DECONSTRUCTION with Brad Jersak

[Music] oh that i could see your face [Music] holy grace [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] and the souls are the songs of the kingdom of god [Music] beauty is shining from your face always long to see this place is there somewhere i can stay even just [Music] [Applause] [Music] who are crying [Music] and their souls are the songs of the kingdom of god [Music] the lord is our shepherd [Music] over and over for now and forever for now and forever [Applause] forever [Applause] oh well good morning friends welcome to our live stream service we are glad that you are here um we want to connect with you so if you want to join our zoom session you can do that by clicking below on the link we want to see your face and stare at each other awkwardly while we worship that's a joke we don't want to do that but we do want to connect so write a comment on youtube say something we want to know that you are there and want to try to be as embodied and present as we can i'm really excited not to say that stuff in the future because it seems like things are starting to open up so yay um welcome everyone wherever you are coming from at whatever time you're watching or re-watching this we believe the lord has brought you here we invite you to open up your heart to the peace of christ this morning if you have been tracking with us last sunday we had a wonderful guest in this sunday we have an awesome guest as well brad uh jersey is going to be sharing the word with us and those of us who are familiar with his writings are just really excited to have him sort of in the room so we invite you to enter into this time of worship as we prepare our hearts um as we take a posture that allows us to enter into this time together to to look forward to to long for a better revelation of who christ is in our midst so this trinity sunday we we turn to our call to worship i will lead and i'll invite you to respond with jenny blessing of father spirit son holy trinity three and one be in our meeting and in our greeting in the worship we share and the words of our be in our prayer and in our breathing that through our hearts and our words your truth may be heard amen amen let's worship together [Music] god our father giver of daily bread blessing our hands and covering our heads hear our prayers lead us into your peace drawing and comforting all those [Music] [Music] me [Music] me [Music] holy spirit [Music] jesus [Music] me [Music] [Music] me [Music] losing power [Music] me [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] with me [Music] [Music] [Music] in amen so this next song when we sing it we get the opportunity to do it in different languages and last time we sang it in spanish which was peak moment at pilgrim history just the best and this time uh similar we're going to sing it in mandarin so so jenny is going to lead us in that part so what we're going to do right now is we're going to for those who don't know this i'm going to teach you the course in english it has a bit of a call and response and then we're going to learn it in mandarin so in in english it goes like this [Music] he shall reign he shall reign she shall reign now jenny say it in mandarin just so that we can all hear it the the chorus uh all right so now we're going to sing that uh jenny's going to lead it and you all repeat with me [Music] let's try that one more time [Music] [Applause] [Music] so let us join now and declare that jesus is lord and caesar is not and that he is lord over all of creation come broken [Music] creation rejoice our child our savior our healing he brings [Applause] what freedom what consolation she shall reign shall reign [Music] [Applause] [Music] he shall reign [Music] with justice and peace [Music] all [Music] all nations and earth [Music] will bow down to him oh [Applause] [Music] [Music] is [Applause] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] shall we [Music] one more time he shall reign [Music] we worship you jesus we praise you for who you are we lift up a hymn of gratefulness this morning [Music] sing for the beauty for the beauty of the earth for the glory of the skies for the love which from our birth over and around us lies are hymn of grateful praise for the beauty of each [Music] [Music] and hour and stars of light lord of all to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise for the joy for the joy of human love brother sister [Music] lord of all to thee we raise this are him of grateful praise [Music] for the church that ever [Music] lives holy hands above offering upon every shore her pure sacrifice of love lord of all our hymn of grateful praise lord of all to thee we race grateful praise [Music] let's just continue in this moment and tend to god's presence i want to wait in silence and i invite you to just take in a deep breath breathe in the spirit which is present everywhere and cast your anxieties and cares on him because god cares for you holy spirit we thank you for your presence and on this trinity sunday we name you god who's revealed his relationship of loving persons father son and holy spirit and lord when life success can never be fully achieved or we're dealing with loss and despair lord you speak to all of those places in our lives and this morning we want to choose to enter into being in relationship with others that push us beyond and so we wait on you today in jesus name amen amen thank you for joining us this morning um we have we're going to continue on a worship today with some of these elements of scripture and body life so please join with us as we continue on today's common lectionary comes from john 3 verses 1 through 17. jesus and nicodemus there was a pharisee named nicodemus a jewish leader he came to jesus at night and said to him rabbi we know that you are a teacher who has come from god for no one could do these miraculous signs that you do unless god is with him jesus answered i assure you unless someone is born anew it is not possible to see god's kingdom nicodemus asked how is it possible for an adult to be born it's impossible to enter the mother's womb for a second time and be born isn't it jesus answered i assure you unless someone is born of water and the spirit it's not possible to enter god's kingdom whatever is born of the flesh is flesh and whatever