[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the Collective table where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast. So we're glad your here and thanks for listening.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: For those of you might not know, last week we finished a teaching series. And so this week we're actually starting a new teaching series called Practices of Belonging. And we're going to start today by talking about kind of a practice, perhaps an odd or unusual topic, and that is the topic of corporate prayer.
I got to be honest, I've never taught on corporate prayer before.
Today is going to be a little bit different. I kind of hate the word corporate to begin with. So, like, I'm going to try to say collective instead of corporate, but, you know, we'll see how that goes. But a couple things I want you to know. The first is that we're sort of pairing this teaching series with a couple of books.
One of those books is Sacred Balance by Miriam Deephouse McMillan. You're going to love this book because it's so short and so easy. It's so breezy to just blow through this very quickly. But I really love the way Miriam, who is a clinical chaplain, mostly works in like a hospital setting, just very effectively walks us through a variety of spiritual practices.
And I'm going to talk to you about one of these today, actually. And so this is a great book for you to pick up. It's very inexpensive online or in case you didn't know, we have a lending library here at the Oceanside Sanctuary, curated by Beverly. Where is Beverly? There she is right there.
Right.
You can search online at our website if you find the little library page and find the books you're looking for. So you can just check this out for free if you're interested. The second book that we're pairing with this series is this, this Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley. If you have not read this, oh my goodness, this is so good.
And it's a bit more like memoir, like a bit more reflective, a bit less maybe just straightforward explanatory. You from Cole Arthur Riley's book, this Here Flesh, because I think it frames this whole series really effectively.
Here's what she writes. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, in a Christian community, everything depends on whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain.
Only when the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain Unbreakable.
A community which allows unemployed members to exist within it will perish.
Now, that is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote, and I want you to just maybe sit with that for a minute. The idea that a community that allowed anybody in it to be unemployed would be a community that wouldn't last, that's a very challenging quote to me, because in any given community, there's a lot of need, and it's really, really hard for us to be responsible for each other's needs.
And I think Bonhoeffer's quote really challenges us to take economic liberation seriously.
So for that reason, I just hate it.
It's just too much.
But I really love what Cole Arthur Reilly does with this quote, so I want to continue.
She writes, when he uses the word unemployed, I don't believe Bonhoeffer is talking about employment in the economic sense, but rather as a fostering of purpose.
He meant that each part of a community would have agency to affect the whole in whatever way that may be, that the community's survival would depend on each link.
I have a friend who calls this mutuality, the truth that says, we don't just welcome you or accept you.
We need you.
We are insufficient without you.
One part's absence renders the whole impoverished in some way, even if the whole didn't previously apprehend.
In mutuality, belonging is both a gift received and a gift given.
There is comfort in being welcomed, but there is dignity in knowing that your arrival just shifted the group toward deeper wholeness.
So listen, here's why I like this.
Because we are really, really good at welcoming.
Really. Like I'm not just saying that every time we ask you, what are we good at? At the Oceanside Sanctuary, you tell us, I genuinely feel welcomed to be who I genuinely am and not apologize for my identity, for my gender, for my theological beliefs, for my sexuality, for my socioeconomic status or upbringing, on and on and on, like you really accept me.
And that's wonderful. But one of the reasons we're good at that is because we demand very little of you.
In fact, we sort of specialize in that.
We specialize in being the opposite of the high control spaces you might have been in before that that knew perfectly well that there is a vulnerability in human psychology that says that if I simply hold before you a carrot that expects enough to make you question your own self worth, that you will profoundly respond by doing more and more and more and more.
And there's like a science to this in church growth, like the more I demand of you as a Pastor and trigger that, like, authoritarian follower response. The more likely you are to show up and the more likely you are to give and the more likely you are to volunteer and the more likely you are to be traumatized and burned out on the other end of your belonging here.
So we don't do that.
And so a lot of you, when you first start coming, you come every week for about six weeks till you realize nobody's keeping track. And then you're like, well, come twice a month. This feels nice.
And that's totally okay, believe me.
