Giving Up Power for Community

Transcript

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[0:00] now to the sermon. And our reading is Philippians 2, 1 through 11. We're not going to get to it just yet. That'll come a little bit later. But if you want to find it in the bulletin, you can. And also be thinking now, because at the end of this hopefully shorter sermon, we're going to break into smaller groups and confer with each other. And there's a spot on your bulletin on the back there where it's just like there's some lines on the page and you can write. And then you choose somebody to be the reporter for the group. So this is our final sermon on this book study. It's been a great book. I think it was a really good book. And I think we need to thank the racial justice team because they selected this book with care. It's a very hands-on book. There's a lot of new information in here for many of us. And I think one of the challenges that we've often seen in the racial justice team is we say, well, what should we do? What can we do? And so she gave us some answers. And then there's another book she recommended that has even more answers. I'll get to that. But she basically said we need to build our own beloved community in which racial justice prevails and racism is dismantled. And I think that's a great vision. It's a Christ

[1:19] centered beloved community. And she gives us at least four spiritual practices that we can do. And that will help build community. And so Steve spoke on them, some of them last week. They were lamenting, which I think is a super important thing. And the other was to read together. And I thought that one was good, too. I think it's there's a lot to digest there. And it's great. So thank you, Steve, for preaching last week. I really appreciated that.

[1:50] So and this week and the last two chapters of the book, the spiritual practices of pilgrimage and fasting. So the first two chapters of the book, the spiritual practices of pilgrimage and fasting are the last two chapters. And we'll get into those because they don't mean exactly what you might think they mean exactly. And we'll get to that. But first, a real quick review of the book so far, because I want to remind everybody what we've been reading. Chapter one was this invitation to this journey. And she gave us definitions, asked us, is this an area where we can grow? Chapter two, she talked about this being something that Christ has to be at the center of. Praise God. And this differentiates us from how the world is approaching this. If you look at how the world is kind of having this conversation, it's not characterized by the love of Christ. It's characterized by a zero sum game, people winning, people losing, people yelling at each other. And it's toxic. It's hateful. And I think this is a place where the church can shine a light and say we can have this conversation in a Christ honoring, God honoring way. We can bring our humility to it instead of thinking that we know everything. All these important things that she talked about.

[2:58] And so we are. We offer love and our own humility to people who differ from us. That's super important. Chapter three was about waking up and having the humility to believe that there are things that we don't know that we don't know. Right. There's things that we don't know that we don't know that we don't know. I could keep going, but, you know, we don't have time. I could say that for hours, but we don't know. And so we could ask. We would add asking why things are the way she are. So she talks about why are black men in Christ? Why are black men incarcerated at a much higher rate than white men? Why are black families accumulating far less wealth than white families? And there is good evidence that structural biases that are built into the system of criminal justice and banking and lending have driven these disparities between these groups. You can you can do a sociological political science sort of study of this and find that that's probably the case. Right. And why is that? So that's the question, though, is why is that happening? Why are those structures in place? Why are we like this? You know, why do we create why do humans always create systems that advantage some people, privilege some people and disadvantage or dis privilege other people?

[4:08] And so can that evidence that that exists change our preconceived notions of why we think some things are happening? Because you could make up all sorts of other reasons for why you think that's true, but they may not be centered in facts at all. They may just be your own biases at work. And so we have to be really like. This humility to take off what we think is true and be open to new evidence and new thinking.

[4:33] And so Chapter four is more about bias, taking off the biases that we have and changing how we think. I won't say more about that. Chapter five is healing from racial trauma, both for victims and perpetrators. Chapter six is about beloved community. Pastor Victoria preached on this. Actually, Chapter five was our author came and spoke. I thought that was great. Chapter six was. So we're talking about the vision of the beloved community. And this is the vision for what how all this looks like when racism doesn't rule our systems. And again, this is a particularly Christ centered vision. The beloved community has Christ at the center, which is very different from the world. Now, Chapter seven through 10, the four spiritual practices to get us there, to get us closer to beloved community, living and reading, living and reading, color, reading and living color, lamenting, taking pilgrimage and fasting, though not the food type fasting.

