"There’s never no more urgent time for prayer than the now in which you find yourself, but I also- I know what it feels like to exist in this world right now. I often feel overwhelmed, anxious, frightened, helpless, useless, and when I start to feel a bit better, a bit more hopeful, another breaking news alert comes through to break me. I don’t know what the future holds- for this nation, for the world, for myself. I think I have a pretty fair idea based on my reading of scripture and my knowledge of history, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. What I do know is that if I’m going to survive this, if I’m going to be functional in the midst of this, if I’m going to be any help at all, and if I’m going to retain some sense of wellbeing- I’m going to have to pray. I’m going to have to be intentional about reorienting myself to God’s purposes, about centering myself in God’s presence, and about letting myself find comfort in the wellspring of God’s ever-abundant love. I know that’s what I want for myself. I believe that’s what God wants for me, not this rage and confusion and bitterness I feel otherwise. I want to rest deeply in God’s care. I want to walk steadily in God’s path. And I want that for you too. I believe God wants that for you also, and prayer is the primary tool to attain that."

This sermon was preached on July 21, 2024 at Chester Presbyterian Church in Chester, Virginia.

Join Charlotte Elia for a time of guided contemplation and centering prayer for spiritual rest and renewal. Put on some comfy clothes, settle onto a mat or bed, and give your breath, your body, and yourself to God.

During our practice you will be invited to focus on an intention, for healing or wholeness, for yourself or someone else, something that you want to release to God’s care. You might take a moment to think about an intention before your begin. You don’t need to search your mind for something. If nothing presents itself, you may simply choose the intention of rest for yourself.

If you should fall asleep during our practice, that’s okay. Don’t fight that. It’s what your body wants. It’s what your mind wants. It’s what God wants for you. You are safe here in this space, in this sanctuary. Receive the gift of peace, of rest, that God grants you.

“You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” -Augustine

You can learn more about the practice of Requies Divina with the episode of our podcast Requies Divina: Developing a Practice for the Present.

Chad: One of the benefits of recognizing the limits of our understanding, especially through perception, but maybe just in general, is it should give us, number one, a little more humility- I am not seeing the world as it is. I pretty much assume that, and so I need to take a step back, because I could get things wrong! And again, I'm hearing you saying this: and be open to other people's experiences because they might see something I'm not seeing, so I can learn from them.

"All of those Peter stories reflected in this text, all of those experiences, all of those lessons to be learned and Peter doesn’t know why Jesus keeps asking if he loves him. It’s Peter’s denials; it’s Jesus’ crucifixion, and it’s Peter’s feelings that are hurt. Oof.

But those are the old stories, and this is a new chapter, a new life. That’s what Peter’s really missing, and that’s the real pity here. You see, Jesus is inviting Peter not just to reconciliation but to participation in the resurrection. Jesus is inviting Peter and the other disciples into a new life of astounding abundance, daring love, unexpected joy, and yes, inexplicable danger. Jesus is literally calling the disciples to the other side of the boat, directing them from the waves to sure ground, inviting them to a bonfire- not in the evening shadows, but in the brightening dawn- to warm themselves not in secret or shame among suspicious strangers but in the joyful company of dear friends- a bonfire centered not on fear and humiliation but on the affirmation of love and a commitment to service in that love. That’s what Peter’s still missing, and that’s the shame of it, and that’s what you and I had best not miss ourselves."

Check our Charlotte's recently published "Coloring in Prayer: 40 Conversations with God" at Amazon.

Charlotte: I had been thinking about the pandemic… Congregations had been, since at least the mid-20th century, basing programming on Sunday morning worship, maybe a mid-week Bible study. There’s Sunday school, but it’s primarily academic in nature, and then fellowship events... So when the pandemic happens and churches can’t get together, what are the tools that I have at home as a Christian to actually practice this religion? The church was generally failing because we never taught people how to pray! We didn’t! And then there’s this terrible, terrible thing that’s happening that is scary, and it’s not just the pandemic. It’s the moment that’s unveiling just how bad our health care system was and what huge economic disparity there was in this country and racial inequality and just everything that was happening during that year, and the church had not equipped folks with tools to deal with that in anyway on their own. It’s like, “Christianity happens Sunday morning.” Well, I’m at home, and I’m freaking out, and I don’t have Christian tools to deal with this because we hadn’t been sharing spirituality. So that’s also part of my push because I think the Church, or at least the Mainline American Protestant church, absolutely failed that moment, and they failed it decades before that moment.

