David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin | 7.23.17 If God is a playful God—as mirrored by Jesus who loved to play with children, tell colorful and funny stories, eat and drink with his friends—how are we to react and respond? How does this notion that God doesn’t live life as a duty to perform but a playground to be experienced change the shape of our journeys? Why is playfulness so important? Think on it: to be in a playful mood and mode is to be tender and open…to be vulnerable. It’s a place of the surrender of control, a suspension of disbelief and reason and defense. It’s far too frightening a place for many of us to go, who don’t feel safe enough to be playful. The arch enemy of playfulness is control, and control is always the foot soldier of fear. We can’t be playful, childlike until we know that we are loved. This is the essence of the Good News: that we are loved enough that being playful is not only possible, but the only possible response…which is why the emblem of Kingdom, the living out of God’s playful love, the proof of t

Dave Brisbin | 7.16.17 On the 15th anniversary of my ordination, I took a look back at the subject of my first sermon on ordination day all those years ago: The Gospel According to Lou. A beloved friend who died from complications arising from diabetes two weeks before my ordination, Lou’s last words to me and my wife fueled a fundamental change in me and my first sermon that I thought I already had in the bag… “Love each other, just love each other…and kid around a little.” Twelve words. But it was the kidding around part that characterized Lou, who’s playful smile always made me feel I was the only person in a crowded room. It was his playfulness that made all of us aware that Lou actually enjoyed the love he expressed for everyone in his path. And it was his playfulness that finally broke through a theological view of God by showing me the playfulness of Jesus hiding in plain sight in the words of the New Testament. To see Jesus as a laughing, smiling, energetic man playfully living his relationships began

Dave Brisbin | 7.9.17 What about faith healing? What is it? How does it work? Does it work? Is it biblical? Questions such as these are always present. They are born out of a deep human need for healing and wholeness—and out of the pain, trauma, and fear life presents. People in pain can be most easily manipulated so we need to be wary, yet Jesus healed many of the people around him…aren’t those gifts still in operation? How do we know how to proceed? Although Jesus tells us he came to bring good news to those who have been marginalized, freedom to those who are captive and oppressed, and healing to those in need, he also shows us that kingdom—his word for abundant, healed, liberated life—is a process of becoming that he calls the Way. Is healing an event or a process or both and how do we balance our desire to change our circumstances with learning to be content in all our circumstances? Let’s talk about healing and faith and see if we can find the Way through together.

Dave Brisbin | 7.2.17 Fourth of July should be a time to reassess, take stock of the last 241 years, see where we are, where we came from. We live in an age of cynicism. Our culture doesn’t revere tradition or founding principles anymore, but does that mean there’s no truth, no relevance there to guide us herenow? When we carefully read a document like the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson is telling us that human rights derive directly from God--but not political contracts or laws. Laws only exist to serve the people, and when they don’t, it is the right of the people to abolish them…yet people will suffer oppression and evil as long as they possibly can before finally acting—partly out of fear and partly out of prudence. Revolutions should never be taken lightly, and what operates in nations and governments is reflected in our personal lives. Jesus is calling us to a personal revolution, one that will question and upend all of the intellectual concepts and religious contracts to which we’ve signed, if

Dave Brisbin | 6.18.17 On Fathers’ Day—Is our Father in heaven male? We call him Father after all…and “him.” Intellectually, most of us know God is spirit and neither male nor female, but emotionally, subconsciously, the feelings, the consequence of maleness surrounds our Western notion of God. To have been immersed in a male conception of God keeps him at a distance—the king, judge, executioner, administrator, creator/builder, lawgiver and standard bearer. We talk of the female attributes of our God: compassion, mercy, intimacy, love—but we really order our lives of faith and religion around the king, not the queen, Father, not Mother. Jesus had an ingenious way of dealing with this dilemma: while his people called God their Ab, Hebrew for father, he called his Father, Abba, the familiar, intimate name that Hebrew children use for their daddies to this day. Without contesting the tradition of his people, Jesus brought into the relationship the sense of intimacy and compassion missing from a culturally male c

