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17: Two Pastors Discuss The Resurrection Of Jesus
258 Plays4 years ago
Dr. David McDonald and Pastor Jim Mueller returned this week to provide their perspective on the Resurrection of Jesus. David and Jim are great friends and in this episode, you will be entertained by their stories of one another. In addition, you’ll be impressed with how they are able to present their knowledge of scripture in a very normal and relatable way.
Jim is the Lead Pastor at Messiah Lutheran Church in St. Charles, Missouri.
In 2019, David founded the Fossores Chapter House, the world's first headquarters for Christian ministerial innovation, where preachers, leaders, and entrepreneurs gather from all over the world to do their best work.
Highlights from the episode include:
*Exploring Jesus
*The point of life
*What does an abundant life look like?
*As Pastors, they have the same questions as you
*Death is not the end of our story
*Grief and celebration at the same time
*Supernatural feelings
*The Resurrection of Jesus is happening within you now
*The advice the Pastors have for you this Easter
Normal Goes A Long Way Website: https://www.normalgoesalongway.com/
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Normal Goes A Long Way is brought to you by Messiah St. Charles: https://messiahstcharles.org/
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Transcript
Jill Devine’s Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way.
Jill's Personal Journey and Podcast Purpose
00:00:17
Speaker
I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The Normal Goes Along Way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
Introducing Jim Mueller and David McDonald
00:00:42
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Laura Fleetwood. I am in the studio today with my pastor, Jim Mueller, and my friend and his friend, David McDonald. This is a follow-up conversation to the episode where we talked about why did Jesus have to die.
00:00:59
Speaker
And Jill and I thought, this would be awesome to bring two friends, Jim and David, our great friends together, they're pastors, they are also really cool, normal guys, and just have them banter back and forth and share when it comes to the resurrection, like
00:01:17
Speaker
How do you explain to people that we believe in a God who died and rose from the dead? And what are some stories that you might have as a pastor about that topic?
Jim and David's Friendship and Humorous Anecdotes
00:01:27
Speaker
So first, Jim, I wanted to ask you to share a little bit about the history between you and David so the listeners have some background about your friendship. And then we'll dive into Easter. Awesome. Dave is an amazing friend. And I met him when I was starting my doctoral studies. Dave was my doctoral advisor.
00:01:46
Speaker
And I really didn't get to know his personality until this one night we were in Portland. And- This is funny already. It is, it's gonna be. Yeah, I hope to embarrass you. At midnight, we went and got donuts at a famous donut shop. I won't name it. And it was kind of fun that night. They had a little baby coffin filled with donuts in there.
00:02:12
Speaker
And we all were discussing just how strange this is and get up to the register. And Dave said, what does it take to get the baby coffin? And he had this private conversation. Next morning, we're all waking up. All the students are waking up. We're waiting for our faculty to get there. And here comes David down the street walking.
00:02:28
Speaker
baby coffin filled, I don't know how many donuts, let's say 50, 100, but above his head and walking into the hotel facility and just the look on all these pastors faces, like here comes our faculty and you see Dave with the baby coffin.
00:02:49
Speaker
forward a little bit and we're packing up to go. And everybody wants to know what he's going to do with the baby coffin. And Dave said, I'm taking it with me. I get to the airport. You didn't. And I am ready to check in for the flight. And there's David duct taping up the baby coffin duct tape. And I said, what are you doing, Dave? And he goes, well, they said it's not luggage. So I had to turn it into luggage.
00:03:17
Speaker
And apparently, it checked. That worked. And then, fast forward a little later, I'm up in Jackson, Michigan, hanging out with Dave, coming to his office, and there it is. This baby coffin, which once held donuts, which we ate, a little creepy, is now in his office on display. Not to say that that's the important story. The important story is that Dave helped mold me as a pastor, as a leader, as a preacher,
00:03:47
Speaker
Now we're partnering together with the Chapter House up there in Michigan.
The Chapter House: A Creative Haven
00:03:51
Speaker
This is a creative place where creative leaders, pastors, musicians, artists, people who need a place where they can set aside the worries of everyday life and they can grow and they can be nurtured, they can be cared for, and Dave has taken it upon himself.
