They Look Like Trees

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Hi, my name is Marta. Um, I am a board member of The Table. I've been coming here for a few years, been on the board for a year going into my second year. If you haven't seen me around or if you're like, I see you're out there, she's really noisy during announcements and then she just leaves.

I've been hanging out downstairs with the kids this semester, um, while Caitlin Schmidt's been on maternity leave. And boy is that a lot of fun. If you ever want to volunteer, if you're like, man, I love upstairs, but there's just not as much like coloring and jumping, then you should come downstairs and hang out with us. Um, it's been really fun.

So in case you aren't sure you have walked into The Table, our mission statement is The Table is a community that practices the ways of Jesus making a space for all to belong and be loved. Like, that's it. We just had our new members meeting, um, a few weeks ago, and some people were like, “I've been at churches where it seems like an all are welcome kind of thing. And then you dig into some of the details and the paperwork and there's all these like, well, you're welcome, but you can't do this and these people can do this and you can't do like,”

And I promise you, like, if you, first of all, if you want to get into the nitty gritty paperwork, if that's like your kind of geeky jam, we'd love to get it to you. And if there's anything that you read in there and you're like, “That makes me feel gross,” I want to know that. Like, we want to know if there's something in there to make you feel gross. 'cause at the end of the day, every decision, whether it's really, really big or really, really little, comes back to making a space for all to belong and be loved.

And so that might be different than, like I said, places that you've maybe existed before. Um, that, like, what are, what are you grounded in? And you've gotta be like really washy in this like liberal hippie, whatever. You're just like grounded in love.

Like we are grounded in the person of Christ. And one of the ways that we find out about Christ is through scripture, is through the Bible. It's a group, a collection of texts written for specific context at a specific time, bound together in this book that unites the group of people that identify as Christian. And we come back to this text every, you know, Debbie and I talk about this all the time, we're like, actually, we're like super, like scripture driven for people that accuse us of being like washy and whatever.

Like we read scripture every week and this year, if you've been with us, you know that we've been in the book of Mark, we've been in Mark since fall kickoff in September. Um, going so slow verse by verse and going, this pace can be super beautiful.

I'm going to be honest. Sometimes it can be really annoying, like, oh my gosh, like there's Jesus on his little trip doing his thing again like he did last week. It can be boring. Um, it also can be wildly timely where we're Not, we've set this text in line probably over a year ago, like a long time ago. We were, we're not able to see what's been coming up this year and things can not be more timely.

So we know that these texts are written in a specific context at a specific time, but every week we open it up and we ask if it says something about our world, about the divine and ourselves and how we connect with it. So I am not a theology nerd. Like some people on staff like Katie, if you want to like get into it, you should go talk to her.

I'm like, not as self-identified in that, but I am really into translations for someone who didn't do very well in Greek Hebrew classes. I do really love translations. So I'm going to read from one that maybe you haven't heard of or spent a lot of time in. It's called The Voice Translation.

I'm going to go really fast. It, there's two different like camps in how you translate. So there's like a word for word. I take this word and it's original language, I find the closest word to English, and then I create a translation out of that.

Or there's like a thought for thought camp where there's this general idea of like, either it's the sentence or like the paragraph, and we're going to, we're going to say it in a way that makes sense for your context. What I love about this one is it really marries the two and is really honest.

So, um, Patti, if you want to pull up the text, what they do, um, is they italicize anytime that it's in that like, thought for thought camp. Um, so they're really honest and open about how they translate things and it's written like a screenplay.

You know, sometimes when you read the Bible, it just like, you know, you don't read books this thick and this thin, but this is written in a way that is more engaging. So there's my plug, this is my favorite translation.

We’re in Mark 8, and I'm just going to read just a couple verses starting in, uh, verse 22:

So when they, [that's Jesus and the disciples] came into Bethsaida, a group brought a blind man to Jesus, and they begged him to touch the man and heal him. So Jesus guided the man out of the village away from the crowd, and he spat on the man's eyes and touched them.

