Cascade Church Portland

Revisiting Paul::The Man

Christians have had a complicated relationship with Paul and his writings. It’s amazing to think about the journey of a man who went from attacking followers of Jesus to becoming one of the heroes of the faith. It’s rare that people change that much in the course of their life.

But there are also parts of his writings that have been used to support patriarchy and homophobia.

We think it would be well worth our time to re-examine Paul and his role in Christian thought and practice. It might be possible that understanding context can shift how we view him and give us fresh eyes on his writings.

Govern Yourselves Accordingly::Michelle Lang

Take a listen to Michelle Lang sharing her message with Cascade about creation, worth and all the potential within you!

A Light Has Come:: God is Love

Take a listen to Pastor Sarah talk about the ways that we experience the love of God in real and mysterious ways. 

A Light Has Come:: Family of God

The older you get, the easier it is to see the interesting dynamics of your family system. 

I can vividly remember the feeling of trying to catch my brother in a mistake so that he could get in trouble like the rest of us. I was sure he was the golden child that never got in trouble. 

I can remember baiting my sister into fights so that she would get in trouble once again. She was the black sheep who was pushing back on most rules and expectations. 

I can remember retelling stories my parents wanted me to tell their friends about the funny thing that had happened. I was the comedy relief that could help lighten the mood. 

What's so interesting about these roles and expectations is that all of them were true and untrue at the same time. All of those stories illustrate part of who my siblings and I were and there is also a lot that is missing from those stories and descriptions.

When we get older we can instinctually fall into these roles in our friends groups, work environments or faith communities. What's the impact of continuing to live into one version of ourselves from our families of origin to the family of God? What happens when something catastrophic makes our family of origin role crumble right before our eyes? Who are we and who is God in the context of God's family?

A Light Has Come:: Love and Hatred

Ever see someone drop trash while they're walking down the street? 

It's oddly satisfying to whisper "sinner" under your breath when it happens. 

Sin is an intriguing word that alternates between meaning too much or too little in people's lives. It can be a huge burden that you carry in the pit of your stomach or a meaningless flick of lint that you pull off your shirt. It's a word we can dismiss because it's overuse has rendered it meaningless or a word that carries so much weight because of our fear that we're constantly sinning. It can also be an odd word that means nothing because it wasn't one we heard or used growing up. 

We want to look at and through the word sin to discover some really powerful words behind it. Love and hatred are words that are used heavily in this section of scripture and we want to see the relationship to sin. 

The hope is that we can reorient our understanding of sin by contextualizing it with love and hatred. When we see it in light of these other words I hope that it sticks with us in ways that invites us to both humility and purpose. 

A Light Has Come:: One Reality

There are so many moments in any given day or week that make you question your handle on sanity. 

I'm not talking about current events or politics. I'm talking about little moments each day that make you realize that your grasp on reality is a tenuous one. 

Have you ever pulled out your phone to check the calendar, see a notification of a text message that sends you down a digital maze that will inevitably end with putting your phone away without checking the calendar? 

Ever search your house in a panic looking for your glasses, wallet, phone or keys only to realize that they were on your person the entire time? 

Have you ever searched the refrigerator repeatedly only to give up and tell whoever else is in the house that the item is gone only to have them walk over and immediately find it? 

Have you ever sworn that a particular actor or actress starred in a movie and debated it vigorously only to Google it and discover that you were very wrong? 

This world has a way of causing us to doubt ourselves and desire for some true things to hold onto. I take great comfort in knowing that the quest for something "real" in this world isn't something new. This Sunday we're going to look at Plato and Aristotle so we can really dive into 1 John. The author of the letter in the New Testament deftly uses the logic of the day to point to deeper levels of truth that are less known and more experienced. 

Stand Sunday:: Orphans

People often use the words empathy and sympathy interchangeably. It's largely understood as the same concept, but empathy is just an improved version of sympathy. 

Sympathy is the ability to hear about someone else's pain or struggle and to care about their experiences. It's incredibly useful when you hear someone else in pain and you don't feel anything other than, "suck it up." You pause for a moment and try to see the experience through their eyes. 

This isn't an easy thing to do and many of us talk about sympathy like it's an easy thing to have or share. We usually mean that we understand they are saying something painful, but we've never actually done the work to understand what they are saying from their point of view. What we're feeling is most commonly understood as pity. Pity is the ability to recognize that someone else is suffering. While a vital step that moves us from being cold or indifferent, it's not much beyond that. 

Sympathy requires that I see the situation from your perspective and I actually care about your pain. I move from receiving information to caring about the information that I receive. 

Empathy is one step further to actually feel the suffering as if the experience was yours. It's probably best to visualize this so that you can see the progression between the 3. 

Pity  -------->          Sympathy ------------>          Empathy     
I see your pain       I care about your pain        I feel your pain

We overuse empathy without understanding what the word means and the time required to actually get to that place. We tell people we feel their pain when we actually just care about or see their pain. 

