David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin 1.19.20 One of the drawbacks of the Sunday morning sermon is also its strength: uninterrupted speech. Good for developing and delivering a message, but not for conversation. And conversation, the give and take, question and answer is where ideas can really be conveyed and absorbed. And with a topic as large as salvation that was tackled last week, this Sunday is more about the conversation. Recapping the main lines of thought on salvation from last week’s “Becoming Saved” message, it seemed good to add a bit more thread. It’s hard for Westerners to get their minds around the Hebrew concept of salvation since it’s not grounded in afterlife, but here and now—as is all Jewish spirituality. It may help to understand that salvation and eternal life were equivalent terms to ancient Jews, but only if we know how eternal life was understood. Using Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus based around the famous verse, John 3:16, we get a glimpse from the Aramaic rendering of how eternal life is not life that c

Dave Brisbin 1.12.20 A friend takes me to task saying that he could see that what I write and teach would make someone want to be “saved,” but that he couldn’t see where I was actually telling anyone how to attain salvation. Based on our understanding of salvation in Western Christian tradition and Paul’s line from Romans 10: if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your hear that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, I completely understand why he would say that. But what if the Jews who wrote our scriptures, including Paul, understood salvation differently? And what about Paul then writing in Ephesians that there are no works by which we are saved but only by grace through faith and then further in Philippians that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling? What can three statements seemingly in direct contradiction with each other and an altered view of what it means to be saved by God tell us about attaining that salvation? Digging in, we find that Jesus and Pau

Dave Brisbin 1.5.20 Why are new year’s resolutions so hard to achieve? They are so hard that fewer and fewer of us actually try to make them anymore—especially those over fifty-five year of age. I suppose the older we get, the more we realize the difficulty, which lies in the fact that what we want most, resolve to do most, is not the result of a mere intellectual decision, a stated intention that we make once at the head of a new year. The things most valuable to us are always the result of repeated, ongoing action, discipline, and dedication until the change “takes.” Whether a reputation, character, stopping smoking, or losing weight, a marriage: if we’re not saying “I do” everyday, we’re ultimately saying “I don’t.” This is the same reason it’s so hard to follow Jesus. Because what we consider salvation is not an intellectual decision or stated intention either. Jesus specifically calls himself the “way,” the clear implication that following him is not an event but a process of showing up every day to a ra

Dave Brisbin 12.29.19 Anticipating a new year and new decade, how best to prepare and direct ourselves? How best to find the hope, peace, and assurance we need to remain undeterred and undistracted amid the noise and chaos of another year? Coming from an unexpected direction, I get a phone call from a licensed clinical psychologist, a PhD who had a near death experience that was so profound that he had to write about it, asking if I would be willing to read his manuscript. His story stood out among other such experiences I’ve read in its sincere attempt at objectively describing what is inherently a radically subjective and ultimately inexpressible experience—an experience of pure presence, of God’s presence—yet completely devoid of religious imagery. And most interestingly, his description matched in some cases almost word for word the experiences of the mystics and contemplatives who have written for millennia. Whether external circumstances like illness or accident bring us to the point where ego is comple

theeffect 12.22.19 theeffect’s Christmas service as a seamless presentation of music and story combines the scripture passages of Jesus’ nativity with original and curated writing, all centering on the incredible story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 between the trenches of the Western Front of World War One in Belgium and northern France. A spontaneous ceasefire in which muddy, exhausted soldiers were able to see themselves in the muddy, exhausted soldiers sometimes only fifty yards away across No Man’s Land. And though wearing different uniforms, these soldiers found the same humanity, hopes, and dreams that Christmas promised nineteen hundred years before and still promises today.