00:04:10
Speaker
to lead that. It's an amazing, magical place. It's a place where Christian faith really needs to find its roots. And anybody that wants to know what a chapter house is, go on Wiki, look it up, and find out more about how these
00:04:27
Speaker
these houses helped pastors stay in the game, stay faithful, and to become great leaders. And that's exactly what we're doing. It's why my family donates to the Phosaurus chapter house. It's why I volunteer on the board of directors and why I really want to see Dave pursue this long term. Yeah, thanks, man. Jim, he's been a huge part of my life over the last few years. And he was at the very first
00:04:57
Speaker
retreat at the chapter house. I invited 12 of my friends in ministry to help get us started and then he's been back a couple times since and Jim and I have similar pain points that sometimes we'll get into conversations with people that we both hate and Jim has the most gorgeous, impish little smile and he gives me that smile. I know he's in a conversation from which he must be rescued and then I don't rescue him. Instead, I leave him there because that's what gives me my little smile.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, I do blame you for such things. That's right. Yeah. Oh, no, you've been a great friend. I'm very grateful that you're on the board. I'm excited for you to come back to the house too, because I think it's really different probably than the last time you were here. I'll be there in a couple of weeks. I know. I know. I'm very excited. I'm very excited. We're going to do all the fun things. Yeah. If anybody from Assai is listening, I want you to know this is where I go. I go once or twice a year and just get to be around pastors from all over the country.
00:05:52
Speaker
artists, creatives, musicians, and sometimes you'll turn a corner out of your room and you'll just hear somebody working on a new song. It's absolutely beautiful. I love that. This is not just for ministry leaders either. There's going to be people that need retreats and so you can go on the website and look at what some of those are and there might be a chance for you to go and get away and grow.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, we just hosted nine missionaries to Las Vegas here in a private retreat for them and their organization last week. And that was so meaningful, man. And the chapter is the only place that I can ever think of in my own experience in ministry.
00:06:31
Speaker
where you can laugh and cry, learn and make like craft something, design something, new book, new project, new podcast, whatever, all in the same like two days.
Significance of the Resurrection in Christian Faith
00:06:42
Speaker
And so you leave and you have this hyper intense connection to the people with whom you shared all these wild and wonderful prayer things and Bible things and creativity things and Jesus things. And it's really, yeah, I feel very privileged to be a part of it. It's really cool.
00:06:57
Speaker
It is also the first retreat center I know of that reminds me of Hogwarts Castle. I can second that. With all the magic that goes with that, with all the peculiarity and all the beauty that goes with Hogwarts.
00:07:15
Speaker
Dave, you had such an eye for that, and a lot of us have loved picking up little antiques and things that we've wanted to donate just to make it all the more special. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited. I can't wait for you to get over here.
00:07:30
Speaker
Well, Easter is right around the corner. It's on people's minds. And today I'd like to just throw the topic at you two and say, tell us about the resurrection of Jesus, what it means to you personally in your walk of faith, and has it been
00:07:50
Speaker
a stumbling block for people that you have walked alongside in your life to believe that Jesus could die and then be raised again from the dead by God. So Jim, I'll throw it to you. What does the resurrection mean to you? You know, it is the linchpin of our faith. And I don't I don't know that most people who are in my experience that are rejecting Christianity or
00:08:20
Speaker
are unsure about Jesus, I don't think in many cases they're looking at the resurrection itself. I think they look at the Bible. I think they say, I don't believe the Bible. And one thing I would tell them is, well, I don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus because of the Bible. I think the resurrection of Jesus gives testimony to the validity of the Bible. I think we've got it all wrong. The resurrection of Jesus
00:08:48
Speaker
means that everything that we know about what is possible changes.
00:08:55
Speaker
And so before I would open up Genesis to anybody, I'd say, hey, let's get into the gospel of John a little bit and let's just examine Jesus. Let's look at who he was. Let's look at what he stood for and ask, aren't these the kinds of values that we want for the world? Isn't this the kind of God that we want? Because ultimately what the scripture has been trying to say all along, so you want to know God?
