🐮 Proper 17

Readings: Jeremiah 2:4-13; Psalm 81:1, 10-16; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14.

To Do:

• Get your #GruntGod Season Pass

• Attend GruntCon on October 25th in Albany, Oregon

Reflection

 Good morning and welcome to First Formation Proper 17. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. Our reading today come from Jeremiah two, Psalm 81, Hebrews 13, and Luke 14, and. There's I just gotta, like when I read the gospels and some of the stuff that Jesus does whose name is also Joshua?

It should be Joshua. I just, I don't know, I'm just tickled. And I say that this morning because this story from Luke, you can tell, I feel like I'm being arrogant, but it's not a parable. Whoever said it was a parable in verse seven, Luke, like it's not a parable. It's advice like there's no story, there's no fantasy involved.

It's just advice. He says, when you're invited to an important event, sit at the lowest place so that you can only move up, because if you start at the high place, if you think highly of yourself, you will be humbled and they will ask you to move. Very pragmatic, very earthy, very like. I don't know. Like it's not a parable a B.

Yes. Like it makes so much sense. And I say I, I struggle with labels. I think they are helpful, but incredibly dangerous. It's like idols. We make them, then they are in making them like art. They're subjected to their context, good and bad, and labels can become. Bad and harmful. Talk about PTSD, the English speaking world.

The America was given the language of trauma from veterans in Long Beach, California with K Chatan, and I think Jonathan Shea was the other one. They held rap groups about how pissed off they were at civilians and how pissed off they were that they were sent to an unjust war. And then Jonathan Shea writes Achilles in Vietnam and Kam Shaitan and other civilians get what had been called Vietnam syndrome into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM, the Bible of psychoanalysis, and not psychoanalysis psychology.

Anyway, and so we. Everybody's, snowflake, victim card dropping because trauma has been infused with value, social value, social capital, and so everybody. We'll talk about how they're a victim. And I say that in sweeping terms because I've experienced it from both sides of the political aisle. I'm in a lawsuit, a federal lawsuit right now with a Republican legislature, a republican legislator, and her chief of staff who pulled the victim card when I was doing my first amendment rights of addressing my grievances to government.

And they were. They didn't want to do their job. They didn't wanna be held accountable, and so they played the victim card. Oh, I'm scared of Logan. He came in and he scared me. I'm a victim. I've, he's traumatizing. And it's insulting, to be frank, how frequently the trauma card is played when it was built off the back of Vietnam.

Vets who were spat upon and looked down at and. Cast away as nothing by the society that sent them to war. And that was when we had a draft.

Why do I say that? Because PTSD became another teragram Ofan. Some people get to use it to their advantage. Some people, you get it used against them to their disadvantage. PTSD is an idol that is used to hurt people like veterans. At the same time, it's used to prop other people up. And so when I say labels are both good and bad, they are idols.

We've made them don't give all the authority to idols. Don't worship them, don't focus on them so much and assume that they're real. We made them, we're in control of them. And this gets into the reading from Luke because language is important. I don't know who thought the author of Luke thought that it's a parable, but it's really important to get language right.

When we say it's a parable, we create this degree of separation in our mind. Oh, okay. This is just a pretend. This is like animals walking around and plants walking around and talking. No, Jesus is not giving a parable. He's giving advice. He's pragmatic. And when I say pragmatic, it comes from the Greek word pragmas, which is the deed.

If when I say I'm a Christian pragmatist, which is what I think I'm going to increasingly do, and I started this because. I used to call myself a pacifist, and I don't think Christ is the pacifist that we. Have in our head when we use that English word in this time and space, he's, Christ is not a pacifist.

He's something other than pacifist. You do have to be a pacifist. I think you have to be nonviolent in order to be Christian. But that doesn't mean that all anti-violence or whatever, don't be misled. There are some pacifists who can be toxic, pacifists and hurt other people using violent ways all while claiming they're pacifist.

People can claim they're traumatized and used this trauma victim card and it, we all know, like it's ridiculous. You have more power and privilege than, a politician has more power than I do in our system. We made this system. I elected that politician. And so the problem with labels is that language adapts, evolves over time for both good and bad.

But look at what he says. Look, if you want to live the good life, don't set yourself up for failure by thinking too highly of yourself. Because if you go thinking you're the guest of honor, you are going to be corrected. It's gonna happen. That is the deed that you can expect if this is how you go about yourself.

