David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin 5.31.20 Pentecost Sunday: Though it’s the feast of Pentecost today, the week of protests and riots are the elephant in the room that demands some attention and discussion. But is there a link between our response to the strife and opposition around us and the deepest message of Pentecost? Or better, would our engagement in Pentecost temper our response to the opposition we face? Between the extremes of the most destructive forces around us, there are still voices in our country calling us back to connection and sanity. Those voices crying in the wilderness are the ones giving us hope that we really will pull back from the brink, just as Martin Luther King’s voice did for previous generations. Reading his words of deep conviction and determination for his people that he spoke while still maintaining the balance and perspective to “learn and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition,” is the message we need to hear again today. And it is the message of Pentecost as well.

Dave Brisbin 5.31.20 Pentecost Sunday: Though it’s the feast of Pentecost today, the week of protests and riots are the elephant in the room that demands some attention and discussion. But is there a link between our response to the strife and opposition around us and the deepest message of Pentecost? Or better, would our engagement in Pentecost temper our response to the opposition we face? Between the extremes of the most destructive forces around us, there are still voices in our country calling us back to connection and sanity. Those voices crying in the wilderness are the ones giving us hope that we really will pull back from the brink, just as Martin Luther King’s voice did for previous generations. Reading his words of deep conviction and determination for his people that he spoke while still maintaining the balance and perspective to “learn and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition,” is the message we need to hear again today. And it is the message of Pentecost as well.

Dave Brisbin 5.24.20 Thomas Merton wrote that the bible is, without question, one of the most unsatisfying books ever written until the reader comes to terms with it in a very special way. If you’ve never been unsatisfied by the bible, if you’ve never been perplexed, affronted, offended, even outraged by it, then it’s possible you’ve never seriously considered it. What are we to make of God ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son, or Moses being punished with death before entering the promised land, for one infraction in forty years? Or Jesus saying it was for his followers benefit that he was leaving them? Reading the bare words, it’s hard to find satisfaction in such stories. But considering Hezekiah’s first actions as one of the few righteous kings in Judah’s history: tearing down the high places of worship and long standing religious traditions that had led the people astray, the spiritual principles running through all these stories and the main themes of scripture begin coming to the surface. The special

Dave Brisbin 5.17.20 As the outbreak crisis continues, fear is ramping up in us either directly or through its son and daughter emotions of anxiety, stress, anger, and depression, among others. It’s becoming painfully clear that our fear is now creating new problems and exacerbating others, which brought a quote to mind from another era: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Franklin Roosevelt said that in his first inaugural address in 1933—another era, but as history always shows, one much like our own. It was the fear of the people that had begun driving the Depression deeper, and he was offering the hope of new solution and direction as a bridge to repairing broken trust. Fear is not an evil; it is the means by which we survive the clear and present dangers in our lives. But we need to determine that those dangers are clear and present and whether our fear levels are justified or becoming part of the problem. We can manage fear and use it to focus and motivate ourselves as long as we have hope an

Dave Brisbin 5.10.20 Mothers’ Day. This pandemic and lockdown has pulled the veneer of so many of our fears in just the past two months, it raises the question: why so many of us who know God loves them are still experiencing so much fear? Did we miss a memo somewhere? A woman once told me she knew God loved her, but wondered how she could know if God liked her. May sound silly at first, that if God loves us, doesn’t that include liking? Or does liking even matter in the face of love? But I think that question lies at the heart of our fears. Liking is about affection, taking delight and pleasure in, a desire to be with, a playful attention that our ideas of love may not include. Love can mean many things and remain more or less invisible, but liking is experienced directly and emotionally. It is like a mother’s love as opposed to a father’s. Both are necessary to our growth, but mother’s unconditional acceptance and genuine pleasure in our presence is the key to it all. 1John tells us that perfect love casts

