ITLOTC
(In The Life Of The Church)
Epiphany (for the last time in 2020)
Bored with Eternity
I’ve been thinking about Jesus’ miracles lately. More particularly ranking them. Resurrection obviously comes in 1st place, but you gotta wonder if Jesus gets credit for that one. In Romans 8:11, the Spirit is the active agent of the miracle and Jesus is the passive recipient. But still Jesus has Lazarus resuscitation on his resume, and that’s pretty good. I’ve never brought anyone back from the dead after three days, nor have any doctors that I can remember. So we’ll let those two exist in their own category. How about the rest of them?
The feeding of the 5K is the one miracle that makes an appearance in all four gospels (save resurrection, which we already talked about). So that’s probably a pretty important one. There are other resuscitations (raising the widow’s son in Nain, Jairus’ daughter, etc.) You could make broad sweeping generalizations about the other miracles. You have the exorcisms, healing of paralytics, the blind, lepers, and some anomalies like dropsy, and withered hands. These are all really impressive miracles and I’m glad that Jesus did them, especially for the people who received those restorations. That being said, I will now reveal my top three favorite miracles.
3. Calming the storm
2. Walking on Water
1. Turning Water to Wine
My favorite miracles all have something in common. Well two things. They involve water, but I wasn’t going for that one. They aren’t the human restoring miracles. In that way they could be viewed as a bit frivolous.
Some Christians I know don’t think miracles happen today. Some think they do. I hope they do and I’m willing to pray for them, but I can’t guarantee anything. In the meantime I tend to think the miracles are useful in that they help us have an imagination for the Kingdom of God. The kingdom is a place that will eradicate leprosy, blindness, paralysis and other human challenges. But what do the frivolous miracles teach us? I like to think that they teach us that God is fun. I know that’s not a popular adjective to ascribe to God. None of the famous theologians write on that one, but I think they are important and this is why.
In what follows I will include spoilers from NBC’s The Good Place. If you have not seen the ending of that show and care to not have it spoiled, please don’t read this newsletter anymore.
After telling the staff that I was going to write about The Good Place in the newsletter, they got very restless and indicated that I needed to offer several kinds of spoiler alerts. This is another spoiler informing you that I’m going to write about the finale of The Good Place below.
A few weeks ago NBC aired the final episode of The Good Place. It’s a show about postmortem reality for humans picking on tropes about heaven and hell in a humorous way. For most of the show the main characters are 1. Realizing they aren’t in fact in the good place, 2. Critiquing the system that keeps the majority of humans out of the good place and 3. Negotiating a new system in which people can in fact get into the good place. In the last few episodes our main characters finally make it into the good place. The good place is and is not what you might imagine, but included in the good place is the reality and those who make it have eternity and the resources to experience whatever they wanted in life. It’s hard to develop plot in that environment, so the writers turned to the only source of potential conflict to conclude the show. People get bored in the good place. The last act of mercy of the good place architect creates is to let people cease to be. People can choose nonbeing, which all of our beloved main characters eventually do.
I have two criticisms of the ending. 1. When Eleanor finally ceases to exist, a fairy dust particle from her disintegration floats down to attach itself to and direct a piece of mail to Michael. This indicates that Eleanor is now guiding Michael. The problem I have with this is very simple. If Eleanor really ceased to be, so would her agency and any kind of influence that she might exert on the cosmos. What this suggests to me is that the writers weren’t actually comfortable with exhaustive definite extinction. Why? Because I believe the soul longs for the eternal. 2. While I think it completely reasonable to end the show the way the writers did, especially since they had to depict it within the four dimensions of time/space as we know it, i think it is a theological (perhaps anthropological) mistake to think that we have exhausted our sense of satisfaction with the eternal given our same limited view created by our vantage point in space time. Said differently, when overwhelmed by the possibility of the infinite, the finite will fail to compute proper possibility including emotional response.
Back to the miracles. What I like about the three water miracles is that opposed to being merely restorative, they are expansive. Instead of bringing things back to the way they should be, i.e. healthy hands, eyes, noses, limbs, they explore the world of joy where those hands, eyes, noses and limbs can be used for pleasure.
One of my favorite speeches from television comes from the lips of John Cavil in Battlestar Galactica. John is a cylon (bad guy robot) who complains about being human. You can watch that speech here, but if you’re too lazy to, let me paste the words from a meme I found that accomplishes the same thing below:
My concluding point is this. The water miracles teach us to dream of a world that is to come. One that asks us to develop an expanding capacity for joy and goodness. I don’t think we can overdo, run out of, or get bored of those things and I think we should have the humility to entertain that notion.
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College Retreat - April 3-5 - $40
We are heading to Cedarcreek lake for a weekend of learning from each other, and relaxing. The $40 covers all meals and lodging for the weekend. This is always a highlight of the year, so you don’t want to miss out. If you have any questions, please contact toph@ubcwaco.org
Ash Wednesday Service
UBC will host Ash Wednesday services on 2-26 at 7:00 AM & 5:30 PM. Liturgy will last about 30 minutes. There will be no childcare, but children are encouraged to come and attend worship.
Parishioner of the Week
Special shout out to Adam & Rebekah Powell Lewis for all the work they are doing on our relationship class on Wednesday evenings.
Work is Worship
Greeters: Harris
Coffee Makers: Clark Mi Casa
Mug Cleaners: Ron Miller
Money Counter: JD Newman
Announcements
Sermon Text: Special Guest Erika Graham
3-26 Night of Belonging Spring 1
3-29 nUBCers Lunch
4-23 Night of Belonging Spring 2
Youth Schedule
February 29 - Leap Year Celebration (Movie/Game Night)
March 11 - NO YOUTH (Spring Break)
March 27 - TBD (Talent Show?)
April 19 - 5/6 Family Game Night
April 26 - After Church Picnic
May 13 - Last Youth
Leadership Team
If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members.
Chair: Kerri Fisher: Kerri_Fisher@baylor.edu
Byron Griffin: byrontgriffin@gmail.com
Jeremy Nance: Jeremy.J.Nance@L3T.com
Joanna Sowards: jo.sowards@gmail.com
Kathy Krey: kathykrey@gmail.com
Jose Zuniga: jzgrphix2002@yahoo.com
Taylor Torregrossa: Taylordtorregrossa@gmail.com
Student Position: Davis Misloski
Student Position: Maddy O’Shaughnessy
UBC Finance Team
Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.
JD Newman: JD_Newman@baylor.edu
Catherine Ballas: catherine@refitrev.com
Jen Carron: jen.carron78@gmail.com
Mike Dodson: financeteammike@gmail.com
George Thornton: GeorgecCT1982@gmail.com
UBC HR Team
If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.
Erin Albin: erin.albin1@gmail.com
Sam Goff: samuelgoff92@gmail.com
Rebekah Powell: rpowell671@gmail.com
Kristen Richardson: wacorichardsons@gmail.com