[5:28] So those those are the spiritual practices to last week, two more this week. So now I'm going to summarize Chapter nine for us. OK, and this will just help you if you haven't. The reason I'm summarizing this is it's OK if some of you haven't read, you're getting exposed to the information in the book now and that will allow you to have a conversation about it later. And we've had very good participation in the small groups, which for which I'm very thankful to all of you. And we've had very good participation in the book study in the sense that we bought. Twenty five books and only one was left, and I was very pleased to see that. So twenty four books were taken home by somebody. The youth group actually got their own versions of the book and they look a lot like each other. So Krista started reading the youth one and she's like, it seems a little different, but it's fairly close. And then we had three, I think, three copies of like the really young kids book, which was really cool. And we still have more of the really young kids books, I think. And so take one home if you can't find one out there, I'll find one for you. OK. So we. We've been reading the book, we've been discussing the book and we've been preaching on the book.

[6:30] Chapter nine is about pilgrimage, which is a Christian tradition. We think about it. A pilgrimage is just a journey from one place to another. And pilgrimages have not been working out lately anymore because really the journey was the destination. It used to be the the destination was important. Maybe somebody would go to a place where a saint was born or a place where something significant spiritually had happened.

[6:56] But along the way it took them. They had to walk. So along the way they would sing and they would pray and they would stop in various places along the way and they'd be in fellowship with their fellow pilgrims and travelers. And so actually the process of getting to that place was probably more than the place itself. But the problem with us is we fly places. We get in our car and drive places. The journey takes two hours, a journey that, you know, across Europe that used to take three weeks. It takes four or five hours. Right. So you get there and you're like, here, I'm ready. Well, no, it's this this journey. So we have to kind of think back to let's journey together. And that's actually something we can do as a congregation. We can journey together, not actually to other places, but to two ideas and two themes. And so you could say in a way that this book has been a pilgrimage for us because it's been something that we've been doing together for the last six weeks.

[7:53] OK, so. But the value of the book is that it's a journey. It's a journey. And the value of a pilgrimage is also that you change your place. So a physical pilgrimages, you change your place and that opens you up to God's work and to changing your thinking. And so I think one thing that we actually actually did in the summer is we did take a trip together. We went to Angel Island together and took a tour of the island. Unfortunately, because of COVID and just because of life, we had to drive there in separate cars. So that was too bad. It would have been cool if we could charter a bus.

[8:26] We could have a bus or all ride bikes there together. But that would take too long. But you get the idea. At least we were that we traveled there. We did the tour together. We came back and it was a pilgrimage. It was a pilgrimage to open our eyes to the Chinese Exclusion Act and all sorts of things that had happened in the 19th and 20th century.

[8:43] Our church has gone on a pilgrimage to Israel about four years ago. Next year, we plan to go on a pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John. That is going to be a pilgrimage. We're going to talk about. The writings of Paul and John as we go and see those places. We're going to visit monasteries. We're going to visit ancient ruins.

[9:04] Places where we're going to walk in the places where the Apostle Paul walked. We're going to go to the island of Patmos where we think the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelation. And so that's just a little plug for next year. But I want you know, I'm hoping we can get a lot of people to go to Turkey and Greece next year. Pilgrimages are important, but you can pilgrimage in place by experiencing. Other cultures that are in your midst as well. And so we live in a perfect place here in Silicon Valley. We're surrounded. This is almost the most aside from like maybe New York City and Los Angeles. This is probably one of the most diverse metro areas in the United States. You don't have to look far to find people from other countries, other restaurants, things like that. And so we could decide that as a group, we're going to go experience another culture and listen to them and talk to them. And we would call that a pilgrimage. We would absolutely call that a pilgrimage. To go and do this. We would do that together.

