Advent Series | The Wonder of Christmas with Dr. Ray Lubeck

In the spirit of Rob. Oh yeah. Welcome to another Emu Talks episode recording.

Of that for him.

I think it's time I didn't I do think it's time, Renee, to get another a recording of Rob, but I hope we don't need it because I hope he's here with us. Another episode without Rob Hildebrand, but with a very, very special guest. As we wrap up. I cannot believe we are wrapping up our Advent series, our very special Advent series. So, Renee, please introduce our guest today and tell us about this Advent series.

Yes, this is week four, the final week of the Advent season and our final week of this special Advent series at mutalks. During Advent, we at mutalks have been sitting down with the outstanding faculty of Multnomah University to discuss the traditional themes of Advent, which are hope, peace, joy and love. If you miss the first three weeks, do yourself a favor and check them out. Together, we've wrestled with hope in the midst of a messy and challenging life. With Dr. Carl Kutz, we've talked to Dr. Karen Fancher about discovering deep rooted peace even in the midst of circumstantial turmoil. And last week we talked with professor and professional therapist Dr. Kristen White about finding joy in our experiences of presence. This week we're fortunate to be sitting down with Dr. Ray Lubeck to focus on the theme of love. Dr. Lubeck is a longtime faculty member at Multnomah University and he has several courses available on MU Plus. From these courses you can learn about interpreting the message of biblical stories, how we got our Bibles, and much more. Dr. Lubeck is the author of two books and many book chapters, articles and reviews. Dr. Lubeck, thank you for being here today.

It's really a delight for me to be able to join you here. Looking forward to this.

Great. Oh, this is great. I, I have such tremendous love and respect for Dr. Lubeck at Malnoy University. I've only been here for two and a half years and I've grown to respect the work and the legacy that you've left behind here and leaving behind every day. Today we are talking about Love. Love. So Dr. Lubeck, please define love and give three examples when we initially the.

Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Well, that wraps up our season. It's a difficult one. It's a simple discussion and it's a difficult one.

Right.

I, I was reflecting recently on John 3:16 and what's interesting over there is that you find a God that loves everybody and a lot of people that don't feel Loved. And I was thinking, where is the disconnect? Where is that disconnect? Especially around Christmas, around celebration, around joy, around all these things? There is a God that profoundly loves people, and yet people that don't truly understand or feel loved in any way. And for me, in John 3:16, it showed. And I'm launching this conversation, but I'm here to learn from you. Your view of this is that disconnect is in Christ, and he loved so much that he gave Christ. And in that disconnect, whenever we have anything to do with Christ, and especially on Christmas, that's what we celebrate, we are introduced deeply, meaningfully to a very different kind of love, or maybe original love. And I'm very excited to have a conversation about this, but microphone is yours. Take us wherever. Take us wherever you think it would. It would bring good, healthy questions or a good discussion around the Christmas table for people in the season.

Well, just as you've been talking so far, an image came to my mind of something I'd read a long time ago, talking about God's love. By any human. Can we begin to fathom the how, how broad, how high, how long, how deep is the love of God in Christ Jesus? And it seems like any attempt that is on our part is like building sandcastles alongside of the Matterhorn. He is love. He identifies himself as love. So in First John, we read God is love, but we don't. We don't read that, that, that. The same kind of phrase for the other attributes that you talked about with relation to Christmas in your introduction there. We don't read that of, of God as explicitly as we see right there in First John that God is love. And God commended. He demonstrated his love to us and that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Of course, the first step in that from our human perspective is the baby in the manger. The fact that God is transcendent. And the transcendent was somehow imminentized. If that is a word, I'll press it into a verb. And that to me, you know, at Christmas time we sing or hear a song or hear the expression. It's all about the cross. And while I don't want to diminish the cross, it's a profound mystery. But I don't think that that exhausts what the whole Christmas season is about. And I don't think first and foremost of the cross. I think first and foremost of his imminence, Emmanuel, of his coming, invading, erupting with an eye, breaking into, bursting into space and time, of human Events and showing up in person, that is love. So with the question, where's the meaning of Christmas? Why have we lost, you know, so much? I think it's, it's a lot of that is the imminence of God that we don't sense his, his presence. And so we, we celebrate with grinches and with elves and you know, all of our other mythologies in the place of the wonder of Christ with us. If you were to come over to our house today, you would find that there are manger scenes all over the place. But that doesn't matter if you're coming in December or if you're coming in June. There are manger scenes in our house all year around. So actually, rather than have a Christmas tree, I actually just took some pallet wood and shaped it into a manger. And that has always been the place where we have put the gifts for our kids as they were growing up. They always look to the manger. And along with the manger right behind it is a. Just made from a few sticks that we found out on our hikes. We have a cross and there's a cross that's behind it with, with a crown on it. Granted it's only a Burger King crown, but it's the idea. And we have the manger and the cross with us during this season and we just have manger scenes all year round to remind us of the, of the miracle of incarnation.

