Keep Asking Anyway

Transcript

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[0:00] Well, we go now to our time of our sermon. And our sermon text is Luke chapter 18, verses 1 through 8. As Pastor Victoria said, we have a parable today. And we're continuing on in our book series of many colors. Cultural intelligence for a changing church. I'm going to put this out of my way so it doesn't get in my way. I print my sermon in super large 24-point font so that I don't have to wear my glasses while I preach it. Did you all know that? Like a little secret sauce there for everybody.

[0:34] And even then, it doesn't quite work. So I might have to go to 36. That's next. Then instead of an 8-page sermon, it would be like a 12-page sermon. So Luke 18, 1 through 8. And this is related to our book study. You can still join a discussion group, by the way. And the goal of us doing this book together is to increase our culture. And to increase our cultural intelligence and proficiency so we can serve God better. In a multicultural society and as a multi-ethnic church. So those are our goals for this study. And today we're looking at chapter 7 of our book. And the title of chapter 7 is Tell Me a Story. Tell Me a Story. And we're getting at the beginning of how to make relationships between cultures work. And our author is telling us today that storytelling is a big part of bridging cultures. And that's why we're doing this together. So we've seen in the previous chapters that we need to have awareness of our own culture. We need to have awareness that there are other cultures. That we have a culture that God designs. At least the good parts of our culture were designed by God. And that there are challenges when cultures meet. There's communication challenges. There's tolerance challenges when cultures meet.

[1:54] There's awareness challenges. If you're in the main culture. The majority of you are. If you're in the minority culture. You don't even have to be culturally proficient. Because everything is kind of handed to you. You've got everything you need to make your life work. Whereas people in the minority of the culture. The cultural minority have to be proficient to make everything work. So the awareness of the majority culture is really big. Then there's the challenges when we're on opposite ends of these cultural spectra. Group orientation versus individual orientation. All of those things. And so being able to understand why other people act the way they do is huge. And understand that. Understand and admit that just because it's different from the way we do it. Doesn't mean that it's worse from the way we do it. Right? We don't believe that our cultures are inherently better.

[2:48] So and then last week Victoria did a wonderful job. She talked about how power plays a big role. And I would say. You know. It's the power dynamics that take a good thing. That God made culture. And turn it into a toxic thing that has a human imprint on it. And so it's when humans seek or use power unjustly. In using the cultural avenues that they have. That's what breaks culture. That's what unredeems culture in a sense. Right? And so we need to undo that original sin of culture. And let go of control. And that was kind of the issue. Is that we can use culture. To control each other. And that's hard to do. That's the hard part. So that's kind of how far we have gotten now. And the next part I think is a bit easier. And I think it can be a little bit more fun. And it's about how to bridge cultures by telling stories. About ourselves. And understanding the value of stories. And so.

[3:48] And I think almost everybody likes telling stories. We like telling stories about ourselves. I hope we like listening to other people's stories. About themselves just as much. That's a challenge. That's a growth area. I'm sure. So we need to listen to other stories. And so for the sermon today. I thought what we would do. Is we would look at a story that Jesus tells. And examine it through the lens that our author is giving us today. And so this particular story happens to be called a parable. And we can use that as a way of talking about the power of storytelling. And in fact telling a story. Is something. So much more powerful. Than just giving a list of facts. Right? Stories have a lot more power than that. They create imagination in us. They help us. They actually stimulate our brain to connect some dots. And once we put in that cognitive work. We kind of own that story in a way that we don't own just a list of facts. Right?

[4:47] And I'm guilty of this. I probably should do away with it. But if we could get away. If we could do away with the word processor that creates the bullet points. We should do that. Because bullet points are an invitation to turn off your brain. And not engage anymore. Instead if you were to write a tidy paragraph.

