Are We Well?
Transcript is AI-generated and may not be 100% accurate.
My name is Matt Moberg. Thank you for being with us tonight. Obviously, to Maggie's point, like this is different. I'm used to strolling, sorry for the ADHD, I'll try to be present in just one particular spot. Can I go like this? Is that awkward? [laughter] That feels awkward to me now. Right? Okay. I don't do standing still very well. But to Maggie's point, thank you for braving the parking elements that present themselves as challenging because my family—Lauren, did you ever think about going back?—I did. And I have to provide the sermon for it tonight. I thought about it.
This is the space and the worship service that we do as The Table. We try to provide some kind of way where our collective stories can root ourselves inside of the sacred text, our tradition stories, and find some nutrients there within. Before we get into that though, before we get into this Mark text that we're going to be in all the livelong year, I want to make sure you hear this: Who you are is more important than what you do, even if what you do gets more attention than who you are. Honestly I'm not going to harp on this, 'cause sometimes Debbie says I talk too much about this and it sounds like I don't know what I'm going to talk about after it. So I'm not trying to do that right now. But it matters that much to me where I want you to hear it; that's so important. Please take care of who you are outside of your production. The output, who you are as a person is so much more important than who you are as a producer or performer. And if you hear nothing else, hear that.
I want to also create space for this. I mentioned it a couple weeks ago or was it last week? Debbie and I and The Table community, we have a lot of relationships—and Christian—in the Israel/Palestine community. I was on the phone an hour and a half ago with a peacemaker over there who was witnessing the rockets around their homes. And it's a lot. It's a lot. When we think about just where we are societally, where we are geographically, and we look across the seas and see all of the terror, the harm, the fears, the ambiguities, the “What is happening right now?” It is just a lot.
You don't have to line up on one particular side; we will never ask you to do so whatsoever. But we have friends in Palestine, we have friends in Israel, and both would say the same thing. It's a lot. And so in full integrity, before we proceed any further, I would love it if you'd allow me just to open up this space with a moment of prayer for our friends over there. Join me.
[Prays] God, we are living in a space right now that is in a lot of ways, unprecedented. Ambiguities, they float over every different angle. Friends are being harmed, People are scared. The weight of not knowing what's next is taxing. It is. You desire more for us than that. God, I don't even know the right way to approach you right now on behalf of a community of people who are looking to you for some kind of solution, some kind of next step. But I ask God that you provide clarity. I ask God that you would be a steady hand amidst this storm. If there are ways that we as a community can respond tangibly, pragmatically, proactively, make it clear. But God, just like in Egypt, your children are crying out in pain, in fear. Respond again. In Jesus' name we all pray. Amen.
So for those of you who have been participating in the life of this community for a little bit now, we are going through all of the gospel of Mark for the rest of the year. Probably something changed. Debbie, did you hint at that a little bit or…She's gone. She left already. She's already that sick of my message. Thank you. Oh, look she came back. Thank you, Debbie. We're going through the gospel of Mark all year long and I kind of love it. Like I'm excited about, you know, I mean I feel like there's a lot of different people, myself included, who are like, “Church is so 1994 and how do I like reengage with the life of a spiritual community like church once more?” But I kind of love that we're doing this gospel and Mark, which is stripped of any kind of like, “Here's your seven best steps to your perfect kinda living.” Or any kinda sexy salesmanship whatsoever. We're going through the sacred text bit by bit. We're not just hitting the highlight reel. We're going slowly through the midst and right now we are in Mark. We've been in Mark 1 for about four weeks now. We're in Mark 1:35-39. I'm going to read the text for you right now and then we're going to go back to it. Patt, can you put it on the screen for me?
Mark 1:35, I think it might be 36. I think it's actually 35. Anyways, it says this: “Very early in the morning.” Context is this: last week I spoke to y'all and Jesus was in the synagogue creating a hot mess. He was exercising and evicting demons from bodies. He was getting rid of all kinds of dysfunction that was disturbing the peace at,at the moment. And then later that night, I should have listed this text. I do think context is important. Later that night after his stunt in the synagogue where he did evict the demon and he did evict the dysfunction people from all over Capernaum, they came to him saying, “Could you help me with this too? Could you fix this part of my life as well?” And the text says that Jesus, after the sun had set, he was up late healing people, he was doing the good work in the name of love. But this is day two.
