I had an absolute blast talking to Emily Larsen and Trey Comstock from Divine Provisions Co. They are both United Methodist pastors based in Houston Texas, and together as Divine Provisions Co. they produce no less than three podcasts.
We move from Trey and Emily’s Fkd Up By Faith stories – OMG is all I can say – to talking about the theology of pool party baptisms and ministry as a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
Episode Transcript
Opening Music
Hello and welcome to Fkd Up By Faith. My name’s JUDE Mills. In this podcast, we have conversations with people who’ve been Fkd up by their faith and we explore how they found hope, healing, reconciliation and forgiveness in or out of their faith tradition.
JUDE: My guests today on Fkd Up By Faith are Emily Larson and TREY Comstock. Together they are Divine Provisions, and they have no less than three podcasts.
TREY: Yes, shocking amount.
JUDE: One is Cut the Crap, which I have been on, and we had an awesome conversation. that does pretty much what it says, but they describe it as intentionally heretical, which is right up my Strasse. And then they have How to Restart a Church, again, how to restart a church.
TREY: And maybe how to do it better this time.
JUDE: How to do it better, exactly. And then The Goodness of God, which is musings on the revised common lectionary and it’s much more interesting than it sounds. So it’s a podcast about scripture, about life and about being the church. And I was just listening to one this afternoon as I was preparing for this where you were talking about the gospel of John and Mary pouring the excessive amount of spikenard all over Jesus. That was a really, really interesting conversation. So I recommend all of those to the folks who are listening.
So I’m going to start with a prayer because I’m in the right company for such a thing. So, and it’s a prayer that I have written particularly for F***ed Up By Faith.
God of all love, as we join together today, we bring our whole selves, our joy, our pain, our gifts and our flaws and all that makes us human. May this space be one where we might find hope, healing, reconciliation or forgiveness. Bless everyone listening, remind them that they are loved. And even in the struggle and in the mess, you are with us. Amen. Amen.
So we’re going to start with Emily, I think. Emily. How were you Fkd up by your faith?
EMILY : Well, while I was thinking about coming on this podcast and the stories that I could share, I could probably do an entire episode called Fuck the Patriarchy. Yeah. And just we’re working on an episode of Cut the Crap with that title specifically with that title because of the times, the many stories I could share of you know, gentlemen telling me whether or not I should even be in ministry or women should be silent in church, what I should wear, what I should not wear, what they thought of me while I was wearing something, which is highly inappropriate during ministry. But also a lot of our work has centred around this idea of where the church has broken people, where we have marginalized people.
not just women, but all sorts of people on the margins. And a lot of that sort of centred around for us, this split in the United Methodist Church over LGBTQ rights in the church with the global Methodist Church now is now a separate denomination. And I just remember the comments that were made from friends, from clergy friends that I had done very meaningful ministry with for decades. I have been in ministry for decades with these people who are now on the other side of the line than I am. But it’s almost like it gave them this permission to say things that they never would have said otherwise. I remember two gentlemen colleagues during a conference before the split while all of the discussions were being made, and I was sharing with them how I was going into ordained ministry, and I was really excited to share it with them. And they looked at me and said, oh, well, you’re staying United Methodist. Do we have to change your pronouns? know? Oh, I don’t like that one. Rudely assumed. And so I am not a quippy person. I do not have good comebacks. But to that one, I actually did that day. I looked at them and I said, yes, I’m going to start preaching in drag. I’m going to start preaching in pants.
Just because it was so ridiculous. The fact that they would have permission to say those sorts of things. And I grieve for those relationships that were lost in the split because we did wonderful ministry to a lot of people for a very long time. I mean, at people’s death beds, in their weddings, at their babies’ baptisms, meaningful touch points in people’s lives.
TREY: a grand moment for the quiet part finally being said out loud.
EMILY: Yes. Yes. So that was just there was a lot of heartbreak around that.
