Explore every episode of the podcast The Nexus Podcast

The Advent/Christmas season is upon us which means it is time for some stranger things. This fall we have been laser focused on the ethical aspects of the Jesus Path. For this season though, we are going to need to explore some seriously weird ideas. The Christmas story is so familiar to us, it is easy to miss that every aspect of the Christmas story includes a most quizzical character - angels. Why are they so prevalent in this part of Scripture? Fair warning, this Sunday will be stranger than most. I will need to tell you some peculiar stories, like the one about the guy who stared me straight in the eye while claiming to have encountered a Sasquatch, or the hitchhiker prone to seizures, how on the side of an Ohio road I met an angel with alcohol on his breath, and of course the one time I was able to role play an angel in disguise. When you are trying to speak of the Jesus Path as a reasonable way of life, angels don’t get mentioned much. But sometimes the weird stuff is exactly what we need in times like these.

Last week, we dared to face our loneliness. We had a great follow-up discussion Tuesday night, sharing times when we have felt the most lonely, and we talked about what helps us feel less lonely. In the sermon this week, we’re considering how our loneliness can serve as a doorway into something that might not sound much better: Solitude. Even worse, the transition from loneliness to solitude is a difficult, challenging journey. So why would we even bother?  Great question. I encourage you to begin thinking about that - why would you bother? What could be so great about solitude? Why would anyone think that’s a good destination? What’s your relationship with loneliness? With solitude? How are they different? Listen in as we explore the barriers and benefits, the practicalities and the potential of being “In Solitude”.

All humans journey with loneliness, experiencing it in varying degrees, at different times in our lives. We’re in this together. But most of us - all of us? - do NOT enjoy this feeling in any way, and why would we? Most of us usually do everything we can to avoid it. We even avoid talking about the “L” word, or admitting that we are lonely. This is quite reasonable of us, considering how deeply painful and isolating chronic loneliness is.  And yet…what if loneliness, as soul-sucking as it can be, can offer us something?  Could the Jesus path include loneliness in ways that are freeing and creative?  Could it even be a key to the Good Life? I hope you’ll join us this Sunday as we engage with scripture, research, statistics and a meme or two, along with some of my most (un)shining moments of connection and togetherness as we explore this possibility, and dare to face The Lonely Road. 

Well, this is a bit awkward after the week we have had. I didn’t plan it this way. Or maybe I did? I can’t remember now, but as we continue to pursue the flourishing life, we come to a bridge that may feel too far to pass. Jesus instructs us to “love our enemies.” Of all weeks to head there, this is the one? I am afraid so. Mark Twain once quipped, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.” That certainly rings true for where we are headed. But this teaching isn’t meant to bother us. Rather, Jesus’ teaching is about directing us to the good life. How in the world does loving enemies lead to flourishing? Well, let’s explore that together on Sunday.

Sometimes I feel as though I have the word ‘sucker’ written on my forehead. Kristen likes to say I am every salesperson’s dream. I haven’t met an upgrade or extended warranty I have passed on. I can be easily taken advantage of. Which is why Jesus’ next teaching about the Good Life initially feels a little disconcerting to me. I am referring of course to the “turn the other cheek” passage in the Sermon on the Mount. It starts with Jesus referencing one of humanities oldest laws (the eye for eye bit) and moves to not resisting evil people. The examples Jesus uses to illustrate what this might look like involve getting slapped twice (at least), finding yourself naked without any clothes, walking a lot, and lending a lot of people money. On the surface, it sounds like a recipe for people like me getting walked all over. Ah, but naturally, there is whole lot more going on here. And we are in for quite the ride. We will need to explore the earliest human laws we have on record and why implementing those laws still seems beyond us (think Ukraine and the Middle East). I will need to tell you about the anxiety I experience when getting my oil changed, my mission to stop Amazon thieves, and what to do when an elderly couple backs into your car. We also have plenty of stops to make within Scripture, from what David did when he caught Saul using the bathroom, to a question from the apostle Paul that I find to be both wise and hard to swallow, and of course, why Jesus’ instructions here are not only wise, but psychologically astute as well. If we can begin to master what Jesus is getting at in this teaching, we will be well on our way to the good and flourishing life.

