J-Curve Session 11: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 11 Revisited)

Class Description: Session 11, Chapter 11

Chapter 11: A Cascade of Love: Weaving J Curve Together

Those of you who were with us last week may remember that we really never made it to our chapter. We got into some fairly deep discussion regarding what the people in our class are wrestling through.

This week we jump back into chapter 11. In chapter 10 PM showed us past J Curves and also introduced us to three different kinds of present J Curves: the suffering J Curve, the love J Curve, and the repentance J Curve.

This week we’ll begin to see, through the life of Joni Eareckson Tada, how we can be experiencing multiple J Curves at the same time, and how one J Curve can spill over into another and by so doing can real help and resurrection.

Class Notes:

J Curve Session #10

·      Is there any suffering you’ve intentionally embraced recently because you recognized an opportunity to be united to Christ in it? Share if you’re able.

·      Were you able this week to identify any particular kinds of present day J Curves (suffering, love, repentance)?

·      Were you able to rejoice in your J Curve?

·      What did resurrection look like? How convinced are you that resurrections always follow J Curves?

·      Was it helpful to think about justification being your foundation as you suffered?

Chapter 11: A Cascade of Love: Weaving J Curve Together

In chapter 10 PM showed us past J Curves and also introduced us to three different kinds of present J Curves: the suffering J Curve, the love J Curve, and the repentance J Curve.  This week we’ll begin to see, through the life of Joni Eareckson Tada, how we can be experiencing multiple J Curves at the same time, and how one J Curve can spill over into another and by so doing can real help and resurrection. 

1.     P. 94 “Breakthrough came...” two paragraphs:

a.     We are loath to equate our suffering with those of the apostle Paul or with Joni, but what chains or wheelchairs belong to us?

b.     How has Joni become like the gospel through her suffering?   What does this look like in practice?

2.     P. 94-95 Connecting paragraph PM describes how Joni’s suffering J Curve led to a repentance J Curve.  He mentions that our suffering J Curves often necessarily need to lead to repentance J Curves.  What is this dynamic?  How and why does this work in this way?

3.     P. 95 Excerpt.  It took Joni significant time to get to the point where she could call her wheelchair, “mine.”  The fact that we’re discussing the J Curve each Sunday doesn’t necessarily make embracing suffering an easy thing to do.  Are there any sufferings in your life right now that you find yourself pushing away?

a.     Physical trials?

b.     Financial?

c.      Relational?

d.     Sin?

e.     Vocational?

f.      Situational?

4.     P. 96 “What we love...”

a.     How did Joni’s selling of Tumbleweed put to death the bad desire that was driving her toward anger and fantasy?  Discuss this dynamic.

5.     P. 96 Last paragraph. 

a.     PM is arguing here that Tumbleweed had to go.  Why?

b.     Do we struggle theologically with ‘destroying idols’?

6.     P. 97 “The resurrection...” (two paragraphs)

a.     Do you recognize here how Suffering led to Repentance which led to Love J Curves in Joni’s story?

7.     P. 98 Read 2 Cor. 1:3-7  Then read “In a love J Curve...” and look at diagram.

a.     Clearly, you and I receive comfort through Jesus’ suffering b/c his death, burial, resurrection and ascension overflow in comfort by purchasing for us forgiveness, righteousness, and the assurance of eternal life.

b.     Have you ever received help or comfort as a result of someone else’s suffering?

c.      Is there any suffering you’ve experienced that you believe has overflowed as comfort or life to someone else?

8.     P. 99 “Suffering isn’t strange for Paul.  He isn’t merely enduring suffering, coping with it, or even learning from it - he’s celebrating a life that re-enacts the cross and the empty tomb.”

a.     How is a life that re-enacts the cross and the empty tomb so much richer than one that simply endures, copes with or learns from suffering?