00:09:20
Speaker
Look at Jesus. This is the God you can know. This is the God that you can hear from. This is the God that is teaching you. This is the God that people walked with and ate with. And for them, when he died and rose again, which by the way, he predicted all along, when he died and rose again, you had then hundreds of followers who were willing to, at that point, to die for that truth.
00:09:48
Speaker
And I just have a hard time believing that the disciples themselves from that point on are dying for something that's a lie. You know, if they stole the body and hid it, or I just have a hard time believing that that's a lie. And for many of us now living today, if you ask me, why do I believe in the resurrection of Jesus is because I know Him.
00:10:11
Speaker
And sometimes that's what it takes. You can spend time in your faith and you can investigate all sorts of things. But for many of us, it's like a light bulb that went off. Like we know God. We know we're not alone. And we know that this life is not the end. I think the resurrection is everything.
Understanding Jesus's Life and Resurrection
00:10:30
Speaker
Now we can talk about the story of Jonah or Noah's ark or any of the rest of it. But if you don't at least start with the resurrection and Jesus himself, I think we're missing the point.
00:10:41
Speaker
But I really liked when you acknowledge that you rarely start with the resurrection. Me neither. The question I think originally was,
00:10:50
Speaker
How do you explain the resurrection? I go, well, that's, that's not usually the starting point. I mean, sometimes some Randall, sometimes come in and ask you a question like that, you know, in an online forum or, um, but, but usually I just, I just start with Jesus. Um, and then if I, you know, in the life of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, the relationships of Jesus, the, the values of Jesus, the witness of Jesus, I mean, Jesus is, is the compelling person. I mean, if you don't find Jesus compelling, who cares if he came back from the dead. Um, that's not the thing that makes him fascinating for me.
00:11:19
Speaker
That makes God fascinating. I mean, that God's human rescue plan involved becoming a person, that's cool. That's super cool. That God would condescend to humanity or that God sees so much dignity in being human, that God tried it on for size, which is hilarious because most of us feel no dignity in being human. So I love that God maybe likes us more than we do.
00:11:45
Speaker
And then when we get to talking about the resurrection, which I agree with Jim, it's so significant, so important. I mean, really the bedrock of the Christian claims. Well, then I like what N.G. Wright says, where he goes, you know, the problem in our modern day conversations about resurrection is we go, we can't prove it scientifically. But science deals with things that can be reproduced in a laboratory under controlled conditions and with replicatable results.
00:12:15
Speaker
And the resurrection is not a scientific act. It's an historical one. And history deals with things that only happen once. And we have every possible bit of historical evidence to substantiate the claim that Christ was dead and then did not remain dead any longer. And so when you weigh the evidence that's there,
00:12:37
Speaker
You really have to come to that conclusion, which was the foundation for Lee Strobel's book, The Case for Easter, where as a skeptic and a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, he set about to debunk the claims of Christianity. He was an atheist, I think, and his wife started going to church and he didn't like that because he thought it was going to make her nutty or nuttier.
00:13:01
Speaker
And so he set out to blow the whole thing up and do this huge expose that was going to win him a Pulitzer. And in the process, instead found that his assumptions were wrong. And he came to faith in Jesus because of the weight of the events of the resurrection. So that's a really cool story about his life.
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a Dave man, your quote, everybody needs to listen to this. Dave just said, I think God likes us a lot more than we like ourselves. How true is that?
Embodiment of Christian Faith
00:13:28
Speaker
Right? Yeah, we will we disparage our humanity, you know, and especially in the church, you know, we're, we're afraid of, you know, our sexual desires, we're afraid of our desire to be beautiful, we're afraid of enjoying ourselves too much, we're afraid of playing too rambunctiously, we're afraid of our emotions.
00:13:48
Speaker
We're afraid of our connections and so many Christians are like Gnostics. We think if we could just escape the prison of this flesh, we'd be so much more spiritual. But God took on flesh. God chose flesh.