You can experience a session of Requies Divina with this recording from our podcast feed. You can also access some 3-minute guided meditations produced by Charlotte Elia at Chester Presbyterian Church's YouTube Channel.

Charlotte: When we talk about starting these other practices, it’s one thing if I intend to put aside ten minutes every morning to sit in silence, but there’s always going to be an excuse for me not do that… but coming to the building, sitting, and then being led, making that commitment to the time, I think is useful for them too, and I hope it leads to them doing more contemplation and meditation. I am hopeful that giving them a basis of positive, tangible experience from that is going to encourage them to broaden their practices.

Please consider subscribing to us on your favorite podcast source and on our Substack where you'll find lots of additional goodies.

Chad: One thing I’ve learned in keeping up a practice of contemplative prayer, of just sitting, (at this point I do twenty or thirty minutes), is eventually there becomes this space between what’s happening in the world and my reaction to it. I don’t know if that makes sense. Because what you’re doing as you’re sitting in prayer is you’re watching thoughts go by, and you’re not clinging to them, right? You just try to let them go. If you start thinking about the laundry— And I’ll share a trick that I use. If I’m sitting there trying to be aware of God and I start thinking about the laundry, I will simply say to myself, “I’m thinking about the laundry,” and the moment I name it, I can let it go. But when you nurture a practice of letting thoughts go, you begin to realize, “I am not my thoughts.” You know, thoughts come and go all the time. I don’t have to cling to them. I think that’s part of what creates a space between what’s happening in the world and my reaction to it. 

Charlotte: Spirituality in the Christian tradition has a goal of union with God through imitation of God, either imitation of the divine attributes, things that we know about God- love, goodness, kindness, mercy- or through imitation of the life of Christ, of the example that God has given us. So there are a couple of approaches there, but I think what we're really talking about is how we enact our faith. What does the Christian life look like?

Chad: The one thing that always remains the same in our love relationships is constantly we want what is good for the other person. I think that gets closer to what is essential to love. When we love another person, we want what is good for them, regardless of how we feel. And we can turn that around. If we don’t want what is good for the other person, do we really love them? […] Love and the good are intimately related. When we love ourselves and when we love others, we are wanting what’s good for ourselves; we are wanting what is good for others. […]

Love is a whole life-orientation toward the good.

Charlotte: These particular spiritual practices are ways in which we enact the faith in the world or in our personal lives, so they are outward expressions of the faith. They are also specific things, in those cases, that Christ has asked us to do, so we’re following specific commandments. But those acts of love not only transform the lives of the people to whom we offer them, but those acts of love are ultimately transforming us. Love is transformative, not only to the beloved, to the object of our love, but to ourselves. And those are concrete ways, not just biblically, but historically, Christians have sought to reorient themselves through love, through acts of love, because our God is love.

Charlotte: And as Osuna says, it's wonderfully egalitarian. I don't need anyone to do it for me. I can just sit, and I could do that anywhere and anytime I needed to.

Chad: And as it should be. The presence should be accessible to anyone.

Charlotte: Anyone should be able to have contact with the divine because, as you say, the ubiquitous nature, and God is closer to us than our own breath.

Chad: Why would we not want to be intimately aware of that presence?

Chad: The thing that impresses me most and has really kind of changed the way I think about the scriptures is this idea that you see in the early church that in coming to the scriptures I can encounter the risen Christ, the person versus an idea that I learn about Jesus in scripture, which is certainly true obviously, but I encounter the living, risen Christ in it.

Charlotte: I think all three of these thinkers would look at the historical-critical method and say, "Okay, that's fine, but it's not enough. It's lacking something." It's lacking faith seeking understanding, ultimately. I mean, because it's really a set of tools you can apply to any text, ancient, modern, etc, but we're coming with different questions as people of faith, of what claims those texts or Christ within those texts have on us.

"This is a parable that like Jesus’ teachings, a parable that like Jesus’ life, shows the absurdity, the lies, the ultimate ineffectiveness of supposed power. Power seeks only to maintain power, and power is maintained through cruelty, manipulation, violence. Power serves itself, but love offers itself, empties itself in service. And love can’t be overcome while power is often its own undoing."

This sermon was preached by Charlotte Elia at Chester Presbyterian Church in Chester, Virginia on Sunday, October 15, 2023.