9.     P. 99 “Embracing the J Curve as a way of life frees our inner self from a life of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  In the same way that justification by faith frees our conscience, entering the dying and rising of Jesus liberates our spirit.”

a.     How does embracing J Curve living fee us from waiting for the other shoe to drop?

b.     How does J Curve living liberate our spirits?

J-Curve Session 12: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 12)

Class Description: Session 12, Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Life at the Bottom of the J Curve: Making Sense of Persistent Evil

It’d be easy to assume that once a resurrection has taken place following some particular suffering, that the suffering has served its purpose and should be removed. So often that is not the case. Let’s consider today how we should be thinking when the suffering simply continues.

Class Notes:

J Curve Session #12

·      Think about our cascade of love from last week.  Did you see any J Curves weaving together throughout this past week?

Chapter 12: Life at the Bottom of the J Curve: Making Sense of Persistent Evil

It’d be easy to assume that once a resurrection has taken place following some particular suffering, that the suffering has served its purpose and should be removed.  So often that is not the case.  Let’s consider today how we should be thinking when the suffering simply continues.

1.     Pp. 100-101 Read entire section entitled ‘Paul’s Flesh’.

a.     Did these paragraphs spark an ‘aha moment’ for any of us?  “This exact thing has happened to me!”

b.     Often when we’re experiencing our sin nature in this way, it’s tempting to think that our experience is unique - that other Christians are moving beyond their battle with sin in ways that we’re not.  That said, these insightful paragraphs provide us with a few helpful ways of thinking:

i.     The reassurance that our experience is in fact not unique.  The tidy-looking Christians around us experience this same relentless battle with their own sin on a daily basis.  We haven’t been singled out, and we need not experience shame in our ongoing battle!  How many of us have thought when we’ve experienced this dynamic, “I should be further along in my sanctification than this.”?

ii.     When we begin to understand that this is how the sin nature, and our battle with the sin nature looks, it has the potential to change how we view the layout of the battlefield.  Our expectations begin to align with reality.

2.     Before working through this next section of the J Curve, let’s open in our Bibles to feel the scope of where PM is about to take us.  2 Cor. 12:1-10. 

a.     Read P. 102 “Jesus is saying... - God pours out his power.”

i.     Let’s do business with the first paragraph in that section...  What would you and I need to believe in order to actually embrace the thorns that the Lord sends into our lives.

ii.     “Down low, at the bottom of the J Curve, pride is stripped from Paul.  As he cries out for grace, he becomes like Jesus, who can’t do life on his own (John 5:19).”  Do we actually believe this about our Savior?  Do we actually believe that he lived a life of obedience by faith?  (consider Heb. 2:11-18 & 4:14-16) 

iii.     “Paul’s poverty of spirit, then, becomes the launching pad for the power of Jesus in his life, and he experiences the real-time resurrection.”  Have you ever entered some ministry completely poured out and weak?  In those instances, have you ever cried out in prayer for God’s help and seen him show up in ways he likely wouldn’t have if you’d have been feeling strong?

3.     P. 102 Look below at the 2 Cor. excerpt and the diagram on p 103.  Describe Paul’s resurrection here.

4.     Pp. 103-4 Connecting paragraph. 

a.     Do you remember when Covid began a year ago?  Do you remember people speculating that it would last a few weeks or months?  Have you heard recently any reports on how long we should expect to be dealing with the virus?  Have you noticed how trials in your life seem to often linger much, much longer than you thought they would?

b.     PM uses an extraordinary phrase in this paragraph...  “ongoing miracle of a humble heart...”  A humble heart hardly seems miraculous, but I think PM is on to something here.  Why is a consistently humble heart far from commonplace?

5.     P. 104 “But God gave us a harmed baby...” through end of paragraph. 

a.     Why was prideful independence more dangerous than Kim’s disability?

6.     P. 104 “With the map of the J Curve, Paul doesn’t get lost in suffering.  The narrative of the cross captures evil and puts it to work in resurrection.”

a.     How is this working in our lives these days?  Are we learning how not to get stuck at the bottom of our J Curves by anticipating resurrection?