But I feel like we haven't broken through to the other side of what Cole Arthur Riley is describing. And that is a belonging that is built not on our, like, toxic high expectations, but a belonging that is built on the recognition that we need each other.
Because we're raised in a culture that so highly values your individualism that we can't conceive of a kind of collective belonging.
Okay, I feel like that went over pretty well. Like, I could be done and you guys would be like, that was a good Sunday.
Alas, I do have a Bible verse to read.
You can't pray for me, by the way, because this sermon is a little different than my usual formula.
So it might be helpful to think about what I do today in a kind of like three act structure. Right? And hopefully those three acts, even though they seem completely at odds, will, like, make sense and, like, fit together. And if not, it's okay. I'll go home and take a nap. So, yeah, our passage today is Nehemiah, chapter nine. I want to read to you verses one through six. And then I'm going to just share with you what the whole chapter is about, because this is a long passage, and the long passage is really what I'm invoking today. But I'm not going to read the whole thing. I want to set it up for you and then kind of summarize it for you. Nehemiah, chapter nine, starting in verse one, says this. Now, on the 24th day of this month, the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth and with earth on their heads. These are physical demonstrations of mourning or lament, by the way, verse two. And then those Israelites, those of Israelite descent, separated themselves from all the foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their ancestors. Don't get weird about that whole separating themselves from foreigners things. It's actually kind of cool because what they're about to do collectively as a people is repent for their sins and they're saying, these aren't your responsibilities. You're not a part of us. You all can, like, excuse yourselves from the collective repentance. Does that make sense? All right, so that's what they're about to do.
Okay, where was I? Verse 3. They stood up in their place, and they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth part of the day, and for another fourth, they made confession. Confession and worship the Lord their God. So for a quarter of an entire day, they read from the book of the law, and for another quarter of the entire day, they confessed their sins collectively as a people.
And then Yeshua and Bani and Kadmiel and Shebaniah and Buni and Sherebiah and Bani and Chanani stood on the stairs of the Levites, that is the priestly class. And they cried out with a loud voice to the Lord their God. And then the Levites, Yeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabaniah, this is a test. Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah and Pathiah said, stand up. This is to the whole congregation, Stand up and bless the Lord your God, from everlasting to everlasting, that is forever. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.
And then there's a kind of hinge point.
Then Ezra, who is the chief priest, said, you are the Lord. You alone, you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts, the earth and all that is in it, the seas and all that is in them. And to all them you give life. And the host of heaven worships you and will.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Pop.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Pause there, and I'll just tell you that this is the beginning of a prayer.
It's the beginning of a long and very sort of poetically constructed prayer, not unlike here when you all show up.
You know, we have, like, a little welcome song, right? And that opening song is our way of acknowledging that everybody's going to be late for church.
Now. You know how the sausage is made, right?
And then we have a prayer.
Have you noticed this?
We ask you to stand, kind of like Ezra, and we all pray some version of the same prayer virtually every week, whether it's the Lord's Prayer explicitly or it is Christ our liberator, which we prayed today, or it's the prayer of St Francis. These are all versions, essentially, of the Lord's Prayer.
And that prayer sort of invokes a kind of memory. And that's exactly what's happening in this passage.
What's happening Here is that Ezra is inviting people into a prayer that helps them remember who they are.
Okay, that's the introduction. Would you pray with me?
God, we thank you for today.
God, we thank you for today.
God, we thank you for this day.
In spite of all that is happening in our lives, in spite of all that is happening in the world, in spite of the heat, in spite of whatever might be challenging us today or tempting us today or testing us today, we thank you for this day.
It's my prayer that we would learn as a church to pray together.
We would maybe lean into what that means to remember ourselves and remember each other and our place in your story. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
Okay, act one.
Learning how to breathe.
In this book, Sacred balance, Miriam Deephouse McMillan teaches about something called breath prayer. You know, breath prayer?
Okay, this is where things get a little weird.
Miriam Deephouse McMillan writes, Breath prayer is extremely flexible.
All it requires is inhaling and exhaling.
