Relationships that Transform

Transcript is AI-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Hey y'all, my name is Jae. I'm the Pastor of Children, Youth, and Family here at The Table. And I do have a couple more quick announcements before I get in on the message. We just want to make extra sure that everyone knows. So, Sully's job up here is to help out kiddos who feel like they need a little bit of a break, a little bit of a sensory break to get just beyond these doors and take a break if they need it. And as well as if your kid needs help finding the bathroom, and you'd really love to just stay and hold on to every one of my words, you can send your kid up here to Sully and she will make sure that she walks them out into the open, point them towards the restroom, wait in the hallway while they go in and then she'll make sure that they get back here safely and that they don't wander. So we just want to make sure that we're extra sure everyone has what they need tonight because we are worshiping as one community and that can come with its joys and with its challenges. 

Alright, before we begin tonight, I know that some of us might be kinda sugared up. Is that true? Would you say that some of us are maybe a little bit, little bit up on those Reeses and the KitKats? So what I'm going to have us all do quick is we're just going to stand up and we're just going to do a little bit of shake out and a breather. Okay? You can stay seating if you don't need the shakeout, but stand if you're able and willing and just start in your, start in your arms and your shoulders and just shake it out and then move it down. And then just shake it out in your feet. And now we're just going to take one collective big breath. All right. So in, hold it, hold it, hold it, Hold it, and then out. Alright. You may take a seat. I just want to do that 'cause I know that this is the week of, this is the week of many sugars. So I just want to make sure that we're all in the good head space to be together. 

If you couldn't tell, I'm one of the scariest things you can be for Halloween, which is I decided to dress up like a Hillsong pastor tonight. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. This is actually how I always dress. So that's just a dig at me and not, not at them. I did bring a banana head, but I figured that would be deeply inappropriate to preach in. 

All right, so tonight I want to begin by inviting my good friend Wyatt up here, and he is actually going to read the text for us. One of the joys of having a kid-involved service is that our kid participate and that means reading the words. So, Wyatt, I'm going to hand this thing to you. It is green, it's on, I'm going to have that text brought up here for us and you can go ahead and read [Mark 2:13-17]

“Jesus went out beside the lake again. The whole crowd came to him and he began to teach them. As he continued along, he saw Levi, Alphaeus’s son sitting at kiosk for collecting taxes. Jesus said to him, follow me. Levi got up and followed him. Jesus sat down to eat at Levi's house. Many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and his disciples. Indeed, many of them had become his followers when some of the legal experts from among the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, “Why is he eating with sinners and tax collectors?” When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Healthy people don't need a doctor, but sick people do. I didn't come to call the innocent people but sinners.”

Thank you. Thanks Wyatt. Appreciate it. You can take a seat, bud. So this text I want to first acknowledge has a lot of what we can call theological gutters we can get stuck in—which is that word sinners, all right? I want to acknowledge that some of the worst sermons that could come out of this text and some of the worst sermons that have come out of texts that repeat the word sinners. This is from the minds of our third through fifth graders sermons that they have either personally heard or that they know people have preached because they've heard secondhand of sermons like these. We talked about this word sinners and some of the worst sermons we've heard related to that word. 

And the kids came up with these four points, which is that some of the worst sermons we've heard when talking about sinners say either just specifically that gay people are bad sinners and that they're horrible people. That number two, insert group here, whoever we don't like are bad and they're sinners. Number three, that if you don't believe exactly the way I do and see scripture exactly how I do, and you don't do things exactly that this church does, then you're a sinner. Or for just, just big old general, you're all sinners and you should all be sorry about it, right? 

And so I think it's important to start with this, which is that the words sinners, or the word sin or the word sinner, all of those sin-adjacent vocabulary words in Christianity are loaded. That sinner can be a loaded and a weaponized term. And for something to be weaponized y'all it means that we take something that's not meant to hurt and then we make it with our own power into something that is a weapon that can hurt people. Like a what? Like an airplane. 