Jesus said, what do you see? The blind man opening his eyes said, I see people, but they look like trees, walking trees. Jesus touched his eyes again. And when the man looked up, he could see everything clearly. And Jesus sent him away to his house and Jesus said to the healed man, don't go into town yet and don't tell anybody in town what's happened here.

And so when I got assigned this text, instantly my mind started jumping to like, okay, one, am I one, am I supposed to know about this text? Because you know, I'll share a little bit more about my background in, in a minute here. But I do have a lot of history and a lot of biblical education under my belt. And also I have probably like the rubberiest brain when it comes to retaining like all the fun facts you're supposed to know about things. Like I just, I'm like told, I'm like, that's amazing. That's life changing. Like, boom. I'm like, I, I don't remember what this is.

So I, I'm filled with all these questions as to what I'm supposed to dig into and like where I should focus to start learning more about this text. And so I'm just going to share some of the questions I had. Some of them, I'll share some answers to some of them. I I, I didn't go that direction this week.

If ever you have any like really nitpicky detail questions, you should talk to Bill. Bill is a theology nerd and like loves getting into these details things. So if you're ever like, why the heck did Jesus do that one thing? I, I bet Bill knows.

So here were my questions. Where's Bethsaida? Is there something important about this place as opposed to where he was last time? Why did Jesus touch this man's eyes twice? Like that doesn't feel typical of what's happened with all the miracles we've gone over. What's up with the whole tree thing and how the heck is a blind guy know what a tree looks like and that why is that his go-to, to describing things and lit?

Why is Jesus like spitting on people all the time? He did it when Jae preached the other week. I think it's gross. I don't get it. I know it was in a different context. I think it's weird.

Um, and then literally what's the point of healing somebody if they have to keep it a secret like that just feels selfish or something. I'm not sure. So I've got all these questions. I'm trying to figure out a direction to go.

And I am rudely interrupted by the worst kind of notification. A LinkedIn notification comes across while I am doing this research. But in order for you to understand why this one little LinkedIn notification upended my entire day, I do need to back up and tell you some of my story for those of you who haven't heard it before.

So I have a very thorough relationship with the Christian Church. I grew up in a very small specific denomination where everybody looked like each other, everybody talked like each other. Everybody thought like each other. I stayed, um, and attended that denomination in Christian school from preschool until grad school.

There's little baby me. Uh, and I'm going to be honest, I loved it. I was very good at it. This is like a little like school assignment where I'm like, someday I want to be a famous Christian singer. Like, that was my like little school assignment, which like is if you talk to me now, like that is not the dream at all. But like that was like, I know what church is. I do really well. I'm very, very smart. I'm very good at it.

When I was in, I have this memory of I was probably like fourth or fifth grade, and after like Sunday school got done, we would do like these, like bible trivia flashcards. And if you got it right, you would get a piece of candy. And I have this memory the, and I like always knew the answer and the teacher like went to like the back of the deck to get like the really hard questions. And she goes, what did Jesus call the Pharisees in Matthew 12? And I'm like, like lounging in my chair. I'm like, he called him snakes and she's just like, no, he called them vipers. And I'm like, do you know what a viper is? A viper is a snake. And he called him this 'cause they were being deceitful and blah blah. And so I won. I got the piece of candy.

Eventually I got banned from taking candy home because I'd be like, [arms full] hi mom, thanks for coming to get me. And like she's like eating my candy all through church. This is also why I don't play this game with the kids downstairs because I know that the Keller kids would be the me and like, I don't need to send Maggie home with a ton of candy. So we don't play that game downstairs. Not with me, me.

Uh, so that was me, um, natural born storyteller. And I always wanted to be in a community centered on good news. Like this felt good and this felt like home. So I was carrying this really rigid worldview, but one that I really understood. Um, and the more I encountered the person of Jesus to the point where he was close enough to my face that he could spit on me, I, um, people in my life looked more like people and less like trees.

