Advent 3 Bible Study: Luke 22 and John 20
Episode 17 - Release Date 12/14/2024
Today’s Bible Study discusses readings from Luke 22 & John 20
Bedtime Chapel's weekly Bible Study supports families to make sense of the Bible readings in the upcoming night prayer services. You can find a copy of the prayer service and the list of the upcoming readings here. Sign up for Bedtime Chapel's monthly email and we’ll send you copies of the upcoming prayer services and readings.
In this episode, Gary Commins joins us to discuss the Bible readings you'll here this week during Bedtime Chapel. Gary and Natalie know each other from their shared intersted in creating new community-centered ministries. He is a retired Episcopal priest and his most recent book is Evil and the Problem of Jesus. Key moments in our conversation include:
00:55 Ways to Integrate Faith-Practices into the Home
07:22 "Who do you say that I am?"
12:22 St. Thomas the Apostle
15:52 Nurturing Vulnerability - In Children & In Ourselves
19:53 Proclaiming Jesus in the 21st Century
You can read a complete transcript of this episode below
Things we talked about on this episode:
If you missed it, check out our other Bible Study discussions with Gary that covered the readings for Advent 1 and Advent 2.
Gary's Other Books
If We Could Only See - Mystical Vision and Societal Transformation
Becoming Bridges - The Spirit and Practice of Diversity
Let’s stay connected!
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00:00:00 Natalie Thomas
Hello and welcome to Bedtime Chapel's weekly scripture study episode. I am the Reverend Natalie Thomas.
00:00:07 James Thomas
And I'm the Reverend James Thomas. We're deacons in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
00:00:11 Natalie Thomas
Bedtime Chapel grew out of our shared desire to offer resources to families who are trying to center Jesus in a post Christian world.
00:00:19 James Thomas
We offer a nightly prayer service that includes a short gospel reading. In this episode, we will be covering the third week of Advent.
00:00:27 Natalie Thomas
And we're here today with Gary Commins, who was with us the last two weeks. And if you've missed them, you can go hear his introductions on those readings or catch up on our website, bedtimechapel.com to learn about him. And in this episode, we're going to invite you, Gary, to share a little bit more about yourself and your way of being in the world by passing on some practical ways that families can create a faith practice their home, a few things.
00:00:55 Gary Commins
One is just to establish rhythms. Obviously, parents establish rhythms in your house, from meals on and on, sleep, and then to have some kind of prayer time. Be part of the ritual, not to beat yourself up if you fail for a while. As I said in the first session, I had no religious exposure until I was 9 or 10 years old.
00:01:19 Gary Commins
So your child can grow up and be a priest even, but certainly be someone who's a faithful Christian without everything going perfectly. But to as part of that rhythm, to have a time of prayer, you know, I know bedtime reading was very important with my son and it included prayer time for a while and then it just didn't, you know, he would say thank you prayers.
00:01:42 Gary Commins
That was a big focus for us with thank you prayers. And it was always, you know, pizza and Sesame Street. And then after five or six things, it would get back to Daddy, you know, And I always thought I should have had top billing, but I was behind the pizza and Sesame Street, usually.
00:01:59 Gary Commins
But to have that, to establish a rhythm and as in any your own prayer life, that we fall out of the rhythm. It can be very hard for busy people, especially busy parents, to have time to pray. So obviously have your own rhythm, and that includes the weekly rhythm. And the church is good at weekly because there's Sundays and the church is good on an annual rhythm, the whole liturgical calendar, the whole Christian year, and to see your family rhythm within that, your practice within that.
00:02:29 Gary Commins
And I think that's important. The other thing is as children get older and again, as a priest, I almost felt like I had to be careful not to overdo it because my son was always in church and preachers, kids are notoriously grow up to do all kinds of just, you know, disregard the church, back away from the church.
00:02:52 Gary Commins
And so there were times on Sundays when he didn't want to go. And there were times that I said, fine, don't go. And, you know, you have to, again, everything. You're playing it by ear within a context of love, and, you know, you love each other. But I know when he was in high school, somebody asked him if he was going to be a priest, and he said, hell, no.
00:03:11 Gary Commins
You know, that was important for him to be himself and not to be just his father's son, you know, and we had the usual things when you have a rhythm of life and you have, you know, I was very fortunate I picked a good baby to be my son. And I like to say I got a form in the mail before he was born, and I got everything I asked for.