During our practice you will be invited to focus on an intention, for healing or wholeness, for yourself or someone else, something that you want to release to God’s care. You might take a moment to think about an intention before your begin. You don’t need to search your mind for something. If nothing presents itself, you may simply choose the intention of rest for yourself. 

If you should fall asleep during our practice, that’s okay. Don’t fight that. It’s what your body wants. It’s what your mind wants. It’s what God wants for you. You are safe here in this space, in this sanctuary. Receive the gift of peace, of rest, that God grants you.

"You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." -Augustine

Charlotte: These folks are in a position of protecting a particular reading of scripture because it has become their god. That’s the thing that is at risk, right?

Chad: The scriptures have become god, yeah.

Charlotte: Like we’ve talked before about this confusion between the word of God in scripture and the Word of God in Jesus, and there’s not a one-to-one relationship. Not only does that seem to exist, but it seems to exist around a particular reading of scripture, so that what science is threatening is the whole faith itself, so that’s why there’s this kind of crusade energy against it. And I think the distinction there between the way that those folks are reading scripture and the way that we’re reading scripture is that as science informs my worldview more and more through what I learn or through new discoveries, then I’m realizing that the thing that I might be modifying is my own understanding of scripture, again with all of those variables that I’m bringing to the table, and one of those variables is always how much I know about the world, right? And that’s okay for me because the whole scheme isn’t going to fall apart. It’s the one little piece of it that I was grasping in a particular way and now have a different handle on because I’m trying to fit these pieces in some congruent way. But it’s not going to threaten my idea of the existence of God because I haven’t hinged everything on my one particular understanding of a piece of scripture.

I wish this didn’t sound as condescending as it’s going to, but here it goes: One of the things that I think ultimately is so sad about folks who are rejecting science in favor of a scientific reading of scripture is that they put themselves in a very defensive position and that, I think, is antithetical to our faith, to be clutching onto a particular idea, whatever it is, but being closed to one another, to the world around us, ultimately to the Holy Spirit. And it’s not just defensive; it’s a defensiveness that manifests itself in a very combative way often.

Chad: And it can be so rigid that instead of adjusting, it just breaks.

Charlotte: Exactly. Exactly. You took that right out of our podcast description, I think.

Chad: That’s right. I actually thought about that when it occurred to me.

Charlotte: Just the idea that creation is a reflection of the Creator… It just has to be. I mean, we think about that with art and other things. You know, like, this is an expression of somebody’s personality, of somebody’s mind, right? And you want, of our great artists and musicians, you want the fullest expression of their art to understand that person and to understand their art in context. There’s this kind of skepticism, on one hand, around that saying, “Oh, no, then you’re worshipping creation,” or something. I think we’re all smart enough to distinguish between the two, but there is something all around us that’s reflecting the Creator’s mind, the Creator’s face, within everything because that’s who made it! That’s just almost too simplistic, but destroying any piece of that is destroying part of the reflection. It’s primary source material that we’re throwing out because it’s inconvenient or somehow not worth saving, but it’s God’s handiwork. 

Chad: They don’t jettison the whole notion of hell, (well, hell of course isn’t actually in the Bible), the notion of an age of punishment. The thing is the punishment is cathartic, versus purely retributive, because God is always trying to separate good from evil. And so what happens is, if you enter the next age and you’re still, as Gregory of Nyssa would put it, welded to evil, you’re going to be separated from that, partly because you will be drawn to the good, which you’ll have a clearer apprehension of, but that will be painful because you’ve welded your nature to evil… It’s a process of purification. I think the caricature of universalism is that I walk into heaven and there’s my grandmother, who was a saint, and Hitler playing checkers together. It’s like everybody dies and goes to heaven. If you’re welded to evil, you’re going to be separated from that, and that’s going to be painful. It’s going to cause suffering. 

Charlotte: So there’s still real incentive for me to do as much of that work as possible now in this life, as well as incentive for me to help others do as much of that work, so it’s not an antinomianism. 

Chad: Right. Exactly. Yeah. 

