Dialog with The Da Vinci Code: Jesus & The Magdalene (Ken Wilson)
Fundamental question raised by Dan Brown: What is the relationship of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels to women? The New Testament Gospels have the effect of undermining, subverting, overturning, the age old problem of men dominating women.
Given by Ken Wilson - Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor - www.annarborvineyard.org
Thank you, dear Lord, for all the gifts that you give us that sustain us and provide for us. And now we want to return the favor and offer you these, our gifts, our ties and our offerings. The first fruits of our labors belong to you. And so we offer them in the name of love, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen. Just on an opening sad note, we lost a man who had been attending the vineyard for a year or two. Terry Burns passed away last week. Terry was kind of a loner. I was so thankful to learn that Evelyn and Johannes had been bringing him to church every week and connecting with him in that way. So please keep Terry and his family in your prayers. Very much appreciated. Also just want to note that the book of God is available out there for sale. We're selling it at like $14.00, it's regularly $27.00, we've got the publisher's discount on this. But the book of God, it would be great for you if you're a little sketchy on the storyline of the Bible. And a picture, just an awesome storyteller by the name of Walter Wangren, award-winning literary kind of guy who just knows the Bible inside out and he's telling the story. It's not a translation of the Bible, it's a retelling of the main narrative of the Bible all the way from Abraham through Jesus. So it's just a great read and if you're familiar with the Bible, it will give you a better handle on the storyline. If you're new to the Bible, it will give you a way in so it's highly recommended. There we go. We're in the third of a series on some of the issues raised by the, did you know there's a movie called the Da Vinci Code and there's been this book that sold like over a hundred thousand copies, I think, called the Da Vinci Code and it raises a lot of issues that are important for those who are interested in God. One of the main themes of the Da Vinci Code is the Gnostic Gospels and the premise of the novel is that the Gnostic Gospels, we talked about the Gnostic Gospels last weekend, different than the New Testament Gospels. The Gnostic Gospels under this premise are pro-women compared to the New Testament Gospels which are kind of retro in that regard and Mary Magdalene is a case in point, how she's treated the Gnostic Gospels compared to the New Testament Gospels. So we're going to consider that issue today of Jesus and the Magdalene, really Jesus and women in general, the Magdalene being a specific example in the New Testament Gospels. I don't have time, I was hoping to do this and tackle the issue of the sacred feminine which is raised in the movie but I thought, gee, there's no way I can talk about the sacred feminine until talking about the human feminine and so we're going to talk about the human feminine first in Jesus' relationship with women so I think we'll probably add a session to the series unless you say please, no, I've had enough, go on to something else. So thesis today is that the New Testament Gospels actually undermine, they sow the seeds for the overturn, they subvert the age-old problem of gender oppression and this can be demonstrated from the text themselves but we've got to do some very serious plowing first. This is an adult sermon, today I'm kind of hoping for an adult tension span, we're talking about complex issues, I know sometimes it would be nice to have a happy story and three points and we're out of here and some fun things on the screen and you might want to know why bother with an adult sermon today and complexity and all that, well because we all know women. And we know some women who, this is a big deal issue and we all know women or we have daughters or we have mothers or we have sisters or we might be those women ourselves who keep an arm's length to Christ because there's this fog in our culture about really is Christianity pro-women or not and what's the deal there? If we care about women we will listen and we have to be willing to bother our little brains we have to actually plow into some complex stuff. First fact, duh, the ancient world is marked by widespread oppression against women, is this news to anybody, this is framed in Genesis as a result of the great tragedy, the breach of trust that ruined relationships, when the woman hears your desire will be for your husband and he shall rule over you, it's a curse, not a blessing and it's a curse that God plans to overturn, to reverse or to die trying. In the name of religion, have tried to enforce that curse but you know it's not our job to enforce the curses, it's just a sign of how dark the darkness in us is when we try to enforce the curses in the Bible. The ancient world treated women as an inferior rank of human and this is pretty well across the board trans-cultural, Abraham himself was affected by this perspective, he offered his wife Sarah to a tribal lord named Abimalek I believe to do with Sarah as the tribal lord please so that Abraham wouldn't be in danger, I guess it ran in the family, the human family, his nephew Lot offered his daughters to a mob in Sodom so that his guests wouldn't be mistreated because if his guests would be mistreated he would lose face in that culture. Now none of this is held up in the Bible as the way that it's meant to be, it's an example of the Bible's searing honesty about the way things are. Yes things are better for women in many ways in different parts of the world but they still have a smaller piece of the power pie, for example fortune 500 companies, I think there are 11 CEOs who are women and fortune 500 companies, that's interesting and the US Senate 14 of 100 senators are women, of course