Dave Brisbin | 6.11.17 One of the hardest aspects of working in a church setting is watching people come and go—people you like, those you thought of as friends move on and leave you often feeling hurt or abandoned. Natural to feel that way—hard to make the emotional distinction between friendship and ministry. But what is really hurting us? Really, it’s our expectation, our opinion of how things should be. Any community is in constant motion—never static. Any community as we view it is just a momentary snapshot in time that will be morphing into something else in the next moment. To be able to live richly in any community or family or workplace is to expect what is real and not what we wish to be so. As Sengtzu famously said: If you wish to see the truth, hold no opinions for or against. It’s the same message Jesus is giving us when he tells us not to judge. Judging is another way of trying to impose our opinions. If we’re ever to enter the quality of life that is Kingdom, it will only be when we let fall ou

Dave Brisbin | 5.28.17 The theme of balance in kingdom life continues as we consider a very strange saying of Jesus: to be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. In sending his followers out to teach and heal, what is he trying to tell them and by extension, us? To balance “shrewd,” as intelligent, thoughtful, discreet, practical, and cautious with “innocence,” characterized as simple, sincere, straightforward, without deceit is a difficult mix that seems to be in basic contradiction at first glance. But as with all of Jesus’ instructions, it’s not only possible, but necessary, of course. And this balance must extend to the fundamental ways we look at life and faith, religion, and even scripture itself. When we apply Jesus’ balance to a view of the teachings of Paul and Jesus, what does it reveal? How does it change the way we look at the message being delivered? And how does it change how we apply those teachings to the everyday issues we face here and now? To balance a simple and straightforward appr

Dave Brisbin | 5.21.17 Reading an article by a pastor who now consults and coaches other pastors on growing church attendance, building programs, and time management created a moment of dissonance that I needed to process. In coaching pastors on protecting their time, to focus their time on necessary growth, the author stated that a pastor can only have meaningful relationships with 120 people at a time, and in a church that group is always changing and needs to be managed to the point of actually changing phone numbers and cutting off access to those outside the current 120. Sounds harsh, contains truth, sounds antithetical to Jesus’ principles, but Jesus had inner circles as well. Hence the dissonance. How to balance? And what does it say of our view of time? The ancient view of time and timekeeping was so different than ours, it may be hard to make hard and fast comparisons then and now, but it again points to the necessary balance between mother and father, accomplishment and relationship that is key to k

Dave Brisbin | 5.14.17 Mothers’ Day: I was recently asked that though we know God loves us, how can we know he likes us? Great question, one that goes to the heart of our human experience. On Mothers’ Day, and by way of answering, it’s always good to be reminded of the ancient Hebraic understanding of the roles of mother and father that is coded right into their language. To understand father/Ab, as “strong house,” the support and structure of the family, and mother/Em as “strong water,” the glue that holds the family together, is fundamental to their life in family, tribe, and nation. But it also reveals their view of God as well. Though God is always referred to in the masculine, Hebrews never understood their God as male, but with key divine concepts such as wisdom and kingdom referred to as feminine, they saw God as a balance between the justice and mercy, accomplishment and relationship that father and mother represent. We can know, understand that God loves us through reading, study, and ritual practic

Dave Brisbin | 5.7.17 The cross of Jesus is such a big and central message in Christianity that we need to spend more time on it. So continuing the discussion from the previous week’s message, “Lamb of God,” and in answer to the perennial questions—why is the bible so violent, and why would God sacrifice his son?—we’re looking at deeper ways of understanding Calvary that neither compromise the sacrifice of Jesus nor the love of the Father. In typical midrash fashion (see the message “Deeper Reading” for more on midrash), the New Testament writers portray Jesus on the cross using three deeply embedded images from the Old Testament: the Passover Lamb, the Lifted Up One, and the Scapegoat. To fully understand how Jesus’ first followers understood his sacrifice on the cross, we need to know how these three images functioned in the spiritual lives of the people and how they applied to the spiritual truth of Jesus’ sacrifice. As we dig deeper, we find that all three point us toward a deep gaze at ourselves, at our