Dave Brisbin 12.15.19 Has the Star of Bethlehem ever fascinated you? The Star that led the Magi to Jesus…what was it really? A miraculous star that appeared and behaved like no other star ever did or could? Or a natural, but perfectly or supernaturally timed astronomical event like a comet, supernova, conjunction of planets or some other anomaly as many scholars have suggested? But even such events, if natural, could never behave as Matthew describes the Star behaving: going before the Magi, unseen by Herod and his advisors, and then stopping and standing over the place of Jesus’ birth. Is there any possible astronomical event that could account for all Matthew’s details? In our continued look at the account of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke, we look at the Star like a forensic detective sifting through the clues left in the gospel to see what may actually have happened. And surprisingly, if we’re willing to look in a direction that is often forbidden in modern, Western Christianity, we find there is one t

Dave Brisbin 12.08.19 There’s a word little known in Western Christianity that was a foundation of Hebrew spirituality, appearing throughout both Old and New Testaments. Anawim, plural for anawv in Hebrew, literally means to “bow down” but by extension means lowly, poor, oppressed, or marginalized. But more than that, it refers to people who have accepted this position in life, see themselves as vulnerable and dependent, and are grateful for all provision—realizing that ultimately they must rely on God rather than themselves for sustenance. The humility, submission, and grateful vulnerability of the anawim were understood as the ideal attitude toward life and God, and that it was primarily an interior attitude of heart that was easier to attain if physically poor as well, but available to even the wealthiest. The anawim are held up as the inheritors of God’s kingdom from the Psalms to the Beatitudes, and all the great figures of faith in scripture are anawim at heart regardless of their station in life. Mary

Dave Brisbin 12.01.19 Why is there so much depression and anxiety at Christmas? One psychologist writes that there are three reasons: the demands of time, preparation, activities, and finances; family dysfunctional issues that are highlighted during the season; and inability to meet expectations placed on us both physically and emotionally. When you think about it, we first experience Christmas as children—learn what our culture says it’s supposed to be through a child’s eyes. And it’s a perfect storm for children: from three feet off the ground, the lights, decorations, candy, treats, magical beliefs, gifts, suspense, and anticipation create a breathless wonder. How do we expect to recreate all that through our adult eyes, looking at a different world from six feet off the ground? To recreate Christmas as our hearts remember it, is to recreate the world in our hearts as the child sees it. This is Jesus’ message to us—that the Kingdom he’s leading us toward is only experienced from three feet off the ground,

Dave Brisbin 11.24.19 In the run up to Thanksgiving, we take a pause to ask if anyone knows who established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in the first place. Our thoughts tend to go back to Pilgrims and Native Americans collaborating, but it was surprising to most that it was Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, who instituted Thanksgiving. This is ironic on two fronts: that Thanksgiving was born in the middle of the darkest period in American history, and born of Lincoln, a man of near constant depression at the most stressful time in his life. What allowed Lincoln, as he put it in his Thanksgiving proclamation to see the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies, and the continued beauty of the land and its people outside the theater of conflict? And how did he continue to acknowledge the divine source of that beauty and fullness in spite of his own personal loss and that of the country? Gratitude is an amazing thing. People choose to embrace or not, it seems, based on their ability t

Dave Brisbin 11.17.19 Launching a new book is a crazy process. An all-consuming process. A process that takes on a life of its own and sweeps author and marketing team up into a whirlwind of deadlines, strategy, tasks, and emotion. But what does it all really mean? A book hopefully has meaning poured into its pages, but once it becomes a product to be sold, is there any real meaning left— to it and the process of selling it? As with all the tasks, causes, careers, and activities of life, where is the meaning? Maria Montessori said that play is the work of the child, and toys are the tools of that work. We dismiss child’s play as inconsequential and look to our work in the adult world as significant and meaningful. But just as the real meaning of child’s play lies in the motor skills, socialization, and problem solving being learned, the real meaning of the processes of the adult world lies in the humility, vulnerability, interdependence, and connection in relationship that we are learning if we’re paying atte