[9:59] Now, I maybe some of you have heard of this, but there's a trip that our denomination puts on called Sankofa. And she mentioned it in the book. And I had gotten an email from there's actually a whole department in our denomination called Love, Mercy and Do Justice. And the director of that sent an email to all the people who had been through what we call an anti-racism discipleship pathway, which I had completed the second round of. And they said there's six spots left. That was a month ago. And as I read, as I kind of was preparing this, I thought, oh, I can't go there. It's in Atlanta. It's four days long. It would be quite a disruption for our lives. But I felt the spirit prod me. And so I emailed him back and I said, is there any room left on this trip? And he said, there's one spot and it's probably for you. I don't know why he said that. I think he just wanted to fill the trip up. But I think he wanted me to go.

[10:53] And so I'm enrolled. And so in our denomination, we're going to do that. And I'm going to take this bus ride. And I'm going to take this bus ride all throughout places in the south where significant civil rights things have happened. And I'll report back. I'll tell you what I've. So that will be my pilgrimage. And I think I'm hoping that you can experience it vicariously when I come back and tell you what I experienced. So we want to do pilgrimage. At least that's a spiritual practice. One other thing. And I thought this was a challenge. Is what if you go to parts of your own town that you never go to? That if you want to say it one way, like it might be the other side of the tracks. Right? A place where it seems maybe a little dangerous. Or maybe a little unknown to you. Now, there's probably ways to do that safely. Go in a larger group. You know. Et cetera. But to look at, just look at the world that you're in. That's only five miles from your house. And say, oh, okay. I live in a community that's quite different and diverse. Okay. So that's chapter nine.

[12:03] I'm downloading a lot of information to you. I hope you guys are enjoying it. If you've read, you're like, oh, yeah, I remember. Okay. Chapter 10. This is called fasting for real. And it's not a fast from food. Though that is a powerful practice. And I don't do it because, I don't know. It's just never, it's never. I could try it. But it's never been my thing is to fast like from food. But maybe I should try it. And you could try it. Talk to your doctor first. It's a good practice. It's a different kind of fasting. She's talking here about fasting from power. And that's an important distinction. Because if you, depending on your, you could call it your intersectionality. If you're intersection of race and gender and class and all sorts of other things. You may be, you know, you're not going to be able to do it. You may be in this range of having more power or less power. More privilege or less privilege. More position or less position. The ability to, that people think of you in a certain way. More or less platform. Which is your ability to speak into a system. Or more or less prosperity. And a lot of these things are kind of interlinked with each other. Clearly. Right? And so her idea is that a spiritual practice that a disciple who wants to build beloved community would take on is to take a fast from food.

[13:18] From that power. In some way. Okay? We'll talk about what that means. I thought that was a very, I thought that was a very, not innovative is not the word I'm looking for. But it was just a really thoughtful way of talking about it. Because we probably think of our power and our privileges as this immutable thing that we always have no matter what. And we can just shrug our shoulders and say, well, I have it. I can't really get rid of it. And some of you can.

[13:48] But this idea that a disciple would purposely set aside some of that for the sake of community with other people. And to build a more beloved community is powerful. And so I want to go to our reading. And Andres is going to put that up on the screen. This is Philippians 1. Pardon me. 2, 1 through 11. And this is the model. This is what Jesus himself does. He takes his power, his privilege, all the things as the son of God. Living up in heaven with the host of heaven. Up there. Being adored by the angels. And having the power equal to the ability to create, be a co-creator of the universe. I mean he had some power. Right? And he sets that aside so that he can become human for the sake of relationship with human race. So that he can also save them. So let's read. If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete. Be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

[15:14] Who though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited or taken advantage of or privileged. But emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name. So that at the end of his life, he would be a man of God. And at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. To the glory of God the Father. And let's say a quick prayer over that. Father, thank you for this word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it in Jesus' name. Amen.