Chad: Here’s the thing: Paul is writing letters; he doesn’t see himself as writing scripture. And at times Paul makes explicit that what he is saying is his own position, not the Lord’s. You know, this is not coming from the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 7:12 he said, “This is from me, not from the Lord.” And I think the question we have to ask ourselves is does he qualify that every time he gives his opinion? Probably not. And so I think the onus of responsibility falls on us to discern if what he is saying is from the Lord or his own opinion. And the example I always give is which sounds more divinely inspired to you? “In Christ,” Pauls says this, “In Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek.” Okay? Or, “I don’t let women speak in church because Eve was deceived and Adam wasn’t?” I mean, clearly to me the more inspired statement is “In Christ we are one.” This idea that the way that we carve up humanity in groups is- it causes division, and it’s about power. It has nothing to do with the kingdom. 

Chad: I mean, the computer is just a program. I don’t know if people need to hear that. It’s encryption all the way down, turtles all the way down. There’s no understanding there. There’s no agency, desire, will, goals unless it’s programmed into it obviously. But not the desire and will, the goals are obviously going to be programmed into it. But it doesn’t have agency, and it’s not aware of its own experience in the world. 

Charlotte: Maybe that’s the angle, that love of neighbor presumes love of self. Love of self presumes self-awareness. 

Chad: Yeah, the ability to be aware of my own experience and then equate the experience of others with something similar, you know?

-----------

Charlotte: But they’re only returning what we’re putting into them, either through those prompts or the information that we’ve fed to them and through the programs that we’ve written for them. And in that way, they actually reflect more on us as their creator than as some other entity. 

Charlotte: What I love about Jesus’ interpretation of Jonah, shall we say, is he’s kind of doing some midrash here. He’s filling in some blanks in the book of Jonah… You wonder why would you have been so taken with this person, this Jonah, that you would have responded.

Chad: Unless you saw him come out of a fish.

Charlotte: Unless you either saw him or that word got around. And that word probably would have traveled faster than Jonah, wouldn’t it have? I mean, that word gets on the trade routes before Jonah can figure out his way to get to Nineveh. So I like to think that’s what Jesus is doing, is filling in this part of the tradition… It’s certainly not the effectiveness of Jonah’s speech. Probably more compelling than Jonah’s speech is “That’s that guy what got thrown in the water and the storm stopped, was in a whale and got vomited on a beach. I’m curious what he thinks about things.”

…

Charlotte: From the beginning, literally in the beginning, Genesis 1:1, it’s a story about us and the world, us and creation, not as just actors on a stage of creation. And part of our responsibility then of caring for creation is to be mindful of all of our impact on creation, the fact that everything that we do impacts creation.

Chad: There's something about the idea of this perfect identity of diversity in unity that hits a lot of high notes for me. I mean, the creation reflects that. We live in a universe that is a diverse unity, that's a nice reflection of the creator. And I think there are moral implications, which I think you've already touched on, but this idea that any efforts toward homogeneity or uniformity or pitting one group against another because of inherent differences does not reflect the nature of God who is inherently diverse and one. What reflects the divine nature is diversity working together in love as one. The diversity isn't lost in that process.

...

Charlotte: I think that anytime we cut ourselves off from groups of people, we're cutting ourselves off from knowledge of God.

The sound quality for this episode falls far from our own expectations. Charlotte called in to record from what sounds like the bottom of a trashcan, and we'll not let that happen again.

Charlotte: The church is one. How is the church one? It sure seems like there’s a lot of division and confusion within the church, right? But the church is unified by acknowledging one Lord, confessing the same faith, or the core of the same faith, maybe the faith as described within this very creed. The church is born of the same baptism, and so forms a body and gains its unity through the unity of the Trinity. That’s its strength. But, like the Trinity, within that unity is a multitude or great diversity that mirrors the diversity of humanity, so saying that it’s one doesn’t mean that it’s uniform. 

Chad: I was thinking of keeping that same thread we started in the first episode of God being one, this idea that the divine love is always one, does not change. Divine goodness does not vary. Divine mercy and justice are not incompatible, but they’re one. The divine intention for a good creation is one. It never changes. And so that opening statement reflects that unity and tells me that is the divine intention for the corporate body of the faithful as well- this idea that the effect, in some significant sense, resembles the cause or reflects the cause. The one, holy church is- this might be controversial- is one and holy insofar as it is unified in love and reflects the nature of the divine goodness that never changes and brings it into being. 

Chad: The idea, at least according to the tradition, is that we’re created ex nihilo, out of nothing, and the principle they would use is, “Anything that’s created out of nothing, tends towards nothing.” And so how do we become, how do we get passed, as you were saying, our material, corruptible, physically corruptible nature and enter into some union with eternal spirit? Of course, that’s where the incarnation really does a lot of work, by the begotten taking on creature-hood and uniting those two in himself. 