is born of the spirit is spirit don't be surprised that i said to you you must be born anew god's spirit blows wherever it wishes you hear it sound but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going it's the same with everyone who is born of the spirit nicodemus said how are these things possible jesus answered you are a teacher of israel and you don't know these things i assure you that we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen but you don't receive our testimony if i have told you about earthly things and you don't believe how will you believe if i tell you about heavenly things no one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven the human one just as moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness so must the human one be lifted up so that everyone who believes him will have eternal life god so loved the world that he gave his only son that everyone who believes in him won't perish but will have eternal life god didn't send his son into the world to judge the world but that the world might be saved through him this is the gospel of the lord let's affirm our faith together we believe in one god the father the almighty maker of heaven and earth of all that is seen and unseen we believe in one lord jesus christ the only son of god eternally begotten of the father god from god light from light true god from true god begotten not made of one being with the father through him all things were made for us and our for our salvation he came down from heaven was incarnate of the holy spirit and the virgin mary and became truly human for our sake he was crucified under pontius pilate he suffered death and was buried on the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end we believe in the holy spirit the lord the giver of life who proceeds from the father who with the father and the son is worshiped and glorified who has spoken through the prophets we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come amen and now will you agree with me in prayer heavenly father we thank you for your faithfulness to faithfulness to us as a church family and this morning we rejoice knowing that we will be able to gather together as a body in person so very soon we know that you've been so gracious and merciful to us that you've continued to draw people to yourself during this pandemic that we've been able to connect with one another through our home groups and that you continue to speak truth into our lives we are truly grateful that we have hopeful news that the pandemic will come to an end soon and lord today we remember that there are still millions of people who are still suffering from the effects of the pandemic we pray for people who are facing food insecurity and lack of access to medical treatment and vaccines people who are reeling from loss of loved ones father only you know the heartache and pain of each individual but you call us to bear one another's burdens we pray that you will open our eyes to the ways in which we can do we can bring healing here and for our neighbors as well as for people across the world and today in our own country we also want to remember those children whose remains were found on the grounds of the residential school we know it might just be a news story but we grieve with those families whose children never returned home and we are saddened that so many acts of abuse were carried out in your name we ask for your forgiveness as people who call ourselves christians but who are often too blinded by our own self-righteousness and arrogance that we have neglected to act justly to love mercy and to walk humbly and so lord may we follow you closely and we ask that you would teach us to know how to build bridges to be peacemakers to be healers teach us how to love each other this day that we may have life and have it abundantly in you in christ and through the holy spirit in jesus name we pray amen let us confess our sins to the one who gives life eternally let's try this again let us confess our sins to the one who gives life eternally to lift us up hear this declaration sisters and brothers hear the good news we did not receive the spirit of slavery but rather the spirit of adoption your guilt has departed your sin is blotted out for you are god's beloved children forgiven loved and free may god's peace be with you thank you maureen and jenny and andres for leading us as we worship and recenter um we're going to just share a little bit of a few more things spotlights here this morning and talk about giving before we introduce our guest and uh again thank you for joining us today on live stream the spotlights are uh next sunday we are meeting in person at the two locations pilgrim at uh 41st and inverness and emanuel's campus which is at 40th and quebec and for those of you that are unfamiliar with that we're just couple blocks west of knight and 45th and the other campus is located just a couple one block west and one block north of maine and 41st so right here in south central vancouver so join us you do have to rsvp if you go to the website pilgrimchurch.ca right on the top of the page there is an rsvp link there so please fill that out we can only do 50 indoors of course you got to wear your masks and all of the normal stuff there is information about that too that we sent out this week and we will resend out again um so we're regathering and we are joining together with our mother congregation emmanuel uh so we will be uh i want to encourage you to to mix it up between the locations and uh yeah so we're gonna start to worship together for june as we explore what does it mean if we're better together and this church merger process that we have been in conversation about for the last few months so again please go rsvp we'd love to be able to have the problem of adding another gathering um i just want to say if the science and fear uh led us sort of into being super cautious for the last 14 or so months let the science and hope lead you out of lockdown as well and there's some articles in writing going on that some people are because this is so changed how they function it may take some time for us to embrace the same sort of science that brought us to into all the precautions to also lead us back out as people are vaccinated and as we are following safety precautions as well