And so I want to, I want to first acknowledge that many of us have had this word used against us. I've had this word used against me in the ninth grade, I had someone tell me that they couldn't be my friend anymore 'cause I was a sinner, right? They wield this against us and they hurt others. And that impact matters and it hurts. And ironically, that is in itself sinful to hurt others by making weapons of things that are not meant to be. 

But I also think it's important to talk about the fact that harm does happen. That things like racism, things like sexism, things like violence, they, they're not like rain. It doesn't just start falling. It's not mysterious. People participate in things and in behaviors and in systems that go against God's promises of life, of abundance, of flourishing for all, that go against the justice and the mercy shown to us in God's character. So I think it's important for me as a person of color, as a queer person, to know that in fact there is harm that people use against each other. And that that is what we call sin. That, that—to harm others, to transgress, to trespass, it matters too. I think many of us have experiences of being sinned against. And so to be in a church that tries to ignore the idea that harm happens is not helpful either. 

So I know that some of us are at different places with that. But I want to say that for me, as someone who's been called a sinner, I do think it's important to talk about that there is harm happening and that we can conceptualize that as missing the mark of God's love and justice and mercy. We can call that trespass, we can call it a lot of things. But I think tonight it's important to redeem some idea that it is important to talk about how God approaches sinners. 

And in this case, it's not just moral sin of who's laying with who and who's having marriages with whoever. It's about Levi as a tax collector. We're going to talk a little bit about that. So let's, let's go to the next thing. I want to go back to our kids. A lot of the kids up here last week talked about different people in their lives that they think are absolutely the worst people according to them that they would never want to have to interact with ever again if they did not have to. Alright? 

Again, just super quick, we've got girls at school who've taken over eight lockers just because they can. We've got bullies, actively calling kids names, hurting kids with their words, hurting kids with their hands. We've got kids who are bad sports at the end of games and swear at other kids on the field. And then we've got kids who are hurting other kids again, maybe with their words, maybe with their hands. 

So all of these things are real. These are real ways that our kids have experienced hurt in their lives and in their communities. So those definitely for some of us might sound distant. Like, okay, if you’ve not got kids, then you're just maybe thinking, “okay, well yeah, when kids are kids and they fight and whatever.” But if you level these things up into adult behavior, that becomes incredibly, incredibly harmful. 

Now, girls at school who take over eight lockers just because they can become that behavior becomes something as an adult, right? Some adults in here. Have you experienced other adults who basically take eight lockers at school just because they can? In a way it meant to hurt other people. We experience bullies not just in schools, but in our lives, in our communities, in our government. What? Cyber bullies. That stuff matters. That harm is real and it is there. And those people doing the harm need someone to speak to them. 

And so I asked the kids, okay, these are people who you basically don't like, not because you're judging them, but because they've hurt you. Because they're not fun to be around because these people are not kind towards you. And so you would rather run the other way all day, every day than hang out with these kids. 'cause who would want to hang out with these kids? But I asked them, “if you could imagine, if you could hope and believe for some change for these kinds of kids, what would that change be?” Again, if you could believe that some radical change would happen in these kids' lives, what would you hope that would be for them? Or what would you believe they're capable of?

And so we asked that question and we got this, what change we hope and believe was possible for these kids in our kids' lives was becoming more considerate as people using influence to help others instead of hurting others. And acting humbly and kindly. Now the kids that we were talking about just now, that the kids in my class basically would never want to associate with if they had a choice. They also believed and hoped that real change was actually possible for them. And I think that matters. 

And that matters in Mark 2, especially, that Jesus as he is talking to the people, as he is teaching the people that then he goes and he calls Levi, who is a tax collector, who at the expense of his fellow Jews is collecting, is reaping the benefit of empire and is contributing indirectly and sometimes directly to the oppression of his neighbors. And Jesus doesn't just say, “I'm going to teach the people and be with the suffering,” but Jesus says, “I'm going to have dinner with the man that no one else in this community wants to have dinner with because he's the bully, because he's the girl who's got eight lockers just because they can. Okay?” It is really, I think for me, easy sometimes to just reduce Jesus's love to, well, Jesus sits with the outcast and the poor and the little guy, which is true. And we need that message so badly 'cause it is true. 