I discussing with my 5 year old about Santa, we're doing the lists and she said it was really funny because she looked at us and said if Santa doesn't exist, this is going to cost you guys a lot of money. And I'm thinking why is she questioning.

The existence of Santa?

We've never had this discussion. She just looked us in the eye. There's a cost of having a meaningful, of meaningful Christmas, right? There's a cost of having. I think that's a really profound thought that you shared. I, I really think it's a profound thought. I, I was finding or finding myself in that. We're celebrate with grinches, we celebrate with lights, we celebrate with all this. But there is the God's presence. And can you tell us a little bit about more God's presence connected with love? How do somebody or how do you understand or feel God's love? Love, Even if you start feeling his presence, where does that, where does that go?

You know, it's interesting the, in the Hebrew Bible, most translations will talk about the presence of God and that's fine. But the Hebrew IDIOM is his face. So the Lord make His face and shine upon you. We all know what it's like, how unnerving it can be to be in a room with people, especially people that we know. And for some reason they are avoiding eye contact. And that can be at times excruciating to us when someone that we care about is. Isn't giving us the favor of their eyes. I sense that very much as a teacher, when I'm standing in the front of the classroom, I know whether the students are with me and I with them really by the eye contact. And so actually, I don't even allow in a number of my class. I don't allow them to use laptops or anything else because I say, I say I want to work with your eyes. I want to see your faces. All of the notes, everything I have on PowerPoint I will make available to you right after class. I just want you to listen. And so I try to engage in that sort of way. Well, there's. There's nothing but profundity when we consider the fact that God is present. Well, yes, God is omnipresent. He's. He's everywhere. He holds together every single atom in the entire universe, String theory notwithstanding. He understands it. He knows how it works. He's the one who makes it work in that particular way. He's present everywhere. But what good would that be if his face was not turned toward us? And in Christmas at Advent, we should be aware, perhaps more acutely than at any other time, of the fact that his face is directed toward us. He's given us his eyes, his. His love, and extended it in that kind of a personal way. There's so many things about the incarnation that I just find mind boggling. I think it's easier for us to envision the divinity of Jesus than the humanity. Did Jesus ever get the flu? Yes. I'm sure that he would have suffered through the flu or some other equivalent. And if so, then he was suffering on behalf of our sins. I rarely feel that noble when I'm going through a flu. This is suffering for a purpose. Was Jesus ever bullied by some of the neighborhood kids? And if so, I wonder how he responded. What did Jesus have to learn from. From his adoptive father? And did his adoptive father never teach him how to use tools correctly? I wonder what Mary would have been thinking, understanding that it was the Holy Spirit who had come upon her and that she was about to give birth to, to God. And there's this little face with its eyes crying, wanting something, and what does a mother do to help out a little baby? God, These are things that just beggar my imagination. So I'm, I'm left in, in a wonder, a posture of wonder. And I think that that's what, what Christmas ought to mean for us as followers of Jesus to contemplate what one theologian has said, the mysterium tremendum ad fascinance, a Latin phrase. But we can kind of guess at that from, from the verbal roots, just this tremendous mystery of Christ. And in Colossians, the mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory. That's the mystery.

Yeah.

So.

So coming at this and this idea of mystery, pondering these questions and connecting that to the presence, to the face of God being with us, and I wonder what, what would you have to say or share with someone who, who looks at you and says, that sounds great. I have never experienced God's presence. I don't even know if I can, like, what, what can I, what can I do? Is there anything I can do? How, how do I move forward? Or, or, or, you know, what's wrong with me? Like, why don't I have that right? I feel like I've, I've heard that question from people that I know and love, and I wonder what's, what would be your response to that?