and so i encourage you uh to use that same journey don't um what would we say don't become sort of an anti-science person on the recovery side so we want to go through the full cycle here the other uh spotlights this morning are we doing a summer book study we have chosen the book analog church by jake kim and he is a pastor at village church in california talking about the importance of embodied practices including things like gathering and that digital only goes so far it'll be really interesting this summer because we want to wade into the conversation about while we continue live stream live stream is not a replacement for the gathering and what happens when we serve one another minister to one another in those communities and so we're gonna wrestle with this book uh there's some interesting articles out there just even this week i read uh about one church that's ending their live stream because they want to focus on the importance of these things like analog church and getting us reformed as disciples as we're in community so good stuff this summer finally if you want to connect with us at a deeper level please subscribe to our e-newsletter that goes out every week there's information that gets sent out we also send out texts to our church as well to remind people of various things but it's a way to stay in touch and engage uh and then of course if you're not in a home church we are in the tail end of the home church season before we break for summer but you can jump into home church even during summer but it's mainly just hanging out activities as we're allowed to do so now some of that in bc so please join a home church as well okay i think that's enough spotlights if you want to support what we're doing here at pilgrim church we encourage you to give make us a part of your normal whatever it is weekly bi-weekly monthly budget to support the work of the church and what we're doing here we are community the organization exists solely to support the organism the living organic thing and so that's how we see it and we want to keep those things moving if we want it to go beyond ourselves into the next generation we build the organization around it to support the organism to support the organic thing giving is one way we do that it's a spiritual discipline it helps build it up it helps move it beyond ourselves and three people like us and to go into a bigger circle so thank you for giving you can give three ways by sending a check to the church old school canada post snail mail you can give through paypal anywhere in the world or you can give through e-transfer here in canada of course uh email giving at pilgrimchurch.ca giving at signpilgrimchurch.ca and that's how you can give to support the work of ministry here let's pray as we prepare to transition into our teaching time today lord we do thank you for this opportunity we have to gather virtually online and we thank you that it is a gift and yet it is an incomplete gift and as we move towards in-person services slowly and cautiously following the science because all truth is your truth lord uh out of it as we follow the science and fear into lockdown lord help us to follow science and hope out of lockdown and to regather as a people for the sake of our city for the blessing of others for our mental health for our spiritual life as well lord we also pray today for those that are giving thank you for the giver today thank you for those that have made this part of their budget and spiritual discipline refusing the lies of consumerism refusing the lies that they need to spend it all on themselves and limited return things versus eternally returning things as we invest in others beyond our kin and immediate friend circle so lord thank you for setting us free from the control of money lord all the other things that we've named today we thank you for and also be with our guest today as he prepares to walk us through some of the conversation around deconstruction in jesus name amen amen so this morning uh it's my honor to introduce a guest who's joining us uh via his home out in the valley here in the greater vancouver area his name is brad jerzac and good morning brad welcome we are excited to have you with us today i i can see him so hopefully the rest of you can as well uh just a little bit about brad i'm not going to do a full bio but i do encourage you later after the after his talk this morning to visit his website at bradjurzak.com brad has written many books in fact and he's involved in the academic world he's an author some of the books that i think have really spoken to some of us at pilgrim are specifically the ones about a more christ-like way and a more christ-like god and so we invite brad this is the second time he's joined us today and of course we're honored that he was able to make time for us um but to talk about the idea of deconstruction we're seeing that as a real buzz word right now um how people are wrestling with faith or leaving faith or blowing up faith and there's a whole range and so when i was emailing with brad i we had a couple topics and i said what about this one and and he has done some speaking on this before and so i'm excited that he's going to kind of lead us in this time and hopefully help us ask new questions better questions and wrestle with deconstruction and our hope at pilgrim is that we create a church where many people do have to go through faith deconstruction outside of the church but a place where at least it's safer to have those conversations that god can handle our questions and that we can be a community for people truly on a pilgrimage on a journey so brad thank you and welcome we're so glad you're joining us today i'm just going to hand it over to you and uh if you were in a room i'd say everyone at pilgrim let's give brad a warm pilgrim welcome our volunteer team is just giving you the welcome today so thanks so much uh let's pray so father in heaven we thank you for your son the lord jesus who's given us the gift of the holy spirit through whom we have trinity living inside and we we do depend on you today lord that uh you would open the eyes of our heart to see what we need to see in just what we need to ingest and uh forget the rest in jesus name amen well it's good to be back with you sort of i say sort of not as in good sort of but as