TREY: There was that time that you went and went to a meeting in Palestine, Texas, as like representative of the church, because I couldn’t go. And there were only two things that you were my you were my associate at that point. Right. Like you were like, fully like a pastor at this church. Right. Like we, you know, clergy team and So it was one of those natural like a pastor needed to go to this I couldn’t go so the other pastor goes like very normal And that meaning at that meeting they could only assume you were one of two things You were either my admin which you were not or my spouse which you are not like you know when you think about like Fkd by the patriarchy like that was one of like, you know, Maybe we should have seen this coming, but you know I was like I felt bad because I knew I’d sent clearly it sent you into hell without meaning to Who knew?
EMILY: Yes, you know God bless him and even after correcting them. I was like no not his spouse Just his clergy partner.
TREY: right like not like Captain first mate, Picard and Riker. This is where, you know, that level of everything. You will learn if you listen to any of our shows, everything is either Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or Star Trek. Like that’s all I’ve got. Sometimes Harry Potter. Or Harry Potter.
JUDE: Emily, have you ever been called the Lady Pastor?
Emily: Yes. Yes. used to get that. The Lady Pastor. Just like, you know. The level of it is fixed there. Oh, God. Or even most recently, it’s been so in a program, a bulletin that was published. of that because there were several other pastors who were serving in, you know, retired pastors who were doing the prayer or the liturgy of the day. And so all of their names were printed with REV in front of them. And then I, was preaching and leading the service that day, did not get my title in, which I really care about titles. But if you’re going to put them in, put them in for everyone. It’s everybody or nobody, right? in a world where no one has title, no one else’s titles, like never insist on yours. like everyone else is getting their title. Like it sends a message. Right. Mm hmm. Yes. Yes.
TREY: You know, yeah, Lady Pastor is like, I, I, I, all colleagues of like, like, oh, like, why is that such a problem? And then every like, you know, female identifying pastor I ever talked to is like, oh, Jesus Christ, it’s terrible. Like it is one of those places where, like, oh, right. This is horrific.
JUDE: Yeah. Yeah. I got it frequently when I was working in chaplaincy. If I was in the office as the as the you know, the chaplain and there happened to be a man in the office with me. He was often a volunteer, they would talk to the man. This is my office. Yes. My name is on the door.
EMILY: Oh my God. What a mess. And so strangely enough, that pastor who had asked me about my pronouns was actually the pastor that TREY followed at one of our mutual appointments that had also caused a lot of um interesting Fkd by your faith stories.
TREY: Yeah, so for me, getting Fkd by my faith is a movement in three acts. And one of them has very little to do with the church, actually, and everything to do with being a depressed kid and not knowing what depression is. Yeah. So growing up, I a lot of people, their church trauma comes from childhood or young adulthood. For me, it’s all largely later in life, you know, in my 20s and 30s, but growing up, I had a fairly healthy, if normal church and a youth group that was really nice and a lot of friends and it was fine. But I spent my whole like young adulthood thinking that like I was never gonna be able to connect with God because like, If you chart human emotion on a one to 10 scale, I top out at a six. That’s just how my brain’s wired. There are receptors that I have that are blocked. That’s just how my brain works. And I didn’t know that at the age of 16. I wish someone would have told me that. But I know that now. But I’m watching all these people have these ecstatic religious experiences. We’re at a church like camp and you’re at the like worship at like eight o’clock at night and the bands go in and like people are like flipping out and I’m like I feel nothing. What are they experiencing? And when am I going to? And the answer is I was never going to. And so until I was 20 probably I just thought that I like I desperately wanted to connect with God. I really did since like a reality to the divine. I’m not really good at faith, I had enough that like, really think, really want something and I really believed I couldn’t get it. And eventually like through like therapy and finding religious space that made sense for me and learning about what depression is, like I eventually now I’m in a place like, oh, it’s okay.
Like I am in a connection and experience the divine in these other ways and in the same way that like I experience marriage and parenting differently. It’s like, did you cry when your child was born? No, I have never cried for joy. It is not a thing I am physically capable of doing, but that does not make me any less of a parent. That last sentence is a thing I learned later in life. Like that’s not perhaps the thing I like.
