Religiosanity

In this second part of the "Angels" series, Pastor Andrew shifts our focus to the more "mundane" angels that we can encounter in life, and shares a story of an angel visiting an old man in modern times.

After 70 episodes of Religiosanity, you must now realize when you see a title like "Angels" that you are not going to get some lightweight, cookie-cutter, hallmark-talk. By now you know that Pastor Andrew is going to take us back to the beginning, as close to the origin as would be possible to examine, back to when they were called "messengers," and he's going to fill us in on what they represented, how they manifested, how people interacted with them, and what their existence says about us anthropologically. Now be an angel and, if you enjoyed our first 70 episodes, would you share them with loved ones?

Pastor Andrew traveled to Arizona for a birding vacation and provides us with a dispatch from the border wall. The terrible structure is not just an eye-sore, its construction and enforcement create tangible issues for the people of the area that are much more detectable when you visit first-hand. The trip also made him reflect on the irony of the indisputable Mexican-ness of the birds (and other living things) of the area.

Somehow loosely associated sermon at Rutgers Presbyterian Church can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/3yoMhQFkxFM

Pastor Andrew gives us a theological, exegetical, historical record of the attempts to reconstruct the story of the empty tomb, how it changed throughout the Gospel stories, it’s potential powers and pitfalls, and the multiple reasons why he has chosen not to talk about it in a sermon, until this Easter.

Pastor Andrew and Peter share their personal approaches to Lent, and the idea of abstaining in general, which takes the conversation from soda pop to pescatarianism. Plus Peter shares a wild, potentially controversial lenten practice that he thinks would be an interesting way to get closer to that metaphorical desert. Pastor Andrew finds some merits in it, but also advises thoughtfulness in its regard.

The topic of this episode is Mark 8:33, where Jesus tells Peter “Get behind me Satan.” Pastor Andrew touches on the broader context of Peter’s position in the early church and his successors, gives us an illustration of how the story was transformed and deepened through the use of conflict, and calls for the demythologization of the passage, away from resting in the dualism of God and the Devil, “which does it a disservice.”

Right around the time Senator Ted Cruz was getting on a plane, quite literally leaving behind his suffering constituents trying to survive the power crisis in Texas, Pastor Andrew sat down to record this episode in which he ponders how Christians who subscribe to the Prosperity Gospel, and the end-timers or "Left Behind" crowd, are dealing with being truly left behind, when it comes to the economy, services, or care, by those in power who they trusted.

The events of January 6th prompt a conversation about the duty of progressive Christianity in this time of violent White Christian Nationalism, and the need for a modern Barmen Declaration (which was a document adopted by Christians in Nazi Germany who opposed the German Christian Movement) to publicly decry this brand of blasphemous "Christianity."

Here is the link to the sermon mention in this podcast https://youtu.be/bmKGX21U69g

An explanation of his rationale for choices made in his own translation of Matthew 7:13-14 leads Pastor Andrew to an interesting discussion about roads and gates in Jesus' time, and a wider (no pun intended) discussion about translation in general.

A spectacular moment in nature prompted Pastor Andrew to reflect on the famous philosophical thought experiment "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" It leads him to a condemnation of the anthropocentric world view at the heart of the question, and challenges us to start accounting for the interconnectedness of the natural world around us, and to let that knowledge humble us.