[16:03] Well, this is a classic, this reading is a classic Christian hymn of how Jesus, it says, emptied himself of all his privilege. You can imagine like a cup of wine. A cup being poured out. The Greek word is kenosis. And so you, keno-o is probably how the infinitive would be. But it's this idea of, of like really it's like a cup being poured out. He had all this power and he emptied it itself out. He emptied himself of his power and all of his privilege as God's son to take on human flesh. For the purpose of going to the cross to save humanity but also to be relational with humanity. Imagine he could not do ministry among us until he became like us. He couldn't. He was born a baby in a really sort of squalid conditions, right? In a manger. He wasn't born in a castle or a palace, right? And he, he, just imagine, I mean if he was walking around with his disciples, he was just another person. Now he was different, clearly. He was just another person. He didn't have a giant light coming out of his head. He didn't have some angels fluttering above his shoulders following him around everywhere. You couldn't have a conversation, a real conversation with a person like that. You'd always be like, oh this, this person is so high above me.

[17:23] All I can do, really do right now is just worship him. Or I, I can only keep him at a distance because it's just too much, you know, too much power and holiness. He emptied himself of all of that. So that he could, he could say, I no longer call you servants. I call you my friends. Right? This is how Jesus thinks. And so he gives up all this vast power and is born into a human body. Now, here's, here's a way of thinking about it. There's an old Christmas hymn which has some theological problems with it. Which is, the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. Right? The baby Jesus didn't cry when he got hungry? When he filled his diaper? Of course he filled his diaper. He was a baby. He was a human baby. He didn't have some magical digestive system that it just sent it to the void, you know. He had, you know, he got hungry, he got hurt. When he was older, he was walking around, he got bunions, you know. And clearly his body was assailable by life and nature because he went to the cross and died there of his wounds. You see all that? You see? That if, if he was so holy and powerful and had not set aside his power and, and cannotically emptied himself. He could not die on the cross. He'd be just like a kind of like this Superman thing.

[18:45] That oh they'd, they'd hit the nails on him. And they would, the nails would just bounce off. Like Superman or something like that. But he's not Superman. He's Jesus. He's man. He's man and God at the same time. And this is so important. So.

[18:59] You can't get excited about the incarnation. What I'm talking about now is the incarnation. This is super important. But Paul says. This is the example. let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. So we're getting again to this idea of changing how we think, changing how our mind is oriented. Change your mind away from the selfish and arrogant and the mind that doesn't know what it doesn't know, and take on the mind of Christ that is humble and admits there's things it doesn't know and needs to learn, but also that same mind of Christ that says, I will empty myself of those things that set me over others so that I can enter into a meaningful relationship with them. It's hard to have a mutual relationship with somebody that you have far more personal power with or far less personal power with. It's hard for the janitor to be super good friends with the CEO of the corporate. operation. Because the CEO could fire the janitor at every moment, at any moment he wanted to, right? The CEO, the janitor would always be walking on eggshells around that person. And thus, no real relationship is possible. The janitor can't tell the CEO, you know, I think you're making a mistake right there. That doesn't happen.

[20:28] So, and that I think we're in beloved community, there are also power differentials. And those have to, the only way for those power differentials to diminish is if the one with more power gives up some of it and if possible gives it to one who has less. And so that there's a leveling of power in, in the beloved community for the sake of community, for the sake of relationship, for the sake of living together. Now again, real quick, four areas that she mentions that we should take a fast in. Privilege, I have advantages based on my ethnicity, the family I grew up in, my gender, the wealth I was born into, which I always thought wasn't that much because my family was solidly middle class, but definitely we had more than some people and less than others. But still the relative amount of wealth that I grew up in my family was, was some level of privilege. Right? The opportunities that were given to me. And you look at these and you say, well, some of them I can't give up. I can't change my ethnicity. I can't change my gender, or at least I won't. I'm not going to. Okay. And, but other things I can give up. Right? And sometimes people give you privilege because of who you are. And, and there is sometimes it's hard to deflect that.

[21:54] One example. So, one example that I've noticed is that I've noticed that as a tall person, people always ask me for directions. And I'm like, I don't know. But I think they think, oh, he's taller. He can see a little further down the road to where the, you know, where you're supposed to turn. But I'm just like, I don't know. I'm new here too. You know, let's find a map together. I don't know. So, it's not, so the ones that you can't give up because you, you can't, I can't give up that I'm white and male.

