he comes the master restorationist to, to brighten the image of God that is in every human being, you know, to, you know, take away the foot and whatever that's built up, you know, and so, but we start out with these ideas about God, you know, he omnipotent, you know, and we invest
44:00.212 --> 44:11.595
[SPEAKER_02]: pride and fallen human imagination, and when what it means to be powerful for God is to be lying in a feed trough without the ability to speak.
44:13.275 --> 44:21.117
[SPEAKER_02]: Or to be hanging by iron to wood, or to be lying still in the grave.
44:22.657 --> 44:28.339
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of those events are the big bang
44:30.782 --> 44:42.254
[SPEAKER_02]: All stars have their energy, all planets are in orbit, all flowers come up out of the ground, all human beings have breath and all mammals have breath.
44:43.075 --> 44:47.459
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything that's slid is on the ground, yeah, has its power, all of those,
44:49.661 --> 45:06.505
[SPEAKER_02]: wonders of power, come not from show of force, not from violence, not from imposition, but from grant humility, from a humility that is hard for us to even get our heads around, where God is the janitor of his cosmos.
45:06.565 --> 45:11.726
[SPEAKER_02]: He's on his knees, washing the feet of his human brothers.
45:19.170 --> 45:38.104
[SPEAKER_02]: but what God is actually like an eternity, so that when at the end, all human beings are before God, it's not an imposition of kneeling, kneel before me because of my vast, you know, the sort of kind of odds we project, yeah, of who God is, yeah.
45:39.225 --> 45:45.090
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's this beauty and stillness and wonder
45:47.640 --> 45:54.304
[SPEAKER_02]: embrace of God that causes our knees to buckle, yeah.
45:54.684 --> 46:03.249
[SPEAKER_02]: And only you can only confess the Jesus Christ's Lord by what a work of the Spirit.
46:04.390 --> 46:04.670
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
46:05.130 --> 46:11.354
[SPEAKER_02]: So if every knee bowels and every ten confesses that Jesus Christ's Lord is the glory of God the Father, this is not a coercion.
46:12.900 --> 46:18.886
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know how that, you know, I mean, it's a story that's painting a portrait for us of what redemption will look like.
46:19.747 --> 46:30.537
[SPEAKER_02]: And that might be different for every person, but the goal of that work is this restoration that we're talking about.
46:33.881 --> 46:34.141
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
46:36.640 --> 46:37.141
[SPEAKER_03]: It's beautiful.
46:37.741 --> 46:44.489
[SPEAKER_03]: Feel like we need a moment of silence and then we'll say the nice and creed and the prayers of the people and come to the table.
46:44.769 --> 46:51.517
[SPEAKER_03]: We just say, I love, I was just, I was, I was, we can't remember that Jesus from.
46:53.810 --> 46:54.630
[SPEAKER_03]: The long time ago.
46:54.971 --> 47:04.994
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I've been saying committee, which were the headquarters were and then where I live for 20 years, California, and I got invited as a young man because the Russian Orthodox Bishop was coming to town.
47:06.195 --> 47:08.976
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they were trying to make the Jesus film an ecumenical project.
47:09.936 --> 47:15.879
[SPEAKER_02]: And they said, why do you come up and, you know, because you, you're really into Eastern Christians and I was this young priest and everything.
47:16.439 --> 47:18.940
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got up there and their offices.
47:20.040 --> 47:26.801
[SPEAKER_02]: and then I was writing in a taxi with him and I was asking all these questions like, what are all these controversial things between the East and the West?
47:27.542 --> 47:33.343
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there was an interpreter and all this stuff and he was a role bishop and he was a real deal.
47:34.423 --> 47:44.225
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think at one point he just got frustrated with my youth and with all my questions and how I was making controversy or how my British brother John Licks controversy.
47:49.695 --> 47:51.556
[SPEAKER_02]: the hot button issues.
47:51.616 --> 47:51.836
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
47:53.518 --> 48:00.522
[SPEAKER_02]: All of a sudden, he started loudly exclaiming, you know, and from the back seat, and I'm in the front, yeah.
48:01.443 --> 48:06.507
[SPEAKER_02]: And the interpreter starts saying his words, and he's confessing the nice and create.
48:06.787 --> 48:10.649
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, and finally, it was almost as if
48:11.668 --> 48:31.232
[SPEAKER_02]: I hear you young man and you've got all these questions, but this is my truth and this is what I'm going to get back to and this is the story of the world and you're caught up in all these other stories, but here's the story and we're just going to I'm just going to say it out loud so when you said that I was like telling that's pretty good.
48:34.772 --> 48:37.835
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you mentioned the Sinai, how did you pronounce it?
48:37.875 --> 48:38.475
[SPEAKER_03]: Pentakriter?
48:38.795 --> 48:39.396
[SPEAKER_03]: Pentakriter?
48:39.536 --> 48:39.796
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:39.916 --> 48:40.677
[SPEAKER_02]: A ruler of all.
48:40.697 --> 48:40.797
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:41.017 --> 48:41.778
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, everyone.
48:42.258 --> 48:42.459
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
48:42.619 --> 48:44.060
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know if you can say that.
48:44.120 --> 48:44.540
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, there is.
48:45.081 --> 48:49.004
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the, you, you handed these out at that conference that we saw you.
48:49.625 --> 49:01.535
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, unless you had, like a bunch of these in your, uh, in your satchel, and I've given out hundreds of those over the years, the title of this book came from.
49:02.750 --> 49:13.253
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, look at that, that news me so much, Matthew, from that same party, William Matthew has that in like with his records and his apartment or whatever.
49:13.273 --> 49:27.698
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got a people send me pictures, you know, but I got the title, this book from a church of Ireland priests, Jack Heesleb, and I first met him in 2004.
49:29.700 --> 49:35.001
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had conversations in the meantime, we were trying to book both at S.E.S.
49:35.041 --> 49:37.022
[SPEAKER_02]: and a book that Kathleen Filsani was editing.
49:38.022 --> 49:44.184
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was going to be in New York because he was a chaplain to a major rock outfit.
49:44.864 --> 49:49.065
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was going to be a Trump Tower of all places, you know, 2012.
49:50.765 --> 50:05.356
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I wrote him and I said as you would like in a polite way that you might do is you won't remember me, but you know, and he said, remember you he wrote me back as a remember you he said,
50:08.439 --> 50:17.729
[SPEAKER_02]: This I keep us icon with me and when I put it wherever I hotel, wherever I go, it reminds me of the vulnerable God you talk about.
50:18.510 --> 50:22.534
[SPEAKER_02]: And I never seen those two words together and it took about a week.
50:23.355 --> 50:28.559
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was like, that's the title, you know, of the book and God bless him.
50:28.699 --> 50:32.101
[SPEAKER_02]: He's with our Lord and all the saints and angels.
50:32.181 --> 50:45.831
[SPEAKER_02]: But like a couple weeks after New York, he wrote me and he said, because he used to go on, he used to, before this band would go on stage, he would pray with them, you know, like just
50:48.293 --> 51:02.489
[SPEAKER_02]: and he wrote me, because I'd given him some icons for the members of the bag, so you can give him to whoever you want, because he would do baptisms, and he would marry people, and he would like hang out with the technicians, and he just was the pastor of the tour, yeah.
51:03.410 --> 51:09.557
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, I want you to know, as a final night in America, we were in Pittsburgh, and it was our prayer time.
51:10.410 --> 51:24.634
[SPEAKER_02]: And I took those icons and I handed one to each other members of the pan and we prayed and I talked I gave him your meditation on the vulnerable gut and that just made my entire life because that was a huge I'm a huge fan of this group.
51:25.374 --> 51:35.756
[SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, Jack is the one who gave me the title and it comes from the you know, I gave all in Brad Bryan mentions in the forward.
51:35.796 --> 51:38.317
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that he has one of these icons.
51:39.257 --> 51:46.541
[SPEAKER_02]: I gave him, and it's so touching to me that, you know, eight years later, whatever, you still have those, huh?
51:46.601 --> 51:47.802
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's beautiful.
51:47.922 --> 51:49.843
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait a minute.
51:50.123 --> 51:51.984
[SPEAKER_00]: As best friends, I don't have one.
51:52.124 --> 51:55.065
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not feeling the love right now.
51:55.205 --> 51:58.787
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys, you guys sent me the best mailing address, and I'll get one to you.
52:07.352 --> 52:26.590
[SPEAKER_02]: it's not gonna it's not it's not gonna it's gonna it's gonna happen like it's like the prop promise yeah so yeah oh wait a wait a fulfillment it could be a month or so but eventually you're gonna have it oh it's especially with the post office for this today I know because I'm mailing they sent me a hundred copies of this book
52:27.677 --> 52:27.877
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
52:28.217 --> 52:32.638
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've been mailing them to people, friends, people help me out on the book and so forth.
52:32.698 --> 52:34.339
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just takes forever.
52:34.359 --> 52:34.899
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
52:35.139 --> 52:35.759
[SPEAKER_02]: That's seen too.
52:35.959 --> 52:36.479
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
52:37.799 --> 52:42.000
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, listen, I highly recommend.
52:42.100 --> 52:42.841
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
52:42.861 --> 52:43.301
[SPEAKER_03]: Here it is.