00:14:02
Speaker
The incarnation means God became flesh. He was enfleshed. So the embodied experience that we have is not a detraction from our spirituality. It is an essential component of spirituality, which is why all the promises in the New Testament about getting new bodies and living in resurrected bodily life in the new creation. That's what it means to be a Christian.
00:14:27
Speaker
A Christian faith is an embodied faith. It is a somatic spirituality. And I don't know how we missed that one. That's the very thing that Jesus did and did twice. He became a man and he died and then he was a man again, still a man. That's fascinating. Yeah. That's why for you Christians out there, it's really important to not just talk about your body dying and your soul going up to heaven or something.
00:14:56
Speaker
make sure you really look at how the scriptures are testifying to bodily resurrection. It really changes the way you see everything. And you definitely see that in Jesus. Jesus is more than happy to have a drink with people. Jesus is more than happy to have a feast with people. I would encourage people to read the Jesus stories and the Gospels and ask yourself over and over again,
00:15:23
Speaker
Doesn't it look like he's having a lot of fun? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And when you look at the brief descriptions we have of eternal life in the presence of God and the fully manifest kingdom of God and new creation, John's revelation, everything that's happening there is bodily, like there's a feasting. Look, ghosts don't feast, spirits don't feast.
00:15:47
Speaker
You need a stomach if you're going to put food somewhere. So the fact that heaven entails feasting and singing and work, all of those things are things for which you need a body. So Eugene Peterson in his book, Reverse Thunder, which explores John's revelation, says, there's nothing new in heaven.
00:16:09
Speaker
It's just that everything we already have has been perfected, beautified, glorified, and any taint has been removed from it. It's feasting without gluttony. It's drinking without drunkenness. It's work without toil, which is a really healthy observation. Yeah, relationship without strife. Yeah, we could go on and on. Yeah, that's the testimony. And I think if people hear this and they say,
00:16:36
Speaker
Boy, that's something I want. That's why you explore Jesus. You actually look at the promises that God is making. And if you say those are promises worth living for, those are promises worth exploring, those are promises that it's worth committing myself to, even if I'm not yet a believer. If that is in any way attractive to you, we're gonna turn you to Jesus every single time because those are the promises
00:17:06
Speaker
that he's making. Well, and really essential to understanding Jesus is his promise in the Gospel of John that he's come that we might have life and have life abundant, full life, abundant life.
Relevance of Jesus’s Promise of Abundant Life Today
00:17:18
Speaker
And that echoes so much of the Pentateuch, you know, the first five books, the Old Testament and Deuteronomy, where we're instructed to choose life. See today, the Lord says, I place before you life and death, choose life, choose to live.
00:17:31
Speaker
And I mean, the life that we have is meant to be enjoyed. And Jesus demonstrates that even in the midst of incredible heartache and persecution, adversity, pressure, even though Jesus is never safe, he nevertheless finds a way to give himself fully to the life
00:17:55
Speaker
that he's been permitted to enjoy and enjoy the heck out of it which is so cool and made so many people mad i mean certainly the religious community religious people don't like it when you enjoy life but that's that's the point the point of life is to live it.
00:18:10
Speaker
You know, you think about all those times where we've experienced judgy Christians, and it seems like the goal a lot of times, or at least what it feels like, is it just feels like they're nitpicking every little thing in your life. What if we could turn that the other way and say, you know, look at that quote from the Gospel of John that you talked about, you know, that you may have life and have it to the full.
00:18:35
Speaker
to instead present people with the opportunity, what would a full life look like? What would an abundant life look like? Because that's way different than me judging a habit or judging an addiction maybe that somebody has. It's very different to say, how do you actually want to live?