[5:06] That told a story. Of why the widget needs to fit into the flange. Or something like that. You know. Then somebody would go, oh now I get it. You know. So we need to be better storytellers in all ways. Now in some forms of communication storytelling isn't the best way to do it. Clearly. You get what I'm saying. So now let's go to our reading. Luke chapter 18. And this story gives a person identity. It gives another person their corrupted identity in power. And this story also gives God his identity. And so I want you to be listening for those identity markers in this story.

[5:49] Let's go to our reading. Luke chapter 18. And this story also gives us the ability to be better storytellers in all ways. And not to lose heart. He said. In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow. Who kept coming to him and saying. Grant me justice against my opponent.

[6:12] For a while. He refused. But later he said to himself. Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone. Yet because this widow keeps bothering me. I will not give her justice. So that she may not wear me out. By continually coming.

[6:31] That's the end of the parable by the way. And the Lord said. Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones. Who cry to him day and night. Will he delay long in helping them. I tell you he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet when the son of man comes. Will he find faith on earth. Let's pray. Heavenly Father thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus name. Amen.

[7:04] So let's do a quick overview of chapter 7. And if you haven't read it yet that's fine. If you're in the book study you can read it this week. But I'm going to give you a real quick overview of chapter 7. And this idea of storytelling that the author gives us. He makes a good point that stories can be hijacked by agendas. I thought this was a very interesting thing that he said. They don't always have a story. They don't always exist for themselves. But they're designed to persuade or trumpet the view of the storyteller. And those are stories that we should look at with a little bit of suspicion. Because they're actually taking a form of art. And trying to shoehorn some message into them. And art needs to sometimes I think exist for itself. Good art doesn't need to be that pointed. You may have seen some political art. It's very interesting. You can find it on the internet. I saw some in Norway.

[7:51] Political art sometimes it's socialist art. But you could easily find other kinds of art that was from a different political point of view. And so some of the socialist art that I saw was there's a man and a woman smiling and holding some farm tools. And behind them in the background is this giant bushel of the crop that they just harvested. And the message is see look how happy these workers are. That they just and they're so productive. And because our system is so great that they don't even need to own the land. They're just so motivated for the love of their country just to do all this work and produce it for everybody else.

[8:32] And even if that was true which it wasn't actually because those people generally weren't that happy right. It was propaganda. It was propaganda for a political goal. And that's just one political like I said that's just one political view. You can find on the opposite end of the political spectrum you can find art as well. That's trying to kind of shoehorn itself into the art.

[8:55] But that's art that insists on its own interpretation. You kind of get that idea that art is a little bit too much on the nose. It's a little bit too pointed. And I think then it becomes a lesser art. And I would put it in the same category as Christian movies. If you've ever seen a Christian movie they're terrible. They're terrible. The only exception is sort of the biography of Johnny Erickson. Which is actually a little bit more of a documentary. But it's really well done. You know. But aside from that Christian movies is like the art doesn't exist for itself. The art is in service of spreading the gospel which is noble. But I don't think it's the right move. I just don't think it's the right move because it doesn't function. It becomes boring and obvious right what's going on. So a story shouldn't be hijacked by an agenda. So that's one of the points that the author makes. And I think that actually gets to some of what Pastor Victoria was talking about last week too. That our cultures are always giving us hooks that we can try to grab on to try to control things. What other people think. What other people do. Etc. And so we want to create stories that are softer than that. That don't do that. You know.

[10:10] Now going on in our book chapter we read that a story has multiple layers. And this is important to know this. Because we want to. Storytelling is something that you can get better at. Everyone can do it. And you can get better at it. Storytelling has somewhat of a format. Somewhat has somewhat of some ingredients that you can practice. And so these are some of the things that the author says. You first start with what happened. You communicate. These are the layers of the story. You communicate facts and information. That might be the bullet point. But you would massage it into a narrative perhaps. And next he says what are you feeling if you're telling a story about yourself. What emotions are at play in the story. You're beginning to now humanize the story. So somebody else can connect with it. And finally the layer of the story is about identity. It asks who are you and who am I. It communicates identity about ourselves. And then you're getting at the sort of the core of the story. And yes the story then the goal of the story is to create identity or communicate identity. That is its own purpose no doubt. But those are the best kinds of stories. The stories that tell us who we are. And ultimately stories do kind of tell us who we are.