[22:25] Instead, if, if it's something you can give up, you can give up your voice. You can give up a lot of other things. Some things you can't give up. If you can't give up a thing, then you leverage the thing, which is, don't think of that as a, you could think of it as a financial thing because people leverage things. But think of it more as a, like a jack. You know, when you raise the tire of your car with a jack, you're leveraging it up with sort of a, the law of the lever, the law of the lever. It's a, it's a great thing.

[23:03] So if you get some great information for for for for for for for for for for for community. I'm a father. I'm a pastor. I'm a property owner. I'm a citizen, etc. But in that position, can I step aside to make room for others to have a seat at a table? Or like it says in Hamilton, to be in the room where the decisions are made. You can do that. You can do that, but it's intentional. You have to decide to do it. Platform. These things are similar. Platform is a place from which I can speak, and supposedly people will listen. I can speak, but I'm not sure any of you are listening. I have no idea because I'm not you. I assume that some, like one percent of you is listening, and three of you are asleep, but it's okay. No, nobody's asleep. The person who normally sleeps isn't here today. I don't know. You know who you are. I don't know. Now, if I had one million Twitter followers, I would have quite a platform, right? Because everything I tweet, you know, almost a million people would read it, right? And then I'd want to be very thoughtful about how I used it. Would I use it to sell products or advocate for myself? That's the normal way, right? Or would I use it to advocate for beloved community? You see what I'm

[24:28] saying? I could use those million followers, or I could use the platform of those million followers for myself, or I could use it for something else, right? Or to give voice to people who have fewer followers. So I could end them on my Twitter, and I have like, actually I'm on Twitter, and I have like seven followers, and most of them are robots as far as I can tell. Like they're nobody I know at all. They're just like random people. That are not people. I'm pretty sure they're not people. Anyway, but if I had a million followers, I could say, well, here's somebody with 10,000 followers, but I think everybody really needs to hear what that person says. So I could retweet them, and then everybody on my feed would see it. This is how Twitter works. Also, Twitter gets you fired. So, yet, has not happened, but you know, if I ever get fired from here, it'll definitely be because of Twitter. It's basically, it's a software platform that helps you get fired faster, is really what it is. Okay. So, I have a platform, and my goal needs to be to make room on the platform for other voices. And so this is one platform I'm in here right now. The pulpit. We try to share this pulpit. We share it with Victoria. I make sure that she gets to preach at least once a month.

[25:37] That's super important to me. When Victoria is on sabbatical this summer and I'm going to be on vacation a few days. I'm asking other people to fill the pulpit too. And we have, when we have missionaries come. I want them to fill the pulpit. but I want them to preach. I want you to hear other voices. And I think that's just a good goal. And it's only like 5% because I'm lazy, right? And 95% is because, no. Because really it's fun because when there's a week when I don't have to preach, I'm like, I could get a lot of done on this project or, you know, whatever, some other thing. Finally, prosperity, which is wealth, of course. And this is what we think about all the time. This is the hardest one. Do you want to give up your wealth? Do you want to? No, you don't. But we know that wealth is uneven between ethnic groups and that structural biases make that gap bigger. And so what can we do? And here, I think only the spirit can guide us. Can our wealth help build up beloved community? Now, just giving another person money could hurt them. It can. Sometimes it's better to give to an organization that understands better than us what leads to justice. I don't know. There's some tough choices. Just because it's tough doesn't mean we don't do it. If it's tough, we seek the spirit's guidance