Dave Brisbin 5.3.20 The best part of being a pastor is being trusted enough to be invited into people’s lives. To see and be a part of their vulnerabilities and fears as well as joys and celebrations. And during this lockdown, many people I’m talking to have multiple losses and difficult circumstances layered over the quarantine crisis. And each one, whether a death, illness, unemployment, homelessness, a hospitalization, represents a loss of the relationships and routines, the way of life that we call our world and our lives. That experience of being thrust into a doorway between the world we knew and whatever world is coming next is sometimes called liminal space from the Latin word for threshold or limit. To be in the doorway is uncertain, full of unknowns, and is experienced with enough fear and disturbance that we will try to flop back down to one world or another and reset normal as quickly as we can. But Jesus spent his entire public life in the doorways of liminal space. He understood that the purpose

Dave Brisbin 4.26.20 Everything in the New Testament is geared toward creating in us a fundamental shift in perspective. To experience the process of learning to see life through the Father’s eyes. To see life in all its complexity, diversity, contradiction, even absurdity of pain and joy from the viewpoint of the one thing it all comes from, is sustained by, and ultimately is. When we can begin to see life from this point of connection, everything changes, and we can finally begin to see the ground-shaking significance of Jesus’ prayer from the cross asking our Father to forgive those who were torturing him because they didn’t know what they were doing. He’s speaking to the human condition as seen through the Father’s eyes. That driven by our fears, we literally don’t know what harm we do and pain we create as we simply struggle to survive. But if we’re willing to follow the shape of Jesus’ Way: to face, accept, and own our own fears and vulnerabilities, we can finally begin to see how they shape our behavio

Dave Brisbin 4.19.20 As I talk to more and more people being worn down by quarantine lockdown to where some are in real distress, the point is hammered home that our faith, spirituality, and the message we convey must be relevant and useful enough to meet people at their point of need. If the gospel as we understand it isn’t relevant, if it remains abstract—however beautiful as a concept—what good is it? Some recent surveys are showing that domestic violence calls are up 35% in the past few weeks. Chinks are appearing in everyone’s armor, but where there was dysfunction to begin with, there is real distress now. In a Sunday message, we can’t address all the specific issues needed to help specific families and individuals. There are principles we can look at to help us maintain balance and poise in our homes whether living with others or alone, but to talk about principles with people in pain runs the risk of trivializing their circumstances—speaking platitudes to those in need. As true as the principles Jesus

Dave Brisbin 4.12.20 Easter Sunday: On Easter, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, we celebrate Easter virtually via streaming with our community watching a live stream from their homes, setting their own communion tables to fully participate remotely together. Though missing each other’s company, in the following days, it was wonderful to hear how individuals and families created their own sacred space and found connection in spite of isolation. This Easter we try to step inside the minds and emotions of Jesus’ closest friends and followers as they live through the traumatic and mind bending events of Good Friday through Easter Sunday. What were they feeling and trying to understand? And why did none of them recognize the risen Jesus when they meet him again for the first time, and what it was that opened their eyes to finally recognize him when they did? There are no random details in the gospels. Every word and detail is carefully chosen to be preserved because it has something important to teach us. Why

Dave Brisbin 4.5.20 Palm Sunday: On the first day of Holy Week—the week before Easter Sunday that recounts the events of the last week of Jesus’ life and circumstances of his death—the church celebrates Palm Sunday, named for the palm branches waved and laid before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem for the last time. The church has dubbed it the triumphal entry, but Jesus himself considered it a tragedy. Why? In Luke’s gospel, he weeps over the city and predicts its destruction because the people still didn’t know the things that make for peace, that they missed the hour of their visitation. And it’s in the tragedy of the people’s missed opportunity that we find the true significance of Palm Sunday—how it shows us the first step toward Jesus’ truth and only Way to the Father. The people cheering Jesus into the city saw only what they wanted to see, what their fear would allow them to see, as they imagined Jesus as their savior—the fixer of all their problems. And the silent onlookers, invested in the status quo,