[11:23] Even Star Wars right. Star Wars at the end when the Death Star explodes. Because somebody had a change of heart. Han Solo changed his mind from being a mercenary and decided to come help his friend. So it was that moment of change. If you haven't seen Star Wars I get it. So you get that that's like that this success in the end comes from a changed heart. So that's like the core of that story. By the way I don't I never tire of saying this. But when Star Wars came out in 1977 I went and saw it in person. And I loved it so much me and my brother sat in the theater when the movie was over. And we waited for them to rewind the film. And we sat there and watched it again. And this young man came in with a broom and he was sweeping around. And he kind of looked at us like huh those kids are cheating the theater. Oh well and then he just you know. I'm telling a story. And a few years back I decided to write George Lucas a letter or an email which I did. And it said I offered to pay him whatever he thought the value of that those two tickets that we had kind of cheated on. And I got no response. But now I can sleep at night about that. That was a long time ago. I was just a kid. I was seven years old.

[12:43] I wonder what my mom was thinking though. Like we sent him to the movie four hours ago. Where are they? All right. So anyways I totally lost myself here. Who saw Star Wars in 1977? Brian? David? We're a dying bunch. We're a dying breed. All right. Okay. It's before they added stuff to it. Right?

[13:14] So there's more about the structure of the story again. In the book it says you have to have a setting. You have to have a character or characters. You have to have conflict. Every good story has to have a conflict and resolution. If you tell a story where there's no conflict then it's not a story. It's just kind of, you know. Well then they all, they started off living happily. Nothing happened. And then they lived happily ever after. Okay. Well nobody's going to watch that movie. Right? Something bad has to happen and then get resolved. That's how stories, you know, work. Right? I'm not, this is not an English class so we won't go into all of these. But what we want to do is use our parable to work through these categories. And so I'm going to ask Caleb to put the first one back up again so we can have it along while we're doing that. And the first thing we notice is that the parable is short. Did you notice that? It's short. Like this section is eight verses. But the parable is short. But the parable itself is far shorter than that because the parable is really a story within a story. There's an outer envelope which is Jesus explaining that he's trying to make a point with the parable. And then the inner envelope is the parable.

[14:29] And this is a little rare but not unheard of for parables. Sometimes Jesus presents parables as is and leaves it to the listener to kind of say what is this about and to kind of use their brain. And in this parable it's Luke at least in the middle. And then he introduces why he's telling the parable. And at the end Jesus explains, kind of contextualizes the parable. So parables sometimes, and then there's another parable for example, the parable of the sower and the seeds. Which is explained from beginning to end. First the parable is given and then the entire explanation of the parable as it's reiterated is given. That's very rare but that does sometimes happen. So parables come in all shapes and stripes which is great. And this parable is kind of a hybrid from between one that sort of stands on its own and one that has a little bit of narrative around it that encapsulates it. But it's short. It's short and it's to the point. It's succinct. It leaves room for your brain to fill in some of the gaps. And I think that's the value of a story. And so if you're going to tell a story about yourself someday, I'm not saying keep it completely short. But brevity is great. If you hit all the high notes, right, when you're telling a story.

[15:41] That's good. So this parable gets right to the point. I don't think it produces any unnecessary details. Right? Stories don't have to be short. But Jesus is a good storyteller. I just got a text message and we're going to double check today to make sure we're not having production problems. I've got to see what that text message is about.

[16:06] Okay. Okay, Adele. No, it was just Adele saying back. You were only seven years old at the time. Yes. Yes. I was born in 1969. And in May of 1977, I was still only seven years old. And she says, I was 18-year-old. And yes, I loved Star Wars. So Adele is one of the others who saw Star Wars when it first came out. All right.

