[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: 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 A: Hey, so we're one of those churches that does have, like, teams and committees and the finance committee. We have a finance committee. And they met, I don't know, two weeks ago.
And I said, hey, we're going to exceed our $100,000 year end fund drive goal. And that's good news and bad news. The good news is, you know, we. We're going to raise over $100,000 for our food pantry. That's amazing.
News is this was Janelle's idea and now she's always going to think that we can have these crazy big goals for whatever it might be.
I don't know why you're clapping, because every time when she was like, I think we should make a goal of $100,000, I was like, that's not gonna happen. There's no way.
And now she's always gonna be like, I don't know, Jason.
I don't know.
Anyway, we. This was a big dream, and it's very, very important to us to be a church that is here for the community and starting with those who can't meet their own basic needs, we think that is a tangible expression of the Gospel. So thank you for showing up for that. Today we are going to conclude our Christmastide teaching with with reading of Isaiah, chapter 63, verses 7 through 9. Let's go ahead and have a look at that passage and then jump into the text and I'll share with you what I'm noticing about this passage. And I hope that you are noticing something good as well. Isaiah, chapter 6 or chapter 63, verses 7 through 9 words are up on the screen. If you don't have a Bible with you, says this, I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us and the great favor to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. For he said, surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely. And he became their Savior in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel, but his presence that saved them. In his love and in his pity, he redeemed them, he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
Would you pray with me? God, we thank you for today, for this opportunity for us to gather here as a congregation, as a church, as a group of people whose eyes are focused on you, especially in this season when we remember your goodness and your grace through the celebration of Christmas and the coming of the Christ child. We pray that you would expand our imagination throughout the year for what it means to be connected to a God who is with us in so many ways. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
Okay, so last Sunday, Janelle taught and she made like this offhand comment in her sermon about me being like, you know, insufferable about the fact that Christmas is, is not just one day of the year, but that it's actually more than that and how, like, we shouldn't even be putting our Christmas trees up until Christmas Eve. She just made that, like, offhanded comment.
And the reason this seems insufferable to her is because we put up our Christmas tree, I kid you not. The day after Thanksgiving, right? And so from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, she has to hear me complain about the fact that the Christmas tree shouldn't be up at all. At least not until Christmas Eve. She didn't explain any of that. You know, she didn't, like, unpack it. And so after church, two people who are members here came directly to me and they were like, so why shouldn't we put up a Christmas tree until Christmas Eve? And I was like, oh, I am so glad you asked.
And the answer is because Advent is the season of waiting.
Christmas doesn't actually begin until December 25th. That's the beginning of Christmas. It's the first day of Christmas. Sing it with me. On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me. And then that insufferable song continues through 12 rounds. And do you know why? Some of you do? It's because Christmas is a 12 day celebration.
And in sort of the Western Christian tradition, which is by no means the only Christian tradition, there are many traditions across the globe of Christianity that are far older than Western Christianity. But in Western Christianity, we have this lovely tradition of Christmas beginning on the 25th.
And starting on the 25th, every single day, you would go to your family and your friends and your neighbors and you would give a gift on each of the 12 days of Christmas.
And this season is not just Christmas, it's Christmas Tide.
And for that entire 12 days, you are reminded every single day as you give and receive gifts, that life is the experience of giving and receiving good things. Not things that you earned or things that you bought or things that you own, but things that are imbued with, with grace.
And this is Christmas.
And at the end of that 12 day celebration, there is the culmination on epiphany, which is January 5th. And Christmas ends the night of January, January 5th, with Twelfth Night. Any Shakespeare fans here?
Twelfth Night is a play about epiphany, about an epiphany party where there's a feast and a king cake and there's a tradition of having like skits and plays on Twelfth Night to close out the Christmas season, which is why we're having an epiphany Sunday. And no, it's not on January 5th, because I don't think we could get you here on a Tuesday night.
But isn't that better rather than, like trying to concentrate the entire Christmas season into one morning on Christmas instead of like, inundating each other and our children with piles of gifts and then it's over in like 32 minutes. And then you're exhausted because you spent a month not only shopping for gifts and then wrapping gifts, but also being like, solicited and pandered to with constant advertising. Right? And I hate to sound like, you know, a Charlie Brown Christmas, but, like, the commercialization of the season is exhausting.