“Very early in the morning while it was still dark, Jesus got up, he left the house.” We are under the assumption that that is Peter's house. He left Peter's house. “He went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him. And when they found him they exclaimed, ‘Everyone is looking for you right now!’” Like TMZ is hanging out outside the house right now. The buzz on the street is coming in real loud, real hot. Everybody heard about you. If you came to pronounce some kind of good news, here's the good news.: Everyone wants in. What you were selling at the synagogue is playing out in the streets. We all want to be a part of that good stuff right there. Everyone is looking for you. And Jesus seems relatively indifferent when he gives this hard no and says, “How about we just go somewhere else to the nearby villages so I can preach there also. That is why, that's my why. This is my why behind why I am here.”
I'm reading this book right now. Please hold your applause till the end. I mean it's, it is quite the intellectual accomplishment just to be reading a book in general. But I'm reading this book by a man named Sebastian Junger who wrote a book called Tribe. Anybody read this book? Sebastian tried to set out to glean whatever wisdom could be found in tribal societies of past and present. Trying to say like what, what is it about community, belonging, a sense of place and purpose that can be found in tribal societies that is absent in modern society? And so he writes this book and it is brilliant.
I think Jerome, Anna, I think Jerome told me about this book. I told Lauren, I go, I think Jerome told me about that book, but I could not actually remember. So if Jerome did tell me about that book, like please tell him that I'm [reading] that book 'cause it mattered to me a lot. Okay?
In this book he says a lot of fascinating things. I'm only halfway through it, Kate. But one of the things that is most fascinating to me is in chapter one, he sets out and he starts to talk about this very interesting early American history phenomenon that took place. I had no idea until I read this book, but he says that when the first Europeans came across the seas and they landed on these shores, they came with their own sense of like, this is what society ought to look like. And there's 10,000 different things we should say about that. Probably more harsh than I have the space to get into right now.
But these early colonizers, they came over here and they interacted with a society that had not changed much since the stone age. People who had kept intact their way of being people who have lived this certain way and they had no reason to depart from their norms at hand. And so you had this first interaction hundreds of years ago: Europeans coming across the seas with Native Americans who have always been here. What I did not understand about the culture clash that happened at that time, what I did find out though through Sebastian Junger's book is that what was happening was through that clash, through these two very different cultures, the civilized cultures that was always trying to innovate, build new things. Let's push forward, forward go, go, go. And this other structure that is very much like, let's keep it all intact. You matter, culture matters, tradition matters. Tribal affairs matter. What I didn't understand is a lot of Europeans ended up moving into the woods with Native Americans. Especially young men, but also young women, they started to emulate the lifestyles of Native Americans. They started to look up to them, they started to marry into those tribal uh, arrangements. They were adopted by the tribes in the woods. And if you actually, there's a one woman named Jane Seaman, Jane Simone or Seaman, where she was so invested in the tribe, in the woods that she encountered after being first caught as a prisoner, that when a European search party went out to look for her, she hid from them because she wanted to stay.
This was like not just a here it happened, there it happened, once every so often it happened. This was becoming a thing. So much so that when Benjamin Franklin wrote home to a friend and tried to describe the land at hand, Benjamin Franklin said this: you know, we've had some people who have been ransomed, people who we have set free from imprisonment with our different conflicts with the indigenous peoples of this land. “We ransomed them, we treated them with all the imaginable tenderness, prevailed them to stay among the English, and yet in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods.”
Sebastian Junger’s big point and the reason why he leads with the story right here and why he harps on it for a minute or two is to say that the impulse to be grossed out by our pace of modern life. That sense of what we are doing right now—constant innovation, constant hustle, #Imonmygrind, all of it—is killing me on some level. And so the first opportunity to run to the woods and get a break from what is, for a betterment of what I could actually be, people were taking it. That call to the woods. What's crazy about this early American phenomenon is that it was a one-way street that people were walking to. There were not indigenous folks who were walking into the city and saying, “I want a part of that life.” It was all city folks who were walking into the woods saying, “I want something like that.” I had never heard this story before, but I resonated with it all the same.
My wife gave me a hard word the other day. You want to stand up, Lauren and share? No, no, it won't be on the spot. Saturday afternoon. she said something to me about how, you know right now Matt, you wear many different frigging hats. You're trying to do a lot of different things. You're busy. We are busy, our kids are getting into more things. We're, we're active all the time. Is this who we want to be? Actually, she said it better than I could right now. She said, “Do you feel like we are well?” That's my wife. And honestly, I said, “I gotta go to Stillwater right now to lead a wedding. So I'll talk to you about that later.” But on the way home from that wedding, I started to think about that question “Do you think that we are well?” and I can just speak only for myself and say I don't think that I am. I think my yeses are too casually given out. I think my calendar is too casually filled up. I think that I'm way too busy for the health of my soul and yet I'm not doing anything about it.