Dave Brisbin | 4.30.17 No matter what questions we ask of religion or church, scripture or theology, the subtext, the question we’re always really asking is the same: with all life’s pain, uncertainty, absurdity…do I matter? Am I safe? Whether we’re asking about heaven, hell, salvation, law, or any esoteric point of theology, what we’re really looking for is assurance, confidence in our own acceptability. That’s the human condition. And so it also is as we ask about the cross, about what it really means, and how Jesus as Lamb of God, an innocent blood sacrifice, impacts the nature of a God who Jesus tells us is absolutely all loving. Is there a way to understand the Lamb and the sacrifice in such a way that God’s loving nature is not compromised? The answer lies in the context of the cross. Just as the letters of Paul are always answers to questions that are left unstated, we can’t understand how his answers are true until we know the context within which they are true. The context of the cross, the unstated

Tina Henningson/Dave Brisbin | 4.28.17 In a talk show interview format, effect board member Tina Henningson works through questions submitted by our membership on everything from the direction and basic beliefs of theeffect—are we Christ centered, Evangelical, emerging, recovery centered, contemplative—to salvation and judgment, Christianity vs. other faith traditions, nature of God’s love, nature of prayer, evil in the world, what is Judaism and why is that important to a follower of Jesus, faith and loss of faith, how to help those in deep grief, miracles, whether church and religion are really necessary… It’s not so much that there are definitive answers to all our questions, but the direction of our questions and consideration of each other’s answers are all part of the journey. So join us in our easy chairs for an evening of talking through the issues that are most on our minds.

Dave Brisbin | 4.23.17 Just as Jesus’ closest friends were kept from recognizing him after the Resurrection because of their limiting expectations and beliefs, we are kept from seeing the deeper meaning of scripture for the same reason. But even to make such a statement that interprets a passage of scripture beyond the strictly literal meaning of the text demands some explanation. What is an acceptable method of scriptural interpretation that can take us to a deeper reading, a reading beyond the literal, moving us to a spiritual understanding and relevance for our daily lives that is still consistent with the author’s original intent? To answer that question, we need to know how the writers of scripture understood the interpretation of sacred texts in their own time. The ancient Rabbis of Judaism used four increasingly deeper methods of pulling meaning from their sacred books. Here, we focus on just one, the one they called “midrash” and see how its use can take legitimately us to a deeper reading of each of

Dave Brisbin | 4.16.17 Easter Sunday: Why do all the Gospels preserve stories of Jesus’ closest friends not recognizing him after the Resurrection? Mary in the garden, travelers along the Emmaus road, Peter and the fisherman on the lake. The central question the angels ask the women who have come early Sunday morning to anoint Jesus’ body--why do you look for the living among the dead?—questions our deepest assumptions and beliefs if we will let it. The women expected Jesus to be exactly where they left him Friday afternoon, and we do the same in slavishly following our own expectations and belief systems. Jesus is ushering in something radically different, always in motion, just as spirit itself is always in motion, as life itself is defined by motion. As soon as a belief of ours becomes set, static, no longer moving, it is no longer alive—and Jesus is not there any more than he is in a graveyard of motionless corpses. The message to us, if we are looking for the risen Lord, is not to look in static beliefs—

Dave Brisbin | 4.9.17 Palm Sunday: What is the real message behind Palm Sunday. Sunday school graduates can all remember that Palm Sunday gets its name from the palm branches that the people waved in front of Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem beginning the week of his passion and death. Some of us will remember that the palm fronds symbolized the people welcoming him as a victorious king and how that unnerved the watching Jewish and Roman authorities. But how does that translate to us, two thousand years and a world away from those events. Why is it preserved in our sacred text and what can it teach us? Entering in to the mindset of each of the various players in the story—the people, the Jewish and Roman authorities, Jesus’ first followers—looking at the symbolism of palms and donkeys, reading the alluded prophecies, looking at the real meaning of hosanna, mixed with Jesus’ pronouncement over Jerusalem as he entered the city and wept, we find the crux of the message here. That every moment is Palm Sunday in o