And so, yeah, I like the idea of 12 days of gift giving. Not because I want a gift every day for 12 days, although that's true too, but because I think celebrating Christmas that way teaches us an important lesson.
That the goodness of God, the grace of God, the majesty of God doesn't come in a flash, in a moment with overwhelming goodness. Instead, it stretches out, it fills the space.
And I, I do think that Isaiah is trying to describe that same idea. I think Isaiah is trying to redirect his listeners from the idea that God comes in the fantastical, in the miraculous, in those moments where we are overwhelmed by God's power. And instead God comes in the quietness of, of God's presence.
Isaiah, chapter 63 is, believe it or not, a lament.
It is an expression of frustration because at this point in Israel's history, the people of God have been deprived of any evidence of God's power in their lives. They are besieged by those who are coming against them.
And in the midst of that, Isaiah says, in verse seven, I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord. I'll remember what God has done for us in the past. Because it's hard for us to remember. It's been a long time.
But God has shown God's mercy over and over again. Verse 8. God chose us to be his people and became Our Savior. Verse 9. And in all their distress, it was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved him.
And I'd like to focus on that idea of presence today.
And we've been talking about this for the past few weeks, leaning into the idea of Christ as Emmanuel, or God with us. What that communicates is the idea that our faith, our salvation is dependent on this idea that God is with us, that God is present with us. And Isaiah leans strongly into that idea. It's not these angels or messengers or miracles or huge demonstrations of power, but rather God's presence that saves us.
And this is a very, you know, liberal, progressive, social justice church. If you didn't know, I really apologize if you didn't know that. If you're new and you're like, wait, this is a woke church. Yeah, it is.
We'd all be wearing dei, you know, shirts, you know, like, I'm not going to make a joke about Latin. DEI means God in Latin. Okay, I just made the joke. Right, okay.
But this is that kind of church. And in that kind of church where we're really focused on all the ways in which people are being harmed and oppressed and subjugated and denied goods and rights and services and duties, and oftentimes by the church itself. In this kind of church, we often forget about God's presence.
Sometimes we're embarrassed to talk about the idea of God's presence.
We don't like to talk about the idea of being connected to a sense of God's presence in our lives because it starts to feel a little like.
Like one of those Jesus is my boyfriend churches, you know?
But. But maybe let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe there is a connection between the presence of God and the goodness of God, the presence of God and the justice of God. And I think that's exactly what Isaiah in his lament is trying to get at here.
Yes. He says, we want God's power to come. We want God to redeem us. We want God to return to those days when God is rescuing us from our enemies. But that is rooted in this idea that. That it is not a messenger or an angel, but his presence that saves them.
This tradition is all over the Bible, in case you haven't noticed. One of my favorites is Genesis chapter 15, going back before Isaiah. Genesis chapter 15 is that passage where God brings Isaiah out of his tent in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the night, and he tells him to stare at the stars.
And he says, this is my promise to you. This is what your descendants will be like, like the stars in the sky. But before that, God says to Abram, don't be afraid, for I am your shield, your very great reward.
Before God promises offspring to Abram, he tells him, don't forget, I am your reward. God's presence is his reward. Psalm 23:4, which you probably all have memorized, says, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me.
Jesus begins his ministry in Mark, chapter 1, verse 15, by saying, Everywhere he goes, the kingdom of God is at hand.
Which can be understood as a kind of apocalyptic proclamation, like, it's coming. Or it can be understood in a more mystical way as like, the kingdom of God, the power of God, the goodness of God, the presence of God, are close, available for you to reach out and grab it.
Romans, chapter 8, verse 31. Of course, famously, Paul says, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, because there is this idea that no matter where we go, no matter what we do, no matter what we are aware of or unaware of, God is with us.
There are all kinds of symbols in scripture that convey this idea. Fire and water, wind and clouds in the Hebrew Bible represent God's presence. And these stories depict those symbols in order to communicate the idea that God is with God's people.