in with you sort of and it's really lovely to uh be part of this congregation even from afar and michelle was saying we want to talk a little bit about this buzzword hashtag deconstruction today you know it has become almost like a new kind of evangelism where people give their testimony about when they went through deconstruction well when i went through my deconstruction and and where are you at your deconstruction and then you give your testimony and it's in that sense terribly evangelical and and we we may not think of it that way in fact some of the images that come to mind you'll see in this next slide uh where we've come to reduce deconstruction um to these models and metaphors and like let's look at this one uh is it a jackhammer for you is it tearing down something because for many people that that is sort of the sum total of of deconstruction is taking apart and rightly so in fact taking apart and reassembling isn't a half of it and we're we're going to see later how perhaps jesus christ is the greatest deconstructionist in history and he used many metaphors for this in fact we referred to a few of them already in this service one was in the passage where he's talking with nicodemus you must be born again well that's definitely about a deconstruction and reconstruction but it's a different metaphor and uh speaking of that uh deconstruction well what did and what was his name enoga montoya the fellow from the princess bride deconstruction i do not think it means what you think it means um the truth is that deconstruction was a term coined by jacques derrida the philosopher in the 1960s and for jacques derrida it was not about tearing down and building up the word literally meant for him becoming more mindful about the way we use words and how words themselves can privilege power and how we need to attend to the way buzzwords are being used to establish agendas and being much more mindful about that well in that light i want to deconstruct deconstruction today that is i want to be more mindful about what that how that word is being used today and how it's a metaphor but one of many metaphors and perhaps not the best one if we were just thinking that we need to deconstruct in the sense of in that tearing down sense for some deconstruction has been a delight in fact it's a little bit like being a kite and learning to fly what i'm noticing now though over time is how kites that cut their own strings may seem delighted at first but i've been seeing a lot of them hung up in trees i get a lot of messages from people about how their deconstruction began as just this liberation and somehow somewhere along the way they didn't only lose and leave behind the toxic elements of faith but they lost their faith altogether worse than that they even lost a sense of meaning and i i get so many messages from people who are saying now what i've done deconstruction and i'm hung up and i'm tied up and i'm bound up and and i have not only lost sight of jesus i've i've lost sight of why i'm alive and they're absolutely bereft um so although there's a lot of glee around deconstruction and in fact online quite a bit of positivity about it that positivity tends to silence those who've experienced it in more traumatic ways i think about my mom when she went through a mastectomy and how for some i've been told that deconstruction has been like that for them in other words they knew there was a cancer that had to go in their faith in their church life in their religious journey whatever uh whatever for them seemed like a tumor that could become fatal to them so deconstruction became like a mastectomy but for those uh like my mom who went through that it's like you don't get to choose how much of your breast in your own tissue you lose and there's incredible grief and loss about that and especially for those who were sold that it was going to be this great thing it's like yahoo we get to be progressive and woke and all of this stuff now and and it's like well wait a minute i lost more than i thought i would and to me that's that's really uh sad and tragic and it requires empathy it's not to say you shouldn't deconstruct oh it's not about shouldn't uh i underwent it and i didn't have a choice i went through a theological deconstruction that actually went quite well because i had support around me but when i went through a personal deconstruction through trauma and tragedy that left me wondering if god is good and to be trusted that's not something i signed up for but it's something i had to pass through and perhaps though the metaphors we use will help it help us um in fact midwife us through the process of whatever born again means now for us so the the first common metaphor the most common one almost to me looks like like a demolition and so we end up blowing things up we sometimes end up blowing up more than we bargained for and if it's just about demolition of faith that's certainly what not what darada was talking about what he might say is a true deconstruction acts asks the question what needs to be demolished what doesn't need to be demolished and what does the word demolition do to our process are you demo demolishing the church you can try are you demolishing bad theology i hope so are you demolishing your faith or the faith what's how's that working for you certainly i wouldn't want you to demolish your heart your heart is precious that's where this stuff is happening and so i want to i want to bring us through some alternative metaphors um the next one might be renovation so instead of demolition you know we do renovation and my my wife and i love these renovation shows we'll just you know during covert we've been binge watching the renovation shows and i here's what i notice the really coolest ones are not when they bulldoze the whole house it's when people like my mom for example they see paint on the floor and they begin scraping and they're like bradley that's solid oak and they begin to pull back old cracked plaster and they find these incredible places these incredible old bricks from the 1850s that are probably worth five dollars a brick now and and so in a renovation we're not just doing the bulldozer work well maybe our faith needs a renovation and maybe what's under that old ugly ratty shag carpet is beautiful flooring and and uh two by six beams and