Frank Billman 11.10.19 If you think about it, we eventually get what we’re looking for. But if we have an ironclad definition of what we’re looking for, we won’t accept anything, however true, if it doesn’t look like the image we already have in mind. A forgone conclusion, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. When it comes to things of faith, most of us have the image in mind of finding the certainty of a faith proven by scripture, church, creed, and doctrine—that if we just master those elements, we will have the certainty for which we crave. But on closer inspection, another image arises: that faith is not about certainty, but about embracing the mystery at the core of life and choosing and taking action as if certain things that can never be proven are actually true…becoming personally convinced along the way. We have lived under the assumption that mastery will take us to faith, but faith as defined by scripture is telling us to make friends with the mystery that will teach us to live in the fearless vuln

Dave Brisbin 11.3.19 If we really accept Jesus’ original challenge to “sell” everything we think we know and cling to for support and survival, what happens? What changes? The short answer is that we descend into a time of voluntary disorientation and disturbance sometimes bordering on panic as we realize our whole worldview wasn’t actually reality but just a set of beliefs, a filter on the world that we chose for ourselves or was chosen for us. And once we’ve looked behind the curtain, everything changes. But to be more specific, if we’re looking at the church and our faith, what changes and in which direction? In his book, a Quaker pastor describes ten new ways to look at Christian faith and church—ways that are possible to see and accept only after we’ve let go of our preconceptions and inherited beliefs. Can we find support for these new directions in the teachings of Jesus? And if we can, then these new ways of looking at church aren’t new at all. They are the reflection of Jesus’ original intent that we

Dave Brisbin 10.27.19 In speaking about the pain and disturbance of breaking out into larger spheres of awareness—being born again intellectually and spiritually—an ancient Chinese philosopher says, “you can’t speak of ocean to a wellfrog, the creature of a narrow sphere; you can’t speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season.” To that I would add, “you can’t speak of perfect love to a human being, the creature of a broken heart.” Our broken hearts, as surely as the frog’s well or insect’s lifespan, wall us off from something so far from our imagined reality as to be inconceivable. How is it possible for us to break through the hurt, trauma, and need for defensive posture just long enough to glimpse the ocean of God’s love? The quick answer is faith—reeling off from the book of Hebrews that without faith it is impossible to please God. But that verse, so often used as a club over the head of the slightest admission of doubt or vulnerability, as if faith was the power we wield over uncertainty an

Dave Brisbin 10.20.19 Continuing on the previous week’s theme of Playing the Scriptures—finding the inspiration of scripture in the real time connection between inspired author, God, and inspired reader—what is our real relationship with scripture? The Quran, Islam’s sacred book, calls Jews and Christians “people of the book,” noting our special relationship and reverence for the text. But this focus on the text of scripture itself, the need to intellectually understand it as God’s revelation to humanity, has only brought two thousand years of division and persecution, resulting in tens of thousands of Christian denominations worldwide today. Is there another way to read scripture that heals divisions and brings us back shoulder to shoulder in shared meaning and purpose? Seems that is exactly what Paul is trying to do in his first letter to the Corinthians as he tries to heal the divisions among people focusing on different teachers with different interpretations, pledging allegiance to different factions am

Dave Brisbin 10.13.19 It is so interesting that bible scholars and commentators for two thousand years have agreed on very little that they read of God’s word and have violently disagreed often as not. And yet the mystics and contemplatives among us seem to unanimously agree on everything they know of God. Maybe it’s not so strange when you consider that scholars are reading words and mystics are experiencing presence, but do written words and unwritten experience necessarily lead to different results? Only when we get so immersed in the words that we lose sight of the experience they were originally meant to convey. Just as written music in notes and bar lines is not the music itself but a bridge between the sound in an inspired composer’s mind and the sound from the hands of an inspired performer, the words of written scripture are not God himself, but the bridge between the experience of an inspired relationship with God and the inspired experience of the reader. Both written music and scripture are meant