Also, the temple represents God's presence. And within the temple, the Holy of Holies is where God's presence is especially powerful. And within the holy of Holies, there's the Ark of the Covenant, which served as a tangible symbol of God's presence. The point of those symbols is that God is with the people of God also. Interestingly, in the Hebrew Bible, God's presence is often symbolized by when strangers and aliens show up at the door, As if to say, sometimes God comes in a form that you least expect and least want.
Of course, in the Jewish tradition, nothing represents God's presence more than wisdom, herself. Yes, herself.
Or the Torah, the written word of God, the wisdom of God on the page in a tangible, durable form that we can all access if we just cultivate the ability to read it.
There is God's presence.
In the New Testament, of course, God's presence is represented by Christ himself in the body and the wine. The communion that you just took symbolizes that God is not only present every day in your life in a meal that you take three times a day in order to survive. But God is your sustenance, the thing that actually keeps you going. And then, of course, Jesus himself in the New Testament is a symbol of God's presence. God with us, Emmanuel. That's what it means for the Messiah to come. It means that God has come in the presence of a person. Which is interesting, because later in the New Testament, Paul develops the theology that we are a symbol of God's presence. In Ephesians, chapter two, Paul says, the church is a living dwelling in which God lives by God's spirit. You are a symbol of God's presence.
I know. I'm sort of belaboring the point, but my point here, of course, is that even though this is a justice y kind of church, it's impossible for us to take our faith to seriously and disregard the idea that to be a person of faith in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition means that we cultivate an awareness that God is present, that that is part of the salvation.
I got to read this to you because this just makes me crazy, right?
Famously. Psalm 139, 7:12 is where David the psalmist comes to terms with this reality that God is present wherever it says, where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light around me become night. Even the darkness is not dark to you, the night is as bright as day, for darkness is as light to you.
In other words, leave me alone, for God's sake.
David is not happy about this situation.
And I can identify with that, you know, like, I like my space.
I don't know that I love the idea of a God who is always there, always around in my face, in my ear, talking to me, directing me, guiding me. Good Lord, I'm an introvert.
Janelle and I joke because we've been together since we were, like, 17 years old. And Janelle is a raging extrovert, and I am essentially an introvert at heart. I am the immovable object, and she is the unstoppable force.
And when we were young, like, you know, late teens, early 20s, and together, I would, like, sometimes go to another room, and she would find me.
Where'd you go? What are you doing? And sometimes she would climb on my lap and grab both sides of my head and say, pay attention to me.
We've, like, you know, balanced out a little bit since then, but I like my space.
I think this raises an important question.
Do we want God's presence?
Do we really want God in our lives? Do we really want God listening in on all our conversations? Do we really want God guiding our hearts, demonstrating for us what the possibilities are, possibilities that we might compare ourselves to measure ourselves against?
Do we really want visions of goodness and justice and righteousness that we have to feel terrible about not fulfilling? Do we really want a God who is there close to us?
Most of the time I don't.
I don't.
It's nice to know that God is there, but I can go a little bit crazy constantly chasing after God's will.
I think it's a legitimate question to ask yourself, do we really want God's presence?
Back to Isaiah, chapter 63, because something that's just fascinating to me, by the way, Isaiah, chapter 63, verse 9, just to remind you, says this.
In all their distress, it was no messenger or angel, but his presence that saved him, them.
And the thrust of this passage really is, as I've already mentioned, that as God's people are experiencing trial and difficulty and frustration, that God's own self is the one who shows up by God's presence and saves. That's. That's the point of this passage. This passage, by the way, that I'm reading from is nrsv, New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which is, generally speaking, like, the best balance, in my opinion, between, like, direct translation and sort of, like, you know, flexibility in order to make it readable. It's generally considered, like, by scholars to be the best translation of the Bible, but it is based on a text that essentially derives from the Septuagint. We don't need to have a lesson about the Septuagint. If you know what the Septuagint is, I'm so sorry.