7.     P. 105 “A wheelchair is an....”

a.     Do you have any difficulties in your life that you’re struggling to identify as thorns? 

8.     P. 106 Final paragraph.  “As important as faith is, unless we are actively reenacting Jesus’s life, pride with regrow.  Boasting is removed in principle at the cross; in practice, it is removed as we re-enact the cross.  To see Jesus, we must do Jesus.” - This quote makes me think of Philippians 3:7-11.

9.     P. 107 top paragraph.

a.     What did resurrection look like for PM in this incident where he didn’t get the credit for his work? 

10.  Throughout the balance of p. 107 PM is talking about dying events that seem disconnected from resurrection events.  He talks about learning to see the connections between them.  Does this section make sense to you?  Can you see how the plane ride to Florida with Kim was disconnected, and yet produced a resurrection in PM at the conference - a disconnected event?

J-Curve Session 13: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 13)

Class Description: Session 13, Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Living in the Borderland: How to Thrive in a Broken World

On the one hand, we’re born in Adam and bear the imprint of his rebellion in our lives.  On the other hand, we’re reborn in Christ Jesus so even our small acts of love and obedience bear his imprint. There’s a certain madness about living in the borderland as a true citizen of the heavenly kingdom, but not yet having stepped into that good land.  In this chapter we’ll explore how to live sanely in this world of “already, not yet, and right now.”

Class Notes:

1.     Throughout the first several pages of this chapter PM works to help us recognize a number of differing worldviews as regards the relationship between the self and ego, or the self and pride.  On p. 110 PM gives us a couple fairly helpful summary statements...  Here are a few of them....

a.     So both Greeks and Buddhists jettisoned the human body.  Getting rid of their bodies freed them from their sin natures.

b.     This understanding let the Jews distinguish between the self and the ego, between the person and the pride, making it logically possible to separate sin from self.  So repentance, the forsaking of the ego, was a real possibility.

c.      The Jews didn’t want to be lifted above the mess or dissolved into the impersonal All; they looked to an infinite-personal God to invade and transform their world.

i.     Assuming PM’s explanation of the merging of the self and ego (pride) within Greek and Buddhist thought...  Why does this merging leave no hope for the redemption/resurrection of the body?

ii.     How does the separation of the self and the ego (pride) open the door to that hope?

2.     P. 108 “In Figure 13A...”  And corresponding diagram on p. 109

a.     Does PM’s description here help us understand how pride can be separated from self so that resurrection can take place?

b.     Are we reminded here of how a suffering J curve can often lead to a repentance J curve?

c.      What kinds of soul-thrilling fruits accompany resurrections after pride has been put to death?  What are you delighted to find your heart full of in those moments (fleeting though they may be)?

3.     To get a fuller sense of what PM is about to launch into over the next several pages, it would be worth it for us to read through Romans 5:12-21.

a.     P. 112 read first paragraph.

i.     I love the first sentence of this paragraph.  Notice that the exit strategy is not something that you and I do, it’s something that Jesus has already done.  Why is that so significant?

ii.     Re-read the end of the paragraph beginning w. “Every time we submit...”

1.     Do we actually believe that when we live in this way we’re re-enacting Jesus’s dying love?

2.     How conscious are we of re-enacting Jesus’s dying love when we’re entering someone else’s mess?

3.     How would being conscious of that reality change the way we think about those little sufferings?

4.     P. 112 read final two paragraphs.

a.     Discuss life on the ridge between victory and defeat...

b.     Pp. 112-13 2 Cor. 1:8-10 excerpt and discuss.