00:03:32 Gary Commins
A good kid, mildly sarcastic teenager, great adult. He did it all. And, you know, within. So there was just a good relationship that we had. And honestly, I think that's part of it, too, is to see your spiritual life within the context of your whole relationship with your children. And, you know, that it was good enough that when I remember when he was a teenager, I was starting to explain something to him, and he said, you don't have to explain something to me.
00:03:59 Gary Commins
Something to me when I'm already not paying attention. And I started cracking up. And he said, why are you laughing? And I said, because that's a quintessential high school thing to say. That's what teenagers say. I'm already not paying attention. Don't explain it. So to have that rhythm, to see it, to be part of a community, I know for my son, that was really important.
00:04:21 Gary Commins
He doesn't go to church as an adult. He's 31, he's married. He says that what he misses about it, his sense of community and a sense of being grounded that we're supposed to be doing good in the world, those are the two things he says he misses about not going, but he doesn't miss enough to go.
00:04:38 Gary Commins
But it's a huge part of who he is. A few years ago, he went to law school, decided it wasn't for him after six weeks. But in his application to law school, he started it off as saying, as the son of an Episcopal priest who grew up in such and such a church.
00:04:51 Gary Commins
So that stuff is very much a part of who he is, and who knows where his relationship with the church will be, and it's not his relationship with God. I think it's his relationship with the church that's not going right now. But I think that in terms of practical tips, figure out what you're going to try to do, try to do it.
00:05:13 Gary Commins
Make sure that there's a larger community than your family that you're connected to that is just so important. And to see it as part of this larger effort to nurture. To nurture them as the words are in the knowledge and love of the Lord. And also to know that, as James Baldwin says, children don't listen to what you say, but they will imitate what you do.
00:05:36 Gary Commins
So realize that you're a role model for your children. And so a lot of it is about taking care of yourself, too. You know, there's that William Golding novel in which a child's not paying attention in Sunday school and the teacher says, well, what was the lesson? And the kid doesn't remember, and the teacher starts hitting the kid and with each slap says God, slap is slap love.
00:06:01 Gary Commins
So what we do and how we live is as important as what we do in our focus time with children. That's what I would say in terms of a practical thing, but also to make sure as a parent that you're getting nurtured, that you're getting supported. That, I think is very important.
00:06:19 Natalie Thomas
One comment before we get into this discussion to your. What you referenced about your son missing the community and a sense of groundedness that we're called to do good. I think just as much as you said about it being a relationship, not only will he come back to the church, but maybe will we, as the church start asking why that's not translating to people maybe in their 30s, that they are a part of the community and that we are doing good, you know, and to really, some of our conversations on earlier episodes interpret the evilness and the pain that they're seeing in the world through the story of Christ.
00:07:00 Natalie Thomas
So two way street there, for sure.
00:07:03 James Thomas
Yeah.
00:07:04 Gary Commins
Yes, very much so, yeah.
00:07:06 James Thomas
So this week we come to it, Luke, chapter 22, starting with the prediction of Peter's denial through the arrest of Jesus and Jesus before the council. And then I think, very interestingly, the way the lectionary is laid out, concluding this Week with St. Thomas the Apostle in the lectionary. And the question here is this question that's so present in the Gospel tradition, which is the question that is right below the text at all times, essentially from the beginning to the end.
00:07:36 James Thomas
Who is Jesus? Who do you say that I am? Who do we say that he Is, I guess that's kind of the essential question of Christianity. So with that in mind, here with Luke 22, and through Thomas the Apostle, my Lord and my God, who do you think the Gospel writers want us to understand Jesus to be in our lives?
00:07:56 James Thomas
And maybe in particular, if you could help parents understand what in the common English Bible is translated as the human one, more traditionally has been the Son of man. What does all that mean as we move through the arrest of Jesus?
00:08:10 Gary Commins
So to start maybe with the Son of man or the human one, that. That's a technical term for a divine messenger, for someone. For someone God sends, basically. But it, it's. It could be a person. It goes back to an Old Testament reference to it from Daniel, book of Daniel, that God sends a divine messenger.
00:08:29 Gary Commins
And I think one of the things that we say when we say who do. Who do we say Jesus is? Is that the New Testament has a million answers. And each answer can be important to us at different times in our lives. And I know for me, you know, going, I think when I was a child, Jesus was like a teacher was really the most important thing to me.
00:08:51 Gary Commins
And that's good, you know, And Lord was a word I would have used back then. And then the word Savior is another word, a big word that we use. But then they also use words like rabbi and he's a prophet, and on and on and on. Lord and Lords, King of Kings. I mean, all these titles for Jesus, who is to me, in the most secular terms, just our window into God.