there's awful oppression of women that continues around the world, rape of females, it is an incredibly high rate compared to rape of males, it's pandemic, fundamentalist Islam is a major force in the world today, it degrades women, India's entire population and if you know anything about statistics you know it's very difficult to get a human population of that size to actually shift demographically toward one gender or the other, India's population is dangerously tilted toward the male for this reason abortion has become easily available in India relatively speaking, also ultrasounds have become easily available and female fetuses are aborted at an extraordinary rate. According to UNICEF this is the United Nations, this is not right to life, a report from Bombay in 1984 on abortions after prenatal sex determination stated that 7999 out of 8000 of the aborted fetuses were female, there's a word for it now it's called gender soft, now that's a fact about human culture, here's one about God, God is willing to associate with us in our current state and to work to transform us from within, we all understand this, if we're Christians we appreciate it, we appreciate it very much, the fact that you are a Christian if you are one does not mean that you don't sometimes misrepresent Christ in the workplace or at home or in front of the computer, that's true, what's true of the individual is true of the church at large, the church is touched by sin because the church embraces sinners, of course there's oppression of women in the church, sometimes what sin in the church is trotted out as righteousness as if you've never cloaked your hostility or your selfishness and spiritual or psycho garb, we all do it, the greater shame is denying it or worse being proud of it, now here's an example and I'm going into some more subtle territory here, there's a Benet tendencies like sociologists have noted it for anthropologists for a long time, a tendency in human societies and probably more so in ancient cultures to uphold women as either virgins on the one hand almost goddesses or as whores on the other and that part of the reason for this is thought is that there's been a certain unease in human culture with female sexuality, in some cultures today the clitoris of young women is removed surgically so that sex is less pleasurable for them, Louise Chaconi, she went to the University of Michigan, her stage persona grew up in Rochester Hills, her stage persona Madonna is a play on this virgin whore dichotomy, it's called, okay see we're talking about some stuff here aren't we, you know we can either talk about this stuff in the church or we can leave it to the secular universities and let the women's studies be the only people who talk about this and then our children can grow up in the church and they never hear anything that's slightly kind of sensitive because we're talking about wow these kind of issues and then the only time they hear about this stuff is when they go to the university and they take a women's study course if you feel comfortable with that kind of way the conversation goes well it doesn't work, it doesn't work for the children of the church, it doesn't work for women who are trying to figure out is Christianity friendly toward women or not, is it friendly toward me or not so we have to talk about this stuff now the Hebrew scriptures are very noteworthy because they have a positive view of female sexuality even though they're ancient documents, this is very counter-cultural, the song of songs for example is in the bible, it's a shocking piece of writing because it's written from the perspective of a woman number one who's the dominant voice in the piece and it's a woman who is in the throes of erotic love, what Aretha Franklin would call us sometimes I feel like a natural woman this is the voice in song of songs there's just no denying it the two most important women in the gospels are Mary the mother of Jesus, don't need any explanation of that and the second is Mary Magdalene the disciple of Jesus she's noted in all four of the gospels and she has a prominent role among the women disciples in the gospels sometime after the New Testament era the reputations of both of these women were embellished toward these extremes that I just referenced the New Testament picture of mother Mary number one she's blessed among women Protestants have undervalued this because we're so afraid of being Catholic and that's a shame I mean you know fear-based religion is not good mother Mary is blessed among women she should be honored she should be celebrated it's we can tip our hat to Mary and not feel the wrath of God I mean we can honor her blessed among women in the New Testament Mary is shown to be a virgin at the time of Jesus birth this really says more about Jesus than it does about Mary but it's an important part of apostolic faith but then it's inferred it's actually the plain sense of the gospels is that Mary went on to have other children and presumably by the normal means the brothers of Jesus our reference throughout the gospels rather in passing mother Mary in later primarily Catholic tradition there's a shift she's not just blessed among women she is queen of heaven so there's some kind of elevation going on in the tradition in addition to that she's presented as ever virgin that means she never had sex with Joseph according to that expanded tradition even after Jesus was born now and this is in spite of the fact that the New Testament tradition advises against couples not having sex except for a short period of time now it's quite possible that this shift was driven by a cultural unease with female sexuality that was just part of ancient society there's no no doubt that was some kind of factor the New Testament picture of Mary Magdalene she's a disciple of Jesus who provided for others along with some other women disciples out of her means that's probably the best argument by the way for the fact that it's likely Mary the Magdalene