52:43.421 --> 52:44.421
[SPEAKER_03]: So there it is.
52:44.441 --> 52:45.061
[SPEAKER_03]: Vulnerable God.
52:45.261 --> 52:45.681
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got one.
52:45.841 --> 52:46.742
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got a copy as well.
52:46.762 --> 52:47.462
[SPEAKER_03]: They sent me one.
52:49.767 --> 53:09.440
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think maybe one last thing that I'd like just like to say about your work, Kenneth, and this book, in particular, a lot of our listeners would describe themselves, I think, as some form of deconstruction or some of them have left the church, can't find a church that
53:10.200 --> 53:26.633
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, resonates or I get it, you know what I mean that that just doesn't harm I I believe me unfortunately I agree yeah, yeah, but I I just want to commit if that listener if you're finding yourself in that place.
53:26.653 --> 53:28.354
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to commend this book to you because
53:29.455 --> 53:47.114
[SPEAKER_03]: I think what this book and what Kenneth's teaching has done has helped me with is to radically reshape on a foundational level using the resources of the early church and all of that, but to radically reshape on a foundational level.
53:47.985 --> 54:05.732
[SPEAKER_03]: Just the sort of the background image of God that I carried around with my psyche, that the sort of the God that we might be flinching from reactively, like that whole, like that's the work of reconstruction, I think.
54:06.892 --> 54:10.174
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, just this book, I think, would be a,
54:10.994 --> 54:20.122
[SPEAKER_03]: A helpful resource for those who are seeking a gentler, humblur, more incarnational way of holding their faith.
54:21.855 --> 54:27.657
[SPEAKER_02]: the kidneys is that God is different.
54:28.697 --> 54:37.740
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, our projections of God and even Christian projections of God that are abstracted from the person of Jesus.
54:38.860 --> 54:39.940
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the good news or
54:50.243 --> 55:01.590
[SPEAKER_02]: And he loves all human beings, and you can enter into his way of being in the world, yeah.
55:01.870 --> 55:06.934
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sorry that the situation is such that we don't have
55:08.230 --> 55:25.923
[SPEAKER_02]: communities for you to be at, but I appreciate your wrestling just as shake up does with the angel and that God will bless you in the wrestling and that you'll know that he is for you and all that.
55:27.905 --> 55:32.068
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't think of a better way to end a podcast than with a blessing from a priest.
55:32.908 --> 55:34.630
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'll say amen to that.
55:36.056 --> 55:40.438
[SPEAKER_03]: go in peace to love and serve the Lord, and Kenneth, thanks for spending some time with us.
55:41.099 --> 55:42.599
[SPEAKER_02]: My deep pleasure, thank you.
55:48.823 --> 55:52.004
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Gravity podcast.
55:52.324 --> 55:54.746
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're finding it helpful, please tell your friends about it.
55:55.246 --> 55:58.167
[SPEAKER_01]: Word of mouth is the best advertising.
55:58.648 --> 56:04.651
[SPEAKER_01]: Ratings and reviews online also help others find the podcast, and don't forget to subscribe, so you don't miss an episode.
56:05.431 --> 56:10.337
[SPEAKER_01]: To join discussions about the podcast and lots more join us in the Gravity community.
56:10.678 --> 56:21.591
[SPEAKER_01]: It's free to join and you can connect with other listeners to the podcast to talk about faith, spirituality, and whatever else comes up also then and I hang out there a lot.
56:22.232 --> 56:25.474
[SPEAKER_01]: To join, go to gravitycommonz.com slash community.
56:26.134 --> 56:37.100
[SPEAKER_01]: The Gravity Podcast is produced by Ben Sturkey and Matt Tubby, Aaron Sturkey, and it's in mixes the podcast, you can check out his mixing, engineering, and production work at AaronSturkey.com, and we'd love to hear from you.
56:37.581 --> 56:45.045
[SPEAKER_01]: To record a question or comment for us, go to gravitycommonz.com slash message and click the Start Recording button.
56:45.505 --> 56:49.227
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also email us at podcast at gravitycommonz.com.
56:50.128 --> 56:50.768
[SPEAKER_01]: Catch you next time.
56:56.932 --> 56:58.126
[UNKNOWN]: Thanks for watching!
00:07.932 --> 00:17.709
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Gravity Podcast, where we host conversations on developing a Christian spirituality rooted in love that fosters resilient faith in everyday life.
00:26.916 --> 00:29.719
[SPEAKER_03]: Greetings, salutations, beloved listener.
00:30.600 --> 00:32.782
[SPEAKER_03]: It's great to be with you again.
00:34.624 --> 00:41.110
[SPEAKER_03]: Three weeks in a row here, after taking a little hiatus, we are publishing weekly podcasts for you.
00:41.130 --> 00:43.693
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the Gravity Commons podcast, my name is Ben.
00:44.453 --> 00:46.796
[SPEAKER_03]: This is Matt and Christy is also with us today.
00:47.176 --> 00:47.577
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, right.
00:48.257 --> 00:51.058
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's good to have you with us Christy.
00:51.078 --> 01:16.591
[SPEAKER_03]: I know your schedule is such that you cannot always be with us for these intros or these interviews you weren't able to be with our with us for our interview, but it's always nice to have you I was with you for the Kenneth Tanner one, but I haven't been with you for some Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it's my schedule is a little different so I'm trying to make the ones I can But yeah, I have a very important question to ask both of you okay
01:17.460 --> 01:19.861
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, is it GIF, or GIF?
01:22.823 --> 01:24.724
[SPEAKER_01]: GIF is already answer, I want to see if Ben knows.
01:26.125 --> 01:27.125
[SPEAKER_00]: I know the right answer too.
01:27.145 --> 01:27.505
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
01:27.886 --> 01:30.047
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the teenagers, there is.
01:30.827 --> 01:31.228
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, really?
01:33.349 --> 01:35.550
[SPEAKER_03]: Can anything good come out of teenagers?
01:37.251 --> 01:39.792
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, can I give a little back story to this?
01:40.192 --> 01:40.833
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, please do.
01:42.073 --> 01:46.576
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so the letters GIF, their an acronym,
01:47.261 --> 01:47.481
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
01:47.942 --> 01:51.807
[SPEAKER_01]: And they stand for graphics interchange format.
01:54.110 --> 01:58.155
[SPEAKER_01]: And because graphics is a hard gut,
02:00.022 --> 02:06.326
[SPEAKER_01]: people, uh, some people make the case that it should be gif.
02:06.886 --> 02:09.427
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be gif because that's the graphics, right?
02:09.807 --> 02:10.048
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
02:11.308 --> 02:16.471
[SPEAKER_01]: But apparently, and I don't, I don't know, um, I don't know if this is a
02:25.257 --> 02:27.999
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, developed GIFs.
02:28.719 --> 02:39.448
[SPEAKER_01]: My name's Steve Wilhite has, has told, has, has gone on the record saying that he pronounced it's, he pronounces it GIF.
02:40.609 --> 02:40.709
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
02:41.510 --> 02:46.674
[SPEAKER_01]: So the person who invented the GIF calls it GIF.
02:47.715 --> 02:47.935
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
02:48.835 --> 02:53.119
[SPEAKER_01]: Controversely, I tell you that's, that's the backstory I know.
02:53.391 --> 02:56.572
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so Ben, with all that historical background.
02:56.892 --> 02:57.772
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that was just, yeah.
02:58.332 --> 03:00.913
[SPEAKER_00]: What is your opinion, GIF or GIF?
03:03.893 --> 03:07.374
[SPEAKER_03]: This is hard because I feel like I pronounced it both ways in my life.
03:07.834 --> 03:11.215
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll just try to think about historically how I've pronounced it.
03:12.415 --> 03:13.636
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I've said GIF.
03:16.116 --> 03:17.637
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, is that your final answer?
03:17.797 --> 03:18.797
[SPEAKER_03]: That's my final answer.
03:18.817 --> 03:21.838
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Matt, you have the right answer.
03:21.898 --> 03:22.938
[SPEAKER_00]: What is your right answer?
03:25.541 --> 03:34.849
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's right because when Steve said that, he agreed with me in the way I'd been pronouncing it, so I go with GIF.
03:35.569 --> 03:41.174
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, all right, just think, just think the peanut butter, peanut butter, GIF.
03:42.004 --> 03:43.185
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know there's some listeners out.
03:43.225 --> 03:45.206
[SPEAKER_01]: We probably just lost some listeners.
03:45.786 --> 03:46.346
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
03:46.406 --> 03:46.907
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not.
03:46.927 --> 03:47.947
[SPEAKER_01]: They unsubscribed.
03:48.007 --> 03:55.251
[SPEAKER_03]: Several thousand have already just stopped listening to this, but I don't know.
03:55.811 --> 04:00.473
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that actually think it doesn't really matter that much.
04:01.254 --> 04:01.834
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it doesn't.
04:01.974 --> 04:02.454
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it does.
04:02.514 --> 04:03.975
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're 16, it does.
04:04.876 --> 04:05.356
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
04:05.909 --> 04:06.629
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the deal.
04:06.689 --> 04:10.210
[SPEAKER_00]: My kids told me this week that I texted very angerly.
04:10.610 --> 04:12.611
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, Mom, you're such an angry texture.
04:13.231 --> 04:14.171
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, what do you mean?