Charlotte: It’s almost too much to ponder, isn’t it?

Chad: It is, but it’s fantastic. And if it was easy to comprehend, it would surely not be true.

Chad: When I was first looking at this, I was like, “My goodness. What are we going to talk about?” But the more I started thinking about it and the implications, specifically for our faith and lived faith, it really is helpful and informative and makes a difference, despite how little information there seems to be here.

Chad: What’s going to come out of this? That’s what I’m really curious about. What kind of fruit? In my mind, you know, especially regarding the way cultural Christianity is in this country, I would love to see some reaction against that. You know, a more open, accepting, loving Christianity, and I think that’s a possibility, but I don’t know. We’ll see, you know? Because there are a lot of people excited about this all over the world. 

Charlotte: What I know and what I affirm to be true is that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, the path to salvation… but I don’t also see that as being limited. What God chooses to do outside of that or within that framework? I don’t really have any way to speak to that. So I can start to talk about different ways that theologians or the tradition has approached this question, but I kind of feel like… It’s not my business?

Chad: I feel you. Yeah. I mean, I think we can proclaim the truth of Christ without denying that there is truth that can be found in other religions. I don’t find that to be a controversial claim. I know some people would. 

Chad: The internet has opened up my eyes to a lot of things, and one thing is there’s a lot of people out there confessing Christ’s name that are downright mean.

Charlotte: Yeah.

Chad: I don’t know, Charlotte. Are those people Christians?

Charlotte: How about this? I don’t know, but I don’t want to be a Christian like they are.

Chad: There you go. I can get on board with that. 

Charlotte: I want something different for myself and for others. I want folks who are learning to love themselves and are learning to share love outwardly with others and who are taking greater and greater risks for that love. That’s what I’d like to see.

Chad: Amen.

Chad: It’s a great act of faith to live in the moment without bringing the burdens of the past or the fears or worries of the future into that moment. Certainly that’s part and parcel of contemplative practice but I think faith in general. 

As I said, God is always present now. God’s not present yesterday. There is no yesterday. God’s not present in the future. There is no future. There’s only now. When the future comes, it will still be now. The moment we are given in time is in some sense connected to God’s eternal now. And maybe we can think of this world as our entrance into an eternity of newness, of new beginnings, of God’s ever new, eternal now, eternal freshness.

Chad: When Christmas comes around, it’s such a great time to think about just the wonder of what it means for the Word of God to take on flesh and live among us, as it is in John’s Gospel. I don’t think there’s anything more marvelous or wonderful than that. And it’s near impossible to express without saying things that at least sound completely paradoxical. So, for instance, the one who came into this world as a tiny baby is the same one through whom this world came into being. 

The top five episodes of 2022 were:

1. What is Love?

2. Will There Be Animals in Heaven?

3. The Older, Responsible Son

4. Concerning That Richard Rohr Meme

5. Faith and Doubt; Faith or Doubt?

Also mentioned in this episode were our series on the afterlife, (What Happens When We Die?, What is Hell?, What is Heaven Like?), Talking Theology With a Friend, and Let's Talk TULIP.

Thank you to all of our listeners and our supporters for engaging this new endeavor. We're so happy you're with us, and we look forward to many more conversations in the year ahead.

"We don’t know Mary’s song because we largely have no revolution in us. And having no revolution in us only speaks of a more distressing underlying condition of having no real hope within us, no real conviction that things can or even should be better, no strength of belief in the promises of God that moves us to seize the promises as though they were already real, right before us- right before us just waiting to be grasped."

Charlotte: Well, what are locusts in the Bible? They’re described as the instruments of God’s wrath…

Chad: Judgement…

Charlotte: ...as the repercussion of sin. So he’s already starting to destroy, in some small way or symbolic maybe, this instrument of wrath. That’s being put aside now. To be eating the thing that causes famine! He’s consuming that which consumes fields and starves people. And wild honey, the only association I’ve got for honey is these lands flowing with milk and honey. So he’s standing in this cusp between wrath and paradise here, but he’s clearly leaning into the paradise part because he’s already being shown as a type, let’s say, of Christ, as one who is literally destroying the instruments of death. And where is he doing all this? At the Jordan.

Chad: Where they cross over into the Promised Land... 