You know, I wish I had something very profound and unusual, but I think what I was taught in Sunday school as a little kid is still true. Read your Bible and pray. All right, so they might sound superficial, but meditating on the truth of God. And that's not just when you have your Bible open in your lap or on your laptop or your smartphone or whatever, but it's pondering what it is that you've read. I find some of the. My meditation happening at times when I wasn't planning for it whatsoever. I'm reading, I'm studying at one particular time. And then I will have the epiphanic moment standing there in the shower. And I have to remember to write this down as soon as I get dried off and dressed, lest I forget it, because there are times when I feel like there are truths that are coming from outside of me that I realize are being spirit prompted. And I need to listen to that voice. So that comes from a posture of just pondering God's word. The Psalm 1. The blessed man is the one who thinks Haga meditates on the instruction of God day and night. That's the person who prospers. That's what I would aspire.

We, we had a We had a great discussion in this season, a great discussion on hope and the messiness of hope or the messiness of this world and how hopeful functions in that. There we, we reflected on peace, the shalom that comes from above. We also had a discussion about joy and it was a great discussion. If you've not heard it, please, please consider, go back. But it was joy in the midst of a very difficult season, global pandemic, all these things and loss. And I'm thinking, what is the role of love in, in a Christian's life, in celebration, in, in the things that we experience in our life through a very difficult season of, of life? Christ summarized the law in those two. But how do we, how do we think of, of love in terms of where Paul mentions you need to grow in your love. What are some of the disciplines that you've done, maybe in your personal life or in your, in your discipline to consider either growing the love or protecting the love or understanding the true, the true love that is commended in scripture for us to actually experience.

I guess I've. I've been the recipient on the receiving end of so many acts of love on the part of others. That's one of the first places that my mind then turns. When I was in, in junior high high school, I was a church kid and I mean that in the worst possible sense. I attended, but my heart was not at all given to God. I had kept him and at arm's length. I believed in Him. But because of bad experiences that I had had with, with churchgoers and proclaiming Christians, I wasn't at all wanting a part of that hypocrisy for what I saw. God did some things to arrest my attention, to impress upon me his love. And I ended up devoting myself to just reading God's Word for one year, at the end of which I was going to either walk away or give my life fully and holy to Him. So obviously you know what the outcome was there. I kind of thrown down the gauntlet as a, I don't know, a 16 year old hotshot. And God just overwhelmed me with that sense of love in His Word. And I realized the problem wasn't in the truthfulness of what I was reading, but the imperfections and how it was lived out in the lives of others. And that shouldn't be my standard during that period of my life. Completely unbeknownst to me, there was a guy who was praying for me every single day. I didn't know this until years later. He told me only after I Had given my life to Christ and. And gotten completely involved in the youth group, come to Multnomah as a student because the people that I knew who really seemed to be the most knowledgeable about the scriptures and the most passionate about God or people who graduated from here. So I figured that's the place where I need to go. And I went as a student from there. I spent some time in ministry, church ministry, back in my home church. A prophet without honor, you know. Then I went off to graduate school and kind of alternated between graduate school and church ministry. And as I was back in. In church ministry once again, finally this guy stepped forward. He was in his 80s by then, and he said that he had been praying for me every single day for the last 20 years. And I was blown away. I had no concept. He was a very unpretentious, quiet saint, 8th grade education, but he had a Bible in his lap all the time. And I knew that I had been loved by him. When he told me this, it was very much a, you know, a retrospective look on how faithfully and love me. That's one of dozens and dozens and dozens of stories I could tell you about people who have extended love toward me. I brought. Brought another here. Probably it's not going to work on a radio broadcast, but I'll do the best I can. After I'd come to teach here on faculty. I'd been here for a few years. I was not looking for any other job positions, but at this particular season of my life, there were actually four other schools that were each trained to recruit me to come join their faculty. And some of them were schools that I had attended. All of them were in places that I would probably just in terms of scenic beauty or climate or things like that, been more inclined to than Portland, which is very beautiful except for when it's gray week after week after week in the sky. At any rate four different schools that all approach me about the same time. Unbeknownst to me, some students here at Multnomah had just decided, impromptu to put together an appreciation night and invited my wife and I over to. To their apartment. And There were about 15 or 20 students who were there. And each of them gave us a little gift. Nothing of great intrinsic value, but all of them kind of special gifts. One of them was actually just a selected reading which this student offered to us as a gift. Hit pause button there on campus. We had just torn down one of the buildings we. Of the original old brick buildings back from when this campus was still Multnomah School of the Blind. Okay. So they had knocked down one of these buildings, and the. The students were trying to raise money. They decided to sell some of the bricks as mementos of the good old post office building, which is what it was back then. And so each of them had signed this, this brick. And I've been carrying this around all day in my backpack. This is the brick with their. Their names on it. And they gave it to us. And my wife almost instantly was just moved to tears. And she's just. She's weeping over. Over this gift. And I thought, well, this other guy gave us an arrow from Iri and Jaya. That's pretty cool too. But she was crying over the brick after we left. And on the way home, I asked her about that, and she said, you know, with these other job opportunities, I've been praying so much that God would just make it so obvious. He would just have to drop a brick on us. And she saw this literally as an answer to prayer, that, here's a brick from Multnomah. Stay put. That's not the way that I typically seek out the will of God, but.