04:14.632 --> 04:19.413
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I like if you we ask you something and you put okay, period, that's like your pissed off.
04:19.433 --> 04:20.773
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, don't don't put periods.
04:20.913 --> 04:21.814
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, put periods.
04:22.274 --> 04:25.955
[SPEAKER_00]: But then my daughter's like, you need to put more jiffs.
04:26.375 --> 04:27.775
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to put more emojis.
04:27.795 --> 04:29.716
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to put more fun things in there.
04:30.116 --> 04:32.737
[SPEAKER_00]: So this week, I've just been practicing
04:33.097 --> 04:37.839
[SPEAKER_00]: any time they send me something instead of responding with words, I'm responding with pictures.
04:38.739 --> 04:43.161
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they're a little bit annoyed by that too, but at least I'm not angry now.
04:43.841 --> 04:44.682
[SPEAKER_03]: At least I'm not angry.
04:44.882 --> 04:48.183
[SPEAKER_03]: Now you're too effusive, you know, call them mom.
04:48.423 --> 04:50.664
[SPEAKER_01]: My kids don't use Jeff's or guess.
04:51.825 --> 04:52.845
[SPEAKER_01]: They use stickers.
04:54.682 --> 05:01.427
[SPEAKER_01]: Stickers is a big, and not sticker reactions, but stickers just in the text.
05:01.707 --> 05:02.107
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
05:02.467 --> 05:02.988
[SPEAKER_03]: Stickers.
05:03.848 --> 05:05.309
[SPEAKER_03]: I hardly know anything about stickers.
05:05.349 --> 05:14.595
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't, it's one of the things that happened after I gave up on trying to understand that phones and communication anymore.
05:15.096 --> 05:16.917
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, you said so old.
05:17.798 --> 05:18.399
[SPEAKER_03]: I really do.
05:18.419 --> 05:19.220
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd really do.
05:19.280 --> 05:20.701
[SPEAKER_03]: There was some point.
05:21.422 --> 05:22.883
[SPEAKER_03]: I used to kind of like technology.
05:23.324 --> 05:31.391
[SPEAKER_03]: I had an aptitude for, you know, I like, I figured out how to write web pages early on, you know, in HTML was a thing when I was like, oh, this is fun.
05:32.072 --> 05:34.414
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's create a web page and, you know, that kind of thing.
05:34.474 --> 05:37.277
[SPEAKER_03]: But somewhere along the line, I was just like, I can't keep up.
05:38.058 --> 05:40.140
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot to keep up with.
05:40.780 --> 05:42.101
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, my, my kids,
05:42.842 --> 05:45.964
[SPEAKER_03]: And my kids are a little older than all y'all's kids.
05:45.984 --> 05:46.925
[SPEAKER_03]: They're all in their 20s.
05:47.545 --> 05:55.270
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things I notice is that they do not use like gifts, gifts to react to things.
05:55.290 --> 05:57.952
[SPEAKER_03]: They don't send a little picture of somebody nodding.
05:58.692 --> 06:01.133
[SPEAKER_03]: They use the use words.
06:03.930 --> 06:07.791
[SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, I just noticing that they never, they never send pictures.
06:07.871 --> 06:10.872
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm the only one in the family group chat that sends pictures.
06:12.132 --> 06:13.493
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm kind of entertaining myself.
06:14.573 --> 06:15.694
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they just tolerate it.
06:15.734 --> 06:16.714
[SPEAKER_03]: They're just like, oh, that's it.
06:17.154 --> 06:22.616
[SPEAKER_03]: So I feel like that's an old person thing to do now, or at least like a gen X, maybe a millennial thing.
06:24.076 --> 06:26.777
[SPEAKER_03]: But the 20 year olds, they're not doing that anymore.
06:28.040 --> 06:29.500
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, sticker.
06:29.560 --> 06:30.341
[SPEAKER_03]: It just send words.
06:30.961 --> 06:42.904
[SPEAKER_03]: And the other thing about my kids that I've noticed, that is interesting is I can send a text, I try to get an answer from them about something that I need an answer, you know, like, hey, who's coming over for Sunday night dinner?
06:43.644 --> 06:45.384
[SPEAKER_03]: Nobody responds forever.
06:45.444 --> 06:46.765
[SPEAKER_03]: I have to ask three or four times.
06:46.905 --> 06:47.125
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
06:47.305 --> 06:51.286
[SPEAKER_03]: But if I call them on the phone, they pick up right away and we have a very nice conversation.
06:51.466 --> 06:55.447
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, this is like, we're back in boomer territory.
06:57.153 --> 06:57.773
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
06:57.793 --> 07:04.234
[SPEAKER_03]: We have to be a phone call to get in touch with somebody and get an answer about something But I have to call my kids Yeah, it's just not a bad.
07:04.895 --> 07:21.638
[SPEAKER_03]: It's realizing this is a not a thing to complain about, but It sounds awesome, you know, and they pick up the phone and then they want to talk to me But anyway, I just find it all interesting, so Alright, well, speaking of talking to people
07:23.367 --> 07:24.808
[SPEAKER_00]: That was amazing.
07:25.068 --> 07:25.788
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's incredible.
07:26.568 --> 07:32.310
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, real quick, before we get into this today, as you're listening to this podcast, we are starting our learning community.
07:32.870 --> 07:33.091
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
07:33.111 --> 07:34.651
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're listening to it on Tuesday.
07:34.991 --> 07:35.211
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
07:35.291 --> 07:35.751
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm coming.
07:35.771 --> 07:36.392
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll know that.
07:36.432 --> 07:36.992
[SPEAKER_00]: I signed up.
07:37.272 --> 07:37.852
[SPEAKER_01]: Really?
07:38.072 --> 07:39.093
[SPEAKER_03]: I sure did.
07:39.373 --> 07:40.513
[SPEAKER_03]: I did not sign up.
07:40.553 --> 07:42.094
[SPEAKER_00]: I got friends to sign up too.
07:43.074 --> 07:43.594
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
07:44.375 --> 07:45.575
[SPEAKER_01]: Ben, can I talk to you for a second?
07:47.286 --> 07:50.248
[SPEAKER_01]: Just we probably could be a pause on the recording here.
07:51.009 --> 07:52.971
[SPEAKER_01]: I am not kidding these emails.
07:54.051 --> 07:54.492
[SPEAKER_01]: The last.
07:54.532 --> 07:55.573
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that I signed up.
07:55.653 --> 07:56.553
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I didn't.
07:56.653 --> 08:03.479
[SPEAKER_01]: The last email I got was a person named Mary registered yesterday.
08:04.864 --> 08:17.676
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I won't tell you her whole name because I don't want to put her on blast, but I got an email at 456 p.m. Now, it's possible that that's the last registration for this, this deal job.
08:18.417 --> 08:22.260
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's the last email and I don't see an email about Christie registering.
08:22.761 --> 08:23.822
[SPEAKER_00]: I registered last week.
08:24.963 --> 08:25.624
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
08:25.784 --> 08:28.386
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, Matt, can I talk to you over here?
08:28.727 --> 08:29.968
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
08:29.988 --> 08:31.169
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we'll just go to Staten.
08:31.189 --> 08:31.890
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just stay.
08:32.090 --> 08:32.951
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just stay there.
08:33.131 --> 08:33.712
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just stay.
08:34.072 --> 08:36.915
[SPEAKER_03]: You only recently got added to the email group.
08:37.395 --> 08:39.958
[SPEAKER_03]: Whereby you would receive these messages.
08:40.158 --> 08:41.960
[SPEAKER_03]: So you wouldn't have known about Christy.
08:42.380 --> 08:48.906
[SPEAKER_01]: Christy, this, I had to, I had to, I had to fight for representation.
08:51.849 --> 08:56.393
[SPEAKER_03]: Just as has been served, I've repented and allowed Matt to receive administrative emails.
08:57.033 --> 08:58.494
[SPEAKER_03]: I just didn't think you're interested in such a thing.
08:58.514 --> 08:59.135
[SPEAKER_03]: Email equity.
08:59.275 --> 09:00.756
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really not interested in emails.
09:00.796 --> 09:03.699
[SPEAKER_01]: That is for sure the true.
09:03.719 --> 09:09.564
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought I was serving you, but I was, well, the good thing is if somebody signs up today,
09:11.104 --> 09:12.885
[SPEAKER_03]: Matt Matt's going to get notified guys.
09:13.385 --> 09:14.026
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to get it.
09:14.066 --> 09:14.906
[SPEAKER_03]: That's really exciting.
09:15.466 --> 09:20.908
[SPEAKER_03]: Guys, if you would like to flood Matt's email with Matt's email in box with emails.
09:21.369 --> 09:21.529
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
09:21.769 --> 09:22.869
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just your friends.
09:22.889 --> 09:23.850
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just your family.
09:23.870 --> 09:25.010
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just your neighbors.
09:25.570 --> 09:25.830
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
09:25.910 --> 09:26.531
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just keep going.
09:26.551 --> 09:27.671
[SPEAKER_01]: Throw any emails into there.
09:27.691 --> 09:28.151
[SPEAKER_03]: That's on that.
09:28.171 --> 09:29.432
[SPEAKER_03]: That's on that.