00:18:53
Speaker
And if God loves you so much, what does God dream for your life? Because when you can get a vision for that, that's very different than just, hey, don't do this. Yeah, right. Right. Or I won't like you. Yeah. About two years ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic, I actually was trying to figure some of that stuff out for myself. You know, we're in lockdown and nobody's, I leave their house and the shelter in place orders there. And I thought, okay,
00:19:19
Speaker
With all this time on my hands, with all this time on the hands of my children and of my parishioners, what are the things that we are permitted to enjoy without restraint? When you ask the question, what would an abundant life look like? What would it look like to live life to the full? That was really the same question I was asking. What am I allowed to do and never have to pump the brakes on?
00:19:43
Speaker
And so I hope that I designed a whole online course about it that then we turned around and offered through the Fisari's chapter house online school. We had about 20 people go through it the first time and it was called all we are permitted to enjoy.
00:19:56
Speaker
And it was really fun to search the scriptures and go, oh my gosh, there's all this stuff that you can give yourself fully too. And the more fully you give yourself to it, the more God is pleased and the more God is glorified in your life and the better you feel. It was a really fun project. Man, that makes everybody want to go back to school. Yeah, that was different than my own experience as a student. But as a professor, I can make it less painful.
00:20:23
Speaker
The two of us, I joke sometimes when my kids are stressed out about finals or they just can't wait for school to be over. And I tell them, I went to college for 12 years.
00:20:39
Speaker
undergrad, grad school, doctoral program. And Dave, I know you share that with me. We went to school for a long, long time. And yet, we're just like all of you. And when we talk about resurrection, I think we're just like everybody else.
Resurrection and Life After Death
00:20:55
Speaker
We want to know is the things that we experience and feel in this life, is this all there is?
00:21:02
Speaker
and the things that we experience and feel in this life, could it be better? And no matter what my job is, or Dave, what your job is, at the end of the day, we look at our families, we look at the people we love, we look in the mirror at ourselves, and we're asking, is there a God? Is this God good? Does this God have a plan for us? You know, when I die, and I will, and all of us will, is at the end of my story.
00:21:32
Speaker
And I just have this thing in my gut. And yeah, the resurrection of Jesus confirms it, but I have this thing in my gut that just says, this is not the end. This is not the end of us. And this is not the best version of myself. And this is not the best version of my kids. Like God is planning something so much better for them. And I'm so excited for it. It's why at a Christian funeral, and Dave, I'm sure you've said this, I've said this,
00:21:59
Speaker
so many times that I am willing to be repetitive. At the same time that we're saying goodbye to somebody we love and we're all grieving, they are celebrating at the Lord's side like never before. So much grief and so much celebration, intention with each other,
00:22:20
Speaker
in that moment. And to look in the eyes of the people in the crowd at a funeral, something changes in their eyes when they realize that.
00:22:31
Speaker
that we're grieving. But man, when they're with the Lord, when they're experiencing eternal life, they are celebrating. Yeah, eternality is a trap. I mean, to just think about, you know, things that persist. And of course, many of us are quite resistant to that idea at first, you know, because it seems so hocus e pocus e
Science and Christianity: Finding Harmony
00:22:52
Speaker
and
00:22:52
Speaker
But think about all the things that are being discovered now in the scientific realm of quantum physics, quantum mechanics is a really good example, which is outside of my scope of expertise. But the idea that things have a life after
00:23:08
Speaker
You fail to observe them like you can only measure so much but there's still things happening beyond what you can measure beyond what you can see beyond what you can touch beyond what you can reproduce in a lab and we're only now developing the scientific processes to figure that out.
00:23:26
Speaker
and prove it, you know, through strange and backwards chains of causality. And I go, just that ought to make us open to the possibility that there's something more than life after death, or even what N.T. Wright calls life after life after death. Because the Christian journey isn't just about, you know, dying and being in a disembodied state, like we indicated earlier, it's then coming from that disembodied state to back and inhabiting a new body and a new creation, life after life after death.
00:23:54
Speaker
And I think there's so many things out there in the scientific community that ought to at least make that more plausible for us. Superstring physics, the idea of multi-dimensionality, M theory, string theory, but even our cultural fascination with the supernatural, whether it's silly things like the TV show Supernatural or the TV show Ghost Hunters, or just the feeling that we all have sometimes that there's
00:24:22
Speaker
there's somebody watching us that a loved one is somehow present even though we know they're not because they died years ago when my dad died in the beginning of covid not from covid from cancer and so there's times where i feel like he's with me.