And many of our churches don't act like that's true, but sometimes we do that at the expense of remembering that Jesus too, sat with the people that nobody else wants to sit with because they're the people causing the pain of the others. So what does that mean? What does that look like? Because it's not a very good message, it's not a comfortable one and it's not a feel good one. But we're going to keep moving into it and I hope that you all can continue to receive this message. Let's go I think the next slide.

So these are the things that we identified within the kids, right? That was happening, the things that those kids wouldn't be able to articulate, but that our kids did articulate these things that they saw were happening with those kids that misusing power to benefit themselves instead of helping. That's something that Levi is doing as a tax collector, misusing power for the benefit of himself and for empire rather than helping his neighbor. Influencing others to do bad things instead of good things. I think we see that a lot, right? Making people feel bad about themselves. Those are the key things that seem like these behaviors the other kids were participating in, do. 

And yet still with no evidence that those kids could ever change, our kids still hoped and believed in real change for those kids away from these behaviors. I think that one was repeated. We're going to, I think the next thing we're doing in, in these slides is I want to show you guys a video. This video is of a man named Michael Kent and of his probation officer named Tiffany Whittier. Michael Kent was a man who was involved in a neo-Nazi gang in Arizona for 20 years. And he was in prison for a hate related crime, and when he got out, he was assigned a probation officer named Tiffany. She was a black woman assigned to his case. She didn't have a choice in it. She saw the pictures of his many, many, many swastikas. And on his back it said I think it's something like “white power” or “white pride” was tattooed on his back. His house was full of Nazi insignia and she was expected, as part of her job, to show up and be part of this man's life. And what it did was change both of them. We're just going to watch a quick clip of that. [video clip]

So Michael talks about the way that love from Tiffany, who in her professional capacity, didn't really have to show him that much love. She said to do the very bare minimum of being a probation officer. But she showed up and engaged in deeper relationship with Michael. And he talks about the way that relationship and love changed his life. He could've had recidivism, he could've said, I'll just do this probation thing and I'll get through it and then I will go back and living with my friends in my neo-Nazi group that I've been with for 20 years of my life. But he says that relationship changed him. And in and in Mark 2 we see Jesus engage in relationship to call Levi away from something and to something else. 

I don't know if y'all when you got in trouble when you were a kid, how effective was it? Like, did y'all ever get the mom? I'm disappointed in you. Like raise her hand if you got the mom like I am disappointed in you. And that hurts so much more than the mom yelling at you and telling you like the laundry list of ways that you had like disobeyed her. That the mom, “I'm disappointed in you” cuts so much deeper in my experience than the mom “oh, you didn't listen to me and here's how all the ways that you didn't, you didn't live up to what you were supposed to be doing.” 

And why is that? I think it's because in the disappointment, there's an implication or an assumption that she loves you so much. She believed in you a better thing than you had done. And that cuts so much deeper than going up to somebody and just telling them how wrong they are. I can guarantee that I reflected on my behavior and I believed that I needed to change way more when I got the mom “I'm disappointed in you” than when I got the angry, righteous mom who just told me her opinion because I saw that she believed in me better than I was being. 

That's relationship. To look at somebody and to say, I know you. I see you and I know that this is not who you are. That's how we approach our kids and kids programming here. I don't send kids out of the room and yell at them like, “you're not listening to me. You're not being quiet enough. You're not participating.” I don't give them the laundry list of things they're not doing to be a good community member of the table. I'll say, “Hey, I know you, I know you can do better than that. You can take a break until you're ready to do that.” But I'm not going to give that kid a laundry list of reasons they're not living up to community expectations. It's about relationship. 

There's so many times in my life I've experienced that as well. I want to keep going with some images of, of some of these types of conflicts. This is an image from one of the many protests that we've seen over the last couple years. And for me, my assumption is immediately that Jesus is only for the people protesting that Jesus is only for the people holding the flag. 