09:30.713 --> 09:45.485
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you'd like to flood his inbox and, or, and maybe mostly, or if you'd like to register for our class, it starts September 15th, Tuesday, that's the day that this episode drops.
09:46.206 --> 09:56.754
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a new reconstructing faith class that we're running over the next few weeks called Jesus and women, and we're looking at passages in the Gospels where Jesus interacts with women.
09:57.415 --> 10:02.079
[SPEAKER_03]: to see what we can learn about how Jesus reckons with power.
10:03.360 --> 10:09.945
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the axioms in our book, having the mind of Christ, says that God's love always reckons with power.
10:10.245 --> 10:17.971
[SPEAKER_03]: And so the way that God's love is expressed toward people always has to do with power differential.
10:17.991 --> 10:19.512
[SPEAKER_03]: We have to learn how to see those things.
10:19.673 --> 10:21.134
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we're gonna talk about that.
10:22.475 --> 10:32.890
[SPEAKER_03]: Tuesdays at 12 p.m. noon eastern time is when we're doing that, but we're always going to record each class and send the out the recording to anybody who registers.
10:32.950 --> 10:37.776
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you'd like to register go to gravity commons.com slash reconstructing.
10:39.090 --> 10:45.932
[SPEAKER_03]: GravityComs.com slash reconstructing and fill out the form and you'll be able to get the zoom link and you'll be able to join us.
10:45.972 --> 10:48.712
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an online live zoom class.
10:49.212 --> 10:49.693
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
10:50.113 --> 10:53.354
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and to Chris these point, there's going to be talking in that class too.
10:53.374 --> 10:54.874
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Chris, it was interesting.
10:55.354 --> 10:56.614
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was a great transition.
10:57.154 --> 10:58.575
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be talking to people.
10:59.575 --> 11:04.799
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be talking amongst ourselves and to get back to Chris's amazing segue.
11:05.560 --> 11:08.622
[SPEAKER_03]: We are also talking today with Kenneth Tanner.
11:09.143 --> 11:15.728
[SPEAKER_03]: Kenneth Tanner is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan, where he has served since 2005.
11:17.409 --> 11:24.593
[SPEAKER_03]: His writing has appeared in many outlets, including Huff Post, Sojourner's Mockingbird, National Review, Christianity today, Clarion Journal, and more.
11:25.133 --> 11:28.835
[SPEAKER_03]: He and his wife Debbie have seven children and four grandchildren.
11:28.895 --> 11:37.980
[SPEAKER_03]: We're talking with him today about his book, Vulnerable God, how Jesus upends our assumptions about God, and shows us how to be human.
11:39.021 --> 11:39.541
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's get into it.
11:58.794 --> 12:01.776
[SPEAKER_03]: Kenneth Tanner, welcome to the Gravity Commons podcast.
12:02.536 --> 12:08.820
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, it's good to be with you and Matt Ben and Chris Cressey.
12:10.080 --> 12:10.540
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
12:10.781 --> 12:11.041
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
12:11.081 --> 12:11.741
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
12:12.321 --> 12:12.782
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
12:14.503 --> 12:14.683
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
12:14.703 --> 12:15.423
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
12:15.603 --> 12:15.903
[SPEAKER_03]: Kenneth.
12:15.943 --> 12:20.106
[SPEAKER_03]: Man, I have known Kenneth for, we were just adding it up.
12:20.386 --> 12:21.727
[SPEAKER_03]: We saw each other eight years ago.
12:22.707 --> 12:26.728
[SPEAKER_03]: was the last time we saw each other, we've known each other, maybe online from before that.
12:26.848 --> 12:28.968
[SPEAKER_02]: A few years before that, I would say.
12:30.189 --> 12:35.130
[SPEAKER_00]: And Kenneth and I, I mean, we're like best friends, so we met about 30, seven seconds ago.
12:35.790 --> 12:39.971
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, a recent see, a recent see bias there.
12:40.831 --> 12:42.611
[SPEAKER_03]: What Christy is now the best friend, so.
12:43.771 --> 12:46.952
[SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, it's nice to have you to be able to talk
12:53.333 --> 12:54.194
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thanks for joining us.
12:54.494 --> 13:03.237
[SPEAKER_03]: To talk about your book, which is all about kind of the obsession of your life, which is Jesus.
13:04.378 --> 13:07.499
[SPEAKER_03]: If I can put it that way, but yeah, the book we want to talk about.
13:07.959 --> 13:14.462
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, vulnerable God, how Jesus upends our assumptions about God and shows us how to be human.
13:15.662 --> 13:17.383
[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought maybe we could just start with
13:20.781 --> 13:29.384
[SPEAKER_03]: I wonder if we could just start with a little bit of, maybe this, I hope this doesn't throw you for a loop, but what's your story of faith?
13:29.784 --> 13:39.247
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, how did you, if you can encapsulate that for us in a, I don't know, a brief story, like, how did you come to be obsessed with Jesus?
13:40.492 --> 13:50.935
[SPEAKER_02]: So it starts in the Deep South, I was raised by Pentecostal, you know, families, extended families on both sides.
13:51.935 --> 13:57.037
[SPEAKER_02]: Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, and my father's people are from Cleveland.
13:58.197 --> 14:15.608
[SPEAKER_02]: uh... and we're involved in the revivals there and my mother's father was a minister in the church who got having been a price fighter before that and uh... so i was raised in a very jesus satirated
14:16.703 --> 14:22.487
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, obviously, it's a holiness when I cost all an environment.
14:22.568 --> 14:29.433
[SPEAKER_02]: And for my mother, that environment was very restrictive but she didn't pass that on to us.
14:30.353 --> 14:40.841
[SPEAKER_02]: And my memories as a child are just like, of, you know, people in their Sunday best, you know, decked out and going to church and singing and joy.
14:41.962 --> 14:55.994
[SPEAKER_02]: And Chris talks a lot about like blood wound mysticism, yeah, the connection of Jesus is the blood of Jesus, you know, and people had tremendous passion for Jesus.
14:56.995 --> 14:58.136
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were mostly poor.
15:00.887 --> 15:11.852
[SPEAKER_02]: working class people, but they were their best and they loved well, they took care of their neighbors and the poor even though they were for.
15:13.392 --> 15:23.616
[SPEAKER_02]: There were aspects of it that, you know, men have to have their hair clean shaved and women wear their hair on the top of their heads, you know, all the things that can get a little boring.
15:24.496 --> 15:25.877
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know,
15:30.195 --> 15:30.796
[SPEAKER_02]: on me.
15:31.156 --> 15:35.018
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't really experience too much of the extreme of that.
15:36.679 --> 15:40.822
[SPEAKER_02]: I did experience the joy and then centered being centered in Jesus.
15:40.842 --> 15:44.945
[SPEAKER_02]: My father was killed when I was not quite five in Vietnam.
15:46.085 --> 15:57.895
[SPEAKER_02]: And that led my mother was, you know, unmarried for five years, widow, and then she married a young man.
15:57.975 --> 16:00.517
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a minister in the church of God.
16:01.457 --> 16:05.260
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he became my dad and lovely man.
16:05.821 --> 16:11.485
[SPEAKER_02]: And he took us out of that Pentecostal thing into more like charismatic and prophetic circles
16:15.428 --> 16:24.971
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was a big shift, and so for years, I was, you know, they were doing the prophetic, you know, charismatic thing.
16:25.551 --> 16:27.592
[SPEAKER_02]: And I did feel some alienation from that.
16:28.472 --> 16:35.034
[SPEAKER_02]: And to make a long story short after a year of college at an assembly of God's school, I ended up at our Robert University.
16:36.408 --> 16:40.392
[SPEAKER_02]: Most people don't know, but all Roberts was a fantastic school.
16:40.412 --> 16:53.543
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, when they founded it in the 60s, late 60s, people from Brown and Missouri and all kinds of tenure people that were Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, you name it.
16:54.104 --> 16:59.309
[SPEAKER_02]: Left these positions and went to teach at the first charismatic university in the world, yeah.
16:59.809 --> 17:01.110
[SPEAKER_02]: So the faculty were amazing.
17:01.611 --> 17:08.698
[SPEAKER_02]: We were reading Abraham, Heshal, and you know, I mean, it was incredible experience.
17:09.278 --> 17:13.542
[SPEAKER_02]: But this spirituality by the mid-80s was quite weird.
17:14.103 --> 17:14.363
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
17:15.104 --> 17:18.767
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I mean, basically the just of it was if you were
17:20.653 --> 17:27.535
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if everything was going well in your life and you were success and you were well and all these things.
17:28.155 --> 17:30.636
[SPEAKER_02]: These were signs that God was with you and God.
17:31.196 --> 17:45.240
[SPEAKER_02]: And the absence of that was either your lack of faith or you've done something that's, you know, made God mad, which is so weird and transactional and really not anything like what happens in the gospels.
17:45.320 --> 17:47.001
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was resisting a lot of that.
17:48.099 --> 17:50.923
[SPEAKER_02]: But it kind of came to a head when I was there.
17:51.504 --> 17:57.351
[SPEAKER_02]: And I started finding life in the writings of the early Christians.
17:58.092 --> 18:02.718
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, there was this crisis moment that I write about the book that I won't go into here.