wasn't a prostitute how many prostitutes do you know who are wealthy and are able to share with others out of their means especially prostitutes in the first century Mary we know is freed from demonic oppression but many people were freed from demonic oppression and that in Jesus was a great exorcist and there's no indication that her oppression led her to prostitution now Mary in the later tradition Catholic and Protestant actually and this was affirmed by Pope Gregory the first in the sixth century I think this is in the movie it's like one of three facts that are actually correct felt the need to inaccurately label Mary the Magdalene as a prostitute this might have been just an honest mistake if I look back through my files I am sure I've preached a sermon about Mary Magdalene assuming that she was a prostitute there's a lot of Mary's to keep track of in the gospels you know and in Luke there's a Mary who is a prostitute and there's a Mary Magdalene and they're very close in the gospel it could have been an honest mistake but it's also possible it's possible that a woman in the gospels with a leading role threatened by that time male only hierarchy of the church and it was kind of convenient to label her as it's possible that that was reversed in 1969 by the Catholic Church that view but you know that's the that's the view of Mary and Jesus Christ super star we'll have that song at the end so you can can hear that so yes the church has been influenced by Jesus by society's view of women well why would he we expected to be otherwise Jesus came into the world to embrace us as he found us and to patiently work with us on an individual level he doesn't insist that when we surrendered to him immediately all of our bad habits just evaporate I mean thank God we count on his patience well and why is that well that's not just our slowness to respond to him it's also because we were designed by God not to change too fast lest it's a safeguard in the human race so that we don't fall into evil so fast I mean you just can't push us too far in either direction thankfully we'd all be off the deep end all the time try to change us too much too soon and we snap like a rubber band that's stretched beyond a packet of mail that's too big for it the same is true of human cultures which change more slowly than individuals so communism you know communism except for the atheist part it's a big exception communism except for the atheist part looks great on paper I mean it looks a lot like early Christianity the common purse let those who have provide for those who need I mean sharing I mean what could be more Christian than that but the Marxist revolutionaries tried to change whole cultures in one generation by fiat and force and Reagan was right it was an evil empire now how did I got any I got any man on that okay we need science we need sides I amen help them Lord and alright how did Jesus go about transforming human society or culture what was his strategy for that well it wasn't a strategy of fiat and force he didn't for example condemn slavery explicitly neither did any other New Testament writer explicitly condemned the institution of slavery or did any other ancient voice even criticize slavery which was criticized in the New Testament but Jesus did sow the seeds for the end of slavery by his simple maxim do unto others as you would have them do unto you I mean it took the church about you know 1700 centuries to meditate on the significance of that you know it took a long time to you know it wasn't that long ago that most of the churches actually theologically defended the institution of slavery and said it needs to be Christianized or it needs to be humanized but the the institution itself was defended by most Christian traditions but in the cultures that brought slavery down it was the church who did the down bringing so the same is true of the oppression of women Jesus in the gospels did not preach equal pay for equal work he came into the culture as the culture was he spoke the language of the culture he wore the clothes of the culture he worked within the limitations of the structure of the culture Jesus had a different method for transforming people and societies and it's in one of his parables the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed he said which a man took and planted in his field though it is the smallest of all your seeds yet when it grows it's the largest of garden plants and it becomes a tree so that the birds of the of the air come and perch in its branches as you read through the story and the gospels it's clear that Jesus was himself the seed and his death was the planting so it's a very important parable of the kingdom so yes Jesus picked twelve men as his as his apostles there were women available he didn't pick he picked twelve Jewish men as his apostles but there's no record of Jesus saying I picked them because they were men and don't ever pick any women as your senior leaders and that applies by the way until I come back in glory he had plenty of Gentile tiles to choose from and he didn't pick any Gentiles as his senior leaders but that didn't stop the church pretty quickly after he died from choosing some Gentiles as senior leaders so Jesus took a different approach he worked subversively to overturn the age old oppression of women and certainly Mary Magdalene in the New Testament gospels was part of that subversive strategy of Jesus why do I say that well because Mary Magdalene was known in some of the early writings of the church as the apostle to the apostles Mary Magdalene was called the apostle to the apostles and for very good reason because Mary Magdalene was the primary witness the first and primary witness to the risen Jesus we read an apostle means messenger and we read in John chapter 20 just exactly why she was known as the apostle to the apostles it's here this is after Peter and John the beloved disciple have run to the empty tomb on Easter morn Mary Magdalene is with them and some