Practicing Resurrection

Resurrection can feel like a distant doctrine when the world is loud with loss, conflict, and exhaustion. Our conversation asks a more urgent question: what does it look like to practice resurrection when life is in ruins and hope feels thin? For us, resurrection is not something to watch from the sidelines. It’s an invitation to surrender, to let something real die, and to trust the Holy Spirit to bring life where we can’t manufacture it ourselves. 

We talk about the Spirit as comforter and nurturer and why comfort is never a cute promise but a sign that pain is being taken seriously. From the Emmaus Road to Pentecost, we trace how the Spirit keeps breaking down “us vs them” and calling us back into oneness, wholeness, and love. That leads us into language: kingdom, queendom, kinship, and the ways religious words can either widen the table or tighten it into exclusion. If you’re searching for inclusive Christianity, Holy Spirit-led discernment, spiritual formation, and a faith that makes room for your body and your inner knowing, this conversation is for you. 

We also linger at the communion table, naming how many people have been pushed out of the very place meant to heal. We imagine what an open table could mean, and we close with a breathtaking reading from the Book of Wisdom that describes Spirit as intelligent, holy, subtle, and “friendly to all.” If this stirs something in you, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review. What part of your life is asking for resurrection right now?

Transcript

Welcome And Tech Gratitude

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Expansionist Podcast with Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake. At each episode, we dive deep into conversations that challenge conventional thinking, amplify diverse voices, and foster a community grounded in wisdom, spirit, and love. Good afternoon, Heather Drake. Good afternoon, Shelly Shepherd. I'm so grateful to be here with you this afternoon on the Riverside platform that allows us to podcast together, even though I'm in Florida and you're all the way in California. But still we get to share conversation and share spirit and share love between us. I'm grateful for this time.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yes, it is a beautiful gift. This technology. Don't ask me about yesterday's technology because that's a whole different story. But today's technology every day is good. Yes. It's a real gift.

Eastertide Hope And Practicing Resurrection

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Technology is wonderful when it works and when it doesn't, it becomes a source of uh a curriculum, as it will, of teaching us new things and how to lean into the voice of spirit or the discernment that we're learning there. Um this is still the season of Easter tide uh for us. And thinking about the resurrection, and I think particularly in the world that we're in today, we're all aware of all of the death and all of the pain and all the suffering around us. And how do we have hope that says this is not the end, this is not how it will only be? But there is an invitation into practicing the resurrection. When I've been contemplating Jesus' invitation, not just to marry, but but specifically to Mary that says, Go and tell the brothers. So, what does it look like for us to live our lives and go and tell our beloved brothers and sisters he is not dead, as we supposed? So there's resurrection in our lives where we can look at places of ruins and go, okay, we can kneel here and we can expect to be met by the Holy Spirit who will bring the dead things to life.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Wow, that is a that is a deep theological um runway that you just gave us to uh to unwrap here today in our conversation. And that's what I love about these these times with you is that we can we expand on this in this platform. It allows us to uh to bring one thought and then expand it uh into another. And so let's run on the runway.

What Must Die For New Life

SPEAKER_01 2:41

I and I'm hopeful for this idea of resurrection not just to be something that people um are spectators at. It's an invitation into embodiment, it's an invitation into being the resurrection, it's an invitation into allowing surrendering to the spirit so that spirit can resurrect in us and resurrect in the world.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

And here's the part, uh, Heather, that most of us don't like about resurrection. Something has to die.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Right. We just want to skip right into resurrection.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Absolutely, we absolutely something has to die, and we have to say, I no longer need this, or I no longer desire this, or this is not serving, or this is not helpful. And so we let it go, or we go to counseling and we we get through it, or you know, we hand it off to someone else.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Sometimes it's not as pleasant as you just explained it. Sometimes it's our life falling into ruins. Sometimes it's someone wrestling from us the thoughts that we held safe or sacred. Sometimes it's listening, expanding, being hospitable to somebody, and then realizing the way that we believe or the way that we live our life excludes someone. And that becomes a place for us to say, all right, how do I kneel here in this garden and say, not my will, but yours, because your will is bigger, better, more beautiful. And what I'm hoping for is a more beautiful world, a more loving world. And how do I offer myself?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

How do you offer yourself?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah, to the resurrection, to that power. Yeah. To how do I surrender to the spirit? How do I say, be it unto me according to your word?