18:02.839 --> 18:04.901
[SPEAKER_02]: But just suffice to say that I,
18:08.265 --> 18:14.449
[SPEAKER_02]: I just couldn't do, I couldn't go further down that road of crazy.
18:15.710 --> 18:29.820
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what I found in the first Christians were people who were saying that God became human to suffer with us, you know, that God became human to redeem a creation that he loves.
18:38.380 --> 18:46.584
[SPEAKER_02]: He becomes what he makes in order to lend his permanence to all the things that he makes, man.
18:47.805 --> 18:50.066
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, wow, yeah.
18:50.426 --> 18:57.450
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just, I was like, OK, there are other Christians who lived in a different time and in different cultures.
18:58.745 --> 19:04.606
[SPEAKER_02]: who weren't as gaypist, you know, who were concerned about this world, yeah.
19:05.607 --> 19:11.968
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, who took care of the poor and took care of orphans, and all these things, these marvellous thing.
19:12.308 --> 19:18.710
[SPEAKER_02]: But they also wrote about a God who was in solidarity with human beings at a radical level, you know.
19:29.292 --> 19:40.835
[SPEAKER_02]: So I embraced that and that led to there was also a group of young sort of liturgical Christians that are you and they were having a vests per service on Sunday evenings.
19:40.895 --> 19:54.158
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I started going to that and encountering the person of Jesus sitting bread on a table and you know wine in a cup and with a with an acumenical group of Christians.
19:54.918 --> 20:18.425
[SPEAKER_02]: and began to see through the writings of the Christians and other Christians that I was in dialogue within people I was reading, that there's a vast deposit of wisdom through the centuries, contemporary wisdom and ancient wisdoms, people who have struggled and wrestled with existence and with God and what it means to be human and it's beautiful.
20:19.765 --> 20:22.206
[SPEAKER_02]: And we need all of it,
20:23.404 --> 20:31.751
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we need to to let all of it encounter us in order to see and we can never see entirely, but a fuller.
20:33.006 --> 20:54.157
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, picture of Jesus as Aaron is as that wonderful illustration, you know, that about mosaic floors, yeah, they used to make these mosaic floors and, you know, wherever it was, Damascus or and then ship it to Jerusalem or in Constantinople and ship it to Antioch or whatever.
20:55.058 --> 21:03.249
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there would be like, you know, the artist who was making the floor from stones had a hypothesis that you would write on the back of the stones and you'd create the stones and ship it.
21:04.130 --> 21:07.875
[SPEAKER_02]: So wherever you're going to lay the floor, and these beautiful Roman homes.
21:08.908 --> 21:21.752
[SPEAKER_02]: And what Erineus says, let's say this, Erineus is an early Christian pastor for people who, you know, are familiar with you he is and really the church's first theologian, yeah.
21:21.952 --> 21:24.372
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's very, very close to the early disciples.
21:25.092 --> 21:33.555
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he's telling the story and he says that what happens with some teachers of the gospel is they arranged the scriptures,
21:35.025 --> 21:48.794
[SPEAKER_02]: in such a way that when you put the floor together, you get the image of a fox or the image of a predator, instead of the image of a good shepherd.
21:50.035 --> 21:56.960
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's really important that we read the scriptures with wisdom, that we meditate on the cross with wisdom and that we do that.
21:58.325 --> 22:05.328
[SPEAKER_02]: as a community of, you know, with the church, with the whole community of humans following Jesus.
22:06.408 --> 22:22.714
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I came to understand that the fullness of the beauty of the floor that I needed connection with every sort of antivaptists and, you know, orthodox, you know, Presbyterian, you know,
22:25.615 --> 22:34.342
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, with young and old and with across cultures, African, Asian, European, and so forth.
22:34.482 --> 22:36.764
[SPEAKER_02]: And being dialogue with them, and I, you know, get to make sure sure.
22:36.784 --> 22:41.027
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a short way of saying it's been a journey of pilgrimage.
22:41.107 --> 22:42.048
[SPEAKER_02]: It's ongoing.
22:42.788 --> 22:50.874
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't ever see it ending in this life, I'm still asking questions, I'm still as, you know, they say it, so I'm found when I'm looking for.
22:51.615 --> 22:56.398
[SPEAKER_02]: And, uh, the greatest YouTube song apart from whether or not you.
22:57.159 --> 23:03.844
[SPEAKER_02]: And, um, you know, it's, uh, we're, we're trying to, uh, pursue the face of,
23:05.134 --> 23:10.658
[SPEAKER_02]: God, yeah, in the human Jesus.
23:11.219 --> 23:12.980
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's beautiful.
23:13.240 --> 23:14.961
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for sharing that little bit of your story.
23:19.505 --> 23:24.388
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, kind of maybe as we get into this book you've written, it's all about the incarnation.
23:25.829 --> 23:29.292
[SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned the church fathers who care a great deal about the incarnation.
23:31.637 --> 23:45.900
[SPEAKER_01]: some of our theological formation around the incarnation, unfortunately, is often reduced to Jesus was God because only God could sacrifice necessary to resolve the problem of our sin.
23:46.821 --> 23:53.882
[SPEAKER_01]: And so incarnation gets sort of collapsed into a essential component that makes the atonement work.
23:54.923 --> 23:56.343
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's unfortunate.
23:56.730 --> 24:03.336
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I wonder if you could maybe just share with us like, why does the incarnation matter to you?
24:04.777 --> 24:07.059
[SPEAKER_01]: And how is it deeper or more expansive?
24:07.960 --> 24:16.608
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I understand you could write a dissertation on this, but what peaked your interest about the incarnation to really plummet steps?
24:20.451 --> 24:27.356
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, there's lots of leads up to this, but there was a moment when I was praying with the cyanide pontocarder.
24:27.417 --> 24:43.009
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an ancient icon painting, egg tempura, it was painted in the sixth century, and what is now instant bowl, but in the time was constantly at noble.
24:43.449 --> 24:46.652
[SPEAKER_02]: Commission by the Emperor for as a gift,
24:47.432 --> 24:58.685
[SPEAKER_02]: to a group of monks that for hundreds of years at that time have been taking care of the better in populations around Sinai, baking bread, saying prayers, and so forth.
24:59.606 --> 25:05.953
[SPEAKER_02]: And he commissions the Sikon and it is still hanging there in the chapel.
25:07.614 --> 25:09.815
[SPEAKER_02]: at St. Catherine's at the foot of Sinai.
25:10.835 --> 25:17.557
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had encountered this icon in the mid-90s and it was praying with it.
25:17.837 --> 25:28.079
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things that's really interesting about that icon, first of all, it survives because of the air climate and the desert, and because of Sinai's remote.
25:28.119 --> 25:29.660
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the most remote places on Earth.
25:30.600 --> 25:52.835
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when there were these controversies about making images of God and in his son happened in the church and they were destroying all this wonderful art it got preserved by the climate and by its remoteness from craziness yeah people destroying art which is always supposed to be labeled as a form of insanity and they had also protected.
25:54.625 --> 25:58.068
[SPEAKER_02]: Muhammad when he was, you know, on the run.
25:58.909 --> 26:02.492
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they have a letter from Muhammad in his own hand.
26:02.532 --> 26:09.317
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the signature was a, you know, tracing of his hand, you know, saying don't mess with these people, yeah.
26:10.298 --> 26:12.200
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it still exists there.
26:12.220 --> 26:15.983
[SPEAKER_02]: But the image itself is so interesting because the eyes aren't symmetrical.
26:19.386 --> 26:38.591
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm not the brightest bulb in the door, but I sat with us for a long time and I was like, there's something, why would this artist paint an imperfection into the image of God in flesh?
26:39.991 --> 26:43.632
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I sat with that, I realized that the art was really
26:47.313 --> 26:57.579
[SPEAKER_02]: because Isaiah says that Jesus was not attractive in the sort of fallen sense that we have of what is attractive sometimes.
26:58.820 --> 27:06.165
[SPEAKER_02]: And that to look upon him, we wouldn't be automatically drawn to him.
27:07.586 --> 27:10.588
[SPEAKER_02]: And that I had this kind of,
27:11.742 --> 27:17.064
[SPEAKER_02]: flanographs, dig figure, Jesus, yeah, that I had inherited.
27:18.104 --> 27:24.966
[SPEAKER_02]: But the icon, I began to realize, wow, he really became one of the susceptible to cuts.
27:25.146 --> 27:32.169
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, I should have known this thinking about the crucifixion or whatever it was, but susceptible to drowning, susceptible to hunger,
27:39.591 --> 27:54.624
[SPEAKER_02]: susceptible to anxiety as we know he was in the garden or susceptible to anger, but all without, you know, sin and so we can be anxious without sin and we can be anger without sin and all these things we can be human differently.
27:55.925 --> 28:11.737
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but it doesn't, you know, everything about what it means to be human and he doesn't just, he does assume a particular body in the body of a particular woman, and Aaron AS says, because this was already a controversy well before.
28:12.658 --> 28:17.002
[SPEAKER_02]: our contemporary time is, you know, how do both sexes participate in the incarnation?
28:17.062 --> 28:19.865
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, a man has to be born of a woman.
28:19.885 --> 28:22.747
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the only way he can get both of them involved.
28:22.787 --> 28:32.816
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've so suppressed her, right, within all of the story and, you know, her role in the incarnation of redemption and prophetic.