The Sermon on the Mount offers us a vision of the “flourishing life.” At times, however, that means heading into uncomfortable territory, like, well, infidelity and lust. Sigh, I confess I am not overly excited to offer some thoughts about this one. So, we might as well just dive in. In her revelatory book The State of Affairs, Esther Perel says this about infidelity. “Infidelity happens in good marriages, in bad marriages, and even when adultery is punishable by death. It happens in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand. And the freedom to leave or divorce has not made cheating obsolete . . . Infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy. So much so that it is the only sin that gets two commandments in the Bible, one for doing it and one just for thinking about it." Ha, very true Esther. That is a great introduction to Jesus’ teaching on adultery and lust. So, I hope you will join us on Sunday as we head into some choppy waters. I trust it will be a worthwhile journey, and while the subject matter may be a bit heavy, there is still plenty of fun to be had along the way. From one of the greatest television shows of all time - LOST - to why I sense my neighbours are giving me the stink eye, I hope to explore this sensitive subject with thoughtfulness, compassion, and a touch of mirth.

Well, now that the dust has settled on our Anger Royal Rumble debate, it is time to dig into the emotion of anger. This Sunday we will explore the positives of anger, its dangers, and why we should maybe question some of the dogmas surrounding this complicated emotion. We have a lot of stops to make along the way: from my deviled egg debacle to the 18,000 angry people of Greenfield, Massachusetts, the psychological sophistication of Scripture when it comes to emotions, and of course, why being angry like Jesus is much more complex than we realize. The intricacies of anger mean there is no "one size fits all" approach to the emotion. Given that, I want to conclude the sermon with my own personal convictions about anger, fully realizing that what may work or be "right" for me may not be so for others. I hope to see you Sunday for An Exploration of Anger.

Friends, it is time to mix things up a little this Sunday. You see, as Jesus heads into the meat of his Sermon on the Mount, first up is our inner worlds and what to do with an emotion like anger. We know, of course, that Jesus himself got angry on several occasions. And yet, here in the sermon, Jesus seems to strongly caution against being angry at all. For Jesus Path people, this can be a little confusing. Now, there are various schools of thought around what to do with an emotion like anger. I could just describe them to you on Sunday, but that sounds a little boring. I think a better (and more fun) approach would be to just host a Royal Rumble debate on anger! So, this Sunday morning after a brief introduction to the subject, you will be presented with six cases about anger from six very different people. Let me introduce you to our debaters. First up, we will have @AngryTwitterTina1234, followed by the Apostle Paul, then Brené Brown, Jordan Peterson, Ichiro Kishimi, and finally, the philosopher king himself, Marcus Aurelius, on behalf of the Stoics. So, they make their case on anger, then we will discuss together which vision of anger we found most compelling. I hope this will set us up well for the weeks to come.

We continue our search for The Good Life by delving deeper into Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This week we find Jesus making a remark that will certainly give us pause. According to Jesus, his path is only accessible to those who are more righteous than the Pharisees! That seems like cause for concern. First, isn’t the Jesus Path radically inclusive? Why the barrier to entry now? Second, and even more concerning, weren’t the Pharisees well known for being super-duper righteous? If we must surpass that, well, it sounds like trouble. Ah, something must be afoot here! This passage, in my estimation, holds the interpretive key for all that follows in the Sermon on the Mount. So, on another journey we go: from traveling three hours only to find out your destination is closed, to Jesus' “anti-beatitudes” (his “woes” in Matthew 23), from why my dentist rubs me the wrong way, to the science of self-awareness, from the practice of hiddenness and introspection, to hosting a “Dinner of Truth,” we are off to explore why Jesus’ comments about the Pharisees might unlock the secret ingredient to living the Good Life.