Charlotte: So all of this is happening in this huge eschatological space...

It’s not just about to happen; it is happening. It’s about to, and it is, but it always has also. I mean, the intersections here of time. Salvation history, we view as a kind of continuum; on the cosmic scale it isn’t. It already has happened, is happening, will happen. So all of these points between Eden, Exodus, the wilderness, Elijah, the Babylonian Captivity, all of that coalescing in this: the activity of God brought then to this moment.

Charlotte: "There's no distinction between a cannibalistic serial killer and when I ate more pie than I should have."

Chad: "Yeah, those are not the same thing. Depends on what kind of pie you're eating..."

Charlotte: "Sweeney Todd has entered the chat!"

Chad: "How about 'totally dependent on grace?'"

Charlotte: "Yeah, I think that's so much better. We'll keep the 'T.'"

The scriptures are the authoritative, written witness to Jesus Christ and the rule of faith and practice. The scriptures are also incredibly diverse, containing both beautiful, instructive content as well as questionable, hardly helpful content.

Charlotte and Chad explore both the books they would recommend in a heartbeat and books they find less than helpful. Of course, this exercise just gives them an excuse to discuss their love for the scriptures and the need to dig deep in the well of the written word.

"Love can reach across any obstacle, real or imagined, present or future, anything in life and even the chasm of death. You know 'Till death do us part?' That’s a legal boundary, not a Christian one. We love each other beyond death, through death, in spite of death. On this All Souls’ Day we remember that our God turns even ghost stories into love stories, that although our bodies may die, love remains, love lives on. Love can reach across any obstacle and join us to God and to one other, and love will reach across every obstacle until the perfection of an age when we will see that love shine perfectly in the face of God and in the face of each other in the heavenly kingdom to come."

Charlotte: Regardless of where either one of us might go in a conversation there’s a presupposition that I’m trying to come from a place of faith seeking understanding, that it’s not a completely abstract exercise, but that there’s a… um...

Chad: Well, there’s a certain amount of trust between us that we can discuss something. We can be crazy too. I mean, if you come to me with some wild idea—

Charlotte: And I have, and it’s been recorded, and it’s been published. 

Chad: I’m not going to assume that you’re not coming to it from a sincere place, even if it is wild, that you’ve been exploring this idea, and you’re like, “Hey, I’d like to talk about this.” So from the get-go, I’m going to treat it as something worth exploring even if we both end up saying, “Well, this is ridiculous.”

"Our God chose death, destroyed death by occupying death. Our God chose that, chose that out of such a great love for us. God chose to die so that even the terrifying, unknown spaces between worlds would be filled with God’s love, and we’d never be alone, not for a moment, not for an instance. God in our death and in our dying. God ever and always with us."

"Ultimately, beyond scriptural evidence, the tradition, what Paul may or may not have actually meant in these clobber passages- beyond all of that, I do not want to participate in the demeaning exercise of debating the basic dignity of others." -Charlotte Elia

"It just makes me so mad to see my faith maligned and used in this way by people who are not only intentionally trying to hurt other people but are doing that for their own economic benefit and basically for clout- that that's the way you want to build a career is off of twisting the Christian faith into something hateful as a way to build yourself up. Like, you don't get it. I don't need any more proof than that. I don't need your 'This verse out of 1 Corinthians and this verse out of Timothy.' You don't get it. If that's the enterprise you're after, you don't get it." -Charlotte Elia

“I’m telling you this stuff isn’t Christianity, and it’s so far removed from the gospel that I don’t even know if it’s worthy of being addressed other than to say, ‘That ain’t it, buddy. My God is love. My God created us for love, to love, to be loved, continually calls us into love, will ultimately bring us into the fullness of his love, so if you’re opposed to that, you’re not on the agenda.’” -Charlotte Elia

“So ultimately you keep negating until the only thing left is God, but of course what happens when you do that is there’s nothing left with which to compare God.” -Chad Rhodes

“There might be a temptation to take our beliefs as if we can only have faith if we are certain of our beliefs. And I think that creates a lot of problems, not only for our own experience but how we view those who don’t believe like we do. What the apophatic way does is it helps us realize that how we think about God is provisional at best.” -Chad Rhodes

“One of the virtues that you don’t see enough of with Christians is what I call doxastic humility, that is humility about their own beliefs.” -Chad Rhodes

Get more of The Heavenly Banquet and join a community of listeners at our Substack at https://heavenlybanquet.substack.com

In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia take a look at a popular meme featuring a quote from Richard Rohr. The quote reads as follows:

"We worshipped Jesus instead of following him on his same path. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God and everything else. This shift made us into a religion of 'belonging and believing' instead of a religion of transformation."