One of the great hopes in Christianity is its ability to move us towards empathy. To feel the pain of others is a byproduct of not seeing a separation between ourselves and others. We experience the whole of humanity as one creation of God and suffering in the world matters to me because it's my suffering too. Jesus came to heal the whole world and my healing is connected to other people's healing. 

While this can be an overwhelming idea, the hope is that identification with all people leads to an activated church that is working for the healing of all people.

Adulting::Growing in Maturity

The other day I walked into a Michael's looking for velcro. 

That's like walking into a Safeway and asking where they keep the food. 

There's not a section of the store that couldn't feature velcro and you have a lot of ground to cover. This overwhelming task could be made simple by asking one of the employees where they keep the velcro. That is what a reasonable human person who is familiar with how stores work would do. 

So, naturally I wandered around the store for 10-12 minutes searching high and low. Within the first few moments a concerned staff member saw the look of confusion on my face and asked if I needed help finding anything. 

"I'm all set, thanks!"

I found it eventually, but this experience exposes my deep and abiding inability to ask for help before the point of desperation. I think I have some ideas as to why I struggle in this area and I'm curious if you've ever felt similarly. 

1. I Don't Want To Be An Inconvenience - Almost every time I'm asked to help someone I feel honored instead of inconvenienced (which reminds me of this great bit from Nick Swardson). I assume that asking for help is a burden to others, so I won't say anything that could be perceived as a problem to someone else. 

2. I Don't Want To Appear Insufficient - Sometimes I think that asking for information that I don't have is a sign of weakness. The assumption is that I should be able have everything that I need in life to deal with every challenge that comes my way. 

3. I Don't Want To Depend On Others - Asking for help is to need another person. No longer do you feel in control and you certainly don't have the experience to back up that what you're being handed is trustworthy. 

Ultimately God gave us a whole world of people who have strengths where we are growing. Part of maturity isn't having everything already, but being aware of where we need to grow in maturity. The belief that we are complete already actually leads to greater amounts of confidently walking around in our own ignorance. There's a spiritual act in acknowledging what we don't have so we can receive what we need for our journey. 

Adulting::Maturity in Failure

Have you ever made a decision in a moment and immediately regretted it? 

There's this great trick where you can run up behind a person, place your hands on their shoulders while jumping and push yourself up and over the top of them. 

When executed correctly, it's the perfect marriage of low-level danger and basic acrobatics. 

One element that's really important in negotiating this maneuver is the awareness from the individual that is about to be jumped over that they are in fact part of this stunt. 

When I was in my young 20's I was hanging out with some dear friends walking around downtown Sacramento. We had just had a great meal, spirits were high and we felt like we could conquer the world. I was drunk on youth, community and exuberance.

 In this head space I decided to celebrate by executing the jump that I've discussed above. Now, my two friends walking ahead of me were very different heights. Erik is 6'3" and Carly is 5'5". I decided that jumping over Carly made a lot more sense and when the crowds in front of us cleared I broke into a jog ready to feel truly alive. 

As I reached about 5 feet behind Carly and was engaging my stutter step to transition into a leap I realized that I maybe I should have told her a bit of my plan. She turned slightly to learn more about the stampeding feet rushing behind her. 

What happened next could only be described by the people on the opposite side of the street as an awkward mugging from a disgruntled member of Cirque du Soleil's B-Team. 

The laughing and chatting was replaced by a strained silence as I helped Carly up from the ground that I had just shoved her into. Instead of using my momentum to launch over Carly, it was all channeled into shoving her down and forward. I had then only been able to piggy back her into the ground like cowboy lassoing and wrestling a calf. I was facing a lot of really logical questions that had no good answers. 

"What were you thinking?"
"Were you going to warn her beforehand?"
"Who are you?"
"You suck." ((Not a question, but a fair critique))

I had failed in that moment and all the joy was replaced by questions from others and from within me. I had always considered myself the kind of person who makes fun times even more fun, but what if I wasn't? What if I was selfish and valued my experience over the experiences of others? What if I had ruined the night and drove a wedge in between my friends and me? ((My friends were very gracious and understanding and this story quickly became a hilarious part of our lives together))

Failure, whether big or small, brings about questions of identity. It almost always causes us to mourn the death of a version of ourselves that we don't believe exists anymore. These might be tiny deaths or they can feel like the complete death of self. 

Adulting:: Maturity in Community

There are days when I feel fully mature. 

I feel like I know myself. I feel at peace. I have hope when I think of the future. I am aware of the world around me`and I embrace it all. 

And then I interact with another human being and it all goes out the window. 

There are these illusions of being grounded in God and seeing the world from a divine perspective that get shattered when we have to put them in practice in the real world. 

We're surrounded by people with different ways of engaging the world, from different backgrounds and different experiences. That's a recipe for confusion and division if we aren't intentional about engaging every person as a holy encounter. 

This week we're going to talk about the stress test of maturity. How do we practice maturity through our conversations with others in a diverse world? How do we celebrate the image of God in others and see that lifted high so that a reality where all people can peacefully thrive comes to earth?