5.     P. 114 Read entire section entitled Linking the Past and Present.

a.     How do you encourage yourself that you actually do bear the imprint of your Savior when you’re tempted to doubt it?

b.     “In order for love to be formed in me in the present, I must put to death what is earthly in me (Col. 3:5).  So I conquer impatience not merely be repenting, but by committing to love people who are slow, tiresome, or inefficient.”

i.     How does loving people who are slow, tiresome or inefficient act to actually conquer impatience?  How does this work?

c.      “Without the J curve, without a present participation in Jesus’s journey, I’ll merely dabble in the world of Jesus; but his world resists dabbling.  In fact, I’ll coast, growing less like him as I age.”

i.     This is a scary statement because I think many of us, myself included, are far too often content to dabble.  How will resisting our J curves keep us in the realm of dabbling?

6.     P. 115

a.     #2 How can recoiling from sadness yield a fragile , jittery self?

b.     #3 This paragraph was worth the price of the book by itself.  Please tell me that someone else in this room what as helped by this paragraph as I was!

c.      #4 “We would rather stay in death than be disappointed my hope, so we shut down our hearts from the enjoyment of even small resurrections. Fear of hope disappointing us leads us to denigrated hope, which feeds a culture of cynicism - always doubting the good.”  When we’re living in this cycle, what are our lives proclaiming about God?

d.     #6 How does this principle help us to battle well?

J-Curve Session 31: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 31)

Class Description: Session 31, Chapter 31

Chapter 31: The Spirit at the Center: Learning Wisdom Down Low

Unless the Spirit repeatedly brings the mind of Christ into our hearts, our ever-present flesh will recoil from the wisdom of the cross. Only the Spirit can continually make the cross fresh.

Class Notes:

1.    Let’s refresh our memories.  What kind of culture was Paul writing into in the first letter to Corinth? Look at the top of p 258 first paragraph to get another dimension of the church culture in Corinth.

2.    P 259 Notice the capital “S” above in Spiritual (1 Cor. 3:1 AT).  A Spiritual person is not someone who is religious or who prays easily.  A Spiritual person is in step with the Spirit and led by the Spirit...  The Spirit carries the mind of Jesus into our lives, allowing Jesus’s fruits (Gal. 5:22-23) to become our fruits.  Dropping the “S” depersonalizes the Spirit.

a.    Perhaps especially in our reformed faith tradition, we struggle to speak often and actively about the personal nature of the Holy Spirit.  Why is it important to recognize and remind ourselves that the Spirit is God himself no less than Jesus?  (Look at the bottom of p 259).

3.    P 260 The Spirit himself is a gift - “the Spirit who is from God” (1 Cor. 2:12).  He’s not part of a world soul - he’s a person, a personal gift from a personal God.  So at every level, gifts lie at the heart of the church (1 Cor. 4:7).  With the gift of the Spirit, we can “understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12b).  That’s why “the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (v. 10b).  Only God can reveal God.  So wisdom comes from outside us.  The wisdom of the cross is so alien to our spirits that we need his Spirit to talk to our spirits.

a.    Let’s have a discussion about the kinds of things that the Holy Spirit does in the lives of believers.  What does he do in us?

4.    Look at the chart on the top of p 261.  

a.    Every one of us has at one time or another attempted to climb the failure/boasting chart.  Can we recognize ways even in this chart that we’ve abused the Spirit’s power for selfish gain?

5.    P 262 The Spirit helped me to shut my mouth. Plus, I’d recently noticed in the Gospels how much Jesus looked at people.  The Spirit didn’t operate in a vacuum; the body of Christ and the word were his language, helping me to listen.

a.    If the Spirit was active in the life and ministry of Jesus himself, we certainly need him no less.  Can you relate to PM in this interchange with his daughter Courtney? Do you recognize the Spirit’s work in causing him to be quiet?  Discuss.

6.     P 262 Unless the Spirit repeatedly brings the mind of Christ into our hearts, our ever-present flesh will recoil from the wisdom of the cross.  Only the Spirit can continually make the cross fresh.  Now look at the chart on p 263.

a.    How do PM’s actions under the Spirit’s influence demonstrate the wisdom of the cross?

b.    This kind of Spirit led ministry requires that we’re not attempting to design and control what resurrection might look like.  What do we need to believe in order to actually let the Spirit lead through conversations like these?

c.     It’s much messier and costlier to live this way.  What is to be gained?