So when I hear stories of people running from the city to the woods, from the business and the hustle to some semblance of peace, I go, that makes sense. Because what we have right now in modern society, at least—pardon the projection—it doesn't work. I talked to a friend about this past week and I said like, “Do you, when was the shift?” Because I'm 38 years old, I don't have much time left. You know, you're an old man. 38 years old. But I remember a time as a child of 1985 where—and you who are 20, you won't understand this—but we once were bored, you know what I mean? Like boredom was a thing that we took on it from time to time.
There were times where after school I would go to McDonald's and I would double quarter pounder with cheese. Now we're just stand in line and I wouldn't get to watch a movie, wouldn't get to play a game, wouldn't get to text a friend, wouldn't get to interact in any different kind of way. I would stand there and as an introvert, some extroverts also who were in the line for that five minute span, they would try to interact with me and I would, it would get weird, obviously. But there was a time in my life where we were bored and I can tell you right now, I don't think that is anymore. I don't think it's here anymore.
Even this morning I took my kid to our 8:30 soccer game and on the way there—we're talking about a 15 minute drive to the game—he said, “Can I watch some of Meg 2?” And I said, “I just don't think that's very appropriate for a kid to watch.” And so we proceeded to listen to Eminem the rest of the way and, and keep it PG, but like that is the idea at hand: there's a readily available dispenser of dopamine that can hit us at any kind of moment. My wife asks me, “Are we well?” I've been so next hit to the next hit to the next hit, going, going, going. I know at my heart of all my hearts, like I know I'm not probably well right now I'm not where I want to be. Matter of fact, I'll follow up and say that after that wedding that I ran off to on the way home, I turned off the radio, the music, any kind of sound or distraction and I thought about it further and I started to play out in my head and go like, “Am I well? Well, I mean it's one thing to answer right now, but if I stay on the current trajectory at hand and I don't actually depart from the path, do I want to be who I am right now at 40? at 50? at 60? Would I be excited about where I'm at?” Honestly, soberly, I looked at the answers that were coming up in my head and I said, “I might be successful, but probably by a lot of wrong metrics.” I might be busy getting a lot of rounds of applause, but probably not for the things that I want to be cheered for. Because I will still be quick to snap on the people that I love the most. My patience will still run thin. I still will be giving way too many yeses to things I should say no to all because I have not actually taken care of that inner call to go back to the woods. Back to simplicity, back to stability—and what I would argue is also sanity.
Jesus often went back to the woods. Context: the text that we just read. When you read Mark 1, we are in Mark 1 still out of the gates. We have Jesus who is going straight into the woods, looking for his infamous cousin who is the wild preacher by the river. And he finds him, gets to him, baptized by him, and then immediately, the text says, the spirit drove him into the woods. Now break that down in real time, okay? Assuming that no angel wrote the words of scripture down on a paper, but this is translated from Peter's sermons to John Mark and he put it down for us, to preserve for all time. Think about what is actually being said when it says that Jesus was compelled, the word driven into the woods is ekballei, which means you were like violently almost thrown into the woods. You were pushed out that you had no choice in the matter. You had to get to the woods.
Immediately, Jesus went to the woods to look for his cousin, went into the water with that cousin, was sent immediately back into the woods by the Spirit. For the longest time I had looked at that text right there and it struck me as odd because I felt like, you know, I mean at some point Jesus does say spirit is our advocate, spirit is the comforter. Spirit is the one who is on our side to see our flourishing, see us like live life and life to the full. So why is Spirit in cahoots with the tempter who comes to tempt us? Because that's what it felt like right now. You tell me that the spirit drives you out to the desert, drives you out to the woods, drives you out to simplicity, abandonment, solitude, and silence. And at your weakest moment, when the tempter comes to tempt, you're vulnerable. That's how I read it, and again pardon the projection, but like when I think about the dumbest choices I've ever made, a lot of them are tied to when I was most tired, most exhausted, sometimes most hungry. At the end of my own particular rope. So it makes sense to me, that is when the Tempter would come to tempt.