Raise your hand if you know how to inhale and exhale.
I mean, that's pretty good. I'm impressed because a phrase I often hear is remember to breathe.
One would think that maybe we struggle to know how to inhale and exhale. Don't, given how often we hear the phrase remember to breathe. But that, I think, is exactly the point of a breath prayer.
Words aren't necessary, but some people find it helpful to pair silent words or phrases to each inhale and exhale. For example, think grace as you breathe in and peace as you breathe out.
This is the beauty of breath prayer. I often find that people, when they talk to me as a pastor, will say, I feel like I should pray more. I feel like I need to learn how to pray. I feel like I should be better at prayer. I feel like I'm not good at prayer. I feel like I should get, you know, become like a prayer warrior. Is not something I hear hear very often thank. Thank God. But you do hear that a lot. And so I'm here to tell you today that you can learn how to pray today incredibly effectively with a breath prayer.
It's so simple.
Just breathe in.
And breathe out.
I feel like you guys don't believe me, so we're gonna try it.
What I want you to do is prepare yourself to get a little bit silly.
And as you inhale, I want you to inhale grace.
And as you exhale, I want you to exhale peace.
What that means is that you quiet your body.
It's okay to fan yourself. It's hot.
And as you intentionally Take a deep breath.
Think or say grace.
And then as you exhale all of that breath, think or say peace.
Can we try it?
Inhale Grace.
Exhale Peace.
Inhale grace.
Exhale Peace.
See, what's happening here is that you're taking advantage of something that your body does without even thinking. You're centering yourself in your flesh, your body.
You're remembering what you are and where you are and taking advantage of that very simple bodily practice to escape the future or escape the past, escape your worry, escape your schemes and your plans, and just be here.
Now, let's try this one.
Inhale.
I am made in God's image.
Exhale.
I am loved.
Inhale.
I am made in God's image.
Exhale.
I am loved.
One more.
Inhale.
My know is sacred.
Exhale.
Your demands are too great.
Inhale.
My no is sacred.
Exhale.
These demands are too great.
Okay, that's simple.
That counts as prayer.
What you're doing is you are remembering what's true.
You're reminding yourself what's true, what's good, what's righteous.
And in that way, you are remembering yourself in goodness.
You belong there.
Okay, Act 2.
Inhale.
Celebration. Exhale. Repentance.
What's happening in Nehemiah, chapter 9 is that the Jewish people have been in captivity for 70 years in Babylon.
They were just one of the 12 tribes in ancient Israel. And ancient Israel was conquered by the Assyrians and the Babylonians in the 7th century BCE and carried off into captivity. And Scripture follows One of those 12 tribes, the tribes of Judah, who ended up in Babylon and were in Babylon for 70 years under the rule of a foreign nation. This was a common thing in the ancient world for one kingdom to conquer another. And part of the conquering of that land would be to displace those people from their land and import them back into another culture as sort of like, you know, a form of colonization.
Only carry folks off to the homeland. You integrate them into society. They'll never quite be accepted there, but they also will. And this is the point.
Forget who they are and where they came from.
It's an act of ethnic violence.
And after about 70 years of that, one of the Jews, Nehemiah, who was cup bearer to the king, had it on his heart, by God's mission and vision in his life, to return his people to their homeland. And so he appeals to the king.
Miraculously, God softens the king's heart. And the king says, yes, Nehemiah leads the Jewish people back to their homeland. This is the story of Ezra and Nehemiah, the return of the Jewish exiles to their homeland.
In Nehemiah chapter 8, what happens is they, after having repaired the walls of the city of Jerusalem and after beginning to rebuild the temple so that they know not only where they're from, but what they're all about in that place, they have an amazing celebration.
They read from the old book of the Law, the law of Moses that told them who they were and what they're all about. And one of the things they find there is that Moses, in his law, tells them to set aside time every year to go camping.
And so they do.
They celebrate the Feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths are where the Jewish people erect temporary dwellings, temporary structures, if you are around or have been a part of a Jewish community to this day, they celebrate Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, by erecting temporary structures or pitching tents and living in them to remind themselves that their ancestors wandered in the wilderness.