[16:28] We're messing with our, not messing with, we're trying something new with our hardware today. And so we're very, if you're at home and you start to see the video stutter, text me right away. And we'll switch to a different internet system. But we're trying to make sure we have ironed out some problems with our system. Okay. That's a different story. So let's look at the elements of this story. So we have, again, we start with our list. What's the setting? The setting is a court, right? And here you can use your imagination. And even with the parable, I would say you can kind of take it out of time if you want. You can take it, you can kind of make it sort of anachronistic. And so you could imagine that it's a court. You could imagine a courtroom like you would see today with wooden paneling on the sides just like that. A high desk with a judge in a black robe sitting up there. And a woman who comes in to make her case. Or you could imagine that it's an interaction that's taking place in the time of Jesus. And it could have been in a synagogue or in a market or at the gates of a small village. Right? So here we have the setting is a court where a judge is presiding. And he's supposed to bring justice or give justice to people who come in.

[17:42] And the characters are a woman who has a case to bring and the judge. And all it says is that she's a widow and that she has an opponent. What more we don't know. Now you can imagine, again, you can use your brain. You can imagine that this woman is a very old widow who just lost her husband. And the case is that her land is maybe being taken over by her brother. Which could have happened. So this is a vulnerable person in that society. You can imagine that it's a young woman, a young widow whose husband died in a war. You see what I'm saying? While that may not be important to the story, there's room in the story because it's so short and so light on details. That you can start to build your own image of what's going on here. Right? The details we don't know much of except that she's moved by the injustice that she's experienced outside of the church. Outside this court. Outside the court there's some injustice, some opponent that she has. Something that she's fairly certain is wrong. And she's coming to the only authority that she can find to make it right. So that's part of the conflict. Remember we said a story has to have conflict. So there's part of the conflict. But this is only part of the conflict.

[19:00] This is a multi-layered story as it turns out. Because the main conflict in the story isn't between the woman and her opponent. It's between the woman and this judge. Who becomes another opponent to her. Who will not give her justice even though she asks for it. So we have another character who's the judge. And he doesn't sound like a nice person. Even Jesus himself gives a commentary ahead of time on what he's like. He doesn't respect God or other people. The judge himself says this about himself. He's an incredibly self-aware narcissist I guess. He's like, I don't care about God or other people. So that's his character. And he's not inclined to give her a fair hearing. And you can imagine any kind of villain. Maybe he has like a curly mustache. Or not. Maybe he looks like your least favorite politician. But don't go there too much. Don't wreck the story for yourself. Don't get distracted. But this is the villain. This is somebody who's doing something wrong in the story. And he may have black roses. He may have a robe on. But that doesn't actually make him a just person. And so even already we're seeing here that there's already a commentary on a broken society. And a broken culture. A place where justice is to be found.

[20:20] There is no justice. The person to whom we go for justice is acting in an unjust way. And so we have layers of power. Layers of control that are going off the rails. Okay. Now the conflict again is that the conflict in the story is that the woman is experiencing injustice on two fronts. Externally the reason for bringing the case and in the court because the judge won't even act justly torture. Even though he is supposed to. And so this is kind of a neat work of storytelling I think. The problem, the conflict actually doubles in size the moment she walks into the courtroom. And one element of conflict that you could often see in storytelling is an expectation of a woman. An expectation that isn't met. An unmet expectation is a source of conflict and consternation. So she comes. You can imagine then she comes confidently into the court saying at last I've made it here. Now I can get what I need. Now I can get justice against my brother-in-law or whoever else who's trying to take my home or whatever else is happening. And the sudden sort of disappointment and broken feeling that in this place where I expect justice. I'm not going to get justice. None. I'm experiencing even more injustice. So this double whammy kind of comes at you.