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Well, that that's where I I wanted to step for a second was the uh the idea that we grew up with the resurrection um, you know, in the church being this physically, this physical body resurrection that Jesus died, rose, and um is now ascended. And um more and more in my life I'm finding resurrection to be places where the greening is happening, where the stones are rolled in a particular direction, um, and I don't have to walk over those stones anymore. Or uh the light um of resurrection looks like um, you know, maybe surrendering to something that I've always wanted, or maybe that I haven't received yet, but the light is there, it's shining on something that gives me hope that resurrection is coming. And so uh from an expansionist perspective, if I just lock on that resurrection is just about Jesus' rising from the grave and ascending so that spirit could come, which we'll come back to that in a minute, so that spirit could come, then um I might just have this train of thought that I've been handed that that will never happen for me. I'm going to die. There is a time appointed when I will no longer be on this planet, and I'm pretty sure I won't be resurrected, even by you, my friend, uh, with the holy anointing over all of that. We don't practice resurrection in the way that Jesus demonstrated it to us. We have to practice it in a different way. And I believe the work of the Spirit is the way that we begin to practice resurrection.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

I agree so much with what you're saying in this idea that we practice resurrection now. And I agree with you in this idea that we have a physical life that has a beginning and an end, but that we are eternal beings and that by engaging with the Holy Spirit, by surrendering to the Spirit's way of living in this world, of being in this world, we actually remember our highest self, our truest self, that we are one with God, that we are made in the very image of the God who created this whole world, who continues to create. And we're invited to be co-creators. But we're invited to create, not just in our image, not just in the things that we want to see, but to create with God this kingdom that is so beautiful, the kingdom of love. What does it look like for us to join with the spirit and say, Yeah, I'm in? I think that that um the invitation there is exciting and terrifying at the same time. Terrifying because there's no certainty. Again, we join with Nicodemus and say, you know, tell us about the spirit. And then Jesus said, the spirit is like the wind. And then we're with the disciples in the upper room freaked out about how things are gonna be and what's gonna happen. And Jesus says to them, peace. I'm gonna give you a comforter, I'm gonna give you a nurturer. And I think anytime that we uh hear someone say, What I'm gonna give you first is comfort, we should be uh like ticking little boxes that say, Oh, then we're gonna have to deal with pain. Then we're gonna have to see the places where comfort would be needed. And I think that's such a beautiful invitation not to bypass our life, not to have a spiritual bypass where we, you know, don't actually wrestle the hard questions or engage our own spirit in following of Jesus, in the following of spirit. And even in the idea that in following spirit, we recognize she's going ahead for us. And this is what Jesus said. It even went, yes, but Jesus said, I'm going ahead also, and I'm gonna go, and you're gonna be so surprised at how big my father is, how big the house is that we're preparing, how big the space is. So the invitation to expand our thoughts, Jesus is telling us, hey, you can't imagine how spacious this is. And this is a beautiful invitation into really changing the narrow and tight and small work that we have been given into this big, beautiful, expansive spirit work that is um awakening. I really believe this around the whole earth. Spirit is up to something. Resurrection is not a spectacle, it is a returning to life for that which was buried. And so for us, we're like, what was buried? Life in the spirit was buried, the spirit's working, the discernment that was practiced in community and in the mystics and with friends. Again, the Emmaus Road is so incredible as a path, as a journey, people talking about it, and then Jesus coming and saying, Hey, you got that whole thing wrong, and explaining it. And then them saying, Yeah, but didn't our hearts burn within us? I think that is such a beautiful key into learning the spirit. Didn't our hearts burn within us?

Queendom Language And Inclusive Love

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Well, that was another, that was another on-ramp of wow, wow, wow, wow. Um I love it when you get when you get on that on that side of the track and just let it go. Um so I want to go back to a thought that I had when you were when you were talking about the kingdom. And I think for me, and you may not agree with this, and that's okay, for me, the um the peace that allows spirit to reveal herself is often in the form of queendom, not kingdom, right? And sometimes in the form of kind, like kinship sort of ways. Because we were talking about this earlier, how language around the understanding of how spirit moves in our world has been, particularly, I think, in in many churches, kind of positioned as secondary or maybe not even equal to what God and Jesus are doing. Um, but truly, I think in the queendom uh mindset, spirit is has always been. Like she has always been in the beginning with God. And so part of I think what we have to to figure out in these stories of resurrection and these stories of of you know walking with Jesus on a road called Emmaus, the own, the our own Emmaus stories. Um, you know, seeing spirit move in the life of a friend that um she didn't recognize it was spirit until I said, well, that was that was spirit. That was spirit that prompted you to do that or to think that. To me, the queen is just as relevant as the king. And you should probably know this more than anyone because being the queen of love, um, that is really the um what's the word I'm looking for? The the banner over Holy Spirit is is love. And um like she wears that as a garment. And so wherever we see love, we probably see her. We probably see the work of spirit in the world. Um, and some people may say, Well, I see Jesus there, I see kingdom there, I don't see queendom there. And that's okay too, right? Because sometimes we have to see what we need to see in order to see and believe what we know is true in our own bodies and in our own thoughts. And so I add that today for um for those that may need to hear. The queendom of God is within us.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