[26:50] on this, right? And we have to be careful that we're not giving just to salve our own conscience and make ourselves feel better without thinking it through. But I do want to tell you the church spends more than 10% of its income on our missionaries. You can look at the church budget. And many of them are serving people who aren't white, right? Who aren't privileged. They're in other countries. And as we get updates from them again over the next few months, you'll see what I mean. We'll talk. In fact, I think you'll see what I mean. We'll talk. In fact, I think you'll see what I mean. We'll talk. In fact, I think maybe when the missionaries come, we're going to ask them, how do you serve people who are less privileged? And what does that look like in your ministry? So that's where we end. I think it's been a great book. I'm so excited the author came and spoke to us. And our goal is to see if this book can help us build beloved community as a church. This is what we want to move towards, is incorporate the teaching of this book to, and I'd say we have beloved community, but I think it's beloved community that can be used to help people get better. And I think it's a good look more like the beloved community that she describes,

[27:49] that Martin Luther King Jr. describes, okay? And so the hope is that, actually I think, the beloved community that we can create here will be an attractive thing to anyone who comes in contact with it. And they'll go, wow, that looks different there. How are they doing that differently? Why are they at such peace? Why are they so brave to face these difficult issues? Why are they doing these things? What's going on in there? Well, I wanna understand that more.

[28:17] And then as she says, the beloved community seeks to follow Jesus and dismantle racism. Wow, I mean, that's like, that's it right there, but hard. Hard to do, but doesn't mean we stop. So that's it for the book. Thank you for reading this book with us. And now we're gonna take, I think, just about 20 minutes is all we need. And I'm gonna ask, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. Can this room break into three groups? Would that be okay? Three groups of six-ish or so? Maybe families break up because you know each other so well and you just kind of give different ideas. Is that possible? And I'm gonna ask one group to go to the fireside room so that it doesn't kind of cross, make noises here. And another group to go through these doors here. You're gonna have to get up. Everybody stand up right now. This is gonna make it easier for you.

[29:13] And six people go through those. And then you're gonna close doors into that room. Maybe Michael, can you? Maybe follow, five people follow Michael into that room. And five people follow Per into the fireside room. And then the rest stay here and maybe gather right in the middle. And I'm gonna join everybody else on Zoom. And then in about 10 minutes, you know, there's directions on the last page of the bulletin to what you're gonna do. Somebody take notes and then we'll call you back and you'll share back what we can do differently as a church based on this book, okay? Does that make sense? Splitting the room. So, load up as families, unless you have a child. You can bring your child with you. Follow Per, follow Michael, stay here. And on Zoom, everybody at home who's watching, join the Zoom stream now. Go ahead and join Zoom right now.

[30:15] So if you want to join for if you want to join for if you want to join for if you want to join for if you want to join for if you want to join for There's no one on yet. Well, it's taking them time. I'll go to my study. And don't, you know, don't turn the volume up on OBS because then you'll just be eavesdropping on us. Yeah, just some light music for people at home.

[31:21] So if you want some great music for if if if if if if if if if if if Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon Working really hard and everything, but at least he's getting a college education now. And he got into all that debt, not because he, like the rest of us, say, oh, I want more than I have. He was just trying to pay the rent and get food on the table. And so that's happening here. This was in Sunnyvale, California.

[49:40] And I'm thinking that, you know, if we can help individuals be able to get the education, as Stan said, whatever they need. That may only be one person at a time, but still it's something. How about Stan? Let's just Stan and then Craig and Karen. What thoughts?

[50:04] I don't know what to suggest. There might be some community outreach. I think maybe look, at our community, what are the ethnicities that we can reach reasonably and try to figure out what to serve. And we already have a mix of people in our congregation.

[50:27] Hispanic, Indian, and maybe that may somewhat indicate what our surroundings are. And I think maybe events, that they would celebrate. I mean, you know, we do Santa Lucia because we're Swedish. Well, maybe we should do made other celebrations like the Chinese New Year or the, I can't think of the name right now, but any one ethnicity we should, maybe we can celebrate, you know, as long as it's consistent with our Christian beliefs, we can have an event that they feel is important to them.