28:33.497 --> 28:43.264
[SPEAKER_02]: beautiful liberation, voice, and person who teaches the wordless one, who is the word, how to speak.
28:43.524 --> 28:46.706
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know what I mean, where he just get down and get real.
28:47.306 --> 28:50.168
[SPEAKER_02]: But he becomes one of us in a very real ways.
28:50.188 --> 28:59.615
[SPEAKER_02]: He's skeptical to everything that human beings are from emotions to the world, to nature, to what it means that have a body.
29:00.772 --> 29:16.337
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and he does that in order to make sacred, to make holy every stage of human development, and what it means to be a child, what it means to be an adolescent, what it means to be an adult.
29:16.557 --> 29:21.838
[SPEAKER_02]: Even in his time, living to 30 was Middle Ages, so an older human being, but he also takes on
29:28.320 --> 29:33.143
[SPEAKER_02]: in every way that everyone has ever been human, yeah.
29:33.703 --> 29:40.667
[SPEAKER_02]: So he takes on the humanity as only God can collectively of us all, yeah.
29:41.047 --> 29:48.171
[SPEAKER_02]: And so Matt, I could keep going like you said, I can write a dissertation, but our nice thing, you can begin to see that there's so much more
29:50.478 --> 29:55.305
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, well, this is how we get this particular theory of a tone that's done, right?
29:55.946 --> 30:01.916
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, and we could go on and on about it, but as I've sat with all of that,
30:02.938 --> 30:10.485
[SPEAKER_02]: I do believe that the cross is where it all starts from.
30:10.505 --> 30:11.406
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
30:12.287 --> 30:18.333
[SPEAKER_02]: And so as Athanasia says, it's at the cross that God becomes full of humans.
30:18.353 --> 30:24.599
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have, and I'm following John Bear here and others as they read the early Christians, but you know,
30:25.340 --> 30:36.422
[SPEAKER_02]: You get that moment with pilot the whole deep the man throw pass not man behold the human right as the way it should be translated Yeah, so all right behold
30:37.413 --> 30:46.718
[SPEAKER_02]: the human, which is male and female, right, is all contained in what it means to be God and what it means to be human.
30:47.538 --> 30:49.599
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's everything.
30:50.080 --> 30:59.024
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he takes on what it means to be at African in the third century, or a Japanese person living in San Francisco in the 21st
31:04.027 --> 31:13.668
[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of humanity yeah, and so he becomes human he's to shares in the nature that we all share yeah, so he as creator
31:15.778 --> 31:20.181
[SPEAKER_02]: The word of the Father, who speaks all things into being, is that human beings are handcraft.
31:20.201 --> 31:25.886
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not spoken into being, but nevertheless, create or everyone before everyone we meet.
31:26.266 --> 31:33.552
[SPEAKER_02]: He's whether they're running from it, agnostic about it, embracing it, but also there's human brother.
31:33.592 --> 31:42.259
[SPEAKER_02]: Before we ever say one word, but the gospel God has already related himself by becoming human to every human person as the creator and human brother.
31:44.039 --> 32:01.011
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but I really do think that starting with the cross is the way that, you know, there's that sense that the full humanity is shown in dying for the world that God loves.
32:01.231 --> 32:03.072
[SPEAKER_02]: John's also the God loves the world.
32:04.033 --> 32:08.376
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he comes into the world in order to make the world that he loves permanent.
32:09.668 --> 32:31.409
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I think sometimes we can talk about incarnation in a way that Mrs. everything I was talking about and the man was trying to draw out, but also that says, well, he was born and we don't need to need the cross, but you know, I mean, it's just just look.
32:32.512 --> 32:50.914
[SPEAKER_02]: at the world, yeah, and we definitely need the intervention of God, yeah, and so he takes all human, it's, it's getting to think about it, yeah, because we've, we've, we've unleashed so much chaos in the world.
32:51.867 --> 33:12.892
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, the child is blown apart and Mary Opel, or, you know, last decade in Aleppo or this decade, you know, and someplace like, you know, in some place like Gaza City, you know, he is entered into all their death and has died with them.
33:14.695 --> 33:28.267
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and so it's not just about, you know, entering into the being born into being a human and existing is being a human, but he's entered into the death of every human in order to raise every human back to life.
33:28.307 --> 33:36.154
[SPEAKER_02]: So the cross is really, you know, the foundation, it says, you know, the cross is thrown down at the beginning of the world.
33:36.214 --> 33:36.455
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
33:36.935 --> 33:38.176
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is the story.
33:39.197 --> 33:41.618
[SPEAKER_02]: of what it means to be God and what it means to be human.
33:42.438 --> 33:51.240
[SPEAKER_02]: And okay, I'm going to stop there because in and I mean, it's like, he could just talk about this for a long time, but it's way more.
33:51.980 --> 33:52.180
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
33:52.540 --> 33:54.961
[SPEAKER_02]: Then a trade.
33:55.001 --> 33:56.921
[SPEAKER_02]: I was touching on this and then Matt was touching on this.
33:57.221 --> 33:58.441
[SPEAKER_02]: Is all this transactional?
33:59.142 --> 33:59.522
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
33:59.562 --> 34:00.722
[SPEAKER_02]: That has nothing to do with the god.
34:02.575 --> 34:14.163
[SPEAKER_02]: I do this in order you're going to do this, I heard some kid, you know, and I just don't even understand it anymore, but he was saying, you know, it was one of these clips, you know, trying to do a hot take or whatever.
34:15.044 --> 34:19.867
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like, you know, God is standing at the door of permanent.
34:19.907 --> 34:20.748
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not what he said.
34:20.788 --> 34:22.869
[SPEAKER_02]: He said standing at the gates of heaven or whatever.
34:22.889 --> 34:28.153
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's going to ask every person, you know, whatever you've done that I can let you in here.
34:28.453 --> 34:30.635
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just thinking like, man, that is.
34:31.868 --> 34:42.958
[SPEAKER_02]: that's, you've lost the plot, man, you know, it's not, you know, it's, this, this has got desire that we interpermanence, yeah.
34:43.138 --> 34:46.421
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, there is a human being who has done
34:48.058 --> 34:53.903
[SPEAKER_02]: what needs to occur, yeah, and order for all of us to inherit this permanence.
34:54.683 --> 34:58.206
[SPEAKER_02]: And we get to, you know, participate in that and all sorts of ways.
34:58.226 --> 35:04.792
[SPEAKER_02]: And he tells us how he says, if you want to find me, go to a prison and visit.
35:05.352 --> 35:07.914
[SPEAKER_02]: The person who is suffering behind bars.
35:08.274 --> 35:09.616
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to encounter me now,
35:10.593 --> 35:33.805
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, go and find the person who's just gotten here from wherever, trying to make money for their family back home or whatever it is, and help them get a shelter, help them get, you know, we need them here to help, you know, with us, but also God has said, if you want to find me look for the stranger, the immigrant and our current language.
35:34.625 --> 35:56.073
[SPEAKER_02]: find the poor, you know, find the naked, and so people can be actually in need of clothes or food, but that can also be a spiritual emptiness, yeah, or the need to be clothed in the right mind again, yeah, so you can be in prison in your mind, you can be prison behind bars, you can be in prison in whatever situation I'm preaching now.
35:56.314 --> 35:59.235
[SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, I'm just going to shut up unless you ask
36:03.196 --> 36:05.978
[SPEAKER_02]: who ever interviews me, as I don't have enough?
36:06.979 --> 36:15.025
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, maybe we can continue this, because you argue that we are to be called fully human, the way that God is human.
36:15.906 --> 36:22.070
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, how does that reframe some of the traditional teachings and holiness and sanctification?
36:22.090 --> 36:23.952
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you can double-click on that for a second.
36:24.932 --> 36:25.893
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:26.934 --> 36:30.937
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I think God invites us into his way of being human.
36:32.255 --> 36:51.027
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the way that works is he says to Matthew going to no more, you know, to excuse me to tax collector, yeah, you know, Matthew was, but you know, there's also, you know, that that key is and so forth, but he says going to no more.
36:52.504 --> 37:03.495
[SPEAKER_02]: To this woman who, you know, wears the man or whatever, but they're going to kill her, you know, because she's, you know, I don't know, some projection that they have of their own.
37:04.902 --> 37:05.462
[SPEAKER_02]: fall in this.
37:05.502 --> 37:08.863
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're going to kill this one woman to expiate their own guilt.
37:09.824 --> 37:12.985
[SPEAKER_02]: And he says to her, don't, you know, don't send anymore.
37:13.005 --> 37:13.445
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
37:13.865 --> 37:18.727
[SPEAKER_02]: But he's not saying that the either of them as I was really ashamed of you.
37:19.287 --> 37:25.169
[SPEAKER_02]: And you really were, you know, making me angry and the way you were living, don't go do that anymore.
37:26.229 --> 37:38.565
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a promise, you know, as Heschel says, you know, we go from with Jesus, we go from the words, you know, you shall have the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbors, yourself is no longer a command, but a promise.
37:39.806 --> 37:43.030
[SPEAKER_02]: So the words of Jesus to the woman and to the man,
37:44.097 --> 37:45.078
[SPEAKER_02]: are going to know more.
37:45.419 --> 37:55.431
[SPEAKER_02]: But with that sentence, he gives them the capacity to do what he is saying to them.