But when I read all of the gospels in their totality, and I look again and again, particularly in Luke and not in Mark, Jesus is bombarded with the busyness of life, the chaos of life that demands upon him. And immediately he retreats to the woods. The Greek word is erēmon, which is not necessarily woods. It's more like the lonely place or the quiet place or the hidden place. The place away from the people. When I read the totality of Jesus' life and how every time things hit a fever pitch and they get really, really loud, he runs out to the woods. I recognize the spirit drove him out there because eventually at some point he's going to be tempted by the tempter. And when that moment comes, he might as well be at full strength. The woods is not a place of weakness. The woods is a place of strength.
And so last week when we read the next part of Mark 1 and Jesus goes into the synagogue and he causes a hot mess and he evicts demons from bodies and then he heals bodies late into the evening. We would think he would sleep it in the next day. We would think he would get a nice like breakfast before him, but instead our text at hand says he got up very early to go back into the woods. TMZ outside. #Jesusisthebestshowintown That's not a real hashtag, don't look it up. But Jesus got up early while it was still dark and went straight back into the woods.
Lauren asked me that question on Saturday. Made me think about my why for tomorrow. Why do I do what I do? How do I understand my purpose? How do you understand your purpose? When you think about your life story, how do you understand your life story? What is your why? Because the moment that Jesus goes into the woods is exactly like the moment all of us try to find any kinda solitude and silence.
I have hidden in my bathroom for two hours straight at one point to avoid my kids. And I promise you, there was knuckles on my door five minutes within. They think I have bowel issues, but it was, I have kid issues. I couldn't get away from ‘em, Maggie. Oh, don't act like you don't understand, Maggie. Get off of your high horse. You've been in that same bathroom. We are all trying to figure out like how we can actually carve out space amidst the business of life, amidst all that is coming at us right now. And there's always a Peter there going like, “But man, like couldn't we be productive instead? Like couldn't we capitalize in the moment at hand right now? This is not an everyday occurrence right now. You are the hottest show in town. Why would you not maximize that?” And yet Jesus, he refuses to give up his purpose for his tomorrows because of whatever preference he might have for today. He says, “You know what? No, let's go somewhere else. This is why I've come. Let's go somewhere else.”
I'm on the couch where now y'all are my therapist, but I'm telling you from my vantage point: it is so helpful to remember that unless I sit down in sync and think clearly and create space, what on earth do I have to stand for? How could you actually expect an authentic why out of me if I haven't sat down in silence prior to? There is no why without the woods. There is no, this is why I am here unless I go there. That is not just true for me. That is also true for you. You cannot step two feet within a Barnes and Noble without some kind of book on mindfulness and awareness hitting you across the head.
This is the cry of our age that we are in. We are in a moment right now if we're moving at a pace that is irresponsible, irrational, and I'm not like some Luddite who would say that all progress is evil. That's not it at all. I'm just saying, while I'm grateful for the progress in medicine, science, technology, and everything in between, we ought to at least be aware of the cost that has come. When is the last time you've created space to do nothing? When is the last time you've created space to engage with God? Boredom. 1985, child of that age. As many complaints as I would save that, I also will say that all those moments of boredom, there were potential portals of prayer and connection to God, which in return would've led me to be more present with my people.
I pledge to you right now, to my wife right now, to our community at hand. I don't want to live anymore going from one thing to the next without knowing why. I don't want to live without the woods. If you are an apprentice of Jesus, somebody who admires Jesus's ways, regardless of what you think about the divinity of Christ or anything like that. But if you look at that life and you go, “That is a beautiful life and that's the aesthetic that I want to hold my life accountable to.” You cannot bypass how often he goes to the woods without wondering why you don't do the same.
My prayer for our community is that even if we are like me, ADHD, busy all the time, cannot sit still for two seconds, can't be behind a music stand, we'd figure it out. That we'd move slower through our days. Love requires slow moving, deep breathing, intentional thinking, not just reactive folk, proactive folk. We need to figure it out. We need to figure it out. What does it look like for you to respond to that call within you to go back to the woods? The silence, the solitude might be 5 minutes a day, might be 10 minutes a day. Whatever it looks like for you, it does matter. It does matter.
[Prays] Jesus, God, I pray Lord that you would give us the faith to believe that it matters. I need to believe that it matters, God. I look at your life, Jesus, and I think about how this is such a common occurrence in your life. This is such a habitual way that you lived. And if I'm going to take myself seriously as an apprentice of Yours, this has to be a habitual way that I live. God, give us the wisdom, the clarity—even more important, the conviction—to carve out the spaces in our lives where we can just be, not as performers or producers, but just be with you. So that we can walk out not just with our preferences in mind, but also with our purpose intact. So that we can know why we do what we do. All God's children together, we say Amen.