I often think I often apologize to my beloved spouse of like honey, like I’m really sorry I just feel like I’m the wrong person in this moment and she’s like, TREY, we’ve been together for 18 years. You think I don’t know. So again, it’s not the people I largely it’s not been the people around me that have done this particular harm to me. It is all the like me looking at a world I feel cut off from and thinking there’s something wrong with me rather than merely there’s something different about me that also gives me gifts and abilities and to be able to connect with people who, you know, have that kind of wired brain, right? You know, depressed people can connect in a different, like I can like help other depressed people who have like are on this journey, right? But I’m never going to have the like, I’m just lost in the joy right now because I am physically incapable of getting lost in the joy right now.
And that really, mean, that, you know, early in my life, that really Fkd me up. Yeah. Oh, as you say, I think that’s why it’s so important. We try to emphasize that your faith is not just a feeling. Right. Right. There’s such a culture around. Well, if you’re not feeling it, if you’re not speaking in tongues, if you’re not falling down on the ground or jumping happy, clapping, crying, then you’re not experiencing the divine, which is just not true. No, exactly. Yeah. And then there was the church that hated us or me specifically. And unfortunately, you were caught in the crossfire because I couldn’t produce the happy jumpy smiley thing.
So we followed a narcissist. Emily ended up at this church. I got assigned to this church. It’s where we became friends and colleagues. Had built the church around his ability to manipulate emotions from people. And then Convinced that congregation that having the emotions manipulated out of you was the very presence of God and so I show up and I’m like this like Stand-up comic with chronic depression. I could have just said stand-up comic. I’ll stand-up comics have chronic depression It’s just it’s just two and two, but And so I think of myself as like fun interesting like really Focused on like hey, oh, you’re someone who’s never connect with church before awesome me neither and like whatever and 50 % of the church left essentially immediately and that’s sucks anyways and almost all of them would sit in my office and Explain to me how I am the reason that they are leaving because they think that not the like Narcissist that like had an affair and then got like very publicly divorced, had the church take sides of his divorce, got arrested for suppressing evidence, although for legal reasons, I do need to say that that case never went to trial and thus is all allegedly. That’s not what was killing the church. It was that I couldn’t make them feel the same things as a narcissist. And that’s why they had to leave because they thought somehow that like, I had I had made God leave that God in Holy Spirit form, leave that place.
JUDE: Yes, your inability to conjure the Holy Spirit. Yeah. I think you said something about that in the podcast that I was listening to this afternoon, Emily, about, you know, like the difference between it being heightened emotion. Yeah. Just, you know, this is a really cool stirring kind of vibe just like going to a rock concert or a rave or it really is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit can move us in lots of different ways. It can move us into stillness.
MUSICAL BREAK
TREY: Well, and for me to filter out and go, what’s the random firing is of my brain? What’s what? I like EDM music, and that’s fun because I do like EDM music. And that is fun. Right. Is it Jesus or is it EDM? Like these are important questions we always need to examine. And so like helps me like as someone who has always struggled with doubt Or who has made doubt my life right like helps me filter of like what is really going on here? versus what is like you know human group think EDM a really good news whatever like what like I that’s where I find a lot of my real like Holy divine moments, you know for me learning. I learned a lot about my faith by walking 500 miles across north of Spain because I walked the Camino di Santiago, because it was like, didn’t set out to find my faith. I set out to have an adventure because whatever, but like what I found was like, oh, in this rhythm of walking, in this stillness, in these like intentional conversations, now I can understand and feel my own version of what a divine connection is. But it took that stillness. It wasn’t going to happen in the heightened emotion. Yeah, yeah. And so, but we were or I was evil Incarnate Because I could not like you know oh, we’re so glad that you’re more moral than this other guy But we really thought you’d be better than this, and I’m just sitting there going What like it absolutely broke me? I? You know Had some of the worst depression of my life also by the way. I’m in a town of 20,000 people Where you can’t escape these people?