00:09:15 Gary Commins
And that through Jesus we see who God is and how God interacts with us. And in my own personal adult journey, it's gone from focusing on the baby Jesus, the Christmas Jesus, the incarnation, focusing on the crucifixion at times, which is what we're leading up to in Luke at this point, a very vulnerable Jesus.
00:09:42 Gary Commins
Jesus in much of the Gospels is just in charge wherever he is. And now he's under arrest and he's going to be killed. And he seems to be powerless. So God is sometimes powerful and God is sometimes powerless. Just to Jesus is all these things. And it's not just who he is, but who are we in relationship to him.
00:10:05 Gary Commins
Are we followers of Jesus? I think there's a huge problem in our society between people who believe in Jesus but don't try to follow him or don't listen to him. A lot of people who call themselves Christians say that what Jesus taught doesn't have relevance anymore. Well, then, if you're not a student or a disciple of Jesus, That's a problem.
00:10:25 Gary Commins
If you're not a follower of Jesus, that's a problem. If you're just praising Jesus and not listening to Jesus, that's a problem. So I think that all those things are part and parcel of that. It's an infinite answer that we give. And we give the answer not only in what we say, but obviously in how we live.
00:10:46 Gary Commins
And that's really the answer. And that's, you know, Peter says it really well, like, I'll be with you. And then he doesn't quite make it to say that, to put it mildly. And yeah, to put it mildly. And, you know, I think that the failures of everyone around Jesus should, should help us to realize that we're not the first.
00:11:08 Gary Commins
I sometimes talk about, you know, Peter. People talk about the Peter principle in society that you rise to your highest level of incompetence. And in the church, it's the St. Peter Principle. And it begins with the story of Peter here, that people, we rise to our highest level of spiritual incompetence. And that's going to happen to everybody.
00:11:28 Gary Commins
And Jesus understands that. And at the same time, as I've said before, he calls us, okay, that's what you did. Now let's move forward. You're forgiven for all that. That's over. How do you move into this new life in which you really are my follower, you really are my disciple, you really are an apostle, someone I send out to continue my work?
00:11:49 Gary Commins
So I think all that is very much a part. You know, there's a lot about Jesus authority in these teachings from the 20th chapter of Luke that we did a couple weeks ago. And that's just another way of talking about who is this guy and what is he saying and does this really represent God?
00:12:06 Gary Commins
So I think that all of that is true. And the other thing I would say, since you brought up, and that is the feast of St. Thomas there. And as I've mentioned to you guys, I was ordained a priest on the feast of Thomas back in 1980. And so that's always been, you know, very much a part of me to ponder that.
00:12:22 Gary Commins
And it was only this year, as I was preparing to preach a sermon the Sunday after Easter, which is always the story of Thomas touching Jesus or having doubts touching Jesus and my Lord and my God, which is such a great, in one story, him doubting Jesus and at the same time proclaiming Jesus.
00:12:42 Gary Commins
And also to be fair to Thomas, he's been through trauma. And I think that actually that's a very important way to understand the story of doubting Thomas is that he's been through trauma. Anyone who's been through trauma, it is not an easy thing. You can't put that aside. It's part of who you are.
00:13:00 Gary Commins
And so he brings that trauma with him, and then he praises God. And as I was thinking about writing the sermon a few months ago, I remembered a moment of trauma for me, which was one of my best friends died 25 years ago of cancer. He was also a priest, someone I knew from.
00:13:19 Gary Commins
We grew up in the same church. We knew each other well in high school, really became friends, later went to seminary at the same time, were very close. That's really when we got to be really close friends. He ended up with cancer and died at the age of 47. And I remember going back there for the funeral, and at one point in the service, his wife put one hand on his casket and raised her other hand up to the cross, which I can still see.
00:13:51 Gary Commins
And to me, that was a lot like what Thomas does. He touches the wound of Christ with one hand and praises with the other. And she was touching her husband's casket with one hand and raising her hand and prays with the other. And in a way, that's what we all do, is we put one hand on the wounds of the world and all of our questions and all of our moments of despair and grief and tragedy, and at the same time, link that despair and that tragedy and our own grief and our own trauma to our faith in God.