Listen as your hosts celebrate those deconstructing their experiences of Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism before turning their attention to investigating the questions posed by the meme. What is the relationship between worshipping Jesus and following him? How is our religion a journey toward union with God? Is the Christian faith a religion of transformation or not?

“I’m glad that these people are coming out of this. It just makes me so sad that they were ever held by it and abused by it and that so many other people might get out of it, but they’re not going to go through this kind of work or ever discover what’s happening in the rest, or what has happened in the rest of the Christian tradition. They will just be done with it all.” -Charlotte

Get more of The Heavenly Banquet and join a community of listeners at our Substack at https://heavenlybanquet.substack.com

Charlotte: Theoretically? The Christ event, the intersection of creator and creation that happens in the incarnation, there’s no way that doesn’t affect absolutely all of creation.

Chad: Right. The infinite enters time and space.

Charlotte: And so that means all of creation beyond this world. Why would that be limited to here? But when I start to think of the specificity of that event happening in a particular time and place, and not just a particular time and place in this world, but all worlds, of all possible worlds? That starts to make me feel like maybe I got really high and started to try to think about something because it blows my mind… To think that this event would change the circumstances or could change the circumstances of sentient beings—

Chad: That are not human.

From Part 1:

Chad: One way to think of lectio is as a conversation between God and myself. I’m reading the scripture, not approaching it to analyze the text, as if I can, almost by force, pull the Word out of it, but I let the text speak to me so that the Word speaks to me.

From Part 2:

Charlotte: What's a bro to do? Rather than actually submit to Christ and understand that power acts through love, not through some kind of dominance or force, then you just bend Christianity to the culture you're already in.

Chad: “Here’s the thing: Grace is working before you even think about getting baptized, and grace is in effect all of the time. These are signs of what God is doing, but they are not what God is doing in themselves.”

"You see, too many of our churches and far too much of American society are filled with nominal Christians, those who are Christian in name only. Those are folks who have aligned themselves with this faith for friends, power, social networks, and warm, fuzzy feelings rather than mission, the hard work of disciple making, the transformative task of love. Their congregational life is practically indiscernible from that of a country club or garden club, a simple fellowship of like-minded people who enjoy each other’s company. Jesus doesn’t promise anything like that. He keeps telling people that if you’re doing this well, if you’re taking this faith seriously and enacting it through radical love, that it will eat you alive."

Chad Rhodes: “Governments operate ultimately by force. That’s how they compel obedience. That is not how the kingdom of God works, certainly not how the church works. I don’t want to say that we compel obedience through love, but love is the prime mechanism, not force. So that fundamental distinction has to be made. This is why, in my mind, the separation of church and state is probably beautiful, because anytime the church gets too aligned with power, invariably they use it for horrific things.”

"When something needs to be said, there’s no time like the present. There’s no time like now in the kingdom of God. If you take nothing else with you today, see if you can’t pick up a little bit of the audacity of Jesus. Speak and witness to the kingdom of God, use your prophetic voice, when the moment presents itself. Don’t wait for some more convenient, more polite time. There’s no telling when or if that time is going to come. Channel that audacity of Jesus, say what needs to be said in the moment it has to be said. God’s time, the kingdom’s time, is always now."

"I have seen God working. I have seen God working in the midst of our churches, and I have seen leaders object. Just like the leader of the synagogue in today’s story, I have seen them witness the same miracles that I have witnessed and say, 'No, not today. That’s not on the agenda. Let’s shut down whatever that is, and get back to the business at hand.' And that’s nonsense. That’s ridiculous. That’s absurd. And everyone knows it, and yet it keeps happening."

Charlotte: This is a very body positive, body affirming, matter affirming faith, because it’s also not just saying a body or some matter is good. It’s saying your body and your matter is good, and even Christ’s wounded body is good. That’s so fascinating to me, that we don’t see him resurrected as healed from the crucifixion but still carrying those wounds as identifying markers, and that’s what Thomas wants to see because that’s the guy he knows, but that he’s literally bearing on his body the impression of his greatest act of love for us.

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Chad: And we’re gonna be together. 