Right, like I now live in a city of six million, right? If I have someone who gets mouthy at me, can go anywhere else. I couldn’t escape them. And so you’re constantly running into them in the store, you know, at school events, or they will come to church outreach events, just whatever. And so that really Fkd me up, frankly, of…
Because some of it is coming off that baggage of like, I used to judge me for not being like able to get lost in the joyous emotion. It took years, maybe a decade to like build myself to place like, oh no, like this is cool. This is just how God uses me. And then 150 people dumped me. You know, it’s breakup conversations for six months about how, oh, I really just wish you could Emotionally manipulate me more when you’re like the pastor supposed to like be leading this thing And you’re there to like make this thing be healthy like you know your life is like trying You know theoretically is like trying to build healthy churches and all the ways that healthy means spiritually healthy But also just like operation like you know you’re kind of part spiritual guide part small business owner, right? You have to like watching like this. Yeah, right. Yeah , You’re being blamed for the rapid death of your small business because you won’t emotionally manipulate people. was for my own life. It was a real toxic combo of, know, I’m here at a new church. I’ve only been here three months.
And, you know, my therapist is like, TREY, these are not the same people. These are not the same people because I’m like, it’s going fine. Right. It’s going normal. And I’m like, When are they all going to leave? My therapist’s name is David. David, when are they all going to leave? When does the leaving start? And he’s like, that’s probably not going to happen. You’re just traumatized. I’m like, yes, David, I am traumatized.
JUDE: It sounds utterly traumatizing. as someone who lives with, you know, because I’m autistic, so I live with rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria. yeah, that would crucify me for months.
TREY: It hit me in the intersection of my ADHD and my depression, right? It was like, why this is the, you know, this is the stuff that I like. You naturally feel, you know, the heightened sense of because of my brain’s wiring. And and by the way, like, you know, I deeply desire for the for people to find spiritual health and belonging. And I’m being told that my very personality is why they can’t find spiritual health and belong. It’s fucking wild, man.
JUDE: Oh my word. Absolutely. I’m really feeling that for you. Yeah. And I’m glad you escaped.
TREY: Yeah. So the escaping was the other heart was the other thing that I think that Fkd me up. So Emily kind of talked about this. We both work and move in the United Methodist Church, which is a global denomination, but largely based here in US. And they were going through this whole like massive political split. And so we were working for some people that were bad actors, were just using their position to try and lead a separatist movement. in the midst of that, I come through like years now of therapy, got up the guts to say, hey, I need to live somewhere else. So I don’t want to get too much into denominational structure. It’s very boring. But the kind of pastor I am in the United Methodist Church, keep this in mind, the geographic range that I can occupy is about half the size of France. Our range in Texas is about 50 % the size of the nation of France. So anywhere, know, Bordeaux to Paris. I could be assigned. It’s not that interesting. It’s Houston to Texarkana. But if you want to just draw like on a map that people not in Texas might grasp.
And I go to my boss and go, hey, I need to not live in this town of 20,000 people. It’s literally killing me. Literally killing me. I need to go. You know, and like that took a lot of like work to advocate for myself and like stand up for my needs. And again, like it done like a lot of really good therapy work to do this. And my boss goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. Ask him again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. I go on paternity leave expecting to get a call like, hey, you’ll be moving. I get back from paternity leave, nothing happens. I call him and he was like, oh, well, well TREY, know, a good Methodist pastor is willing to stay forever and move at a moment’s notice, I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re gonna do. like, it took a whole other year to get out of this situation that was killing me with all these people just telling me, oh yeah, we just don’t, we just can’t. I know like, This is supposed to be like a mutual process, but like we did. You did sign up and say that you would live wherever we told you to live. And I’m like, consent is a problem in this version of this process. And so I ended up weeping along to escaping cult documentaries. So it’s what I did.
It was Leah Remini’s Escaping Scientology documentary. And I’m watching these stories of people who escaped the sea org. And I think I started watching this show because I thought it’d be a little schadenfreude of television. And I’m having this awakening of like, too am trapped by my religious system in a life that feels like prison. Yep. So thank you Leah Remini, weirdly shout outs to, you know, her multi-season Scientology documentary that I watched through COVID that really did change my life.