[51:25] Craig and Karen. You know, yeah, Karen just brought up, made a comment here. The elementary school, our kids went to Oak just down the street, used to have an international fair once a year. And they'd have tables and different people from different backgrounds would represent their culture from the country they, or whatever culture they were coming from. And usually the Eklunds got tapped to do the whole Africa table because there weren't very many African Americans, or at least I should say, there weren't many people from Africa at Oak. And so we got to cover the whole continent, but, but, but something like that could be fun, a fun event within the congregation where people represent, you know, you know, where they're coming from and sign up to say, Hey, I'll do a table on Sweden.

[52:25] I'll do a table on, I think Michael's Taiwanese, I'll do a table on, you know, Japan for Yuki. I mean, et cetera. Andres can do, you know, the Mayan peninsula, you know, and it would be, it could be kind of fun. Probably learn some more about Eklund. So if you want to get some information for some great stuff for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for And then Andres, let's show the one scene with the whole church if possible.

[53:22] It'll be announcements, yeah. There you go. Go ahead. So share whatever your group is, you know, wanted to tell us. So we were at the fire site, and some of the things that came up, like what did we learn from the book about what the community is thinking about the picture of community and how does that, in some sense, as a group of community contributions, we didn't really worry about not having a certain group, and maybe also the part of the population, so kind of a part of that. Difference between ethnicity, which is a blessing from God, versus race, which is creative, broad solutions that are mentioned in the book, like the silver maid and crafting as well as like beauty with a different color.

[54:09] Colorblind being the negative, or not being enough. So that was the main goal, and investing and possible. And then how did you touch it? Ah, yeah. What can we do as a group to respond to this book? Some of the things that we talked about, like food being the heart of everything, so maybe it must be an activity, and they provide the money for other visiting local neighborhoods. Yeah.

[54:39] So we talked about making follow-up to the Hando Park. Can you switch out? Oh, it's not working? Yeah. Oh, better. There we go. Different neighborhoods, which are also underserved and different from our neighborhoods, maybe. Well, I'll turn it down just a bit, though. Thank you, Divya. No, keep going. It was just a little too strong. Andres actually said that we can go to his home and have an event there and experience the neighborhood around his place. Yeah. We were also thinking about the community. So I think maybe we should even do some observations, like where is the nearest school, the public transport, where is the nearest food bank or church and things like that, and looking at that and how that is different from ours. Going to a flea market, and the suggestion was to go to the San Jose Flea Market, which is also very multicultural and multiethnic, and we can go as a group and experience that. Adopting a family around Christmas to give gifts and supplies, I think that is very possible to do. Yeah. And maybe asking some community workers, like people who arrange housing for homeless and things like that, and they coming and talking to our church, and then we can find needs that we could potentially fill in.

[55:51] So those were some of the things we thought. And we want that paper. I meant to say that. Everybody hand me their papers at the end, okay? Because I didn't take notes on that. You'll be able to read it. But if you're a doctor, I'm not sure I can read your handwriting. Exactly. That's why I was assigned the reporter for some reason. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. All right. Another group. Did you take notes, Michael?

[56:12] All right. Let's bring him the mic. Why don't you come up here and just use the pulpit? It's fine. It's better. Okay. So our group, we discussed a couple things. So we mainly addressed the questions at hand. So what did our group learn from the book that was new? What did our group learn from the book that was new? There were three main things. One is seeing how a church can openly address these kinds of racial divide issues, but in a Christ-centric fashion. I think we often see many examples of how people are trying to take justice into their own hands or exert it from their own power, but seeing how we can recenter it on a Christ-centric way is something new. And then we also realized that we take our own lens of how we perceive the world, and apply that to whatever the issue is or whatever the injustice is. And so having this sense that we need to understand we are bringing our own experience into whatever the situation is. And then lastly, I think what was fascinating to us was that there's a generational racial trauma that can get passed down from generation to generation. So I think that kind of helps us debunk the American myth that we have about the fact that you are truly a product of your own individual doing.

[57:42] And I think this gives us this perspective that you are not only affected by what you do, but there's also things that are completely out of your control, like generational things that have happened in the past that affect who you are and what you are today.

