Category: Spiritual Formation & Discipleship

Reimagining Jesus’ Teachings: From Knowledge to Action

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

From Hearing the Teachings to Living the Truth

Jesus’s teachings are many, and in this case he opens the conversation by asking, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13-20) The disciples list the popular answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. It is safe, easy, and culturally acceptable to talk about who others think Jesus is, but is it safe to share your own thoughts on the matter?

The crowds following Jesus respected him. They elevated him to the status of a great teacher or prophet of old, but they stopped short of recognizing him as their king. Why might that be? Is it because they are afraid of being wrong? Are they afraid of what the Roman or Temple authorities might do to them? Or do they just want to keep their options open? That temptation is familiar to many of us.

Knowing facts about Jesus or surrounding yourself with religious chatter can feel like faith, but it remains strictly intellectual and spectator-based. The crowds knew something about Jesus, but they stopped short of recognizing him as king. Words and admiration are not the same as allegiance.

Person reading a book beside a lit fireplace with tea and notebooks thinking about the teachings of Jesus.
A reader enjoys a warm, peaceful evening with books, tea, and a glowing fire.

I think that many of us fall for the illusion that we know Jesus, when truly we don’t. We know of him, we know some things he likely said, but we don’t actually know him, in many respects we are observing him from a distance and likely waiting for the thumbs up as a sign it is time to fully commit, which is one of the many reasons why living a life of faith and love is so difficult. We place our trust in someone we have not learned to encounter personally, and therefore treat faith as a spectator sport.

Many people live off the theological residue of their parents, pastors, or Christian culture without ever taking ownership of these convictions. Some attend Christmas and Easter services, seek out a church service for a loved one when they die or ask to be married and have their children baptized because that is what their families have always done.

A few years ago, I agreed to assist with a funeral on a Sunday afternoon. A few years earlier, the family had held their mother’s funeral at the church because she and her husband had joined the parish. They felt the service was so moving that when their father died, they decided to do the same, even though they were not religious at all. The church was packed with friends and family and the service was a classic episcopal funeral, but it was also one of the most awkward experiences of my life. No one participated except the priest, me, and the acolyte. No one stood, knelt, sang, or anything. They were purely there because it was what their father would have wanted. The family was honoring the theological residue of their father, but I am not sure how meaningful it actually was for them. They said it was very lovely and they appreciated our willingness to do it. I believe God was present in that room because love was present. Even though the experience felt awkward, perhaps that presence of love was what mattered most.

I am left wondering where in our lives we have settled for knowing about Jesus rather than knowing Him personally. I am not afraid to admit that I have never felt a personal connection to Jesus. The Holy Spirit feels far more present to me because I believe the Spirit resides within us, nudging us to seek God in all things and follow Jesus’s teachings as best we can, like the little angel on our shoulder you sued to see in cartoons.

I think many of us miss a critical step in knowing Jesus: allowing his parables to move from stories we interpret to teachings we practice. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, does not simply ask us to admire compassion. It asks us to notice the person we would rather pass by, cross the road toward them, and make their need our concern. We know the stories, we can probably explain or even tell them, but that is not the same as internalizing them. When we internalize a teaching, it becomes more than information we can repeat. It begins to guide our instincts: we forgive when resentment would be easier, serve when no one is watching, and make room for the person we would rather avoid. Knowing the parables matters, but internalizing their teachings shows that we understand them and allows them to shape how we live.

When Jesus asks his friends who they believe he is, Simon answers “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” To which Jesus responds, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church…” he is praising Simon for understanding that Jesus is the one sent by God to help rescue them, but he is also saying much more. In this retelling, we are witnessing the moment Simon understands who Jesus is. Simon is not merely identifying Jesus correctly, he is beginning to know him by recognizing that the stories and parables are not just stories, but the foundation for a different kind of life. To know Jesus is to let his teachings gradually become visible in us, not simply admired from a distance. We will not live them perfectly, but they should begin to change what we notice, choose, and do.

The question, then, is not only who do people say Jesus is, but who is he becoming in us? The faith we inherit may give us words, rituals, and stories, but it cannot answer for us. At some point, theological residue must either become a living conviction or remain only the trace of someone else’s faith. Where do his teachings challenge our instincts? Whom are they asking us to see, forgive, or love? And when we answer who Jesus is, will we speak from our own encounter with him, or only from what others have left behind?

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Abiding in God: Navigating Trauma with Faith

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

As with the entire lectionary, the gospel passage for today is taken out of context. One might think that it comes after the resurrection since it is the 7th Sunday after Easter, but chronologically Jesus is still seated at the table with his disciples the night before he died. He is preparing them for his departure, yet he speaks as if it has already happened. The language of this passage switches back and forth between future and past tense as if time has no meaning—and truthfully, it doesn’t. In this moment, Jesus is standing firmly in the room with them, yet talking as though he has already left the world.

The primary theme of this passage is eternal life, but we need to let go of our definition of that term. We almost always think of eternal life within the context of death and resurrection, which is linear thinking. We treat it as something we experience far in the future, stretching out after we die, like a prize we win after we cross the finish line of death. But it isn’t in the future, and it also isn’t in the past; it is always. Eternal life is not a reference to what will be, it is a reference to what is. God is eternal, creation is eternal, and we are eternal; not in the sense that our physical bodies will live forever, but that our existence is not limited or defined by the short time we exist on earth. When Jesus says, “This is eternal life: that they may know you,” he is using the present tense. It is an immediate reality, a current state of being that we are invited into right now, right in the middle of our messy lives.