JUDE: Yeah. I’ve learned a lot from listening and watching to, you know, cult studies, you high control, high control religion type stuff, whatever you want to call it. It teaches you a lot about how religion can work in some subtle and not so subtle ways.
TREY: And talking about high control environments and the I don’t think the United Methodist Church sets out for it be that way. I just think that when being run by bad actors, it has an opportunity to feel a lot like a high control environment where you have a theology of calling, which I agreed with, that like the church doesn’t belong to the pastor, it belongs to God. And so the pastor is only there for a season in parts that doesn’t become that pastor’s church and becomes more about God and the community and less about your personality. Couldn’t agree with that more. But that can then be misused to say, hey, do what we say, or we’ll give you, we will alter the house you live in, the amount of money you make and the educational opportunities of your children. Right. And so when you have healthy leaders who understand the power they wield, this can be fine.
I have certainly had good life experiences in it, where I have felt really like my needs taken, like where I am now, Like where my needs really were taken into account. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. I’m glad y’all see that in me like this can be really healthy or it can feel like you were a member of the Scientology Sea org who have all this control over me Trying to hijack this thing that I love To exclude people that I love it was you know that those combination of factors and that kind of generation of church leadership quite frankly Fkd me up and my own like We talk about on our shows like people are churchgoers people who are nuns not NUNs- NONEs and Those with no religion and those who are DONEs those who had a religion and left it and so somehow out of all of these experiences I am a pastor who is kind of a done right I am both leading a church and kind of done not but but And this is like where my own spiritual work is right now, not done with God, done often with the people claiming to represent God.
JUDE: Yes. And I think the best ministers come out of that. I really do. I think the best ministries happen in those spaces, in those transitional, weird, messy, Fkd up spaces.
TREY: Yeah, because we understand the messy and the Fkd up. I’m not OK with this. Well, and you run the numbers and there are a lot of people out there going, I feel something spiritual in my soul, but y’all seem like utter bullshit and I can go. Yes, same.
JUDE: I could not agree more to both of those statements. the Christians, this will be audio only so I’m doing scare quotes for the listeners, the Christians who tell us that empathy is toxic, those Christians. can completely understand why someone would not want to be associated or aligned with that.
TREY: Yeah, Jesus was all about empathy. It’s utterly I mean, yeah, there is no understanding it. It is like, know. Like what religion are you practicing? like, yeah, I have spent, you know, good chunk of my life in this church being told I don’t care enough about scripture, and I sit here and go, yeah, but like The image of God I find in scripture is fine in scripture. I with some caveats, I go, OK, yeah, no, I see what you people writing thousands of years ago were trying to get at. And then I look at, you know, many of God’s representatives, even within my own little, you know, faith world. And I go, what book did you read? Like, what are we doing? What is that?
EMILY: Mm hmm. And so much of what we do with our podcasts and with talking to other people and so much of what you have done I know I love the work that you do and is Talking to those people and saying okay. So why are you a done? Or why are you not yet a done? Because you could look at stories like mine and TREY’s and go why didn’t you just leave? But we talk about people, you know, there were prophets that spoke from within the temple and from without the temple, right? Those who are advocating for change from within the temple walls. And so I feel very called to that space still, because even though a lot of what we do is apologize on behalf of the crimes of the church, I feel like that is a needed space for us to do. That’s a needed voice. There needs to be somebody apologizing and saying, no, no, no, we can be better.do differently. We’re Christians, but we’re not like that.
TREY: Right. Right. tired of the not like having to say the not like that.
JUDE: We should get T-shirts printed.
TREY: I want to get like a stole for my clergy robes that literally just reads Christian, but not like that. Like all the way around.