00:14:25 Gary Commins
And so to me, to kind of end Advent on that note, given the journey that Jesus is on in Jerusalem, makes perfect sense, because he is about to have his. He's already actually in the last chapter of his life. Not the last chapter of Luke, but the last chapter of his life. And he is showing us how to be faithful in the midst of all the crises that are going on around him and happening to him.
00:14:57 Gary Commins
He's very human. The different gospels portray him in different ways. But no matter how they portray, whether he's calm, as in the Gospel of John, or just saying, why have you forsaken me? As in Mark and Matthew, it's the whole kind of spectrum of possible human behaviors in a time of crisis, in a time of tragedy, and that is all there in him.
00:15:21 Gary Commins
And who is Jesus? That's part of who Jesus is and part of our reaction to that, to the one who is about to be crucified. And for Thomas, the one who was risen, is that connection of the tragedies in life with our highest praise. And somehow that's part of the same life of faith, part of our life and you know, encompasses everything we can imagine happening for us, to us, with us.
00:15:49 Gary Commins
It's all, it's all there in those stories.
00:15:52 Natalie Thomas
Yeah. I'm so struck about very, very powerful story that you just shared with us and the vulnerability that encompasses that story and you referenced it at the beginning of that Sometimes how do we wrestle with this or how do we reckon this, that God is very powerful. God is also very vulnerable if, you know, if Jesus is the incarnate God.
00:16:14 Natalie Thomas
James and I have a two year old almost, almost very close to being a three year old named Phoebe. And I'm struck by what you talk about vulnerability today in particular, as I was dropping her off at school, you could see she wanted or was about to cry and was just holding it back.
00:16:36 Natalie Thomas
So, you know, just really holding the tears. And she'd been at home, she's been sick for a few days and was at home with us and drop off was challenging. And I'm putting a few things together live as we're talking about it. But this idea and this resistance to vulnerability that we have as humans and what I've come to learn in my work around anti racism, especially as people who grew up with privilege of any sort of privilege, race privilege, gender privilege, just a rejection of vulnerability and softness and how that prevents us often from putting our hands in the wounds of the world or actually letting them move us to grief and to sadness and then often letting that grief and sadness move us to action.
00:17:19 Natalie Thomas
Right. And so what do we see in Jesus is someone who did grieve and did weep and was vulnerable and that that grief and compassion and love for the world, really the touchstone or cornerstone of what motivated him to move into these roles of liberator and savior and redeemer that you talk about.
00:17:39 Natalie Thomas
So that was a very long intro into a question about vulnerability and how we as parents both welcome that in ourselves in witness for our children and also create spaces and homes when vulnerability and tenderness can be nurtured and celebrated. If you have any thoughts on how to do that.
00:18:01 Gary Commins
I think the most important thing parents can do for their children on that is to model it and to model it in our behavior towards other people. I remember when my son was in college, he texted me once and said thanks, I guess, for showing me how to deal with drunken people on the street.
00:18:23 Gary Commins
And I texted back and I said because. And it was, you know, he was in the marching band and some guy, drunk guy, had come off the street and was I don't know, misbehaving, let's put it that way. And I guess Zach managed to keep a peaceful, bring a peaceful end to the interaction.
00:18:43 Gary Commins
So he was giving me credit for modeling for him and I think also how to treat for him. It was important. Certainly in the churches where I worked, he saw me interacting with people who were far from privileged and treating them with respect, dignity. He heard me talking about people. In one congregation, we had an unhoused member of our church who lived in the gardening shed at the church.
00:19:10 Gary Commins
So how do you incorporate people into your community? And, you know, so it was, it was modeled more than any, more than taught. And I think that that's really, you know, how to be vulnerable to another human being and how to learn, you know, speaking of learning from other people, I learned a lot from that man.
00:19:29 Gary Commins
He was a pain in the neck, but I also learned a lot from him. And so that's the three dimensions of any human being and taking the time, yourself to be in that relationship, and then that changes you and you become more vulnerable to other people and you listen longer to other people.
00:19:49 Gary Commins
So I think that's, that's what I'd say.
00:19:53 James Thomas
Thank you. I guess we'll end on this question that maybe as a, as a sort of capstone question to the three weeks that we've been together and ending on Thomas the Apostle, which has this special significance in your life and has been with you. And maybe at the heart of our mission here with this podcast.
00:20:14 James Thomas
What does it mean to proclaim the identity of Jesus in the 21st century? What does it mean to raise a child who, whatever that means in terms of churchmanship or whatever old fashioned word we're going to use. What does it mean to proclaim Jesus and to be a family that proclaims Jesus? You've answered that question many times over the three weeks that we've been together and from many angles for which we're very grateful.
