🐮 Proper 16

Readings: Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17.

To Do:

• Get your #GruntGod Season Pass

• Attend GruntCon on October 25th in Albany, Oregon

Reflection

 Good morning and welcome to Proper 16. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Laguna Beach, California this morning's. Greetings come to us from Isaiah 58, Psalm 1 0 3, Hebrews 12, and Luke 13. And the very last line of the reading from Hebrews just hit me. Like a grand piano tossed out of a third story window, and I wanna talk to you about grunt com.

It's something that has been in the works conceived a long time ago and it's something that's coming up I'm excited about. And I wanted to take this opportunity because of this reading. It's explain one part of Brunt Con, the crowning element of. The inaugural Grunt Con. So Grunt Con is, I call it church service about church and service.

On October 25th, 2025, I and a small group of co-organizers are holding a one day event in Albany, Oregon. Between the chapter House bookstore, the Grunt Workshop, and first Christian Church in Albany where I attend and where. The bulk of the event will take place. There'll be plenary, homilies, there'll be four kind of homily discussions.

You can learn more about it pq.com/drunk con. And the idea actually came when I was in Denver for Homer Christianity in 2024, and there was a guy there who expressed some interest in what I was doing, and he was. He was from San Diego and I had begun talking to the Abbott at the Prince of Peace Abbey in Oceanside, California.

And Oceanside is home to Pendleton Marine Corps base Camp Pendleton. And. It's kinda like the home on the West coast for the Marines and the Prince of Peace Abey is right outside the main gates of Camp Pendleton and many of the monks at the Prince of Peace Abey are also veterans. And I only know this because I talked to Father Charles the Abbott there about doing some kind of event around grunt works around faith and service.

I was really excited because we could have people come and stay at the Abbey, do an event and have this whole big thing. And we ended up by the time I had begun organizing or kind of exploring it, we'd already moved to Oregon and I met this guy in 2024, sounded interested. I ca started like. Putting things together, but it fell through.

And then we tried to do it up in Seattle by the joint base, Louis McCord, and that kind of fell through. But in the meantime, a bunch of people really excited about what I was doing with my writing with other stuff. And we just recently decided to move it to Albany, where I am, where my partner is, my family, my church, and the idea is to just have conversations.

The very kind of conversations that I've been trying to start with, I would've hoped with these influencers, big name, cool kids, universities or platforms, and none of them seemed interested. It feels, it felt ultimately like I had to do it myself. And so literally we're just doing it at my church, at my bookstore in my town.

And that just feels right. But the reason. One of the things I really wanted to do that I still am forming is something I'm calling Bonfire. So if you go to the website, you'll see that there's four plenaries and it's all based around inauguration, and it's about Jesus coming to Nazareth and starting his ministry right after he's tempted.

He comes to Nazareth, he preaches, and there's a different version in Luke, Matthew and Mark. And Luke has the longest one, also has Mary's inauguration speech, the Magnifico. And so there's gonna be four plenary homilies that will be followed by a guided discussion. It's not a lecture, it's not it's not, it's not really a church service. It's not a, it's not something where you just have to shut up, sit down and take in what somebody else has to put down. You are being invited into a conversation that has been needed, that has been needing to happen for some time. And the, the four plenaries. The first two are from Luke beginning with Jesus and Luke four.

Then in Luke one with Mary's Magnifico, and then Matthew's version of events in Matthew four. And in each one, the authors all know that Jesus had quoted from Isaiah and Luke. Has him quoting from Isaiah 61. It also has Mary quoting from Isaiah 61, and then Matthew changes the game and he has Jesus or Joshua sighting from Isaiah nine.

This hidden piece about the land of Zebulon and Naftali, those who sit in darkness have seen a great light upon them. Light has shined, and I believe that about the military community, about military families, that is where God is doing the work of reconciling the world to God Self. Most eminently.

That's why I want to have these conversations. And then finally we're also gonna be having a fourth COB plenary on mark March 6th, where we don't see where Jesus cited from. We only hear him appealing to his own hometown. And he says there, a prophet has no honor in his hometown. And all of these describe Jesus coming to his own people, not just Israel, but Nazareth and saying, Hey, something's gonna happen.

Something's happening in me. And them rejecting him and. In Mark six, there's this term without honor. Atmos is Greek for excellence or honor or worth or value. And Jesus is saying the prophets are made worthless. They're treated as worthless in their own hometowns. And so I am hosting this event in my hometown, but I think something else is happening and it has a lot to do with this line from.

Hebrews our God is a consuming fire. And that's the theme for the crowning event or the kind of central event of Grunt Con. And that is this bonfire bond being Latin for good. There's a lot of Christians who want to be all heat and no light or all light and no heat, but we have to have both.