MUSICAL BREAK
TREY: I didn’t leave. And not just because of the Stockholm Syndrome, but because there is something really powerful when this can happen in a healthy way. Where a church can be the thing that it’s meant to be, which is a collective space where we find spiritual meaning, learn, challenge, support, love, hold accountable, form really healthy communities where the only membership requirement to that community is show up with a desire to be a part of that community. When we can do that, this can be a real, this has been a really powerful thing in my life. And what keeps me going in this muck is A, I’m not sure there’s any place without muck. That’s just the reality of humanity.
EMILY: The other piece is when this works, it is something truly beautiful. and deeply needed in the world. It’s just, we often find fascinating new and terrible ways to fuck it up. And specifically in that congregation, I think we were able to create those spaces. Yes, yes. I remember it was before you had been appointed there, TREY, it was after all of this mess had happened, everything was on fire. everything was falling apart. It was didn’t even have the Wi-Fi password. It was awful. It was awful. And I remember looking at my spouse and saying, okay, do we stay, or do we go? Like, do we stay and help put out this fire and right the ship in this congregation in this setting? Or do we go, and we find somewhere else to worship and we just abandon it? And we had a hard conversation of we gotta help right the ship. This is where God’s called us. And I think that by the end of your tenure there, we were able to create really beautiful spaces for people who were in the margins, right? For our youth who needed a space specifically in that county, which is very intolerant of their lifestyle to be accepted, right? So there were good, wonderful moments in that context, but we had to carve them out tooth and nail some days fighting for those spaces to exist.
TREY: You know, it’s the it’s our, you know, our beloved ex meth dealer sound, you know, ex meth ex meth dealer, ex drug addict, ex Wicca sound guy, you know, who would, you know, show up to church in bear claw slippers. But, you know, absolutely just found a community where he could both find joy and find it sober. And that was like, oh, it can be like this. And I’m like, yeah, bro, it can be like this. I also nearly drowned baptizing him because he is much larger than me. And we were doing full immersion baptism in a swimming pool. And I got pinned underneath him and could not come back up for air.
JUDE: Oh, my word. It was a sacrifice for your ministry.
TREY: I also hate being wet just pathologically.
JUDE: I’m an Anglican. We don’t we don’t do that.
TREY: It’s safer. Dunking is dangerous.
JUDE: I had a little dribble over the over the head. Yeah. No, that’s not quite true because the evangelical wing of the Church of England, They do full immersion baptism.
TREY: Us being Methodists, we’re like, hey, whatever. You want water on the head? You want to die in a swimming pool? All of these options are available to you. Just only do it once.
JUDE: One of the people I interviewed for Fkd up by faith way back in the beginning was baptized four times.
TREY: You gotta make sure it sticks, right? Just keep dunking them until it sticks. That sounds healthy. I think that was the idea. It’s like, you know, no, you’re not, no, you’re not saved yet. We need to do it again. You are not saved enough.
JUDE@ I’ve been thinking a lot about baptism recently and, and part of me would quite like to experience it. But my theology is like, I don’t think that’s really, you know, yeah, I don’t think that would be very cool. But could maybe could I go through like a mock baptism…
TREY: I will like push, push the bounds of what’s technically allowed with that. We’re like, we’re only we’re not rebaptizing you, but I’m going to use a lot more water than I’m supposed to use at a remembrance. You know, you know, we live in a kind of a default Baptist evangelical culture where that is like, you know, you can get dunked every week if you want to and folks come in looking for something really genuine, which is like they want to like recommit their lives to something else. And they want they want to have that like ritual component that helps mark their finding their way back home, which cool. Yeah, rad. Absolutely.
And then you have to disappoint them because what they want is they want to be rebaptized because that’s just the world that they know. And so we just end up doing like re-remembrances of baptism. But I’m going to use like a lot of water, and this will probably get you where this is like a middle ground between what I can do because of important theological commitments that I hold to. But like also, you know, like a pastoral care like What you want is really genuine and awesome. And I don’t want to create this like weird barrier, which like, well, I’m sorry, we don’t do that. Like, what are what are we a country club? Like, whatever. No, you can.