Friends, after two introductory weeks, it is time to take the dive into Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This season is all about searching for The Good Life and human flourishing. So we begin, of course, with the Beatitudes, a series of peculiar and unexpected statements about human flourishing. On the surface, the beatitudes seem to represent the very opposite of flourishing. What are we to make of them?

To mine the wisdom of these statements will require another interesting journey: from Yale’s most popular class, to why Stoics think hope is a toxic emotion, from my ongoing battle with my physiotherapist, to the social experiment Nexus has been running for 15 years, from comedian Neil Brennan’s take on his own atheism, to the devastating loss musician Nick Cave experienced and how that shaped his thinking about cynicism. Through it all, I hope to illuminate the beatitudes in a fresh way for us all. 

This season is all about searching for The Good Life by way of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and other visions of human flourishing. To start our quest in earnest, we will need to make a few early pitstops. If the Good Life is to be found, who are the sages that might point us in the right direction. And where does Jesus fit into all of this? Join us this Sunday as we head to some ancient sites in Athens and Syria before heading to the bohemian ruin bars of Budapest. Our goal is to chat with a few sages, both ancient and contemporary, living and dead, in order to orient ourselves in the proper direction.

Where does the Jesus Path have us heading this year? Well, this season will be all about searching for The Good Life. How can we experience true human flourishing? What is happiness, should we aim for it, and how does one obtain and sustain it? This season we will be exploring Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount by bringing it into conversation with wisdom on human flourishing from Stoic philosophy and other voices. I can’t wait to get started, so to prime the pump, imagine this: Somewhere in the mountains north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a treasure chest filled with two million dollars worth of gold, artifacts, and other treasures. It can all be yours, if you can just find the chest. To find it, all you need to do is solve a riddle.   Would you go looking for the treasure? Where would you start looking? Can you figure out the location based on the riddle? For almost half a million people, this was no imagination exercise, but the beginning of an actual treasure hunt that began in 2010 and only finished in 2020. During the hunt, five people died, scores had to be rescued from the wild, and dozens were arrested. Turns out, if you hide something worth finding, people will search for it...relentlessly. Which is where we shall begin our new season. We are all searching for something, but what? I hope to see you Sunday @ 10:30am at our new home in St. Andrew's for Everyone is Searching. - Brad Watson

For this Sunday, our penultimate episode of the season, I want to reflect and do a sort of “state of the union” talk about Nexus, the place of faith in our wider culture, along with where I am at with faith these days. I am bringing along my “life verse,” a few tales about eels and Sigmund Freud, precarious cliffs, and why the most pressing question for me in terms of faith these days is simply, "Jesus or . . . what?"

As our season winds down here at Nexus, we are bringing our relational tensions series to a close with a theology of conflict. If there is one thing that is certain in all relationships (be it with our friends, colleagues, partners, or parents), it is that conflict is inevitable. Conflict will occur. Then what? There is nothing we dread more than dealing with conflict in relationships. What is worse, most of us aren’t great at it. This is because conflict forces us to battle our own worst proclivities. Further, we often come from family backgrounds that left us with unhealthy notions of conflict management. Even still, conflict can’t be avoided. To mature in life and love, we must learn the art and science of doing conflict. So, this week we will take some cues from Jesus and Paul before turning to the proverbial wisdom of Scripture to help us learn the fine art of negotiating conflict well.

 This week, as we head into our final month of Season 14, I’ll offer my last sermon for the season called, “I Don’t Know What To Do With My Self”." A common complaint of mine for various reasons, but in this case, it’s connected to setting boundaries. Inevitably, as soon as someone brings up boundaries, someone else will mention the word “selfish” (case in point: the latest episode of the Sacred Sofa). So we’ll explore why that might be, what Jesus Path people are invited to do with our selves, and how that might influence our relationships with others. We’ll explore some of the challenges inherent in setting and maintaining boundaries, and how we might discern what kind of boundaries are needed. Along the way, we’ll examine a greatly misunderstood portion of The Sermon on the Mount which could be quite influential - for good and for ill.