So I have three different examples of my deconstruction story, as you will. So I grew up in a denomination with mixed interpretations on whether or not women could preach. Um, I did not see a woman in the pulpit. Um, God, I'm getting emotional. I didn't expect to do this. Um, 11 years ago today, uh, I was a senior in high school. It was a Mother's Day sermon, but it was the first time I had ever seen a woman preach.

And they sent out, I have this in my like old bible, this like little snippet of a letter that went out to the congregation a couple weeks before being like, watch out. There's going to be a woman. Like, so like, here's why. Um, but it was, it was just these things that was really political.

And I, I was put as a leader in all of my schools and classes and they're like, but once you get to a certain age, you can't, you can't do that anymore. You can't do it once you step into this space. So if you like, look at this page, this is, um, one of the texts about worship rules in 1 Timothy. And I like little high school me, like highlighting it and underlining it and going in the footnotes and trying to find different things.

Like I studied and I worked so hard and I discovered that there were people standing behind me as I took a step forward saying, this doesn't feel right. What I was told. And there was a group of people behind me saying, yes, this is good. There is holiness and goodness in women preaching and teaching in church.

And so what once growing up was felt like this huge, like redwood-sized tree that women couldn't do the same thing as men turned into a moving person. Once I started encountering more women who were preaching. So I have this idea, this call, I guess you could call it. I'm, I'm, I don't know what that word means right now, but I have this, I'm, I'm driven and I'm studying theology and undergrad, um, and leading worship on campus. Um, going to chapel, doing all the things, taking prophets classes and different biblical texts.

Um, and then the year 2016 rolls around, I don't know if you remember, but there was election that year. Um, and I went to college in Iowa. So that was, that's where the caucus happens. And it's one of the first states to put forth a candidate. And Donald Trump came and spoke at my school and, um, spoke on the same stage that I led worship every week. And this was the place where he said that he could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and wouldn't lose a single follower. Um, and that was at my school. And it, I just kept learning these different things.

Again, I'm being touched by the person of Christ and, and realizing that like maybe to be a Christian, you don't have to be a Republican. Like maybe that just doesn't feel right in this moment to me. Um, I had a really good friend, she was engaged to someone from Senegal, Africa, and they were really unsure about marriage and immigration because he was from one of the sh*thole countries, you know, so I'm, I'm encountering this in my life and I wake up on election morning and, and I took the step forward saying, this is wrong. I'm hurting and I'm, this is hurting people around me.

And there were a bunch of people left behind being like, this is what we wanted, this is what we picked. And I just felt like once again, you know, if I was here with women in ministry, now I'm, now I'm out here and there's a couple people with me, but I'm, I'm leaving more and more behind. But again, I just can't agree to what once was just this tree of you vote this way because you are this way. Once I saw the people for it, I just couldn't continue that way.

So undergrad finishes, I'm not sure what I want to do. So I'm, and I wasn't married, wasn't dating anybody. So like, let's do grad school 'cause what else do you do in your twenties when you don't know what to do?

So I went to seminary, um, and this was a place where I had started to do the work of like, I knew queer Christians existed, but I didn't really know very many, let alone she had not done the work on her own self identity. But that's a different sermon. We'll do that later. Um, and, and I was, I, I had held this like, not love the sinner hate the sin approach anymore, but it was like question the sin and, and we're okay with like cute, quiet gay people having brunch together, but like drag brunch, I don't know, you know, all these, all these questions.

But once I started meeting people and encountering people and hearing their stories, reading about queer Christianity and like exploring these clobber passages outside of this factual, this is what it is. This is how it has to be. I just couldn't deny that God was within the queer community. There's me and my grad school roommates, they're so cute. I love them.

Um, so again, prayer and study and relationship, these trees of rules turned into people that were moving and engaging with the world around me. And this was the one that was really hard. This was the one where I had friends that had an undeniable calling to be a pastor. And the seminary, you know, we talked at the beginning of these like, oh, we're really open, but, but there's all these things behind the door. Things behind the door. Were changing in real time and stopping him from pursuing this very holy call.