Dave Brisbin 3.29.20 Fascinating thing about human nature is that we will do almost anything to avoid uncertainty and find meaning in the events and circumstances around us. And the bigger the event or circumstance, the bigger the cause needs to be to give the event the meaning we crave. But events, circumstances, and object don’t have meaning in themselves—they’re inanimate objects. If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it mean anything at all? It’s we who must bring meaning to the events and circumstances we experience. When we stop asking why something is happening, what it means in itself and start asking how it is teaching us and growing us, then meaning becomes clear…not in the event or circumstance but in ourselves. The first few verses of the book of James could have been written to us right now in the middle of this pandemic. James is trying to get his own people, faced with the persecution and societal meltdown of mid first century Israel, to completely reframe the

Dave Brisbin 3.22.20 On the first Sunday of COVI-19 lockdown, streaming to those in self-isolation, the surreal quality of living the reality of a pandemic outbreak is amplified. In just a week of lockdown, many of us are already strongly feeling the effects of disconnection from each other and the regular routines of life that once connected us. How can we best help each other in times like these—or any times? As always, Jesus gives us the principles: establish authentic connection first, see others and their needs as they really are, respond with action that because it is grounded in connection is always relevant, always feels like love. Connection always takes precedence over program—connection is the only program that matters. Those who are really making a difference during this crisis are those continuing to extend themselves to others, letting their actions flow from really knowing who they are flowing to. The uncertainty of a time like this raises a thousand questions, and maddeningly, the questions we

Dave Brisbin 3.15.20 There’s an elephant in the room, and there’s no sense not addressing it. The COVID-19 outbreak is unprecedented in the way it is changing our way of life, and there’s a sense that things may never be the same, just as they never were after 9/11. With schools, churches, conventions, restaurants, sporting events, all public venues shutting down, with supermarket shelves empty and people fighting over bathroom tissue, we all want to know how long this will last and how bad will it get? The truth is, no one knows—and that is what is most frightening. In a great article titled the Psychology of Uncertainty, psychologists show us how our brains will do almost anything to avoid uncertainty. Uncertainty can’t be fought, planned for, or outrun. It is the real spirit killer. How can we live through uncertain times like these with our spirits and humanity intact? The short answer is faith, but not as a platitude. Our need for certainty and control has distorted our understanding of what faith origin

Dave Brisbin 3.8.20 If we are to be persuaded to try to make this Lent a transforming process, the creation of a new habitual way of living in greater presence, it’s important for us to have realistic expectation of the result. Most of us would say that we expect peace in some form, and by that we mean we want any and all hurting to stop, an absence of the pain and longing that characterize so many of our lives. But Jesus never promised this. He said that he gives us his peace in one passage, then says that he didn’t come to bring peace, but the sword in another. It’s not until we translate his sayings back into Aramaic that his meaning comes clear. When I was just starting my spiritual formation decades ago, a mentoring pastor said he saw in me a “divine dissatisfaction,” a spiritual unrest and longing for something I couldn’t quite define. When we look at the clues left us in scripture, it becomes more and more apparent that this divine dissatisfaction is there for a reason, and we should pray it never leav

Dave Brisbin 3.1.20 I often say that I’m a teacher, not preacher, by which I mean that a preacher’s main purpose is to persuade, and a teacher’s is to encourage students to engage. Both impart information, but the agenda is different. That said, there are things I do want to persuade my listeners: to be intimately part of a faith community and to passionately engage their own spiritual journeys. How this is done is entirely up to them, but this Lent I have been trying to persuade everyone to use this time to try to establish a new habitual way of making themselves more present to whoever and whatever occupies their moments—and therefore to God in the moment. How is it that we are persuaded to do anything? A marketer says we are persuadable when someone encourages our dreams, justifies our failures, allays our fears, confirms our suspicions, and helps throw rocks at our enemies. When you think of it, these five are all included in the promises of Gospel, if in a slightly altered form than probably first intend