37:55.932 --> 37:57.994
[SPEAKER_02]: He's granting them that capacity.
37:58.795 --> 38:00.557
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think while we
38:01.611 --> 38:15.222
[SPEAKER_02]: are all of us, you know, in need of the kind of ministry that Jesus provides, that's a schizophrenic man in the, in the, you know, it was wandering around in the tombs, you know.
38:15.963 --> 38:24.270
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, where we were put in our right mind, and we're, you know, closed, everybody's in in need of this kind of healing touch.
38:26.990 --> 38:31.112
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the potential of every human being to be human is God is human.
38:31.192 --> 38:32.513
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so much greater.
38:33.654 --> 38:37.816
[SPEAKER_02]: And this might be the Pentecostal in me or the Wesleyan or the Eastern Christian.
38:37.876 --> 38:39.677
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a whole path.
38:39.857 --> 38:55.786
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Wesley was affected by the Eastern Christians all the early Pentecostals were, as well as this belief that the potential of every human to be human is God is human as well beyond our limits we place on ourselves and on other people.
38:57.312 --> 39:07.436
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all God, it's all God's activity, and us, but he's actually inviting us into you, you can be human as I'm human.
39:07.936 --> 39:11.258
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what he was, his love, as I've loved you.
39:11.518 --> 39:13.158
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, at the last supper, yeah.
39:13.799 --> 39:20.161
[SPEAKER_02]: And I always got hung up on that, because how can I love as God loves, yeah?
39:20.401 --> 39:24.563
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, but I can love,
39:25.690 --> 39:32.936
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, as my human brother loves and by doing that, I participate in the divine life.
39:33.436 --> 39:34.657
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, by great.
39:35.058 --> 39:36.979
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the potential is much greater.
39:37.960 --> 39:49.049
[SPEAKER_02]: Our predicament is very severe and I don't want to get in the ditch of ignoring that, but the potential is also well beyond what we imagine.
39:49.790 --> 39:51.711
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where I would sit with that
39:54.245 --> 40:02.311
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, trusting the potential of everyone to be human as God's human is a newer kind of thing I've been sending with for a while.
40:02.392 --> 40:02.652
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:02.952 --> 40:04.854
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I don't know if I'm expressing it.
40:05.334 --> 40:05.574
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:07.095 --> 40:13.801
[SPEAKER_02]: Very well, but that's how I would talk about sanctification to gift like everything with God.
40:13.861 --> 40:14.061
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:14.101 --> 40:14.601
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a gift.
40:14.942 --> 40:15.162
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:16.068 --> 40:16.408
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
40:17.529 --> 40:19.470
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that for any wants to give it to us.
40:20.630 --> 40:22.812
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he's not, uh, he didn't get it.
40:22.832 --> 40:23.692
[SPEAKER_03]: Not for stingy.
40:23.752 --> 40:24.493
[SPEAKER_03]: Jesus into it.
40:24.953 --> 40:26.494
[SPEAKER_02]: Arthur asks his is so beautiful.
40:26.514 --> 40:28.034
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, and it's in the country.
40:28.054 --> 40:29.055
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in contragent.
40:29.095 --> 40:31.596
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, God is not stingy with his existence.
40:32.237 --> 40:32.517
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
40:33.855 --> 40:42.359
[SPEAKER_02]: He, it's gratuitous, he wants his whole creation and all humans to exist as he exists.
40:42.959 --> 40:46.941
[SPEAKER_02]: The desire of God, in my trust is that God gets what he desires.
40:47.161 --> 40:56.785
[SPEAKER_02]: And through all of our crazy and through all of our violence and through all of our reduction, and he will get what he wants.
40:57.645 --> 40:59.006
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a good thing.
40:59.366 --> 41:01.047
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good thing for you and me and everybody else.
41:02.775 --> 41:02.975
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
41:04.136 --> 41:10.563
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that phrase actually shows up quite a bit in my own sermons.
41:11.324 --> 41:13.386
[SPEAKER_03]: Kenneth and I have you to thank for that.
41:13.426 --> 41:18.951
[SPEAKER_03]: That our call is to be fully human as God is human because I do think it reframes.
41:20.313 --> 41:21.734
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it reframes what it means to be God.
41:22.635 --> 41:34.321
[SPEAKER_03]: and it refrains what it means to be human for people I think in really fruitful sort of disruptive ways that we're not becoming the human part of us is not the bad part that is that needs to be eliminated.
41:34.981 --> 41:37.102
[SPEAKER_03]: The human part of the human learning to grow into.
41:37.570 --> 41:40.171
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a humiliation for God to become human.
41:40.211 --> 41:43.452
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what's very strange idea.
41:44.092 --> 41:45.612
[SPEAKER_02]: We're made in the image of God.
41:45.853 --> 41:47.393
[SPEAKER_02]: Human beings are made in the image of God.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's glory for God to become a human being.
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[SPEAKER_02]: God can't become what is not good.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, some of this is so elementary that we lose the plot, yeah, you can't, God cannot become what is evil, yeah, and so he's becoming what is good, and what is inherently good, yeah, and so we have, we have this idea that to become human as humiliation, the humiliation,
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[SPEAKER_02]: is to experience what we do to God, you know, and on the cross, and to submit to our violence, that, you know, that's a humiliation, the shame of that, but not to become human.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so part of the problem is that we start with an abstraction of what it means to be
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[SPEAKER_02]: lots of infections because we've gotten away from the real and the real is the son of God Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter, the worker woman's son who shows us what it even means to be God.
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[SPEAKER_02]: and shows us what it even means to be human.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's only one place in the world where God and the cosmos have met and creation and material creation is met, and that is in the person of Jesus.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And in Jesus,
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[SPEAKER_02]: He's drawing all the creation and all human humanity back into, you know, full union, you know, with his person.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the movement is to toward resurrection, toward, you know, restoration, towards, you know, I love what the Nazis is.
43:29.715 --> 43:56.148
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there, yes, there's dust and there's dirt and there's, we've lost the color, but he comes the master restorationist to, to brighten the image of God that is in every human being, you know, to, you know, take away the foot and whatever that's built up, you know, and so, but we start out with these ideas about God, you know, he omnipotent, you know, and we invest
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[SPEAKER_02]: pride and fallen human imagination, and when what it means to be powerful for God is to be lying in a feed trough without the ability to speak.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Or to be hanging by iron to wood, or to be lying still in the grave.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And all of those events are the big bang
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[SPEAKER_02]: All stars have their energy, all planets are in orbit, all flowers come up out of the ground, all human beings have breath and all mammals have breath.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Everything that's slid is on the ground, yeah, has its power, all of those,
44:49.661 --> 45:06.505
[SPEAKER_02]: wonders of power, come not from show of force, not from violence, not from imposition, but from grant humility, from a humility that is hard for us to even get our heads around, where God is the janitor of his cosmos.
45:06.565 --> 45:11.726
[SPEAKER_02]: He's on his knees, washing the feet of his human brothers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: but what God is actually like an eternity, so that when at the end, all human beings are before God, it's not an imposition of kneeling, kneel before me because of my vast, you know, the sort of kind of odds we project, yeah, of who God is, yeah.
45:39.225 --> 45:45.090
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's this beauty and stillness and wonder
45:47.640 --> 45:54.304
[SPEAKER_02]: embrace of God that causes our knees to buckle, yeah.
45:54.684 --> 46:03.249
[SPEAKER_02]: And only you can only confess the Jesus Christ's Lord by what a work of the Spirit.
46:04.390 --> 46:04.670
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So if every knee bowels and every ten confesses that Jesus Christ's Lord is the glory of God the Father, this is not a coercion.
46:12.900 --> 46:18.886
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know how that, you know, I mean, it's a story that's painting a portrait for us of what redemption will look like.
46:19.747 --> 46:30.537
[SPEAKER_02]: And that might be different for every person, but the goal of that work is this restoration that we're talking about.
46:33.881 --> 46:34.141
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
46:36.640 --> 46:37.141
[SPEAKER_03]: It's beautiful.
46:37.741 --> 46:44.489
[SPEAKER_03]: Feel like we need a moment of silence and then we'll say the nice and creed and the prayers of the people and come to the table.
46:44.769 --> 46:51.517
[SPEAKER_03]: We just say, I love, I was just, I was, I was, we can't remember that Jesus from.
46:53.810 --> 46:54.630
[SPEAKER_03]: The long time ago.
46:54.971 --> 47:04.994
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I've been saying committee, which were the headquarters were and then where I live for 20 years, California, and I got invited as a young man because the Russian Orthodox Bishop was coming to town.
47:06.195 --> 47:08.976
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they were trying to make the Jesus film an ecumenical project.
47:09.936 --> 47:15.879
[SPEAKER_02]: And they said, why do you come up and, you know, because you, you're really into Eastern Christians and I was this young priest and everything.
47:16.439 --> 47:18.940
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got up there and their offices.
47:20.040 --> 47:26.801
[SPEAKER_02]: and then I was writing in a taxi with him and I was asking all these questions like, what are all these controversial things between the East and the West?
47:27.542 --> 47:33.343
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there was an interpreter and all this stuff and he was a role bishop and he was a real deal.