[21:44] And if we know about women and widows in the ancient Near East. Let's see. We know that they're already quite vulnerable socially. And so Jesus has painted a dire situation. And Jesus even in a not too pointed way is perhaps even using this story to make a social commentary about his own society in a prophetic way. Now is he putting it too much on the nose? Maybe not because he's letting the story kind of work. Right? It's not too much hard. It's not quite like that socialist painting is it?

[22:17] So we're going to pause here to look at the other categories because there is two sets of categories our author gave us. The story is communicating information by setting up the story for us. What's happening? And now we're getting to the what are you feeling aspect. Right? And now we can ask ourselves what is the widow feeling?

[22:35] Frustration. Anger. Right? Disappointment. Sadness. That the place of justice is itself unjust. And then what's the resolution? Right? What is the resolution to the conflict? The woman decides that she will never stop coming back to petition the court until she gets justice. So the resolution is what's in her own hands. She only works with what she can do. Well she says to herself all I can do is come back every day. Until I get justice. Until I get what I need. I'm not going to give up. Right? That's the only thing she can do because she can't coerce this other person.

[23:14] Well this is a form of coercion but it's not overt coercion. It's sort of subversive coercion. Right? I'm just going to keep coming back. I'm just going to keep coming back. Right? And so now the judge is what we would say is on the horns of a dilemma. Right? He acknowledges that he has no respect for anyone, not even God. And so he's not inclined to give anyone justice. You wonder who? You wonder how many other people may have walked into his courtroom and gone, oh this is not the right place. And they just leave and they give up. Right? But for her giving up is not an option. Why? Well we'll get to that.

[23:49] So there again we might be seeing here that this story is making a prophetic critique of people who are judges but shouldn't be judges. Right? You're in the wrong job. Your job is to bring justice. You're being unjust. You're in the wrong job. He doesn't respect people but at least he respects his own time. So we're building his character now a little bit too. He's pragmatic at the minimum. He's not just but he's pragmatic. And pragmatic is kind of a neutral character quality. Right? It's neither bad nor good. It's just you know what? She's going to keep doing this. I'm getting tired of it. I better just give her what she needs. Otherwise I'll be exhausted by her coming to me every day, every day. So what character development? We get to the judge.

[24:33] He is pragmatic and unjust. What character development do we get for the woman? She's persistent. She does what only she can. She does the only thing she can do. And she is relentless. She's relentless in her pursuit for what she thinks is right. I'm beginning to admire this woman. I hope you are too. Like as the story goes and like I said this is just a few short verses. I think it's amazing that if we take the time. To work this through. That in just a few short verses we can start to paint quite a picture. Some of it depends on what we know about the ancient Near East of course. And about Jesus. That all builds or feeds into the story.

[25:14] But already in just a few verses we. You almost have enough for a movie here. Not I mean to be a short movie. Maybe a TV show half hour. But still like oh something's going on here. There's a real passion. There's real conflict. And there's real resolution. Right? The resolution is in the end. She gets what she asked for. The judge pragmatically says. Okay is that a good victory? I mean it's a weird kind of resolution. Right? In America. In America the way we would tell a story is. We wouldn't think the story was done. Until the judge was voted out of office. Or sent to jail. Or something like that. Like the bad guy has to pay. In our way of thinking. I think it's interesting in this parable. That it doesn't end with the bad guy paying. It's like it's not an episode of Law and Order. You ever watch Law and Order? I'm kind of I love Law and Order.

[26:06] It's like one in a hundred. Law and Order. The bad guy walks at the end. Because of some technicality in the courtroom. But 99 out of 100 times. They go to jail. You know and you're like yeah. You know the comeuppance. We love that's the problem with. Kind of with our storytelling too. Is. Is. We like to see other people get their punishment. We'd like to see other people suffer for their crimes. And there is some justice to that. But somehow in this story. Jesus didn't didn't have to put that in there. Just that he gave in. Just that he was pragmatic enough to get given. And so that's the resolution of the conflict. Now finally we get again. We're sort of dancing around this. The identity piece. Who are these people? What is their identity? The woman is certain of her cause. She's persistent and doesn't give up. The judge is corrupt and pragmatic. He's aware of his own failures. And he doesn't seem to care. So we've communicated identity. Again just in a few verses. And now like I said. This is just the inner envelope. Because we would be missing something. If we didn't look at the outer envelope of the story. This is a story within a story. Which is the best kind of story. That's really great storytelling. To tell a story within a story.

