Leonard Sweet

Well certainly, Watchman Nee, I suppose it's more of an acquired taste because he's very logical, very deep analysis, so it might not appeal to everybody, but certainly The Spiritual Man is a very good trilogy by Watchman Nee, and I mentioned The Normal Christian Life Study in Romans.

A book that I read more recently is called The Jesus Manifesto by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola.

That's a study in Colossians.

Certainly Colossians 1, that great picture of the cosmic Christ.

who's this

author again?

Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola.

It's called The Jesus Manifesto.

So for those of us that can't pronounce it, and those of us that may not know what that means, at the same time, for normal people, what does that word mean? Unpack it for us.

Yeah, it certainly has a couple of streams within the academic circles, but in Portland Seminary, which is where I got my doctorate from a guy named Leonard Sweet, some people in the church world know that name, his version of semiotics, and therefore Theo semiotics, Theo being God, semiotics is paying attention to the signs.

It's just... not not trying to read too deeply deeply into things and the word semion which is where you get semiotics is the word sign in greek and so when there's a there's a passage when jesus is talking to the pharisees saying the red sky at night sailors delight red sky morning sailors take warning he said you know how to read the signs or the semion of the sky but you're not paying attention to what's going on around you.

And so the practice, at least the theosemiotic practice within kind of the religious or theological circles, is more about paying attention to the whole world around you and asking those theological questions.

Enemy love is, I think if you look at the fruit of Jesus's community, are we known? What are we known for? And I write about it in the book.

There was a guy speaking, Leonard Sweet, and he opened up this conference saying, okay, everybody get out your phones.

And he said, put this into your browser.

Why are Christians so? And he said, just put one letter in and tell me what you get.

The gift isn't the meal itself, but the time spent together.

And he shares a quote by Leonard Sweet that says, if we were to make the table the most sacred object of furniture in every home, in every church, in every community, our faith would quickly regain its power and our world would quickly become a better place.

I think that's so good.

Okay.

I think we spent...

And I'll say, let me read this line, because Leonard Sweet is one of my favorite guys.

But he said this, and I think this would be a good way to sum this up, because why do we read the Gospel of John? Because it's easy to miss this.

He just said this, "...the end product of a biblical Christianity is a person." Not a book, not a building, not a set of principles or a system of ethics, but one person in two natures, divine and human.

Yeah, BibleGateway.com. Blue Letter Bible.

And I'll I'll research different things.

And what does this mean? And that and and then, you know, you quoted Leonard Sweet, who's been my professor in my doctoral program.

Yeah.

Needless to say, individualism and this kind of take it or leave it mode of relationship that our culture promotes is at odds with the kind of deep, intimate friendship, vulnerable community we see in the life of Jesus and throughout scripture as a whole.

Leonard Sweet, a theologian, says, "An untabled faith is an unstable faith." It's this idea that if we neglect the table, if we, uh, if we neglect meeting together in smaller circles, we actually kind of undermine what Jesus was trying to build, what Jesus introduced us to.

If we reduce our faith to standing in rows in an auditorium or a large space like this, we actually miss the very best of the faith that Jesus came to offer us.

If we reduce the Christian life down to putting in your AirPods and going on a solo hike in nature, we're missing the gold that Jesus wants to mine in our lives.