We can't just criticize from afar and think things are gonna change. We also can't just. Pump everybody up and make them feel good and expect anything to change either. We have to balance, as Walter Brueggeman said, in the prophetic imagination, both hope and critique. And I think that the military families, the military community has had enough critique.

It's told by progressives, they're all monsters and baby killers. They're told by conservatives that they're all. Patriots and heroes, and there's no middle ground. And part of that is because there's no grunts, no lower enlisted people who are stepping up to the plate and saying wait. Let's turn the temperature down.

Let's not make it about our own ego. Let's make it about one another. And the God that has bound us together. And so the bonfire, as I currently conceive it, is like taking these things that people put on us. Thank you for your service. Monster, baby Killer, hero, all these things that don't fit. And we're gonna have a bonfire.

We're gonna take those things down. We're gonna write 'em on whatever you want. Paper, probably we'll have plenty of and we're gonna throw it into the fire. And if it doesn't last, maybe we need to s. Dust it off our shoulders and move on. Many of us have done horrible things. Many of us have done incredibly honorable things, and all of us have done a little bit of both.

If you're in the military, if you're in the military family, to be human is to be uniquely capable of both. Not one or the other, but both. That's what's so scary, I think to civilian perspective, is that we don't fit in simple boxes. Some of us are crappy, some of us are awesome. All of us are a little bit of both.

And the more we want to be, people want to put us in one place or another. The more difficult it will be to be honest with ourselves and with our community about what we did, who we are. If somebody else is always telling our story if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, people are using you and using your story and using your experiences to pursue their own interests, which we hear of in Hebrews, oh no, I'm sorry, in Luke.

No, in Hebrews and Luke really hammered it home for me because there's no bad time for healing and redemption. It's never too late to try and fix the stupid shit that people have put us through. And here I'm speaking to other military families. If you're a civilian ally, I trust that you can listen without getting pissy about it, but it's time because it's never too late.

It's always the right time. To find ways to reconnect with God and reconnect with one another, and that's what grunt God is about. It's enlisted Ecclesia. There's no agenda. I want to resource share. I want to give stuff away. I wanna share what weird fucking lessons my life, at least as brought some sense, some value, some meaning.

Because if there's one thing that surprises me about the last 20 some odd years, knowing what. Absolutely crazy shit I've been put through. I'm still amazed that I haven't killed myself. I'm gonna be honest, like statistically, I should have just walked off, departed to be with Christ a long time ago, but God will call it God put something in me that made me stubborn but hopeful survival is a form of resistance.

I wrote that and God is a grunt. And I believe it. The virtue, the survival is not a virtue. You're not going to battle to, to win and walk away unscathed. You're going to battle to or you're the point is to die well. And if you don't die, then build a life that will eventually allow you to look back and know that you have died with a purpose.

The worst thing that can happen is not dying in battle. The worst thing is dying an asshole. Becoming the kind of person that interrupts goodness and humanity, becoming the kind of person who is callous to the suffering of our fellow human beings, dying in that state seals your fate. I'd rather survive if it means getting the opportunity to redeem my life story from the clutches of people that don't have my best interests at heart, that have their own interests at heart.

So if our God is a consuming fire, if our God does not test us beyond what our spirits can take, then I believe that we have all, if you're in the military and have been the last 20 years that we all have a prophetic gift for the, I was about to say the church, but I don't think it's just a church.

I think it's the whole world. I think. Combat veterans and military veterans have seen the elephant. I believe that we know what is good and right and meaningful, and it either scares us or it inspires us, and maybe both. Maybe that's what standing in awe of God means to have both fear, to have fearful, hope to know that we deserve to be.

Judged based on our worst mistakes, but to know that is not the kind of God that created this universe we live in and have our being in. So I hope you'll check out pq hq.com/grunt con via ticket. If you can't afford it, email me, text me, get in contact with me. 'cause I don't want the price to get in the way of anybody attending and coming to Albany in October of this year.

But I believe. The Bible is not only the truest thing that humanity has ever said about itself, but it also has the keys to unlocking the goodness in all of us. And it means we have to dive in rather than to glimpse a few texts we don't understand or don't like and run away and cherry pick it so that it just reifies our preexisting beliefs.

No, I think that the Bible the God described in the Bible. It's not only the God of the universe, but that the words, let there be light. Have as much power as the words forgive them for they know not what they do, and I want everybody to be able to feel. The hope that I feel, despite all the shit that I've been through, combat military service, failed activist, impulses, a world that just looks like it's just circling the fucking toilet bowl.

I believe that it's never too late to reverse course to. Turnaround to metanoia, to repent, to come back to what is good and right, and to die on that hill. Because if survival isn't a virtue and I don't think it is survival is a means of resistance for a prophetic community like military families. I hope you'll join me October 25th in Albany, Oregon for Grunt Con.