And he says, again, not a parable. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. This is just life advice. This is proverbial wisdom. In the Hebrews Al, which also means to rule the ruler is both someone who is the standard for other people. And is a standard by which we measure things, centimeters, inches, doesn't matter.

That is what Al is. Al is contains both definitions of ruler that I just mentioned. The other kind of ruler that you'll see are those who Lord it over other people, those who are what's one of the words? The task masters in Egypt, they were the kind of rulers that were radda. Radda means power without responsibility.

Essentially. Michelle is good leadership, ordained, created, responsive, pragmatic leadership. Radda are assholes with a crown on their head. That's the difference and. I've never been told that in seminary. I had to figure it out by reading the Bible and trying to figure out the Greek and Hebrew and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Because I'm sick and tired of people abusing language to get ahead in life, exploiting language. One of the few things that we have distinct from the animals is language. It's very close. I don't think it is the image of God, but I think it's very close to the image of God, our capacity for language.

But. When we abuse that, when we try and assert ourselves over other people, we will get corrected sometime in our life and we may not even notice it. We have a an administration led by an individual right now, I think has lost all contact with our own conscience, spiritually dead as a doornail I don't think he's coming back, but.

He and this individual may think I'm doing just fine, and everybody surrounding him close far. Anybody who sees this person knows this is a person who is dead inside, not responsive. There's no motion, there's no activity upstairs that a lot that leads him to learn from the mistakes that he's making.

Jesus's Joshua is. At least here on Luke, I think this is one of the fundamental things that the Christ does is to save people from themselves, save people from their sins, save people from the idea that you know your neighbors are enemies. The phenomenon that is Christ to be smeared or ma anointed is to provide an exit from all the.

Corrupt I don't wanna say evil because it doesn't exist. We do it to ourselves, but we sometimes through language and through culture, put some things up on a pedestal and we worship them, and I think it's right to worship Christ. But don't forget there are middlemen. I think one of the, one of the craziest things to me is that.

Americans who pride themselves on freedom and democracy and anti monarchy. We, there's still people that do this, that think that the King James Virgin version is God's Gift to Humanity. And it was literally bought and paid for by a king. I was thinking the other day, the nice scene. The Council of naia when the church came out from under the Rock of Oppression and Constantine was there at the Council of Naia, the Emperor, and what did we do as our first book banning convention?

We said, Marcian, no, nobody gets to read Marcian. Let's burn him. Let's control the narrative that way instead of the wisdom of Gamal in the Bible. Who said to. The Sanhedrin. Look, if it's of God, it'll succeed. If it's not, it won't give it a rest. No. Naia, we maybe were overcome with the new found freedom and thought, yes let's unify let's synchronize our watches.

And I don't think that's what Christianity was supposed to be about. Religion was never meant to be an enforcement agency. It was meant to be a museum. A beautiful museum, but not an enforcement agency. And that happens through language that happens. With how we morph language to do things for our own self-interest, whether that's individual or collective self-interest or if we use language to improve people's lives.

And bringing us back to PTSD, I have A-P-T-S-D diagnosis and that has been very important to me. It's gotten me better medication. It serves as a kind of alert to people of some basic qualities they can expect in me. But that was absolutely used as a weapon in June, 2015 when I was made Christianity Today's Cover Boy for poster boy for PTSD and they put war torn as their title for June, 2015, how a psychiatrist is deploying hope to soul scarred veterans.

Diagnoses can help or hurt. Teragrams can help or hurt our language is important. It's important to get it right, and Christ does this among other things that Christ does, and it's important to notice when language is being either consciously. Manipulated or unconsciously? I don't think Luke thought, aha.

I'm gonna give people an out in humility by saying, this is a parable. It's not a story, it's a story. Like he's giving them advice, there's no talking trees or moving. Rocks or anything talking donkeys, it's a, it's advice that we should listen to and we should be careful not to give ourselves reasons to be anything other than the best people that we can be.

And I think we're capable of a lot, including noticing when other people have made mistakes. With their language. And it's up to us to be careful to correct those mistakes to notice them, to interpret them, to be present with them so that our language can constantly be shaped by our own desires for justice, so that justice can become a part of who we are by allowing.

By allowing us to be shaped by our own language. The one thing that we cannot really, that language is not an idol. We have made it, but it is also making us.