At some point somebody taught you that you needed to know that sort of thing. But the point is, the Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Bible conducted by 72 scholars. Septuagint means 72 in Egypt during the Roman Empire, because Roman Empire did this. They translated the holy texts and holy traditions of all the cultures that they conquered. They highly valued those other religious traditions, and they also knew that if they did that, that it would help pacify those populations that they were conquering or. We don't need to get into that, but that's fascinating, too. The point is, the Septuagint is the translation upon which many of our translations are built. Many of our like copied manuscripts are built upon the Septuagint. But Jewish traditions tend to use something called the Masoretic text, which came several centuries later. And so oftentimes, Jewish translations of the Hebrew Bible are subtly different.
For example, Isaiah, chapter 63, verse 9 in the Masoretic text is read this in their affliction, he, meaning God, was afflicted.
The power of that very subtle shift, which by the way, is based on a deep and highly contested controversy over whether or not the Hebrew word at the core of that passage is low or low. There are two different Hebrew words. Both are low.
And if I were like, you know, Semitic, I could like articulate the guttural sound that distinguishes one low from another low. But I can't do that and I'm not going to try because we're live streaming and that would just be embarrassing.
But one lo in Hebrew means he is, and the other lo in Hebrew means he is not.
And the difference is just the tiniest mark in the Hebrew text, which, when the text is written over and over and over again, sometimes is obscured.
But that difference means everything.
Because if God's presence is made possible by God's empathy, that changes everything.
In their affliction, he was afflicted.
And of course, it's not just Isaiah, chapter 63, verse 9. It's so many other passages that demonstrate that when God's people suffer, God suffers.
And if our idea of justice is rooted in the idea of God's presence that is based on God's empathy, then it changes everything about the kind of justice that we pursue.
Because if God's presence saves us by drawing close enough to us intimately enough, that God suffers when we suffer. And that empathy leads to God's compassion, and that compassion leads to God acting and saving on our behalf because God experiences our pain, then all of that is a moral and ethical model for how we are with each other.
This, then, is how God's presence saves.
This is how God's presence becomes a comfort to us. Because God is suffering with us, like Christ on the cross.
This is how God's presence saves. Because if God's presence not only embraces empathy and experiences our suffering, then God's compassion and rescue and salvation on our behalf is rooted in our pain.
This means that cultivating an awareness of God's presence is not just something that we do to make ourselves feel good, it's something that we do to connect us with the source of empathy and compassion and justice.
It becomes a coping mechanism, a survival technique.
Brother Lawrence famously wrote a book called the Practice of the Presence of God.
What I take from these texts is that God is with you whether you want it or not. That God is always around whether you are aware of it or not. But that if you want, if you are willing, you can cultivate an awareness of God's presence.
And when you cultivate an awareness of God's presence, it connects you to not only the source of life, but the source of empathy and compassion and justice in a way that sustains you and empowers you for a better future.
I don't know about you, but 2025 was rough.
And I mean, if I think it's rough like somebody who literally occupies, like, the intersection of every privilege, then how rough was it for my undocumented neighbors?
How rough was it for my trans siblings?
How rough was it for my friends who work for the federal government, who serve in the military wake up every day wondering whether or not they're going to receive illegal orders?
I don't want to just persevere or survive this time. I want to thrive and grow and make a difference.
And the best way to be connected to that possibility is to be connected to a sense of God's presence.
Brother Lawrence says it this way in his book the Practice of the Presence of God. He says, let us occupy ourselves entirely in knowing God.
The more we know God, the more we will desire to know God. As love increases with knowledge, the more we know God, the more we will truly love God.
We will learn to love God equally in times of distress or in times of great joy.
This is no kidding, no joke, my New Year's resolution to know God more.
And I know that's so cliche, but it really is my salvation.
And I'm wondering if it might be yours, too.
Would you pray with me?
God, we thank you again for today, for this season of becoming more aware of all the ways in which you have brought us salvation.
Just like Isaiah in this passage, we remember and acknowledge all the ways that you have brought goodness and peace and justice into our lives.
But just like Isaiah, we remember because sometimes it feels like it's easy to forget.
And so we remind not just ourselves, but in our prayer and in our reading and in our singing today, we remind you that you have promised your presence, that you have promised to sustain us, that you have promised to bring your salvation and your justice and your peace.
We pray that you'd give us a taste of that by your holy presence. We pray this in Jesus name.
Amen.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in.
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[00:30:34] Speaker A: Sa.