other women as well then the disciples went back to their homes but Mary stood outside the tomb crying as she wept she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus body had been and one at the head the other at the foot they asked her woman why are you crying they've taken my lord away she said I don't know where they put him at this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there but she didn't realize that it was Jesus woman he said why are you crying who is it you're looking for thinking who was the gardener she said sir if you have carried him away tell me where you have put him and I'll get him Jesus said to her Mary she turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic Roboni which means teacher Jesus said don't hold on to me for I've not yet returned to the father go instead to my brothers and tell them I'm returning to my father and your father to my god and your god Jesus being risen I'm I think it's a safe assumption to say he was fairly aware I'm not sure that he was groggy and that he had intention and capacity to plan I think it's quite I'm thinking that Jesus was hanging out in the shadows when the men came and the women and he intentionally waited until the men went back and he chose Mary as the one that he was going to give the most epic revelation in human history to and send her back with the words as a messenger to the messengers as an apostle to the apostles Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news I've seen the Lord and she told them what he had said and these things and and what he had said to her now Luke adds the fascinating detail about how the male disciples responded to Mary's report as usual they're quick on the uptake and these words appeared to them as nonsense and they would not believe them and you know did the cultural view of women have anything to do with their not believing the women's testimony perhaps I think it's a safe assumption yes men were more powerful than women in the early Jesus movement Jesus did not change that in three years of public ministry but the male dominated leadership of the Catholic Church in the time of Constantine the fourth century did not edit Mary out as the apostle to the apostles I mean if the Catholic Church was so hot to trot to ditch gospels that they didn't like just because they didn't like them as is the charge with the nostic gospels no doubt the Constantine suppressed the nostic gospels but because they weren't viewed as authentic but these other gospels which were in a sense a bit of an embarrassment to the male leadership of the church at the time was such a prominent role for Mary Magdalene as the apostle of the apostles they didn't ditch those because they had the fear of God they believed that Jesus was alive and risen from the dead and they would have to answer to him and that he had done certain things in certain ways he had said certain things that he wanted reported and if they didn't take care of that there was going to be hell to pay and they said okay these gospels there's some things in them we'd rather edit out but they're but they're there scholars use several criteria for determining the authenticity of documents and one of the criteria has a really great name it's called the criteria of embarrassment if the documents contain material that is embarrassing to the leadership of the movement which produced the documents they are more likely authentic does that make any sense yeah Jesus gave them lots of material to fulfill this criteria didn't he now let's just compare the New Testament gospel how it ends in the gospel of John Mary and Jesus their conversation with an nostic gospel that also ends with Mary Magdalene this time it's Peter and Jesus having a conversation about Mary Magdalene it's in the in the gospel of St. Thomas one of the well-known nostic gospels it ends like this is the flat end end of the gospel of Thomas Simon Peter said to them Mary should leave us for females are not worthy of life Jesus said look I shall give her I shall guide her to make her male so that she too may become living spirit resembling you males for every female who makes herself male will enter kingdoms heaven this is a nostic gospel this is you know this didn't make it it didn't make the vetting process into the the vinci code I wonder why now to be fair it's not quite as bad as it sounds the nostics believe that the physical world itself is evil they believe that Adam contained male and female in himself the first human and then but every stage of creation was worse and worse so when Eve was created then the female was separated out of the male and so you know on the on the good side of what Jesus is saying here he wants to restore Mary to that kind of original state of male and female but but still but still I mean at least you'd have to say it's very open to misinterpretation and abuse to end your gospel like that you know the New Testament gospels make a point of highlighting Jesus countercultural view of women there's no doubt he was sowing seeds to subvert the oppression of women with his various gospel deeds Jesus surprised the male disciples when he broke social convention and he talked with a woman at the well the Samaritan woman at the well at a private conversation with her male rabbis were not supposed to do that this is also the first time that in the gospel of John Jesus reveals his specifically messianic identity he reveals that identity to this woman in Luke's gospel there's another Mary this one is the sister of Martha and this Mary Jesus came to dinner at Mary and Martha's home and Mary sat at the Lord's feet the text sets now NT right the Anglican scholar says in cultural context that would have signaled Mary's desire to be a disciple and to become like her master a teacher of the kingdom so that when Martha is objecting to Mary's action it's not just that Martha needs help in the kitchen but she believes that Mary her sister is doing a presumptuous thing but when Jesus responds in