Now, Janelle and I have a very comfortable 23 foot camper trailer with air conditioning and a shower and a toilet. But, you know, camping's fun, right?
It's not a punishment, it's fun.
So they go out and they celebrate. They throw a party. They enjoy the feast of booths. So In Nehemiah chapter 8, there is this amazing celebration. And then turn the page to Nehemiah chapter nine, and they go from celebration to repentance.
This is the text I read to you earlier, what Nehemiah is doing after the celebration, after reminding them who they are and where their laws and their sense of goodness and their sense of righteousness and peace and justice come from. He says, good. To celebrate this now, we need to remember the mistakes that we have made.
And so then they have an extended period of repentance, of lament.
And what happens here in Nehemiah chapter nine, I think is an amazing example of corporate prayer, because the Levites stand up and they begin this very long prayer, the beginning of which I read to you, that extols God as the God of all gods in the heaven, of all heavens, the source of ultimate goodness. And then it goes on in this prayer to tell the Jews their own story.
And so in the prayer, they're reminded, you saw that God saw the distress of the Israelites in Egypt. He heard their cry when they were slaves. And he miraculously, through the work of Moses, liberated from their oppression. And it reminds them that Moses went up to Mount Sinai and received the law which told them what was good. And it reminded them that even though God did all of these good things, for them that they stiffened their necks and rebelled against the goodness of God and refused to actually do what was right in God's sight. And still, in spite of that, God preserves them for 40 years as they wander through the wilderness on their way to the promised promised land. And in spite of preserving, preserving them for 40 years, it says, nevertheless, they continued to rebel.
And in spite of their rebellion, God continued to protect them and care for them, to be faithful to them, to be their God. And instead of that being enough, they insisted on having a human king. And those human kings led them to continue to disobey, to violate the law, to not do what was right. And so naturally, what came out of that is they were conquered by a foreign power and carried off because their iniquities made them vulnerable and weak to those outside.
And in spite of that conquering, in spite of that captivity, God still remembered them and delivered them back into their homeland all these years later.
And I love the way this prayer ends In Nehemiah, chapter 9, verse 33 says, you have been just speaking to God in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.
Verse 36 says, Here we are slaves to this day, slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts.
And so for Israel and Nehemiah, the great irony is that even though God has been repeatedly faithful to them, they have repeatedly failed to live out their vocation, their purpose, their mission in the world, which is to be a people of God's goodness and righteousness and peace.
And because of that, even though they are back in their land, they still are slaves under the rulership of another nation.
This is not, and I know it's hard not to hear it this way, this is not just a paternalistic God wagging their finger, scolding their children, trying to make them feel bad.
In fact, what's happening here, I think, is that in telling their story, in using prayer to tell them their own story, people who have been displaced from their land, from their worship, from their identity for 70 years have the opportunity to remember who they are, to remember where they are, to remember what they are, what their purpose in the world is.
And remembering their story, remembering all that they have gone through as a people, allows them to be remembered in their community, to find belonging again in their identity as a people, their purpose as a people.
And it strikes me that this Nehemiah chapter 8 and Nehemiah chapter 9 are a kind of collective breath prayer
[00:28:02] Speaker A: that
[00:28:02] Speaker B: as a people Nehemiah called them to inhale celebration, to exhale repentance, and listen, I know this is a progressive church, and it's okay to be a woman and a leader, and it's okay to be gay and to love your partner, and it's okay to be a Democrat, maybe. Jury's still out, But is there still a place for repentance in a church like this?
Is there still a place for us to remember how we have missed the mark in our relationships, in our relationship to ourselves, in our relationship to goodness and righteousness and peace? And not just inhale celebration and acceptance and inclusion, but to exhale lament and repentance and forgiveness when it's needed.
And maybe love is both sides of that rhythm, both sides of that collective prayer.
Okay, Act 3.
This. This isn't our story.