[57:58] And so some ways that we were thinking about how to respond, we like that idea of being able to travel to different places and also understand the different perspectives from which we are. And so one example that was raised was when you travel to somewhere, being able to see both the urban and the rural side, understanding that there are different perspectives or mindsets that people have and being able to get that collectively helps us avoid being biased towards a certain way of thinking or another. And then lastly is for us to continue listening to one another, even if the stories get repetitive and we hear the same things over. I think multiple of us have had that experience. I think many of us had that thought that we know our community and our church pretty well, so sometimes it does feel like the same stories are being repeated. But interestingly, we are also thinking that when people are saying these same stories, we all kind of take it in differently each time. So there are new insights that we can have, and it's important for us to have this endurance and energy to listen well to one another over time. So I'm not singling anyone out.

[59:11] I'm just saying some things for our community. So if you if if if if if So I think Mike gave a wonderful summary. I don't want to repeat what he also shared. I think we talked about very similar things. So amen to all of that.

[59:50] But we talked about ministry of serving with others and sharing our lives and our food and so forth. But I'll mention a couple of things. We talked about lament and having songs of lament during worship. That would be wonderful. But we also talked about a challenge that we're all very spread out. But I think that could be to our advantage where we more intentionally visit each other. And I forget who it was, but we talked about being very intentional about our efforts. And so I think many of us have really good intentions, but being more intentional about it could be, I think, a valuable approach.

[60:27] And we talked about pilgrimage and visiting other neighborhoods and things of other things. And I'm sorry. One of the things that many people might find kind of surprising and also a little bit alarming is that there's been studies of racial segregation and integration in neighborhoods across the U.S. If you go back to about the 1990s, there have been actually increased racial segregation of neighborhoods since for the past several decades. So racial integration has actually gotten worse in many urban. neighborhoods in the U.S. And so there's really interesting things to be thinking about why that's been happening, but I think that makes us to require us to be more intentional about our efforts too. So some things to think about. So but amen to a lot what Michael said.

[61:23] Thank you. I'll just real real quick the the group the Zoom group the things that we learned that were new. The idea that color blindness is is is not enough. There's more that doesn't restore things. It's just it's not enough. The difference between equity and equality. System systemic racism that exists. And this idea that that this sort of the life course that somebody has starts really early. And so if children need need the same opportunities as well off people if they don't have them they're not going to sort of end up in the same places right. So it was that kind of gets to that equity versus equality thing.

[62:05] And so some ideas what the church could do if we found somebody who wasn't in need of funding for education on a personal level. The church maybe could give money to somebody to help them. And then we we celebrate things like Lucia, but we want to celebrate all the education. And then we we celebrate things like Lucia, but we want to celebrate all the ethnic sort of celebrations that we can within our own body. So that's a great idea just kind of instead of that's not color instead of being colorblind we're color aware which I think is important. And then Craig and Karen mentioned that at the elementary school next door they used to do an international fair once a year and the Eklund's were always told to make a table for all of Africa you know because they had lived in Africa for in one country of Africa for several years. But what if our church did it? What if our church did it? What if our church did it? What if our church did it?

[63:11] What if our church did it? What if our church did it? What if our church did it? What if our church did it? if our church did it if our church did it if our church if if if if The study groups are not done yet. So Steve is going to have his study group talk about chapters 9 and 10 this afternoon. And on Thursday night, that group is going to meet one last time to discuss the rest of the book. So that's it. But in terms of from the pulpit, this is it for our book study. Praise God. I think it was good. Let's give a sort of applause to everybody who read and participated in everything. And now we're going to move on to the last part. If I can find my bulletin, I think it says that we're going to do the benediction. And then Yuki is going to play the postlude, which she's prepared. I don't know where my stuff is. Oh, here it is. Okay. Yeah. All right. Let's have the benediction. May the Lord bless you and us. You can stand up. That's fine. Bless you and us as we create beloved community in the image that God wants us to make. Let us have the mind of Christ who put aside his power and came to this world in humility. Let us live like Christ. Go in peace and serve the Lord.