Charlotte: You see, that part sometimes doesn’t appeal to me. 

Chad: Hell is other people. 

Charlotte: But I do love the idea of the beatific vision including being able to see God in other people, because although I believe, to my core, that everyone is created in the image of God and is equally dignified by that image, there are some people who absolutely try that for me.

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"Too often American Evangelicals have pointed to verses like this in support of their'“culture wars,' to denounce any acceptance of marginalized peoples as 'novel,' 'new,' an addition to the gospel. They teach that 'the commandment of God' is that set of Pharisaical restrictions that Jesus directly challenges, and they oppose any social or political change as a triumph of supposed 'human tradition' over the commandment of God. To accept this teaching though one first has to dismiss the spirit of the law given to the Israelites. The law brings life, literally, by offering practical advice on food safety, health, and sanitation. And the law brings life to communities and individuals by offering protection to the most vulnerable among us. The law commands the care of the orphan, the widow, the sick, the immigrant, the poor, and the oppressed. God’s law is love. God’s law is love, and where the law is applied to hurt, to abuse, rather than uplift and protect, Jesus meets those Pharisaical challenges by reminding them who God is and what God demands. God is love, and love trumps any human understanding of God’s law. Love wins. Love wins because God prevails."

"We are called to love, and we are called to love in specific ways, through very specific tasks. There isn’t a compromise here. We can’t allow the words of Jesus to be watered down into meaningless platitudes meant to satisfy the tastes of those opposed to the gospel of love. We teach the Gospel. We preach the Gospel. We don’t compromise the Gospel. Where it is embraced, we make partners. We make disciples for the work of the Gospel. Where it is rejected, we… Well, we do nothing. We do nothing more. We’ve said what we’ve had to say. We’ve shared what we’ve been called to share, and if it’s rejected, we’re done. We can walk away. We can take our energy and our love and our hope elsewhere. We need not squander it or, worse yet, demean it, mangle it into something supposedly more suitable but also something entirely unrecognizable."

"We talk often about being on the 'right side of history,' but we Christians should probably talk more about whether we’re on the right side of the curse, whether we might be advocating for the curse and propping up Satan’s code rather than Jesus’. That’s no good place to be. The patriarchy, gender norms, including transphobia and homophobia- anguish around reproductive health, inequality in the workplace and in the home, all of the mess around Complementarianism, anything outside of ourselves that seeks to divide or define us? That’s all the curse. That’s not God’s intention. Those are bounds Jesus seeks to break and bounds he’s invited us to break with him, and every act for justice, every small word or large movement that opposes those curses is a blessing. Anything that opposes the curse is a blessing. Anything that opposes the patriarchy is a blessing. May you be blessed and be a blessing. Let’s bless this mess until kingdom come."

Charlotte's Picks:

Athanasius's Life of Anthony

St. Basil the Great On Social Justice

James Baldwin's Letter from a Region in My Mind

Chad's Picks:

Augustine's Confessions

The Cloud of Unknowing

Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You

"And so we need each other. We need each other, we need that diversity of voices, that diversity of perspectives and experiences to keep us from the fruitless pursuits of building towers to heaven instead of the kingdom of God. But it’s more than that. The commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves doesn’t spring from God’s desire that we somehow tolerate each other. Loving our neighbor is what benefits us; it’s what’s good for us. We love God by loving one another and through loving one another we learn more and more about the God who created each and every one of us. That’s why things like music, arts, literature, travel, learning other languages, listening to each other’s stories- that’s why anything that broadens our understanding of the human experience ultimately broadens our understanding of God. It’s also why anything that cuts us off from one another actually cuts us off from the image of God in others, actually limits our understanding of who God is."

"Our dignity comes from the fact that we are created in the image of the Trinity, participate in God’s beauty, are redeemed by Jesus Christ, and are destined for an eternal life of communion with God. God has declared us worthy, has deemed us lovable, has called us heirs of salvation. God says that we are worth saving even if we seem hellbent on destroying ourselves. If we are worthy of God’s love, we are worthy of each other’s love. If we are worth salvation, then we are worth saving each other from this culture of death. Jesus did not die on a cross so that we could die under our desks."

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A sermon on John 13:31-35 from Charlotte Elia.

Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

You can read John 13 here.

You are not alone out there. You are loved. And God is on your side. 

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Welcome to The Heavenly Banquet where the hungry are filled with good things and the rich are sent away empty.