Dave Brisbin 10.6.19 Some twenty-five plus years ago, I walk into the office of a Franciscan priest, bible in hand, to debate a specific doctrinal issue, and before I can get more than a sentence out, he puts his big hand up in the universal stop sign and says: All I can tell you is what I’m convinced of. You go become convinced of what you’re convinced of. At the time, it seemed a supreme evasion, but as years went on, I realized it’s the only thing one person can say to another about the deep things that really matter and can only be proven to ourselves by ourselves. And now as a pastor these past seventeen years, how many times have I said the same to someone with bible in hand as an opening to a very different conversation? The genius of Jesus is to recognize that the truth that really sets us free can’t be transferred to our heads as second hand knowledge, but only applied directly to our hearts as first person experience. The Way of Jesus is an active partnership, a way of living with God, not a passive

Dave Brisbin 9.29.19 If you ask anyone what they really want out of life, you’ll get a variety of answers from health, wealth, relationship, family, love to meaningful work, purpose, a cause, making a difference to peace and serenity. But why do we want all those things? Because ultimately we believe they will make us happy. But happiness may not be the right word because it implies emotions that are ephemeral. Contentment. Solid, reliable, evergreen contentment. Ultimately, if we have that, we have it all. But we know the stories: people who have most or all items on those lists, still don’t have contentment. So what is contentment made of? Where does it come from? What will reliably make us content? Imitating Jesus, the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the third and fourth centuries left their cities, towns, and villages to live in the seclusion of the deserts of Egypt and Judea in search of the truth that would make them free enough to be content. Their stories give us the clues we need to understand that con

Dave Brisbin 9.22.19 Years ago, I drove all the way to Death Valley deep in the Mojave desert, arriving late at night so I could walk out into a dune field under a really dark sky to see the stars. I wasn’t disappointed. The vast canopy turned overhead with the band of the galaxy angling across, and from my dunetop perch, I felt close to the stars. But was I any closer there than here in the city where I can count the stars on a couple of hands, or during the day when no stars pierce the blue curtain at all? Truth is, the stars are just where they are all the time, whether we can see them or not. And more mind bendingly, there are stars beneath our feet as well. It’s just that the ball we’re standing on always obscures. God’s presence is like the stars—always there whether we see/feel it or not. To realize that God’s presence overhead can be obscured by the rising of our nearest star—our own consciousness, and God’s presence beneath our feet is hidden by our focus on the needs of our physical lives and our ve

Dave Brisbin 9.15.19 Our main mission at theeffect is to reintroduce Jesus to Western people. To meet Jesus again for the first time is to meet an ancient, Eastern Jesus who can speak again for himself, stripped of two thousand years of Western commentary and interpretation. And looking at Jesus through the eyes of those who followed first, hearing him from his own context and worldview, what is the essence, the foundation of his life and message? That’s what we really want to know, but to simply know is only an open doorway. Jesus’ real message is about what happens when we walk through and what it costs to walk through. To say that Jesus’ essential message is love is both true and misleading at the same time. The Father’s love that Jesus is trying to convey is so absolute and radical that it levels each and every one of us in the sameness of its indiscriminate covering. We strive our entire lives to be different, to be above, beyond, better, bigger, than others in order to be noticed, loved, and accepted. B

Dave Brisbin 9.8.19 One of my most indelible memories is freefalling from twelve thousand five hundred feet. All these years later, my skydive remains both a clear memory and a clear metaphor. To do an accelerated freefall— jump without a jumpmaster strapped to your back, meant eight hours of training on the ground. And all day long I felt the fear growing until it was at the base of my throat as I stood holding the edge of the open door of a plane looking down at over two miles of air. As long as I was holding the door, I had a choice to jump or not…and I also had fear. But as soon as I pushed off, after the initial shock, I settled down to the business of doing what I was trained to do. Once the choice of whether to jump was removed and a sequence of events started that would end at the ground one way or another, all that was left was to trust the people who had jumped before and survived, my training and the bedsheet on my back, and to simply enjoy the ride. The fear was gone. After my jump, I began to rea