a solid skeleton that just got covered over and needs to be pulled back uh some renovations do require sledgehammer here and there where you knock out a wall to make more space for living right i want to open space concept in my heart and we can see how wonderful that would be and that's so moving from demolition to the language of renovation helps but how about detox and rehab there's a whole nother metaphor and so some people have to detox from how they studied scripture i had to detox from how i prayed my prayer life had it had descended into such an ugly kind of manipulation trying to get god to obey me and then being disappointed when he didn't do what i told him that i i had to detox from prayer and that doesn't mean i stopped praying altogether but i reduced my entire prayer life to lord jesus christ son of god have mercy on me i did that for about six months that's all i prayed ever and i wouldn't tell god what to do and then after that i got a little bolder and it began to pray the lord's prayer probably for the next six months and it did seem bolder than i dared be but jesus did say when you pray pray this our father who art in heaven so i began to do that so i went through this detox time and then began to rehabilitate my prayer life i began to rehabilitate my scripture reading i began to rehabilitate my relationship to the faith community where i realized i needed to move from rescuer to helper in other words i had become codependent and uh and so detox and rehab and i know that some some folks uh their church experience had been so bad they're detoxing from faith community but detox isn't meant to last forever and when we do a det talks hopefully you're not still in detox a month later a year later five years later because that leads to alienation and so some of my friends are like i'm so glad to be away from the spiritual abuse that i went through in church and now i'm living in alienation and i don't have a faith community so i think there's something precious about thinking in terms of of your church as a rehabilitation center where there's belonging where there's gathering where there's healing where you're being restored from old ways of seeing into a new healthier pattern now we also have a kind of detox and cleanse that we do not just in addictions but with food and some of you have done a detox and cleanse with your diets and um i gotta say i don't do a whole lot of that although i'm in the orthodox church and if i were keeping all the fasts i would be an intermittent vegan and that's just how the fasts of the historic church work but for those who do the hardcore detox and cleanse you know what it's like um it well here's here's a secret it gets smelly and that's because toxins are being pushed out of your system and so to do the detox and cleanse sometimes our friends think we're backsliding right and and in reality what's happening is just uh we're letting go of things and we look messy and people might be concerned about us and they might pray for us i'm like uh so when my mom sees you know me going through a spiritual detox she might say bradley i'm praying for him like please do i welcome it just don't think that's going to clean clean up the mess in the short term now brian zohn introduced another model to me a metaphor art restoration and there's this famous story maybe you've seen this picture uh where cecilia jimenez saw this uh this icon in a spanish church and and she it's called eke homo which means behold the man behold the man and it was an icon of jesus and so as an amateur art restorer she offered her services and we'll get we're going to see in this next slide how it turned out um and she actually made it such a botched job that it became this world famous thing and and the nickname became ek mono which is like behold the ape and now you can get like this horrendous uh you know picture on t-shirts and stuff it's a it's a merch item uh but the truth is like there's a lesson in this and the lesson for me is this if you're going through some kind of deconstruction don't just let anybody manage the art restoration you and your faith are a masterpiece and certainly you don't allow amateurs who are making memes on instagram to be your guides through some kind of art restoration that ends up actually defacing the faith defacing jesus defacing you uh the flip side to this is as you if you haven't have an expert a mentor now here's a famous painting called salvatore mundi which is has to do with savior of the world or savior of the universe on the left side we see that uh this was a a really uh cracked and scratched painting and then others came along and they had tried to fix it so they'd put lacquers on it and they'd add touch-ups with other paint and so on to the point where the painting was just discarded and it passed through a series of hands it disappeared for decades or even centuries and then at some point someone bought it for 40 pounds about 80 dollars at the time at a house auction but then a particular woman thought i'm i'm going to restore this piece of art and she carefully expertly began to strip off the added paints the layers of lacquers the botch job restorations because she had a suspicion and at some point she was working on the on the corner edge of jesus mouth there and then she realized oh my goodness this is a da vinci it ended up being fully restored as you see on the right and it was sold for 450 million dollars uh what a difference compared to the last and the thing is uh christ is worth way more than 450 million dollars the gospel is worth way more than 450 million dollars and you are worth way more than 450 million dollars your heart is a masterpiece so please be very mindful of who you entrust it to uh you may need uh to invest money into into a good therapist or a good spiritual director or find a good confessor somebody that you can test for fit and i'm telling you like i i run into people and like who say well it's just too expensive it's like you wouldn't let anybody touch your driveway for 70 dollars why would you let somebody uh into your heart for less than that you know or whatever the going rate happens to be it's like it is worth investing in yourself for art restoration and what such a healthier idea than saying well i'm just going to let anybody take a jackhammer to me no