But Mark 2 shows us that in order for anything different in our world to change, it might not be us, but that Jesus, that God is also in his mission wanting to transform the violence of the people on the other side of that line. Because if I'm going to be free, niceness doesn't do me any good. If I'm going to be free, I need the person on the other side to transform and experience something radical. I need to believe like our kids believed for those kids, that this person wearing a trust Jesus sign and trying to smash down someone's pride flag can experience some kind of transformation.

For my black friends and neighbors and loved ones, I need to believe that there are cops on the other side of that line who can change. That the system that they're working in can experience something radical. I need to believe that. And that is the bend that the gospel invites us to in Mark 2. 

Here's a Trump shirt. Anyone ever seen these before? IIt's a baseball jersey that on the backs says Trump 45. And when I was in college, there's a guy named David. And David wore this Trump 45 shirt everywhere. He went for like two weeks. He wore it over like every shirt he was wearing. And he was in residence life with me. And he was in Fellowship of Christian athletes and he was in x, y, and Z leadership thing. You can name it, he was in it. He was really nice. But he wore the shirt every day for like two weeks. 

So one day I said, “David, let's get coffee. Let's just get coffee.” And he said, “Okay.” We got coffee. And I sat down and I said, “tell me about your, tell me about yourself. Tell me about where you grew up.” And he told me about his hometown. I said, “Tell me about your family.” And he told me everything he loved about his family. And I said, “Tell me about your church.” And he told me everything he loved about his church. And I said, “Tell me about your relationship with God.” 

And he told me every way that he saw Jesus as love and the way that he saw Jesus as mercy and the way that he viewed his relationship with his faith. And I said, “David, do you realize that when you wear this shirt every day for two weeks, you send a message?” And he asked me, “What do you mean?” And I said, “You're telling me right now about the love and compassion your community showed you. And you're telling me about the faith you have in a Christ that believes in the transformation of people and of the world and love. And you're wearing a shirt that to me and my friends as a foreign-born person of color who's queer and who's transgender, this shirt sends me a message that I can't approach you, that I can't be your neighbor, that I can't talk to you, but we're having coffee so clearly I can. But what your shirt sends a message is not one that I see who you are.” 

And he said, “I never thought about that. I didn't know that. Nobody in my life has ever pointed out to me that something like this sends a message that is opposite of the message I want to send.” And I said, “Well I see you and I like hanging out with you and this shirt, it affects me.” And he never wore that shirt again in the entire time I knew him. I don't even know if he kept it 'cause I never saw it again, summer or school year. It wasn't just like, “Oh, I won't wear this round Jae 'cause he's offended by it.” I never saw that kid wear this shirt again a day in his life and I knew him another three years. Relationship changes people. When we're willing to confront someone and say, “I see you. I know you and this is not who you are.” It changes people.

This is a picture of me with a group of I don't even know how many people are in that picture, but the whole trip altogether I think was over 20 Christian young adults in Israel and Palestine for 10 days. And a lot of these kids go to Hillsong churches. And a lot of these kids believed differently than me. And a lot of these kids read scripture in a very specific way that I do not. I spent 10 days with them building a relationship and getting to know them and knowing who they are, knowing who they know God to be. 

And I didn't say anything about myself for 10 days. I just wanted to ask a lot of questions. I shared things when people would ask me things I didn't like stonewall them, but I just wanted to know about them. I wanted to know about their experience of whatever small town in Texas. There's a girl from a small town in Texas in the group. I wanted to know about their big LA church. I wanted to know about their family. I wanted to know about what drove them to be on that trip. 