47:34.423 --> 47:44.225
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think at one point he just got frustrated with my youth and with all my questions and how I was making controversy or how my British brother John Licks controversy.
47:49.695 --> 47:51.556
[SPEAKER_02]: the hot button issues.
47:51.616 --> 47:51.836
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
47:53.518 --> 48:00.522
[SPEAKER_02]: All of a sudden, he started loudly exclaiming, you know, and from the back seat, and I'm in the front, yeah.
48:01.443 --> 48:06.507
[SPEAKER_02]: And the interpreter starts saying his words, and he's confessing the nice and create.
48:06.787 --> 48:10.649
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, and finally, it was almost as if
48:11.668 --> 48:31.232
[SPEAKER_02]: I hear you young man and you've got all these questions, but this is my truth and this is what I'm going to get back to and this is the story of the world and you're caught up in all these other stories, but here's the story and we're just going to I'm just going to say it out loud so when you said that I was like telling that's pretty good.
48:34.772 --> 48:37.835
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you mentioned the Sinai, how did you pronounce it?
48:37.875 --> 48:38.475
[SPEAKER_03]: Pentakriter?
48:38.795 --> 48:39.396
[SPEAKER_03]: Pentakriter?
48:39.536 --> 48:39.796
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:39.916 --> 48:40.677
[SPEAKER_02]: A ruler of all.
48:40.697 --> 48:40.797
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:41.017 --> 48:41.778
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, everyone.
48:42.258 --> 48:42.459
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
48:42.619 --> 48:44.060
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know if you can say that.
48:44.120 --> 48:44.540
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, there is.
48:45.081 --> 48:49.004
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the, you, you handed these out at that conference that we saw you.
48:49.625 --> 49:01.535
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, unless you had, like a bunch of these in your, uh, in your satchel, and I've given out hundreds of those over the years, the title of this book came from.
49:02.750 --> 49:13.253
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, look at that, that news me so much, Matthew, from that same party, William Matthew has that in like with his records and his apartment or whatever.
49:13.273 --> 49:27.698
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got a people send me pictures, you know, but I got the title, this book from a church of Ireland priests, Jack Heesleb, and I first met him in 2004.
49:29.700 --> 49:35.001
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had conversations in the meantime, we were trying to book both at S.E.S.
49:35.041 --> 49:37.022
[SPEAKER_02]: and a book that Kathleen Filsani was editing.
49:38.022 --> 49:44.184
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was going to be in New York because he was a chaplain to a major rock outfit.
49:44.864 --> 49:49.065
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was going to be a Trump Tower of all places, you know, 2012.
49:50.765 --> 50:05.356
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I wrote him and I said as you would like in a polite way that you might do is you won't remember me, but you know, and he said, remember you he wrote me back as a remember you he said,
50:08.439 --> 50:17.729
[SPEAKER_02]: This I keep us icon with me and when I put it wherever I hotel, wherever I go, it reminds me of the vulnerable God you talk about.
50:18.510 --> 50:22.534
[SPEAKER_02]: And I never seen those two words together and it took about a week.
50:23.355 --> 50:28.559
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was like, that's the title, you know, of the book and God bless him.
50:28.699 --> 50:32.101
[SPEAKER_02]: He's with our Lord and all the saints and angels.
50:32.181 --> 50:45.831
[SPEAKER_02]: But like a couple weeks after New York, he wrote me and he said, because he used to go on, he used to, before this band would go on stage, he would pray with them, you know, like just
50:48.293 --> 51:02.489
[SPEAKER_02]: and he wrote me, because I'd given him some icons for the members of the bag, so you can give him to whoever you want, because he would do baptisms, and he would marry people, and he would like hang out with the technicians, and he just was the pastor of the tour, yeah.
51:03.410 --> 51:09.557
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, I want you to know, as a final night in America, we were in Pittsburgh, and it was our prayer time.
51:10.410 --> 51:24.634
[SPEAKER_02]: And I took those icons and I handed one to each other members of the pan and we prayed and I talked I gave him your meditation on the vulnerable gut and that just made my entire life because that was a huge I'm a huge fan of this group.
51:25.374 --> 51:35.756
[SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, Jack is the one who gave me the title and it comes from the you know, I gave all in Brad Bryan mentions in the forward.
51:35.796 --> 51:38.317
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that he has one of these icons.
51:39.257 --> 51:46.541
[SPEAKER_02]: I gave him, and it's so touching to me that, you know, eight years later, whatever, you still have those, huh?
51:46.601 --> 51:47.802
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's beautiful.
51:47.922 --> 51:49.843
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait a minute.
51:50.123 --> 51:51.984
[SPEAKER_00]: As best friends, I don't have one.
51:52.124 --> 51:55.065
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not feeling the love right now.
51:55.205 --> 51:58.787
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys, you guys sent me the best mailing address, and I'll get one to you.
52:07.352 --> 52:26.590
[SPEAKER_02]: it's not gonna it's not it's not gonna it's gonna it's gonna happen like it's like the prop promise yeah so yeah oh wait a wait a fulfillment it could be a month or so but eventually you're gonna have it oh it's especially with the post office for this today I know because I'm mailing they sent me a hundred copies of this book
52:27.677 --> 52:27.877
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
52:28.217 --> 52:32.638
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've been mailing them to people, friends, people help me out on the book and so forth.
52:32.698 --> 52:34.339
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just takes forever.
52:34.359 --> 52:34.899
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
52:35.139 --> 52:35.759
[SPEAKER_02]: That's seen too.
52:35.959 --> 52:36.479
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
52:37.799 --> 52:42.000
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, listen, I highly recommend.
52:42.100 --> 52:42.841
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
52:42.861 --> 52:43.301
[SPEAKER_03]: Here it is.
52:43.421 --> 52:44.421
[SPEAKER_03]: So there it is.
52:44.441 --> 52:45.061
[SPEAKER_03]: Vulnerable God.
52:45.261 --> 52:45.681
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got one.
52:45.841 --> 52:46.742
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got a copy as well.
52:46.762 --> 52:47.462
[SPEAKER_03]: They sent me one.
52:49.767 --> 53:09.440
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think maybe one last thing that I'd like just like to say about your work, Kenneth, and this book, in particular, a lot of our listeners would describe themselves, I think, as some form of deconstruction or some of them have left the church, can't find a church that
53:10.200 --> 53:26.633
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, resonates or I get it, you know what I mean that that just doesn't harm I I believe me unfortunately I agree yeah, yeah, but I I just want to commit if that listener if you're finding yourself in that place.
53:26.653 --> 53:28.354
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to commend this book to you because
53:29.455 --> 53:47.114
[SPEAKER_03]: I think what this book and what Kenneth's teaching has done has helped me with is to radically reshape on a foundational level using the resources of the early church and all of that, but to radically reshape on a foundational level.
53:47.985 --> 54:05.732
[SPEAKER_03]: Just the sort of the background image of God that I carried around with my psyche, that the sort of the God that we might be flinching from reactively, like that whole, like that's the work of reconstruction, I think.
54:06.892 --> 54:10.174
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, just this book, I think, would be a,
54:10.994 --> 54:20.122
[SPEAKER_03]: A helpful resource for those who are seeking a gentler, humblur, more incarnational way of holding their faith.
54:21.855 --> 54:27.657
[SPEAKER_02]: the kidneys is that God is different.
54:28.697 --> 54:37.740
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, our projections of God and even Christian projections of God that are abstracted from the person of Jesus.
54:38.860 --> 54:39.940
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the good news or
54:50.243 --> 55:01.590
[SPEAKER_02]: And he loves all human beings, and you can enter into his way of being in the world, yeah.
55:01.870 --> 55:06.934
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sorry that the situation is such that we don't have
55:08.230 --> 55:25.923
[SPEAKER_02]: communities for you to be at, but I appreciate your wrestling just as shake up does with the angel and that God will bless you in the wrestling and that you'll know that he is for you and all that.
55:27.905 --> 55:32.068
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't think of a better way to end a podcast than with a blessing from a priest.
55:32.908 --> 55:34.630
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'll say amen to that.
55:36.056 --> 55:40.438
[SPEAKER_03]: go in peace to love and serve the Lord, and Kenneth, thanks for spending some time with us.
55:41.099 --> 55:42.599
[SPEAKER_02]: My deep pleasure, thank you.
55:48.823 --> 55:52.004
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Gravity podcast.
55:52.324 --> 55:54.746
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55:55.246 --> 55:58.167
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56:05.431 --> 56:10.337
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56:10.678 --> 56:21.591
[SPEAKER_01]: It's free to join and you can connect with other listeners to the podcast to talk about faith, spirituality, and whatever else comes up also then and I hang out there a lot.
56:22.232 --> 56:25.474
[SPEAKER_01]: To join, go to gravitycommonz.com slash community.
56:26.134 --> 56:37.100
[SPEAKER_01]: The Gravity Podcast is produced by Ben Sturkey and Matt Tubby, Aaron Sturkey, and it's in mixes the podcast, you can check out his mixing, engineering, and production work at AaronSturkey.com, and we'd love to hear from you.
56:37.581 --> 56:45.045
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56:45.505 --> 56:49.227
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56:50.128 --> 56:50.768
[SPEAKER_01]: Catch you next time.
56:56.932 --> 56:58.126
[UNKNOWN]: Thanks for watching!