that sense it has a little more impact that Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken from her see there's a subversive thing going on in the gospels on this issue one last thing about Mary Magdalene and whether or not she and Jesus were lovers which is the claim of the movie and inferred in some of the Gnostic gospels actually in the Gnostic gospels they don't go farther than a kiss so you know but that that's how it spins out you know from a New Testament gospel perspective it's really a moot point because Jesus and the Magdalene were actually closer than lovers they were closer than lovers I hope I'm stirring someone's someone's sauce here with this mark chapter chapter three this is the canonical gospel of Mark then Jesus entered a house and again a crowd gathered so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat when his family heard about this they went to take charge of him for they said he's out of his mind so early in the ministry the family of Jesus actually organized to do what would be called an intervention who wore his family members well a little bit later in the same chapter it goes on then Jesus mother and brothers arrived Jesus mother and brothers arrived standing outside they sent someone in to call him a crowd was sitting around him and they told him your mother and brothers are outside looking for you who are my mother and brothers Jesus asked then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and he said here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters anyone who does God's will is my mother my brother and my sister anyone who does God's will and becomes my disciple is a mother a brother a sister what's he saying something they're way more significant that whether he kissed Mary Magdalene on the lips or not what he's saying here is that the closest possible relationship you can have with him is the relationship of a disciple and that even if you're his mother even if you're his brother even if you're his sister there's no human relationship that's closer to Jesus than being a disciple if you are a disciple of Jesus you are on the inner most circle with him and his claim is that he brings you into direct intimate contact with God as Abba father what's good for Mary the mother of Jesus is good for Mary Magdalene claimed by the Gnostics as the lover of Jesus I don't think there's really much serious thought that she was but that's the claim but it's a moot point because there is an intimacy closer than sexual intimacy and it's an intimacy with God that Jesus offers to all of us who are willing to be his disciples this is a book as a memoir from an older woman named Phyllis Tickle a compiler of the divine hours I read it only because she's in her 70s and when you're in your 70s you get to talk frankly about church and you get to read it in church she writes this about her early married life with Sam her husband that makes sense he was a physician at the time he was in training as a physician as a resident and she writes this the more we were together Sam and I the more I realized that we were two people that we would always be two people that there is no other option given in creation the realization filled me with a soft pervasive morning morning that that it must be so with us and morning for the loss of a sweetness I had dreamed and would never have once or twice when we were lying about that summer I took my forefinger and ran it up Sam's abdomen to his breastbone and said I wish I could unzip you right here and just crawl in forever I stopped my half serious foolishness when I realized my words were upsetting him well of course he was in training as a physician it hadn't been that long since he'd done the the autopsy of the cadaver and you zip it from the abdomen to the breastbone he said you know in on surgeries where they zip it from the she uses that you know they're in two different worlds I mean she's reading the the the Roman myths and she's reading the Greek myths and she's reading the Bible seriously for the first time in her life and she's using images differently than a physician does fellas hello I think yes he would not have that wouldn't have floated his boat I stopped my half serious foolishness when I realized my words were upsetting to him I just simply stopped expressing but not feeling that feminine pull toward a more perfect union toward the return of two into the primordial whole I wanted with all my soul to be a rib again inside the man I loved yet dot dot dot now the very next paragraph in the book fellas talks about the beginning of an intimacy with God in prayer that started that summer and what it was like it's not an accident that this paragraph follows that paragraph because those are the two paragraphs that follow at the heart of the gospel of Jesus himself that image of crawling in is very close to the way Jesus talks about intimacy with him and he with us and we together in God I am in the Father Jesus said I am in the Father and you are in me and I am in you he's talking about interpenetration of persons right there and we're involved in that when we come to him as disciples so whether Jesus kissed Mary or not is irrelevant the fact is by bringing her into the circle of disciples he brought her into that place that allows a relationship closer than lovers and this circle is open to us and we sing a song whose words are so intimate they make you squirm sometimes it's the song Jesus friend forever what a hope I found more faithful than a mother it would break my heart to ever lose each other Jesus Jesus friend forever and then the other verse what a friend I found closer than a brother I have felt your touch more intimate than lovers pretty intimate song but it's a gospel intimacy now intimacy in any relationship is a function of time you know they've got these studies where the older couples you know like the old the old guys and yeah who've been married a long time they report feeling more intimate than they did when they were