JUDE: Yeah, I had a yeah, I don’t know quite what they call it in the Church of England, but I had a baptismal kind of big anniversary last year and because I was baptized an adult. And so we did, there’s a whole blessing that the priest can do on your baptismal anniversary, Jubilee. And it involved quite a lot of water.
TREY: yeah, was baptized as I was six months old. you know, I have no although apparently, I was like…
JUDE: checking out the sinners in the congregation?
TREY: Oh yeah, all of you sinners, gather round, gather round.
JUDE: Were you baptized as a baby, Emily?
EMILY: So I was actually baptized, we didn’t start going to church until I was in the third grade, so think I was nine or ten.
JUDE: Do you remember choosing, or were you kind of like, we’re a member of a church now, so this is what we’re going to do.
EMIY: Right. So I think I did choose beforehand, or I had like accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior beforehand at summer camp at an altar call, you know, like you do in the hyper-emotional state. But it was real. And then the following year, I got baptized with my siblings. So.
JUDE: And was it a dunking or was it a sprinkling?
EMILY: It was a sprinkling. But then later in youth group we did, was a baptism party slash pool party.
TREY: God bless the 2000s.
EMILY: It was remembering your baptism if you hadn’t yet been baptized but if you had or if you’d already been baptized but if you hadn’t yet been baptized you could get baptized then. All got baptized or, you know, remembered our baptism and then had a pool party.
JUDE: Was it simultaneous in this? Like, were you all in the pool? No, so. Yeah, I’m actually really interested in this logistics.
EMILY: I think they did the people who had not yet been baptized yet got baptized first. then they. Individually. And then they kind of stayed to the side of the pool. And then we all got in and remembered our baptism together. And then we had to.
TREY: But was this like was there like a like a water gun?
EMILY: No, it was like, OK, now go under the water like you. Oh, OK. So that’s like under the water. 3, 2, 1, everyone under the water. Yeah, we all did just like a collective cannonball under the water and then had a full party.
TREY: Oh, it was a very interesting theology. But I think next time if we ever do this, which we won’t is line everybody up along the pool and then have them all flop backwards in the water. So it like cannonball, like synchronized swimming. Just yes, everybody dive in at the same time. It would save a lot of time.
JUDE: I sometimes show up to an evangelical service just to wave my hands in the air. But the last time I went to, it just happened to be a baptism day and all these teenagers, there must have been about, I don’t know, 15 of them. And when you’re watching one after the other, it starts to get a little bit tedious. The idea of a collective pool party baptism sounds really cool. I’m sure there are many theological reasons as to why that could not happen. there you go.
We’ve gone on to baptism, which is a nice diversion. So I’m curious about the pool party baptism. Was it, do you, do you bless the water?
So it was basically a swimming pool of holy water.
TREY: Yeah. Yeah. So the liturgy, so the liturgy has like the prayer over the water, which is the like, you know, I, you know, pray for the water and you know, those are receiving. And so yeah, you would, yeah. Uh, presumably logistically that whole pool was not only full of chlorine, but also the Holy Spirit.
JUDE: And if you didn’t desacralize it or whatever it is you meant to do afterwards, presumably it still is.
TREY: certainly, you know, Methodist theology around baptism or around sacraments in general is they can’t be undone. This is part of where we get like the baptized ones and why we have to return communion elements to nature. Yes, rather than just throw that we either consume them or can return them to nature. You can’t just throw them away because they have been they are still a sacrament. And so theoretically that pool is now just Holy water. I wonder if they know As is the lake we I mean when we baptize someone in a lake, this is yeah Palestine we’ve done baptisms and lakes and all sorts of places that we have Made sacred still sacred.
Oh, that’s neat. I can see myself going down a massive rabbit hole with this. Yeah, of like, or then this, mean, this is, this is what we’re doing is basically our version of Jewish midrash, right? Like, so you take this rule that you understand, and then you start to, as theologians expand out, what are the edge cases of this rule? And so where we are is, okay, so if we believe that a sacrament cannot be undone. What happens when you bless a lake? Does that lake remain permanently blessed? What happens with the river? Now, the water molecules in a river are never stable, right? There is just a constant nature of river, right? It’s constant torrent of water. And so it is just it just that moment in the river or is that entire river? How much of that river? These are like not actually important questions, but my brain spirals in this direction. I think I mean, there are.