But still, you know, after all these things, every time I got close enough to Jesus, close enough that I can feel his breath on my nose, I start to see concepts that I once saw as stagnant, become moving, breathing, and living people. Okay?

So that was the context of, of me. So now we're at the table, I'm researching, I'm asking all these questions about the text in front of me and I get a LinkedIn notification and LinkedIn is the worst for a million different things. Mark Hirschfield isn't here. Maybe he would like fight me on that, but I feel like other than Mark Hirschfeld, I don't know who like loves LinkedIn, it's awful because it's the only social media platform that I know of that tells you when somebody was looking at your profile, um, and it it gives you a note. It doesn't even like you, you can dig to find it. It just straight up says, Hey, so and so is looking at you. And I guess that's helpful when you're looking for a job and it's the person at this, you know, whatever.

For me, one of the people when I had taken all these steps forward that I left behind somewhere along the way was looking at my profile and I had just updated it saying that I, um, you know, am on the board and I've been doing these kids' ministry stuff and I just got so mad imagining what they were thinking about.

So I had two different, you know, things of what they must be thinking. And the first was like, oh man, we won, we got her back to church even though she was some, you know, she changed her mind about all these things, but we won. And he, him white Jesus wins the day after all. And it's just like, oh, that's not what I'm doing here. That's not who I am anymore. I'm not the same. I keep taking these steps forward. You don't know me anymore.

Or I was worried that she's standing over here being like, you are working in a church, you're not good enough. You're some liberal washy hippie who's not grounded in anything. And I just was making up these imaginary rebuttals on what I would say to this person, looking at me, making these judgments about me, whether or not they spent next to any time on my profile at all. I was ready to go to war telling this person why they were wrong, why I've grown and changed so much and why I am so great now. And I realized as I'm making these imaginary rebuttals, I had this moment, one of these moments with Christ up to my nose where I viewed this former friend as a stagnant tree, that they were someone who has not changed in the several years since we went different ways.

Um, and I was expecting this person to be exactly the same as I've left them not giving them any room for growth. Um, and I was acting no differently than all these people that were leaving the trees as they were. Um, I hadn't stopped and given myself the opportunity to realize that even though they go to a church that would not work for me at all, that they are encountering the divine in ways that I don't understand that their work and their love is making the world a better place, even if it's not work that I can stand next to them and participate in.

So we, we don't know why they were on my profile. You know, LinkedIn probably was being sneaky on the other end. They're like, look at this person from your past. You know, we don't know what was happening. But, but we do know that leaving this person as a tree doesn't allow space for the person of Christ to be moving and working and changing. So I, I can't control them. I can't change this person.

And like I said, there's a lot we don't have in common with each other and we probably won't exist in toe to toe relationship anymore. But I can still be glad and grateful about their story and the way that they're working to make this world a truly better place for their story. So I don't know what your trees are right now. Um, I do know I'm not the hero of this story and frankly, I still have a forest of redwood trees that I'm still trying to unsee. You know, there's former churches that I've attended and worked at old jobs, people that responded to the pandemic differently than I did. People who vote differently than I do. Um, and I have a feeling that as soon as I brought up this LinkedIn notification, you have your own person. That would just be a nightmare if you found out that they were putting any energy and thought into you.

But I know that this is the only two-parter miracle in Mark. Everything else is a one touch and you're healed. And for some reason, this one took two touches and the first touch turned the trees into moving, walking trees. And it was the second encounter, the second physical touch from Christ that helped the blind man see people for people.

And so it starts with the attentiveness and the willingness to be close enough to this holy, divine love to be touched multiple times to say, wait a minute, that tree is walking. And to find out, maybe it wasn't a tree, but it's been a person all along.

Will you pray with me? Holy and loving God, we thank you for the attention that you give us. We thank you for the breath in our lungs and the spit and saliva on our tongues to be close enough to people to see for who they are. We ask that you continue to work in us, to stay close to us so that we continue to move through this forest of people, um, and be in community and relationship with them because we know that you have created a beloved community. And help us to continue to pull up chairs so that people can sit in close enough to you. Amen.