young couples even when they had that romance hot and heavy thing going on the deeply in love older couples say it's better now than when the romance was hot and fresh the studies indicate that that falling in love romantic early thing is physiologically it's a bath of endorphins and it lasts up to seven years long interestingly that we have the seven year itch the endorphins start to fade and so it's so powerful that falling in love thing that sometimes people just ditch their spouse in order to go find a new one and go through that seven-year thing again but that's always always the case we miss the greater things because we settle for the lesser things and the couples who stick together find that the next kind of bonding is even better and that bonding isn't mediated so much by the endorphins is by oxytocin oxytocin is the chemical that new mothers have released in in in in large quantities that causes them to lactate fathers who see their babies being born or present during the birth of the child also have a burst in their system of oxytocin and it helps them bond with the mother and the child it's a very powerful powerful thing oxytocin and that other bonding that's that's the physical expression of it oxytocin the couples who felt them both say I like oxytocin better and they're not talking about oxycontin you know there's a danger in singing a song like this um friends forever I have felt your touch more intimate than lovers uh it might cause us to say well I haven't felt that or I haven't felt it enough or I haven't felt it lately uh we want our feelings fast don't we we want them cheap we want them on demand but the feelings don't come that way the value of a song like this outweighs that danger though because it points to the reality that the invitation which is really a summons there's no such thing as Jesus inviting someone to be a disciple it's actually a summons isn't it come follow me it's not you know hey I've got an opening would you like to take it it's a summons uh falling in love for those who fall in love feels more like a summons than an invitation doesn't it that's why it's called falling in love that's why in the movies it's the woman grabbing the guy by the lapels and push it's a it's a summons the call to discipleship is a summons gravity is a summons you know in the that's not an invitation to the book to fall it's a summons to fall the call to discipleship is a summons and the value of a song like that is that it's important to know where it is we're being summoned to when we're being summoned to be a disciple of Jesus we are being summoned to the most intense and deep intimacy the human divine intimacy and it's mediated through Jesus that's important information and it's worth even squirming a little bit when we sing a song like that now we're if the band could return i'm pretty much done uh we're gonna we're gonna close with uh little worship uh as as we conclude and i just want to um i always stand up i just want to invite you know um we've been some tender territory here i know for individuals it's been tender territory there may be women here for whom the you know the gender wars and all that stuff is really intruded on your experience with god and you you haven't come as close to him because there's been this whole fog you know this whole fog that it's just hard to press through that fog isn't it sometimes you know in the bible god when he appears almost always he's surrounded by a cloud or a fog there's there's things that we need to press through you know in order to make contact with god and and this might be one of those things that we need to press through just all this all this gender culture war all this bad experience we have as human beings and we just wish there'd be another way but but there isn't and maybe maybe the cloud the fog for you is is the church and it's in its history in this area you know if if we're not willing to pass through the church we won't find Jesus because he's presented to us through the church and we won't be able to even access our own humanity because god wants to reveal his son through humanity through his human son who's also divine and through the human church who who also receives the Holy Spirit and so unless you're willing to press through that fog you're not going to find this god who is the real god and so I just want to invite I want to summon anyone who today who feels like you know I've been standing outside that fog I haven't been able to press through to god I want to say to you that god is waiting in the middle of that fog and he's willing willing able to accept you as you are so if you want to make that connection if you want to maybe you've even been walking as a Christian for a period of time but you know that this this issue has really kept you at arm's length from god today is the day he's saying press through the fog press through the fog so I want to invite you to do that if it would help you to come forward and to receive prayer from someone on the ministry team by all means do that please ministry team people be very gentle with people coming up for prayer today and we don't want to hear your theories or anything but just bless what it is that that god is doing because we're on it especially tender territory when we're dealing with this with this issue um let's just pray god our father we bless you we worship you we magnify your holy name and we want to draw close to you and so we pray for the presence of and the empowering of the holy spirit to give us courage to be bold to step into your presence and we thank you for your beloved son for the way he comes into our darkness so patiently builds a path for us to know god is Abba father we want to walk down that path today wherever we are we want to take another step further on that path toward Abba father so we invite the holy spirit now just to wash over us to meet each of us in our particular point of need and to just raise up a highway to Ziya we pray it father in Jesus name um it