7.    P 264 Staying in step with the Spirit is not nearly as complex as we might think. We aren’t trying to read the spiritual the leaves - as we embrace Christ in the dying and rising, the Spirit always shows up!

a.    I really appreciate what PM is saying here.  Essentially, we don’t need to guess what it looks like to keep in step with the Spirit.  He has a predictable gait which is always in step with the revealed will of God in Christ Jesus, namely, that if we’ll model Christ through dying and rising - that’s the stuff that the Spirit can use to propagate really neat resurrections!

J-Curve Session 35: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 35)

Class Description: Session 35, Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Jesus: The ultimate party crasher

“Next time you have a feast, go out to the highways and byways, and invite the poor, the blind, and the lame; then you will be loving, because these people can’t pay you back, but your heavenly Father will.”

Class Notes:

1.     Pp 289-91 How was wealth separating people in Corinth? 

2.     Climb inside the mind of the weak for a moment.  P 291 excerpt “Not slave and free....”

a.     Do they at all perceive themselves as being on level ground with the wealthy strong?  Has the death of Christ actually produced a body that is unified?  What was missing practically?

b.     The strong were blind, but blind to what?  What were they missing? 

c.      Do we discern ourselves as the weak or the strong?  Do we identify with either group? 

3.     P 292 Its easy to imagine the impact as Pauls’ letter is read aloud to this house church.  The strong look down, ashamed, and smiles spread over the faces of the weak.....  It’s Jesus’s meal; he’s the Lord of this feast.  But when you mock and exclude the weak who are his very body, it is no longer his feast; it’s a supper for the strong.

a.     It’d be easy to read these sentences and insolate ourselves from their indictment.  Paul was writing to the church at Corinth, not Elverson.  Has it escaped our notice that poor and uneducated people don’t tend to ‘stick’ at Brick Lane?  Is that changing?  We may not be discriminating as regards the Communion table, but are there other areas where we’re making the weak/poor feel uncomfortably conspicuous?

4.     P 293 “Next time you have a feast, go out to the highways and byways, and invite the poor, the blind, and the lame; then you will be loving, because these people can’t pay you back, but your heavenly Father will.”

a.     Confession time...  I struggle with this.  Do you?  Why?  What does it look like and how might we improve?  Anyone actually doing this well?

5.     P 293-4 In my opinion, the weakest of those three layers in our churches is the middle one - the leaders.  For Christ’s community to reflect his beauty, Christian leaders need to constantly re-enact his death.

a.     Ouch!  PM, as he’s looking at the American Church, is looking at her pastors and elders as the weakest layer of the diagram on p 293.

i.     On a national level, do we agree with his assessment?  Why or why not?

ii.     On a local level, how are we doing at Brick Lane?  Where is this purposeful re-enacting actually taking place?

iii.     Where do our pastors, elders, deacons, ministry leaders, or staff have room to grow?

6.     P 294 Read 1 Cor. 11:23, 25-26 excerpt.  In secular liberalism, abortion “protects” a woman’s freedom of choice.   Someone has to die so others can live.  Outside of Jesus, it’s always someone else who dies.  Someone else is the problem.  Our founder’s death lies at the center of our faith.  Instead of killing our enemies so we can live he died so that we, his enemies, can live.

a.     Does PM’s logic make sense to you in these paragraphs?  When community is built up around a shared ideal, anyone who poses a threat to that ideal becomes dangerous.  Discuss so we make sure we’re all following him here.