And this is what I struggled with the most with this sermon, by the
[00:29:37] Speaker A: way, today,
[00:29:39] Speaker B: this, you know, story in Nehemiah, chapter nine is the story of the exodus of God's people and how they wandered in the wilderness and how they.
How they failed to obey goodness and righteousness and peace and the consequences that came into their lives because of that. And in that sense, it's our story. In that sense, it's everybody's story.
That's a very universal story, right? The movement from oppression to liberation, whether you're the oppressed or the oppressor, that story is relevant to you, but it's not our story, specifically as a church at the Oceanside Sanctuary in 2026.
And so it feels a little weird for me to call us to remember and be remembered through the story of the Exodus.
What I'd like to suggest is that our story is related.
There's a kind of family resemblance, but our story is a little different.
And it is the story that we tell every Sunday when we gather.
And that story is the collective prayer we pray every time.
Do you remember it?
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
Amen. And whether we pray that prayer with those words or we prayer pray, Nicholas Lee's beautiful take on it, which is Christ our liberator, which we prayed today, or the ama abba. Excuse me, the ama abba.
All of these are a kind of new spin on that very old Story. And it is a story.
The story, I think is this. We are born of righteousness and goodness and peace.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
We are born of righteousness and goodness and peace.
And that righteousness and goodness and peace, when it comes, when it makes itself known in our world, we will know. Because three things will be evident. There will be food for those who are hungry.
Give us this day our daily bread, and there will be forgiveness for those who are indebted.
Forgive our debts as what?
As we forgive our debtors.
The story of God's goodness in forgiveness is that it is mutual, that I forgive you as you forgive me, and as you forgive me, I am able to forgive you. And all of this is a kind of foretaste of God's forgiveness of us.
And three, we are given wisdom for avoiding all of our self destructive ways.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
We can't stop at just giving food to those who are hungry or finding employment or vocation or purpose for those who are disconnected from our community. We can't just stop at being in good and right relationship with each other because the goodness and the mercy of God empowers and enables us to be forgiven and to forgive. We have to learn to quit killing ourselves and each other.
You have to learn to recognize how the anger that rises up in me is born from my own woundedness and trauma and pain and how I just perpetuate that over and over and over again, especially on the people I claim to love.
It's right there in our story.
And I think maybe the hardest thing to believe, maybe the best part of this story, is that this goodness, this righteousness, this peace will win in the end.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
Amen.
That's the hardest part for me to believe.
That pressing into that kind of story, the story where everybody has what they need, where we are able to forgive each other, where we are able to learn to stop hurting ourselves and each other, is the way we win in a world that seems to be increasingly defined by violence and fear and xenophobia and misogyny and homophobia.
But we tell this story collectively.
We pray this story together every single Sunday.
When we repeat the Lord's Prayer, when we sing the Lord's Prayer, when we speak the Lord's Prayer, when we act out the Lord's Prayer for each other every single week, we are not only remembering who we are and where we are, but we are being revolutionized. Membered into that kind of community that I think is a basic human need to belong.
And so that's why we do this.
Coming here also is a kind of collective breath prayer.
We inhale our worship.
We inhale our fellowship.
We inhale our welcome and our inclusion and our grace and our wacky version of progressive Christianity.
And we exhale as we leave this place and enter into our neighborhoods and our workplaces and our polling booths, we exhale righteousness and goodness and peace because that is our job.
This is an integral part of that.
And I hope that when you show up here or to your meetup group or to your band practice, whatever it is that you do to be a part of this place, to belong here, I hope that when you're doing that, it's not because you're trying to, like, I don't know, make me or Janelle happy or make God happy.
You're doing it because our collective well being is bound up in each other's well being.
Amen.
Okay, I can be done. Would you pray with me?
God, we thank youk so much for today again for this opportunity for us to come together, to collectively pray, to remember who we are and what we are, what you have called us to do.
It's my prayer today that all of our ways of being Christian in the world will become a kind of breathing, a kind of autonomic bodily activity that.
Inhales grace and exhales peace.
That we wouldn't just learn to do this as individuals, but we would learn to do it collectively as a people.
Teach us how to pray in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in.
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