This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday and that is always fun to explore because it is the event that birthed us, the church. The event is filled with intriguing details: a violent wind, tongues of fire, the Holy Spirit, foreign languages mysteriously being heard and understood, and eyewitnesses thinking Jesus followers are drunk at 9am. The story is rich in metaphor and symbolism. What is often lost though is how this story connects with a story from Exodus. The Pentecost event happened during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, a festival marking Israel’s wheat harvest as well as the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai. I hope the connections made between these two stories might be revelatory for us all and a source of hope.

We keep climbing ladders in this series on relational tensions. We have explored marriage and relational boundaries. Friendship and community are coming up next. But for this week, we are in search of a robust Jesus Path sexual ethic. To do that, we are going to need to put sex on a ladder. Just one more week of uncomfortable sex talk! But stay with me. Why is this important? Four quick reasons: First, the internet. Second, many folks walked away from purity culture with a lot of baggage, so we owe it to ourselves and our children to think through all of this in a much healthier way. Third, these conversations aren’t easy to have, even in our marriages, which means conversation starters might be good. Fourth, because a whole book of the Bible is dedicated to sexual innuendo and erotic love poetry. If Scripture is willing to go there, so am I. So, let’s have some fun, even if it is a little uncomfortable. 

This question was written by a Nexus person on the Sunday after Ash Wednesday as we reflected on questions of life and faith. It felt like a good question to consider together in this series on the tensions between us.  As Jesus-path people, we’re called to live cruciform - cross-shaped - which involves serious demands on our life and character, to live in the self-giving pattern of Christ. That looks like radical forgiveness, hospitality, generosity, compassion - others-centeredness… But…must we be taken advantage of?  How can we show up in our relationships with love and compassion without being depleted and exhausted? Is there a way for our relationships to fill us up, even as we give? Could living cruciform actually somehow be life-giving?  We’ll look at surprising research on how boundaries can help us out. Some clarity around who we are (and who we aren’t) can lead to freedom. Clear “No!”s can help us say “Yes!” to people and things that are important, freeing us up to be compassionate and build relationships that are life-giving to all. 

With a little history of marriage behind us, it is time to start climbing some ladders. I want to peek at three paradigms for marriage we find in Scripture. Of course, we aren’t looking for marriage tips from David, or any other Biblical character for that matter. Rather, what I hope we will discover are paradigms in Scripture that might allow us to ease the pressure in marriage, while also reenchanting it. There is so much juicy stuff to get to, like what the eclipse this past week can teach us about marriage, why we might want to consider sex in marriage through the lens of justice, what the rabbinic wisdom of the Talmud can teach us about sex, when it is time for therapy, the tough choices in marriage, why we need a Trinitarian theology of “one flesh”, the business metaphor that defines successful marriages, and, of course, how to keep climbing the marriage ladder. And oh, I am bringing along a few choice quotes from my new favourite marriage guru, Harrison Scott Key, whose wife left him for “the human equivalent of Diet Mountain Dew.” Lines like that just bless my heart!

we are pressing on into our season of The Tensions. We have explored our tensions with God, ourselves, and our faith tradition. It is time now for us to consider relational tensions: the tensions we experience with others, be that in our marriages, friendships, or communities.  Many years ago, I did a sermon entitled Sex on a Ladder, which we will return to in the next few weeks, but for this series, I wanted to expand on that teaching by going wider, deeper, and further. So, to begin, we are going on an odyssey adventure: A Brief History of Marriage. We have some fun and wild places to explore. History is a strange and fascinating beast, so we will start by debunking eight myths about the history of marriage (for instance, did marriage come about to protect or oppress women?). Then, we will explore why the Church was largely silent about marriage for 1200 years and the four main reasons the Church got into the business of solemnizing marriages (I am confident they will surprise you). Along the way we will learn about the most common case brought before courts in the Middle Ages (it has to do with marriage) and the rather uncomfortable ritual men had to undergo to annul a marriage (Kristen won’t even let me share the more "juicy" details of the ritual). We will of course land in our present day to discover the two social factors and pressures that are placing more tension on marriages today than ever before.