[27:24] Shakespeare does this by telling a plot. To play within a play. If you read Hamlet. Hamlet stages a play. To trap his stepfather. Into admitting that he killed his father. Right? So the words around this are the outer story. The outer envelope. And here it says. Luke introduces it. Here's a parable about our need to pray. Right? To pray. So did you know this was a. Without. If you didn't know this. Would you go. Oh this is a parable about prayer. Well you know. How you might. And so I kind of question. Not too much. Because it's Saint Luke. You know. But I question. Why did he have to put that there? Could he have trusted us. To get that ourselves. Maybe. You know. But he did. So this is evidently. It's a parable about prayer. Thank you Luke. I think maybe we would have gotten there ourselves. I don't know. I think it would have been more fun. If he didn't tell us that. All right. But so. And the story is. You pray with persistence. Pray believing in the justness. Of your prayer. For you. For you.

[28:56] character that's invisible up until this point, which is what is God like? What is this story telling us about the identity of God the Father? And this is Jesus's reasoning in his negative comparison. He says, if a bad judge will actually consent to hear the case and give justice to a persistent petitioner, how much more, and that's the sign, that phrase there, how much more is the sign of a negative comparison, how much more will our loving Father, who is just, right, grant justice to his children who pray fervently for what they need, right? And so God is beginning to see the character of God in here and the resolution of the other conflict, which is that we pray for things that we need. We pray for things that we long for. And sometimes it seems that God doesn't answer. I don't know. I've been praying this week about Ukraine. I prayed that the invasion wouldn't start because I was kind of doom-scrolling my phone while I was at Disneyland. It was terrible. But then the invasion started, and I thought, you know, that didn't go my way, and why should it? I mean, I can't control global politics, and God could, but he probably chooses not to at some times. So the conflict that we have in our own lives is we pray fervently for things like the healing of a loved

[30:22] one or somebody not to die or some other thing in our lives, and sometimes it seems like God doesn't pray. And this is just one parable. This is just one approach, and I wouldn't say this about everything, right? And that the answer, the resolution to that conflict is not just that we should pray fervently, that we should pray persistently, which is true, and I don't think we can wear out God. I don't want to say, and I don't think this parable says that the more you pray, the more you get, or that praying persistently gives a better outcome for you. It might change you more than it changes God, but the point of the parable, the point of the story, the resolution of the story and the identity of God is that he's not even like this unjust judge who, in the end, does the right thing. He does the right thing from the beginning, and he does grant prayer. Maybe not the way we ask for it, maybe not in our timing, but God listens and hears his children when they cry out. That's the identity of God. The father. And so the resolution to the conflict is also tied into the identity of the character. The resolution of the conflict is the identity of the father who listens to his children and loves them and gives them good things. So that's the story. So again, isn't it great that so much

[31:42] can happen in such a short story? Like just this few short verses here. Oh, I should have told you, let's move the next slide there, Caleb. I should have told you to move it through. There you go. That's fine.

[31:58] Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And there's a parathetical comment at the end that seems unrelated to the story. And that's, interpreters kind of tinker with that one. They're not sure what to make of it, which is also an interesting story, right? So, eight verses are all that Jesus needs to bring us into a world so that we can visualize quite clearly, if we just take a few moments and kind of take some time with it and let the parable work, right? That's one of the great things about parables is you can't understand them in 10 seconds. You have to let them sink in. You have to read them again. There's a famous story about a poet. He was reading his work to an audience. He was reading his poem to them. And poems can be a bit kind of hard to grasp. And somebody in the audience said to him, what does that mean? And he looked at them, and he took out his poem, and he read the poem again. You know, it's like, I'm not going to do that homework for you. You have to do that work. This poem has to work on you, not in the way that I tell you it has to. It's out there. It exists so that it can create its own interpretations in you, right?