I know you heard it first on.

Mu Tops, but I know when I've been bricked, and that's what happened to us. So it sits right by our fireplace mantle all the time, just as a reminder of God's love being communicated via these students into our lives in a way that was really life defining. Yeah.

Well, if you're listening to. To this on your Apple podcast, or if you're listening to, then go to Facebook. I will post a picture of the brick because you are missing out not seeing the brick in person. Actually, the size of this brick that got dropped on Dr. Lubeck to bring to Multoma University. I. I will have to take a picture of this because this is going to be in my office as a. As a token of appreciation to God.

I did tell my wife afterwards, listen, next time, please pray for gold and.

The brick size, gold if possible, because apparently God does listen to your lovely wife very clearly. A God that. That just listens to the softest whispers of our hearts. A God of Christmas. I Job said I wish my words would be written in a book and written in stone. Right. And he was not praying. He was actually quite mad with that. You know, he's talking to his friends about that, and God was like, hold my stones and see what I can do. And he just wrote his words into the book of life. A God that truly, truly pays attention to the details. I I was living with the pastor early on in my ministry, and the definition of love that I saw with him is not using aftershave because his wife couldn't. Couldn't stand the. The scent and saying, okay, I'm going to give this up. This luxury of like, feeling that freshness right after a good shave and realizing. But. But he didn't do it in a way that it was, like, bitter, because I lived for a few months in their house, and I could see that he was doing it with such. With such intentionality and love. And it was a small thing, but it was.

It.

It was a. It was a little brick in that wall of just that surrounded their family with love and the. The greatest gestures that. And the smallest of things that God does for us. What a great reminder. I'm very thankful for that. I cannot believe we're close to time. And I don't want to let you go, Dr. Lubeck. I don't want to let you go without doing fire. The rapid fire. The rapid fire at Amit Talks has very little to do with rapid or fire, but we call it rapid fire because we want to get to know you a little bit. So we're going to have random questions.

Okay.

Just the most random of questions to get to know you a little bit. So I'll start. I'll start with one. I'll give her an eight. Time to. To answer. If you could have any superpower. Ah, any superpower. What would. What it would be?

Memory.

Memory. Boy, some people want to forget. You want to remember the memory.

Okay. Yes, Renee.

Oh, wow.

I. I can explain that. Yes, please, please. In. In Deuteronomy, over and over and over again, he says, remember, remember, remember. Do not forget.

Well, he's making. Do all kinds of things for them to remember and still didn't work. Build pillars, towers, do all kinds of things, tie them around your neck. Wow.

And Jesus at that first last supper says, do this to remember.

You know, since we had Dr. Jason Stuckey on this, I've. I've realized that I need to brush up on my science thing. And one of the documentaries that I saw that was fascinating, it said that water has memory, that oceans and all this actually is so powerful that has memory. So it might be that the best thing to get your superpowers to eat, drink more water. I don't know if that. If that helps. I think if Jason was here, he would have strongly argued with my conclusion that drinking more water helps with memory, but that.

That.

I'll just leave that there.

Okay, question Renee, what's the last book you finished?

Last book that I finished. Well, can I. I still have just a couple of pages left to go on it, but it's the Messianic vision of the Pentateuch in which Derek Chin. I'm not Derek. I'm sorry. That's our boss, Kevin Chin has just explicated all the passages in the Pentateuch that somehow refer to Messiah. Okay. Wow.