way now you get this kind of caution in jesus and there's a there's this thing that i call the puritan impulse and that is when you begin to see toxicity in your faith when you begin to see weeds there's the puritan impulse is to throw the baby out with the bath water i'm just so kind of tired of that metaphor that i thought hey let's use the biblical metaphor and we're going to read this next passage together about what jesus says in terms of weeding the parable of the weeds jesus told them another parable the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field but while everyone was sleeping his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away when the wheat sprouted and formed heads and the weeds also appeared the owner's servants came to him and said sir didn't you sow good seed in your field where where then did the weeds come from an enemy did this he replied the servants asked them do you want us to go and pull them up should we start a website should we be watchmen on the walls that are calling out all the heretics should we go on social media and correct everybody in the comment sections no he answered because while you're pulling up the weeds you may uproot the wheat with them let both grow together until the harvest at that time i will tell the harvesters first collect the weeds tie them up in bundles to be burned then gather the wheat and bring them into my barn well of course we need to correct toxic errors when we see them i try to but this puritan impulse actually led to what we call iconoclasm and there were periods in church history where they would just go nuts and they're like everything's a heresy and we need to smash all the stained glass windows we need to break all the statues we need to cut off all the icons they're all idols they're all idols and what happened was when they be the the puritan impulse led them not only to destroy the icons of christ and the saints and so on they began to destroy the living icons of god's own children did you know that puritan impulse led to more martyrs under and by christians trying to clean things up than all the roman emperors put together in their persecution of the church um that's the puritan impulse he's warning about so like how how extreme do we want to get here you know let's talk about extreme makeover you ever watch shows like that i i just love i love those shows uh when when they're not ridiculous when they don't try to improve somebody by hiding them behind eight layers of caked makeup and whatever it's the beauty is when when you bring out who they really are and and uh and so there's a moderation to this where it's actually not an extreme makeover so some of the shows it's like well you're go you're gonna need plastic surgery you're gonna need this you know and they come out looking like i don't know a mannequin or something but you know here's a nice picture of a woman a before and after and and it's like they saw how to bring out the natural beauty let's look at the next guy too here's here's a whoa that's the same guy before and after now what did they do to him well some of it's just they gave him a haircut and they told him how to hold his head up and they told him that he had a nice smile and oh here do a little skin care and get some content you know so this this idea of extreme makeovers very interesting and when they do the reveal at the end of the show you know people are just weeping it's like what if deconstruction could be that way for us what if instead of destroying our focus was on drawing out the beauty of our true selves that's a kind of deconstruction or a reconstruction or better a makeover and then you've got the the next ones are jokes for you guys so we've got like feel old yet um or the next one after that feel old yet but here what i'm talking about is growing growing up aging well this is my wife eden when she was 19 and then when she was 57 and um and so for her uh she's changed dramatically in her heart in her faith i would say a lot of that credit goes to me because i i hurt her in so many ways and she learned grace and she learned forgiveness and she learned christ-likeness not because i was a great husband but because she knew to draw close to christ when i was a jerk and a loser you know and so she's she could be a saint by the time i'm done with her because i'm that bad but how about just like naturally growing naturally maturing this is biblical language that takes us from one place in our journey to the next but it's not all about jackhammers it's about just simply growing uh similar to that you've got pruning so here's another makeover show this is about pruning right now all this lady needed she just needed her hair pruned a little bit uh we all we all need a bit of so that's a deconstruction metaphor in the gospels well let's read what jesus has to say about that in john 15. the vine and the branches i'm the true vine my father's the gardener he cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it'll even be more fruitful you're already clean because of the word i've spoken to you remain in me and as i also remain in you no branch can bear fruit by itself it must remain in the vine neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me and so he's not talking about taking some people and cutting them off and throwing them into the fire he's talking about our hearts and he's saying what are the branches what are the attachments what are the belief systems in you that have actually become chains that have actually tied you down what are the branches in you that need to go so that you can flourish and so pruning is another one of these metaphors another beautiful metaphor that comes up uh is the wedding dress and so um my daughter-in-law when she was engaged to my son she sent me this picture from the internet and she said i love this wedding dress it's 1930s it's vintage um champagne uh well i can't remember all the you know the specs i just remember thinking that this was a beautiful dress and it suited her and she says and i think it's even my size and she loves to get a good deal she's like and it's only 200 and i'm like buy it buy it now and um and so she she she uh i talked to her the next time like did you buy it yet and she goes well procrastination won out and i thought she meant no i waited too long and i lost