Further down on p 294...  Each tribe is ranked internally and in relationship to the other tribes.  Paul, the football player, leaves his table, sits with the Goths, and then brings them up to the football table.  From the culture’s perspective, he’s destroying the lunchroom.  From Paul’s perspective he’s creating the body of Christ.

b.     If we perceive ourselves as the strong, we should picture ourselves already seated at the football players’ table. What perceived rights do we tend to hold onto that associating with the weak/poor (read here: someone who smells, an addict, some guy who’s all tatted up or pierced through) might threaten?

7.     P 295 bottom: For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:27-28)...  Scholars believe that Paul is reciting an early church baptismal formula, “neither Jew nor Greek,...  neither slave nor free,...  no male and female,” which was spoken as the person was being immersed.  You go down into the water as a wealthy Greek landowner and come up one in Christ.  You go down as a poor Scythian slave and come up a son or daughter of God.  The slave and the landowner are now equals in the one body of Jesus. Our former identities have not only been erased, but replaced with his.

a.     This section reminded me of our earlier discussion about Onesimus and Philemon.  It’s a picture of the vision of the good we’ve been discussing all along - a true Jesus community!

b.     Have you ever looked at baptism that way?  How would doing so enrich your understanding of it?  How should it change the ways we perceive other believers whom we may look down on?

J-Curve Session 36: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 36)

Class Description: Session 36, Chapter 36

Chapter 36: The Beauty of a Jesus Community: Including the Distant Outsider

“But Paul mentions in the same breath the now infinitely valuable slaves and the wealthy aristocrats.  They are on equal footing, completely valued in Christ, in his body in a virtual Jesus community.  The gospel re-enacted by its leaders has worked.”

Class Notes:

So that we can capture the whole context of what PM is going to show us today in chapter 36, let’s begin by reading 2 Cor. 8:1-15.

1.     Bottom of P 299 The poor have no value, so their thanks have no weight.

a.     The apostle Paul is trying to get the Corinthians off the failure/boasting chart.   In your own words, why would the wealthy Corinthians have spurned an opportunity to give to poor Judean believers?

2.     P 300

a.     Why is it critical for us to see J Curve living modeled?  Why did the Corinthians need the example of the Philippian believers?

b.     Justification by faith levels the playing ground, destroying the Failure-Boasting Chart with its factions, jealousy, and exclusions.

i.     Encounter at the dollar store with a young mom.   “Nice Truck.”

ii.     Have the things we’ve been discussing this year leveled the ground for you?  Are you and I learning to see “the weak” as infinitely valuable? 

3.     P 301 Because the Corinthians live on the Failure-Boasting Chart, they love receiving grace, but they give it sparingly.

a.     How does failing to extend grace cheapen the grace we’ve received?

4.     Pp 301-2 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich (life), yet for your sake he became poor (death), so that you by his poverty might become rich (resurrection) (2 Cor. 8:9)....  Paul doesn’t berate the Corinthians for not giving.  He points them to a new vision of beauty - the sacrificial death of Jesus. 

a.     Jesus isn’t simply the payment, he’s the model!  Paul is providing the Corinthians with an opportunity to incarnate with their brothers and sisters in Christ.  In what ways is this vision of beauty so much higher than remaining on the F/B chart?

b.     This account has gotten me thinking about the Afghan refugees.  Anybody else thinking that way?

5.     P 304 “But Paul mentions in the same breath the now infinitely valuable slaves and the wealthy aristocrats.  They are on equal footing, completely valued in Christ, in his body in a virtual Jesus community.  The gospel re-enacted by its leaders has worked....  Only when the other becomes my brother or sister, only when objects of pity become people - even friends - do we create a divine community.

a.     How/Where is that happening at Brick Lane?

b.     Where do we still need to grow?

6.     Anything in particular stand out to you from the conclusion or from the Afterward?

7.     General comments on our time together? 

a.     What has been impactful? 

b.     How are you growing?

c.      Where have you embraced suffering in new ways?

d.     Where are you seeing resurrections?

e.     Are you embracing a new vision of the good anywhere?