Dave Brisbin 2.23.20 Lent begins Wednesday as it has every year since the seventh century. What do we really know about Lent? For those of us who grew up in liturgical churches, what we learned may have had little to do with the traditions that established Lent, and what we remember now, may even subvert those ancient intentions. What does the word Lent mean? Why 40 days and how was Lent initially used in early church life? What traditions like Pancake Day, Mardi Gras, and Ash Wednesday have sprung up around it and what is their significance? But most importantly, how can we understand and even reimagine Lent to take us on a 40 day journey to the new life of Easter? If Lent became a time of fasting and deprivation as penance for sin, can we use Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness as model to begin to see Lent as affirmative action, as positive subtraction, sensory deprivation for the purpose of clearing away all that distracts from the Presence that will bring new life on Easter? Because just as Jesus’ first fol

Frank Billman 2.16.20 The way Jesus teaches, through parables, stories, and questions in response to questions, makes clear that a primary intent is to challenge the belief system of the student, to help him or her deconstruct the worldview that is now limiting their ability to see a radically different truth. We all see the world based on several filters or lenses of our personal belief system, and identifying and deconstructing them is essential to spiritual growth because most of them operate on the subconscious level and appear to us as reality itself or the voice of God. Three categories of lenses of belief are: 1)Genetic predispositions--personality type, Myers Briggs, Enneagram; 2) Childhood upbringing, parents, teachers, church; 3) Woundings and successes. There are other filters but these have a huge impact and are a good place to start. If we can began to see what is shading our accepted truth, we can take action to negate or remove the filter entirely and begin the journey Jesus is traveling.

Dave Brisbin 2.9.20 It’s natural for people to focus on law and rules because the world runs on law and rules with the threat of punishment enforcing obedience. It makes the world go round and trains run on time. And the church, as an institution, has largely run on the same premise, which then makes God guilty by association of also looking for obedience to his “law” as the means by which we are accepted and approved. But Jesus and the Hebrew prophets before him are showing us a God running on compassion and mercy instead of justice, and if we’re going to actually follow Jesus’ Way, we need to make sure we understand that mere obedience can never bring us into Kingdom as Jesus defined it. A story in the book of 1 Samuel about David and man called Naval help illustrate the notion that we can still be wicked, even with the permission of the law, that is, lawful and unloving at the same time. God is interesting in lovingkindness, with lawfulness only an external guide to that internal state of connection with

Dave Brisbin 2.2.20 Continuing a series of exploring difficult subjects, those that tend to really set off emotional triggers and divisive arguments, we have dug into the concepts of salvation, eternal life, Satan and spiritual warfare…and now the question comes about whether God’s judgment on us is predestined or if we really do have free will. Wow, no easy questions here. Just as with salvation by works or grace, there is an immediate apparent contradiction in scripture. Paul seems to directly say that God, from the beginning of time, has already picked the winners and losers—those going to heaven or hell. And Calvinist reformers 1500 years later, based on those passages and the writings of Augustine a thousand years earlier, created a belief system centered on the predestination of God’s elect. Of course, the controversy raged then and still does now, but it doesn’t take much digging to find passages that state absolutely that God draws and desire all people, not just some, to come to himself, and he wishe

Dave Brisbin 1.26.20 Decades ago, I thought it was important to challenge a Franciscan priest who said he believed that Satan was really a metaphor for our own inclination to evil. He waved me off saying that all he could do was tell me what he was convinced of; that I needed to go become convinced of what I’m convinced of. Now, decades later I am challenged for my beliefs on Satan and evil, and though there is no definitive proof from the scriptures I used then to “prove” my points, I do have a different responsibility than did the priest to at least talk a bit about them. So, is Satan “real” as we typically understand him: a sentient being dedicated to opposing God’s will and effecting our destruction? When we dig into the Hebrew scriptures from within a Hebrew context, we’re in for a shock. The scriptures present at least four different ways “ha satan,” the adversary, can be viewed, and the passages we have used to nail down our popular image of Satan aren’t even referring to such a being in the first plac