00:24:38
Speaker
And we don't have good ways to explain all that, but the Bible does. The Bible explains all that in terms of a great cloud of witnesses, those who have gone before us into the presence of the Father and with whom we will return adjacent to the Son. So I think there's an increasing credibility to the metaphysical claims in Scripture.
00:24:57
Speaker
All right, so everybody, this is something I love about Dave. If you go into his office and you look at the books on the shelf, it's not just Bible commentaries. There's so many disciplines that are up there because, yeah, you said you're not an expert in physics, but that doesn't mean you're not reading it. It doesn't mean you're not interviewing people. It doesn't mean that you're not looking into this. I really think
00:25:27
Speaker
If you go into your pastor's office and all you find is Bible commentaries, I would say find another church. You need somebody that is looking at the holistic disciplines of life and matter and everything else.
00:25:44
Speaker
Because that's where we find these things. And David is somebody that loves philosophy, psychology. He's written as much on these things as he has on theology, and it has only enriched his theology. So I love your curiosity. I love your spiritual curiosity, but I love your curiosity just about life and how people can live well. So shout out, buddy.
00:26:11
Speaker
Oh, thanks man. I appreciate that. It is a privilege to be in an environment where such pursuits are not shamed or denigrated or or disdained. That's cool to be surrounded by friends and family and a church community that say, yeah, let your loves lead you. Let the Spirit of God lead you into all truths and then and then share that truth with us.
00:26:35
Speaker
in whatever ways you can. So I feel really fortunate. God was really kind to me to give me so many cool people. Yeah, absolutely.
Hope and Messages for Easter
00:26:45
Speaker
So this Easter, if there was one prayer or blessing or thought provoking idea that you could leave with our listeners for them to experience Easter anew in a new, richer way, what would be your thoughts for our listeners this Easter?
00:27:12
Speaker
The resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact. The resurrection of Jesus is also a promised future, but there's a sense in which the resurrection of Jesus is happening in you right now. You know, after the pandemic, so many people have very dead dreams. They have very dead romances. They're very dead marriages. They're very dead, you know, employment opportunities. And so my prayer is that God would resurrect
00:27:40
Speaker
your marriage, that God would resurrect your dreams, that God would resurrect your passion and your love of life, that God would would resurrect your joy, that God would resurrect your relationship with your children, that you would experience the resurrection of Jesus in you now in anticipation of before you later on. And I would say if this Easter, if you find yourself in a church
00:28:07
Speaker
and the story's being read or the preacher is offering a message. Try not to judge it, just try to receive it. Just soak yourself in it. That's good, yeah. And see what that could mean for life. Even in fact, that's what God so much wants to do for you and for the people you love.
00:28:34
Speaker
And then dream a bit more about life to the whole. I love at the end of Revelation, because if we're gonna say, hey, why is the resurrection important? It's because Revelation 21 and 22 come true. And the testimony of the last disciple of Jesus was, how about a life with no more tears, no more pain, no more suffering? When we think about the hardest times in our lives, those things are always involved.
00:29:03
Speaker
Well, think about all the other things God wants to take away besides your tears and your suffering and your pain. What about your guilt? What about your shame? What about your hesitation? Just let it soak you. Don't judge it. Just let it soak you. A lot of times we can know stories so well, we can say, well, I heard it this way one time and I'm hearing it this way, or just let it baptize you a little bit and see if maybe the spirit as I start speaking a little bit.
00:29:31
Speaker
And we would love to invite you to Messiah's Easter Services on Sunday, April 17th, 8 a.m. 9 30 and 11 will also be live streaming at 9 30 a.m. MessiahStCharles.org. You are always welcome in our doors. And thank you, Jim and David for your thoughts for that.
00:29:54
Speaker
blessing that invitation this Easter. We pray that it resonates with you and that Jesus sparks something new in your heart this Easter. Thanks for listening.