00:20:41 James Thomas
And I thought maybe the last word to you on if you've got something summative to say about that, sure, I'll.
00:20:48 Gary Commins
Give it a shot. I mean, I think unfortunately in our society, Jesus has been so mistreated, abused. Two different things. One is people talk about Jesus all the time and people who call themselves Christians are some of the most vile, violent people in our society. That's just a given. So that's part of the reality of our society.
00:21:10 Gary Commins
So how to be the opposite of that? How not to be vile and violent? How to take Jesus seriously ourselves? We proclaim him Obviously in word and deed. And so I think that's important. The second thing about Jesus place in our hearts is to look at Jesus place in society, which is that he's not allowed in.
00:21:32 Gary Commins
The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, when he came to the US for the first time, had trouble getting into the country, even though he had won a Nobel Prize, said that Jesus couldn't get into the United States because he was from the Middle east, he was brown and he was poor. That strikes me as fairly timely in terms of what people think of people from the Middle east and brown people and poor people in our society.
00:21:56 Gary Commins
And that is a rejection of Jesus. So we proclaim Jesus by welcoming the stranger, as Jesus said. And we do that very actively, whether it's a stranger in our local community or a stranger in our society. That's how we proclaim Jesus. And the other thing I would say, which is very personal to me, is which is both about Jesus and about me as a parent, which is when my son was one day old, I remember being.
00:22:22 Gary Commins
Having him on my chest. He was lying on my chest and he started sucking on my neck. And I started laughing because I said, buddy, you're not going to get what you want. This is the wrong donor, and that's the wrong place. It's not going to give you what you're looking for. But in that experience, three words came to me that have stayed with me the rest of my life, 31 years so far, which is delight, adore and good.
00:22:47 Gary Commins
And that I just delighted in him and I adored him, and his existence was good. And that, I think, is what Jesus tries to tell us about every human being, is that God delights in each person, adores each person and sees the goodness in each person, no matter what we do to try to wipe it out.
00:23:04 Gary Commins
And I think that when we proclaim Jesus by knowing that God adores each person and delights in each person and sees the goodness in each person, and we do what we can to do the same. Knowing that people dehumanize themselves, knowing all this other stuff, but that there is still intrinsic goodness in each person.
00:23:23 Gary Commins
There is still something adorable in each person. There's something to delight in in each person. Somehow there's some people that you ask me, where can I find it in that person? And I would say, I'm not Jesus, but I'm working on it. And so I think that those are the ways that I think that we can proclaim.
00:23:42 Gary Commins
Proclaim Jesus. A lot of it is. Some of it is Word. When it's appropriate because we, God knows, Episcopalians are terrible at sharing their faith, and some of it is just in how we carry ourselves. So it's our words and our deeds, and we do it as individuals and as a community.
00:24:00 James Thomas
Thank you very much for your words of wisdom. It's been an honor to have you with us for the last three weeks and to be our inaugural guest on the Bedtime Chapel. This is a conversation that Natalie and I began six or seven years ago now, and I guess it's all been leading up to this life of launching our own podcast to talk about these things that we love so much.
00:24:23 James Thomas
And we're so. We both mean this, that we're very humbled that you said yes and came on as our first guest. For everyone who's listening out there, if you have enjoyed the wisdom that Gary has shared with us over the past three weeks, as we certainly have, he's written a lot on some of the things he's been talking about.
00:24:45 James Thomas
You can find his books, Evil and the Problem of Jesus. And if only we could see Mystical Vision and Social Transformation. Those are both on the Cascade imprint and Becoming the Spirit and Practice of Diversity, which is a Cowley publication, and then an older book, but it does appear to be available out there widely, still in publication.
00:25:06 James Thomas
Spiritual People, Radical Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Thomas Merton and A.J. musta.
00:25:12 Natalie Thomas
Yes. And we will put the link to those books in the show notes, and you can also find them on our website, bedtimechapel.com and we really invite you to stay in touch. We want to hear from you what's working, what we could do differently. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram. Our handle is bedtimechapel.
00:25:33 Natalie Thomas
Or you can reach out to us over email, bedtimechapelmail.com and just a word again, of gratitude for you, Gary, for your time with us and for my partner over there and right back at you. Yeah. And we'll be praying as well. Yeah. No, it's important to say thank you. It is. Yeah, it is.
00:25:54 Natalie Thomas
Yeah. And we'll be praying with you this week.