[33:17] So, um, we can visualize it. We can understand the motivations of all the people involved. We could walk away from the story and say, that woman. She tells me who I am. Right? This is a story that gives me some identity. I relate to this person who has prayed to God. And maybe not seen the answers right away. Or I'm the person who's faced injustice.

[33:43] And I'm angry about it. Right? And then also you could say this story tells me who God is So we have the function of the story is to end to communicate identity, both of the petitioner and of the good judge, the father, right?

[33:58] So I'm going to leave that behind now and just talk a little bit more about our book study, and then we'll be done. We're quite close to the end of the sermon. At the end of our time in this book series, we're going to take the sermon time at the very end. So we'll preach through every set of chapters in this book. Today was just one chapter. But the week after that, we're going to take the time where we normally do this sermon, about half an hour, 35 minutes, and have somehow by Zoom and chat and people here in the room say, what have we learned from this book? What do we want to do differently as a church because of what we've learned in this book? What is this motivating us to do? And now he's laid the groundwork for cultures and understanding cultures and giving up power and culture and things like that. And now he's saying part of this cultural intelligence is storytelling. There's other parts of it that we're going to see in future weeks. We're getting to the stuff of stuff we can do, which is nice. And so I'm going to suggest, I think, that one of the things that we need to do that we'll probably say on that last day is that we need as a church to create time and space for everyone to tell their stories, right? We need to

[35:08] somehow find a way for each and every person who wants to, we won't force you, each and every person who wants to, to tell their story, to communicate their identity, and give them some time in advance to make it short or long, to give it all the elements that it needs. It doesn't have to be perfect, right? It doesn't have to be as good as Jesus's parable, but we want to create space. And we've already seen some of this. And Andres did this more than a year ago, I think. It was about a year ago. He made a video that we shared with the whole church, and he shared what it's like living as someone whose background is from the Yucatan Peninsula, but lives in the Bay Area. And that was very illuminating to who you are, Andres. You know, that was like, oh, I know him better. Now, you know, and so we want to give other everyone in the church that opportunity somehow, whether that's once a week for 20, 30 weeks, we have somebody come up here for five minutes or make a video, or we create an event where people tell, share their stories. We want to do that because we want to know, love and understand each other, understand each other's identities, cultures, and become and the goal is to become a more culturally intelligent church, one that can

[36:20] embrace the church and the church itself. And so we want to give everyone in the church that opportunity to embrace the multicultural environment we're in here in Silicon Valley, and the multi ethnic nature of the attendance of our church that we have, right? So I'm going to give the author the last word. He says, when we tell these stories, he says, he suggests a few things happen. We tell the truth, right? This is what we want to do when we tell stories about ourselves. We tell the truth, which makes sense. We reveal ourselves just, beyond just facts about ourselves. Right. We share. We share the emotional sides of things. The reality of things. We share pain. Honestly. If there's pain in our story. We share that honestly. And we allow ourselves space to lament if we need to. And finally we share who we are. We share. We put that out there and say this is who I am. You know. And other people have an opportunity to get to know the real us. Right.

[37:16] And I would say these are the kinds of things that safe and welcome. Right. welcoming churches do. And I'm looking forward to hearing these stories in the coming months. Whenever we do this, we're going to decide together how to do it. And I'm excited about that too. So that's the end. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for this book, for this journey that you've put us on. Thank you for this parable that Jesus tells, for the whole world that it opens up to us. And thank you that you point us to the Father who listens to his children and grants them justice without delay. Lord, bless the rest of this time, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.