it i'm like oh no and she goes no it went down to 160 today i'm like you risked a day for 40 bucks grab it and so she did and and then when it arrived it just fit her absolutely perfectly but there was a problem uh it had been covered in stains now if you look at this there's the water stains are removed the wrinkles are removed and this is a picture of deconstruction in the new testament that we as the bride of christ have soiled our wedding dress with gravy stains and we've gotten wrinkles all over it and he he is not going to solve that problem by cutting holes in the dress we pray that he cleanses us from every stain so he doesn't just forgive our sins he cleanses the stains and and uh and turns us into this this gorgeous bride who's just radiant and and colette there she said after that day she said i i just feel like a princess i'm like it's more than a feeling babe you know you are you're really you you really are and and somehow um you know it's not even her that needed deconstructing it was it was the dress and and so i think the new testament talks this way and and to and how did that happen well we found a a chinese dry cleaner in our town who is sort of the stereotypical um how would we say that like meticulous and and he told me what what how why he was such a good dry cleaner he said it's because my goal is not to remove the stains i'm like of course it is it's like no my number one goal is to preserve the fabric and so he would never overdue deconstruction in a way that would damage the dress and and we were just so pleased with him i take all of our stuff there now because i know he cares more about our clothing that he than he does about that puritan impulse to cleanse it is you know um now in this the next slide is the same picture but it's a different metaphor now we're looking at my son and he's wearing he's six foot eight and he's wearing um a tailor-made suit now when you're six foot eight you don't you don't go and get a new suit created it would cost you ten thousand dollars to get a designer and and you and then they would have to get the fabric and then they would you know you you cut it all up and you create a pattern all of this stuff doing it from scratch is my point and what stephen actually told me is that in the hospital he works in he often has to tell people that he's an engineer an improvement engineer in a hospital and he says look at we are not custom making everything here we're tailor making it in other words you have an existing designer an existing pattern an existing a way of bringing about the suit for example or whatever design you want and and you tailor make it for his size and for his fit and so it is with the gospel um there is a lot of people just making up their own religion and frankly they're not good at it they're like really not good at it and it's never as beautiful as what jesus constructed and yet we what we would say is part of our deconstruction is the faith once delivered for the saints by jesus through his apostles that's the pattern and it needs to be tailor-made for vancouverites in 2021 it needs to be tailor-made for you and so it is made for fit to your needs and and so that's what we mean by tailor-making so you know between the the wedding dress that's being cleansed and ironed and the suit that's being tailor-made for you these are other metaphors a couple more here one is uh this idea of a journey and so uh here's a beautiful photo from the camino hike the shadow is of brian zond and he's taking a photo of his wife perry down the road there and this this amazing amazing journey that they went on that actually was a big part of renovating their faith reconstructing their faith and they they said after that after that pilgrimage they were never the same and so we do have the sense of moving on or journey we see it in the scriptures we see it in the great classics of christianity brian also talks about it as packing his bags in other words he went on a trip he moved on but he did pack his bags and so i think in my case as a little boy in a conservative baptist church i've moved on from that but i packed my bags and what did i put in them i put in them the my love for the scriptures that my baptist dad taught me my love for the name of jesus that my mom taught me my commitment to sharing good news that my pastors taught me i i packed those things in my bag and i even see them differently and use them differently now than i did then but this was not about torching my baptist tradition it was about a journey moving forward moving up and and uh christ uses this he says i am the way you know so i want to contrast this between a passage that we read in uh alice in wonderland and so alice is on a path she's on a journey and um well you've got some folks on in their journey who just think well any path will get you there deconstruction's fine just do whatever just let it happen it's like no any path will not get you there a lot of pads will take you into into the brambles and you'll get stuck in the uh you know in the blackberry uh thorns down in some gully you know any path will not get you down gross mountain some of them will take you into into ditches and you can get lost and even die but alice alice was super confident i'm just gonna make my path this is classic modernism i make the path and um and and uh you know it's like i generate my own truths everything's my truth and my path and my way and uh and frankly what that looks like is those who are strongest and wealthiest get to make the path and the those who can't keep up and pay up end up on the margins and someone someone always loses jesus on the other hand what does he say he says i am the way follow me the the christianity is a way there's a way to be um that that he calls it the narrow way and and it's the way of love it's the sermon on the mount way i mean this was tolstoy's great critique of the church as he's deconstructing he says look at jesus actually gives us the constitution of the kingdom of god whereby god's will is done on earth as it is in heaven you could have heaven on earth if you would just do it the jesus way if we simply obeyed the sermon on the mount and understood that there's there's grace to empower that we're like oh but it's so hard it's like and tolstoy tolstoy says yes uh forgiving is hard you know