Dave Brisbin | 4.2.17 On the fifth Sunday of Lent, looking at Lent as a positive-negative: an affirmative stripping away of anything that distracts, obscures, or keeps us away from God’s presence, the image at John’s last supper of Jesus stripping his garments, tying a towel around his hips and moving from friend to friend at table, washing feet gives us another Lenten principle in preparation for new life. It is extremely difficult for us as modern Westerner to appreciate just how mind blowingly outrageous and offensive Jesus’ actions would have been to his friends. There is no relevant analogy for us to bring home the shock of a revered teacher, rabbi, a spiritual master and healer doing what even Jewish slaves were not obligated to do--what was relegated to Gentile slaves. It was dirty, impure, and humiliating work, underscored by Peter’s initial refusal to allow Jesus to wash him. Something this profound either bounces off our cultural force fields and doesn’t penetrate at all or we quickly moralize it to

Dave Brisbin | 3.19.17 On the third Sunday of Lent, looking at Lent as a positive-negative: an affirmative stripping away of anything that distracts, obscures, or keeps us away from God’s presence, we use Jesus’ cleansing of the temple to give us our next Lenten principle. When Jesus rampages through the Temple court overturning tables, he is, in effect, calling into question a given in the daily life of first century Jews: that the Temple, the Temple priests, the Temple system were as good as God, were their means to connection with God and community. Jesus underscores the obvious—says right out loud what any thinking person could see but was afraid to say: that the system had become corrupt and instead of being a means to God’s presence, had become a hindrance, a limitation, a wall between the people and their God. Making the principle personal, what tables to do we need to overturn in our lives? What “givens” that we take for granted as established truth do we need to question to discern whether they are s

Dave Brisbin | 3.12.17 On the second Sunday of Lent, looking at Lent as a positive-negative: an affirmative stripping away of anything that distracts, obscures, or keeps us away from God’s presence, we naturally turn to prayer. What is prayer really? And specifically, what is the continuous prayer to which Paul calls us? Using the Hebrew bride as the bible’s metaphor for the balance of living a balanced life of awareness and presence, we can start to look at prayer in the same way. Not a constant stream of words pronounced verbally or mentally, but a continuous awareness of our place and position and relationship to everyone and everything in any given moment—all infused and sourced in unseen Presence. But is there a difference between mere mindfulness and prayer. How do we know the difference, practice the difference, and above all how do we develop the ability to pray without ceasing? It begins with intent, the intent of our mindfulness and awareness—what is it we are intending to be mindful of and present

Dave Brisbin | 3.5.17 On the first Sunday of Lent, we have begun to look at Lent, not as a negative—as a voluntary deprivation of pleasure in penance for sin—but as a positive stripping away of anything that distracts, obscures, or keeps us away from God’s presence. Looking at the Hebrew meaning of the parable of the ten virgins/bridesmaids—the five who are alert and present and keeping their lamps filled with oil and the five who are not—becomes not a statement of final judgment, heaven or hell, but another image of balanced life and awareness herenow. How do we balance our desires and plans for the future: how we think things ought to be, wish them to be, were taught they should be, need them to be…with a simple awareness of the flow of things as they are right now? To remain alert to present even as we plan for and prepare for radically changed life? What does balanced planning look like? Planning that is as healthy mentally and spiritually as it is effective? Surprising insights come from military leader

Dave Brisbin | 2.26.17 As we approach the Lenten season, many of us have not experienced the annual cycle of a liturgical church, and among those who have, many have never been taught what the liturgical traditions really mean to the spiritual life. This year, we want to try to make Lent, as preparation for the new life of Easter, come alive in a new way—really prepare us for that new life. What does Lent mean? What is Shove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and how has the church celebrated these liturgical days for centuries or millennia? If Lent is meant to mirror Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, how are we to understand his emptying, his moving into silence and suffering in a positive and affirming way for ourselves? To make these connections and see Lent as an interior journey that we can enter at any time is the beginning of our preparation, and understanding some contemporary tools—mindfulness and centering prayer—can be our first steps along the way…and a challenge and encouragement to begin.