Jude: Some theologians who would consider these to be deeply ontological questions. Also near me, because we live quite near the sea, they do baptisms in the sea, like and of course all the seas are connected. So basically the ocean.
TREY: Holy water. Theoretically, right. Like, know, we did this also starts to get at the like the limits of our legalism. Right? This really shows that like, well, you can’t do that because this like, okay, guys, but does that mean that based on what you said that like, because someone blessed the ocean once all the oceans of the world or am I like a video game character where like I have a certain radius of power? Like, what is my you know, what is my range of this move?
I’m just going to D &D, right? Like how many spaces on the board does my baptism power hold? Like how much how much like is it just as far as your voice carries? And that’s how far the Holy Spirit goes to bless the water. And then after that, once the sound dies out, you’re no longer right. And this is where we get to step back and remember that a lot of this is quasi made up and that’s okay. And it’s all right. It’s all right. We can all chill out just a touch because the harder you pull on this, the faster it unravels because we will then have to define like, like, you know,
I because, know, as the type of pastor that I am right, I have sacramental authority. But so now when I select sacramental authority for my move bar, I now will all I’m going to see is like a blue circle of this is the this is the potential impact. And like if I become like a higher-ranking pastor, do bishops have a wider move? Is that how this works? Yes.
EMILY: Yeah, I would. I would go along with that. Yes. Let’s make that canon.
TREY: Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it. Yeah. It might not need this to go 20. If you need this to go 24 spaces, you’re going to need a level up to a bishop. You’re to have to grind for a while, friends.
JUDE: The truth is, we’ve struck on something which is really true. It might as well be. It might as well be a game. Yeah. It might as well be.
It’s because it is deeply performative. It’s deeply, yes, so it’s deeply codified. You need to know what the rules are. Right. And you need to know the edges of your authority. Otherwise, someone’s going to show you or put you back in the box or whatever. And so, yes, you know, we’re using game language and I’m sure someone’s written their PhD thesis about exactly that.
TREY: I would read that. I would.
JUDE: And I’m going to go and look it up after we stop talking. Absolutely. The gamification of liturgy. I’m sure someone has. I’m sure I’ve even seen that somewhere.
TREY: gotta be. Well, I think part of why I go to Dungeons and Dragons because it’s just a game I love. But all Dungeons and Dragons is trying to do is capture the systems that humans build and represent that in game logic. And this is one of those like, you know, and part of how I get Fkd up is like, well, I’m this kind of pastor, which is not this kind of pastor, which is not this kind of pastor, you know? And so as this kind of pastor, I have this kind of move set and I don’t have this kind of move set and I’m never gonna have this kind of move set, whatever.
And it is important, again, part of part of the like the soul searching that I am doing at this part of my life is to remind myself that every time Jesus runs up against like the D &D version of church of like, how can you say that? Or, oh, you eat with sinners or, oh, I’m the high priest and I’m going to kill you now. Psych, I’m not staying dead. Jesus seems to utterly reject that.
Mm-hmm. This is they’ve just told the Easter story in the least faithful way possible like it’s like hi Rome and the temple You think you have all authority on heaven and earth psych. I’m God
CLOSING MUSIC
You’ve been listening to Fkd Up by Faith with me, Jude Mills. Our music is by David Goodall, and you can find the podcast on Spotify and all major podcast channels. If you would like to take part in the podcast or you know someone who would be an awesome guest, please do get in touch. You can do that via my website, judemills.com forward slash podcast. I look forward to hearing from you. Go well.
LINKS AND CREDITS
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MUSIC :Fkd Up By Faith theme music by the late David Goodall
Incidental Music: “Nebula” by Penguin Music on Pixabay