what's harder not forgiving um turning the other cheek and practicing non-violence and non-retaliation that's really hard in fact it's a cross sometimes it goes but you know what's even much harder wars and and sacrificing all you know our young on the altar of the god of mars and losing millions upon millions of people to our own defiance because we're like we don't want the jesus way we want to do it our way and jesus is like i'm telling you this is how you enter the kingdom this is how the kingdom happens in your city this is how you become people who are part of constructing a righteous just society and um but he said yeah uh it's a narrow door few find it what he probably means there is few want it few want it and so uh the the reality is that that uh jesus christ himself is the best deconstructionist and probably more radical than anything anyone else is offering you know like far more radical than nietzsche and the nihilists and so on far more radical think about all these other metaphors he uses old wine skins new wine skins water to wine you must be born again baptism into his death and resurrection you don't get a more radical deconstruction reconstruction than death and resurrection especially when it happens in this life well i think i then i want to close with a final slide that just blesses you on your journey of of uh so-called deconstruction and that is you're on the road anyway there's no there's no getting around it but once you do there's this big caution that comes out well it's a slippery slope you know once you get once you start losing some of those toxic um theologies of of the of the retributive god of wrath and so on once you go down that road it's a slippery slope and it's like hey wait a minute life is a slippery slope the lie is that any religion or ideology can offer you a flat plane that you can just stroll through that's not that's not life that's actually a lie and it's that's really dangerous the uh you know the great plane of certitude let it go but but i love this photo because here's a here's a girl on a slippery slope for sure and yet look at her face she's she's completely joyful and like how was that well why is that here's why because she's anchored in she's anchored in and that's why um in in a church like yours there's a lot of deconstruction happening but you know what i heard today i heard a people who are anchored in i heard you anchored into the creed i heard you anchored in in prayer into the name of jesus i heard you anchored in to worship of the one who leads us on his way and so um i want to say yeah you're on a slippery slope but with an anchor you you have such uh you have warrant you have warrant to be joyful and uh so as you as you proceed i would like i'm gonna just pray for you at the end here now that that god would draw you to one of those particular metaphors or offer you another one that would be healthy for you so that that the hashtag deconstruction doesn't just carry you away in any direction but that the lord would offer you a particular metaphor that's gonna nourish you and and really help you thrive so let's pray father in heaven again we thank you for your son the lord jesus who is the way uh who is the truth who is the life and that by your spirit we can have a living connection to this great anchor oh anchor there's another metaphor so for my brothers and sisters i ask now that you would draw their hearts to a particular metaphor that would cause them to flourish that would bring them through the places of chaos and confusion that would bring them out of lockout into life and rather than fear that hope and anticipation and expectancy of good things would attend their way jesus name i pray amen amen thank you uh dr jerzac for sharing with us this morning and these reflections and his teaching and i want to encourage everyone who's watching now also to share this talk with those that may not have joined us live with those that maybe the spirit would bring to mind but do that in a gentle way do it in a gentle way and and obviously aware but yes as we reflect on this i just want to say thanks again thank you for joining us this morning i want to invite all of us to um to sing along as we move towards our sending prayer this morning and uh yeah let's sing together [Music] [Applause] [Music] my hope is on nothing less than jesus blood and righteousness [Music] [Music] all around my soul [Music] is [Music] [Music] darkness seems too high [Music] [Music] on christmas [Music] [Music] when you shall come shall come with [Music] rest in his righteousness [Applause] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] yeah well as we leave this morning for those of you that want we will have a short foyer chat afterwards on the zoom link and again we want to say a big thank you to brad zerzak for just bringing us this teaching today i do encourage you to check out his website bradderzak.com yeah.com check it out and uh some books as well the more christ-like way more christ like god also his wife eden has written a prayer book a journey through prayer called rivers of eden and uh i would use that in the past as well it's a wonderful tool um so let's receive a blessing as we prepare to leave and do the next things one final thing if you are coming to in-person gatherings you do need to rsvp you can do that either by texting emailing or preferably use the link that's on the front of our website pilgrimchurch.ca right at the top there it says rsvp next week we're at both campuses both here and at emmanuel so now in the name of christ our one true god who has risen from the dead and the prayers of all those who have gone before the intercessions of the saints the martyrs the sinners in process lord send us out today on this trinity sunday in the name of the father son and holy spirit and if you're willing to say amen or amen amen go in peace serve the lord look forward to seeing some of you live and in person next sunday or in small gatherings this week god bless may we drown

Channel: Pilgrim Church

Views: 1,626

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

Keywords: pilgrim church, vancouver canada, i can't breathe, lament learning love, love, colossians, baptism, Jesus, Brad Jersak

Id: A28PhTohQSs

Length: 79min 40sec (4780 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021