Throughout the gospel of John, we hear terms like “abiding” and “dwelling.” In the original language, both of these words denote patiently waiting, living permanently within a space, and thinking about something at length rather than rushing past it. It means refusing to run away when things get uncomfortable. All of these definitions combined still do not fully capture what it means to live eternally with God, but it is as close as we can come with our limited human understanding. These terms aren’t meant to be theological puzzles; they are meant to convey a tangible sense of calm, comfort, connectedness, and most importantly, inclusion. To abide means to rest in the certainty that you belong permanently and safely in the heart of God, no matter how chaotic the external world becomes.

Yesterday, some of us attended a seminar on trauma and the church’s role in addressing it, and the concepts there fit beautifully with this idea of abiding. We learned about a concept called the “window of tolerance.” This is a psychological state of being in which we are able to experience joy, compassion, connection, and curiosity, precisely because our nervous system is not overly taxed or triggered by trauma. When we are in this window, we are mentally, emotionally, and physically present. In a very real way, being inside this window is the real-world equivalent of what John calls abiding.

This is, of course, a state that is fluid. We can very easily slip out of this window into an altered state where it becomes difficult for us to function. On one side, when we are overwhelmed, we might shoot up into the “fight or flight” response where we become overly agitated, anxious, or angry. On the other side, we might drop down into the “freeze” response where we shut down, numb out, dissociate, and feel completely exhausted or disconnected.

When the trauma and stress of the world pull us out of our window of tolerance, we lose our capacity for connection and curiosity. We can’t “abide” because our bodies are stuck in survival mode, convinced we are under attack. Jesus knew the trauma his disciples were about to endure the very next day, which is exactly why he prayed so deeply for their protection and their unity. He knew they would need each other to stay grounded.

This is where the church’s role becomes so vital, when the church stops being just a social club or a lecture hall and becomes a sanctuary for holy regulation. When Jesus invites us to abide in him, he is inviting us back into that safe, regulated space. And when the church understands trauma, we can become a community that helps widen each other’s windows of tolerance. By offering a space that mimics God’s character—one of calm, predictability, safety, and unconditional inclusion—we help soothe each other’s overtaxed nervous systems. We pull people out of the isolation of shutdown, and we calm the panic of hyper-arousal. In doing so, we create a sanctuary where people can step out of the chaos of linear time, drop their defenses, and return to the quiet, grounding truth that they are already safely held in the eternal life of God.

Long story short, our liturgy is the thing that provides the predictability. It helps us provide a sense of calm, it is in this space that we need to leg go of the things from the outside world. We need to let go of the anger, we need to let go of things like bulletins not being printed correctly. We need to let go of other people’s opinions or what we think about them. And we just need to be present for each other and abide in God’s love, which is why we are here. Amen

The Role of Boundaries in Spiritual Transformation during Lent

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

Boundaries are a significant part of modern life. For some they play a vital role in maintaining a sense of control and for others they are a challenge to their sense of control. This concept is heightened by the fact that we live in America, a nation built on the idea that boundaries are meant to be broken. In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner, outlined his argument that it had been the frontier, or the boundary between the known and unknown, that had defined American character and democracy. To that point he argued Americans had always identified with the possibilities that lied beyond the boundary and that our desire to know what lies beyond shaped us and instilled a sense of curiosity in the unknown as well as a willingness to cross established boundaries to satisfy that curiosity. Whether it be the Appalachian line drawn by the King in 1763, the countless barriers placed in front of the civil rights of all citizens, or the race to put a man on the moon, Americans have always seen boundary’s, not as a limitation, but as a challenge.

For Adam and Eve, the boundary was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the serpent was their own curiosity. If God did not want creation to have such knowledge then they would not have created the knowledge in the first place, nor would they have placed it within arm’s reach; I do not believe that the creator of the universe didn’t know that Adam and Eve would eventually eat the forbidden fruit, nor do I believe that God placed the restriction on eating the fruit as some cosmic test. Ultimately this story is just a story that reveals something about human nature. It reveals that when faced with a boundary we have the ability to cross the line, indicating that we have free will, which is vitally important because just as we can choose to ignore boundaries, we can also choose to love.

Prior to the fruit tree incident, Adam and Eve had no reason to fear God; they had no reason to fear anything. But once they ate, they learned the truth, which is that life is hard. They learned about hunger, thirst, pain, and death for the first time. They learned that God had been protecting them from the burden of free will by not denying it to them, but by putting off their loss of innocence for as long as possible. By delaying this inevitable weight of self-determination, the Creator allowed them to remain in a state of grace until they were ready to become the masters of their own destiny. The transition from the Garden to the wilderness was not merely a change in geography; it was a shift in consciousness. In the Garden, boundaries were external, a physical tree and a spoken command, but once that line was crossed, the boundary became internalized. Humanity moved from a state of passive being to a state of active becoming.

We trade the safety of the Garden for the dignity of the “Hard Life” every time we choose to grow. We accept the hunger and the toil because we refuse to be mere spectators in our own lives. We are a people of the frontier, defined not by the fences we build to keep the world out, but by our courage to look past them and ask what lies beyond. In our national history and our spiritual journey, we find that the boundary is not a wall; it is a horizon. It exists to define the moment of our next great choice, reminding us that to be truly human is to stand at the edge of the unknown and decide to step forward.

As we continue our journey through Lent, we find ourselves in our own version of the wilderness, standing between the comfort of what we know and the transformation of what is to come. Lent is, in many ways, a season of intentional boundaries like fasting, discipline, and self-restraint, but these are not meant to imprison us. Rather, like the frontier, these forty days serve as a perimeter that helps us define who we are when the distractions are stripped away. In the wilderness of Lent, we walk the same path Adam and Eve trod when they left the Garden: a path where hunger and thirst are real, but where the opportunity to rely on God’s grace is even more tangible. We use this season to examine the lines we have crossed in error and the new boundaries we must cross in faith, moving ever closer to the ultimate “boundary-breaking” event of the Resurrection.