If you didn't remember, then I would have understood the reason. If you could live anywhere in the world, this is one of my favorite questions to ask. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

Oh, boy, that. That's a tough one.

I know. That's why I like that.

Obviously, the place where I want to live is exactly where God wants me to be. So that's kind of a four gun.

That's a given. That's a given on MU talks. And then location wise.

Location wise. I do have a number of roots, family wise. And I just like the area, the Greater Vancouver, bc.

Oh, wow. Never been.

Yes. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Seen pictures.

Langley, Chilliwack, Burnaby. I have relatives North Van, West Van. All over the place. Around there. Oh, wow. But okay, yeah, you can go night skiing there. And as you're going down the hill, Grouse Mountain, you have the harbor and the ships going in and out and all of the city lights right below you. Spectacular.

Oh, my day skiing has not been successful. I'm curious. My night skiing would be different.

Question, what is your favorite Christmas tradition?

Probably listening to Messiah. We have a number of different versions, and it really isn't Christmas until Tamara and I together have listened to one of the renditions of Messiah.

Have you ever listened to it live? I've heard it's life changing.

Yes. With period, period instruments and everything. No way. Yeah.

I want to go to the 1814 of Tchaikovsky because I heard they have cannons.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I would love to go to one of those live cannons.

Like, I was down in the Loop in Chicago. Okay. When the Symphony performed the 1818 12. 1812, 1812 Overture down right there in the Loop, they shot cannons out over the. And all the fireworks over Lake Michigan there.

Oh, I think I read the news that somebody got the. The bullet in their. Was it the bullet in their house from the cannon? Oh, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's like that concert that happened.

That's not News in the Loop.

Two last questions as we wrap up. I cannot be more thankful that you came out to MU talks. And you've. You've blessed us with. With your wisdom, really. If you could say one thing to your younger self and then one thing to the world in a hundred years. So let's start with if you can say one thing to. To Ray Lubeck many years ago.

It's gonna sound really silly.

I'm expecting silly. I'm not expecting.

Don'T drink coffee.

I might have to edit that out.

In Portland, but I have to explain. When I was 20, I was drinking multiple cups of coffee every day. And I didn't realize it at the time, but coffee, caffeine wires me. If I were to drink a cup of coffee right now, I definitely wouldn't get to sleep tonight. Maybe the following night, I might be, oh, wow. But it really wires me. And so I ended up getting way too little rest for several years of my life. Eventually, I ended up having cancer. I don't think that coffee causes cancer, but I do think having an exhausted immune system can set you up for it. And my life, I'm sure, would look different if I hadn't had cancer way back when I was in my 20s. Oh, wow.

Interesting coffee. And one thing you would say to the world in 100 years from now.

I don't know that it would be any different from what I would say in my class today. And that is the joy of the Lord is your strength. With all the exigencies of life, all the ebb and flow when we face difficulties is the joy. Unfortunately, I don't think that we as Christians more broadly, have done a much better job at exhibiting that during pandemic days or days of local civil unrest. I think that we should be at the very vanguard of teaching society how to be joyful.

Renee, any last thoughts?

I'm just so thankful that you're here. It's been so good to. To hear from you. This is one of the first times I've gotten to really sit and hear from you, and I can't wait to hear more as. As I, you know, listen every opportunity that I get here at Multoma. Thank you.

And Dr. Lubeck does have courses in MU plus, so go to multomaplus.com I guarantee you will be blessed. I've. I've personally been blessed by Dr. Lubeck's Min here at Multoma, through his courses, through his content. I sat in a fraction of his course, and I say a fraction. I was there for 10 minutes in the course that he was teaching over the summer, and I was tremendously blessed. The scripture says that I am not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God. And what's very powerful is the way that Dr. Lubeck is able to unpack that Bible and really let that power of understanding, the power of the gospel come alive. And I was personally blessed by that. So thank you, Dr. Beck. We wish you a blessed, blessed Christmas this Christmas season and who if you're listening to us, I hope you were blessed by this Advent series. Renee, thank you for having this idea. Thank you for organizing and curating the the content of of what we're going to talk. Many blessings to you all as you are listening to us and hope we're gonna see each other in next episode of EMU Talks. And as you know, the views and opinions expressed on MU Talks do not belong to Multimo University. We are part of Multimo University but MU Talks is not affiliated legally with it. So please don't sue the school. Thank you.