And at the end of the 10 days, we were sharing what we got out of the trip. And they gave me the microphone and I stood up and I said “Y'all don't believe in God the way I believe in God. And I didn't say it this whole time, but I know that we don’t, because I know that the churches and the communities and the things that you were saying and the people that I know that you follow, they don't believe in some of the rights that I need. I am queer, I'm transgender, and I grew up being told to be afraid of you. But I'm not afraid of any of you. But is that who you want to be known as in the world? Are the churches that people hear the name of and become fearful? Is that who you want to be known as in the world? The pastors that you follow and hang on to every word and repost their things and idolize have done great harm to my friends, to me, to my community? Is that who you want to be known as?” I said, “I didn't tell you all for 10 days who I was because I was afraid that who I was would stop the friendship at the door from starting. Is that who you want to be known as?” 

This little girl—I'm sorry, not little girl, that's really condescending—I meant this girl from a little town, is what I meant. This girl from a little town in Texas looked at me right in the eyes, bawling. And she said, “I am so sorry because I would never think that was the message I was sending. And I think I need to go back home and I need to rethink some things.” And she hugged me and she said, “I'm so glad that you shared with us who you are. I don't think I will ever have an experience like this again.”

And I just said, “I really appreciate being part of your community for 10 days. I don't want to take it further. I don't want to keep having a conversation about the theology of gender and of sexuality and whatever.” But I said, “Thank you for letting me be part of your community as well, part of your life.”

And I had people come up to me at dinner that night and as we left and in the airport, as we said goodbyes, and people who looked at me and said, “I never thought about that a day in my life, but I know when we leave this trip, it's going to take me a really long time to stop thinking about that.”

And so I don't know if any of these kids went back to their hometowns and went to a pride parade. I don't think so. I know the way that a lot of them continued to post about certain things and about certain topics that lead me to believe they're still on a long journey to it. But I know that there's a lot of kids in this group who for the first time in their life had a moment, an integral moment, that said, “You need to start thinking about some really serious things that Jesus is calling you to.” And it was life changing. 

I want to show us a couple quotes. There was a quote by Richard Rohr, I think I'm out of order. I I think I ended up skipping it. But I wanted to show this quote by Richard Rohr says that “Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change.”

There's nothing that we need to keep doing to be worth the change, to be worth the love. God loves us so that we can move into that space. The last quote I wanted to quote was this one by Carter Kelly from the Queer Christian Fellowship. It says, “We need one another to remove the veils from each other so that we may reflect the glory of God.”

It's uncomfortable and it's hard and it's easier to say, “Heck with my racist uncle at Thanksgiving this year. I'm not going to sit next to him.” It's easier to do that. And for me as a person of color, I need you to do that. I need you to opt in to hard conversations that remove the veil from people who need it. I need you to be in relationship with the people that annoy the heck out of you every time you try to have a conversation. Not if it's not safe for you, but if it's just uncomfortable, I want to invite you into that uncomfortable. 

Um, I think I had one more thing up here, a couple more things. Some questions to just leave us with. I know this was, I just went with it. But these questions, I want to, I want to leave you with these. Do we believe in transformation? Do we believe that transformation is truly possible? Jack does! Raise your hand if you believe transformation is truly possible. You've seen it happen. I've seen it happen. I hope some of us in this room have seen it happen. ‘Cause it is possible. 

Last question. Are we prepared to engage in the uncomfortable relational effort? What that means is, are we prepared to have friendships and relationships and real moments with people in order to see real transformation in our world? What I want you, what I want to invite us all to do right now, is if you feel comfortable, close your eyes. What I want to invite you to do is to raise your hand or stand up if you want. I don't know, could be more powerful to stand up. I don't know. 

What I want you to do is in some way signify if there's someone in your life that you know needs significant and radical transformation, whether that's out of racism, whether that's away from violence, whether it's dealing with addiction and recovery, whether it's family based violence, whatever it is, raise your hand in some way or signify if you know someone today who needs significant transformation. 

And what I want you to do is, is to hold that hand over your heart and to think of the question that I asked the kids: What do you hope and believe is possible for that person? What do you hope and believe is possible for that person? Because the good news in Mark 2 is that Jesus is ready to sit down at a table, to lean back and have dinner with those people, even if it's hard for you. Amen.