I am challenged by those thoughts. And and the idea is really, you know, where else in my life have I allowed a language to narrowly, you know, decide where God is and where God is not? Where have I participated in giving people language to say, this is sacred, this is holy? And really the invitation from God is it's all holy, that we are all one. And the language that we've used to separate is in fact divisive. And Jesus gives us the language of spirit that is to all people, this understanding, this inclusion that comes with the Holy Spirit, this inclusion that says, I mean, we get to look at the book of Acts in Pentecost is coming in the church and in this idea of looking at this, and very often in Pentecost, what we see the Holy Spirit doing is removing division between people. What's us and them? And the spirit comes in and there is no us and them. It's all us. And this invitation of life in the spirit of resurrection is we are one. Jesus, in fact, says this that I'm going to the Father, and then the Father is in me, and then you'll be in me, and we'll all be one together. And so, over and over again, this invitation is because of the spirit, there is oneness, there is unity, there is wholeness. And there is no way that the love of God does not bring absolute wholeness to all things. And so, including women, including the feminine, including everyone in all variations of that, the invitation is not to um idolize hierarchy, but to involve ourselves in the discerning of the spirit that brings us into equity, equality, beauty that is given to us in acknowledging God in all things. What does it look like for us to, even in the midst of the ruins, to find that spirit kneels with us as you know, we wait for the resurrection?

SPEAKER_00 15:00

It's harder, it's harder to see her there sometimes.

Trinity Tensions And Pentecost Hearing

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Is it because though we haven't been taught? Is it because somebody hasn't pointed her that out to us? Yes. Here she is, right here. If maybe if we'd all read the book of wisdom, we saw her or we read Genesis, where the spirit is, you know, brooding over the waters of creation.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Well, can we go since we're talking about this language and this this usness, um this they, them, can we just park here for a second and talk about a word that's not in the Bible, but that we adhere to as a doctrine of the church, which is Trinity and Trinitarian theology, that we have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit? You just said in a few minutes ago that it spirit came to bring the usness of this, of this grouping, right? And if that is the truth in this moment, and we and we believe that spirit is part of the usness of God and Jesus, that they're one, then how do we get here to this division of three? Now we're not going to solve that theological dogma question today, but in light of what is spirit's work, how is her work different than God the Father, God the Son, in our own journeys, in our own cascading lives through the evangelical world that led us to even be able to talk about this on an expansionist uh podcast? You know, very different from where we started thinking about spirit to where maybe we are now. But I think it's an important, maybe just let's just have a little bit of time on this because if we want people to experience her more, the feminine spirit of God more, where do we see her in this us?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

You open so many doorways with those thoughts. But this the scripture uh reminds us that wisdom was with God in the beginning. And this not patriarchal, not controlling, but flowing, this feminine, this radiant invitation to remember what we already know. Doesn't our hearts burn within us? We have never been disconnected. The invitation is that we have always been one. The illusion that we have been separate, Mary uh invites us to return to the good, to return. This is the work of Pentecost. This is the work of spirit. You are one, you belong together, you belong with God. God is is is offering this oneness. And I think sometimes language that has been given to us in maybe intentionally helpful becomes very unhelpful as language evolves. And I think that we're at a place right now where the language that we are given is really unhelpful and it's very divisive. And there is, I believe we need again a wind of the spirit to come. And the first miracle here is that everybody understood each other, that they could hear each other. Very often what we cannot do is hear each other. And so my prayer is your prayer is, you know, wind of the spirit come again, new creation wisdom, come again and let us hear each other and let us see the work that you are doing, that you are, you know, reminding us that we come from love, that we are love, that we're returning to love, that love is what this whole thing has always been about. But the invitation to hear the voice of spirit, to receive the nurture, to receive the comfort, to receive her way of moving through the earth, this feminine wisdom that has been given to us by God. We want to pause and take a moment and let you know how glad we are that you've joined us. If you're enjoying this podcast, consider sharing it with a friend. And if you found the conversation intriguing and want to know more about what we're learning or how you can join our online community, visit our website at expansionisttheology.com. Jesus said, You know the spirit now, and at one point the spirit will live in you. And so within us is a spirit, within us is this Holy Spirit, this understanding. But we just haven't maybe practiced or learned how to hear the voice of spirit, how to identify the working of spirit. In fact, you and I were talking earlier about uh Nicodemus comes to Jesus and begins to ask these kind of questions, and Jesus has answers for Nicodemus, like it's like the wind. That's not a very helpful answer, Shelley, if you're looking for something solid, if you're looking for something to uh to nail on the door of your uh your threshold here and say this is what we're about, to say we're of the spirit is really loosey-goosey.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Well, I think that's the problem for many people is it is loosey-goosey, yes.

The Wild Goose And Daily Notice

SPEAKER_01 20:02

And we use the word loosey-goosey because the uh Celtic Christians said the Holy Spirit was like a wild goose, uh interrupting, disruptive. You couldn't pin uh the spirit down to things. And so I love that idea of wild goose. What does it look like for us to not maybe trying in in a straight line, not allowing you to keep things status quo? And the invitation to follow wild goose means you have to know where to look.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Well, I think that's also um part of the maybe part of the reason why she doesn't get as much uh airtime um in church or on a Sunday morning is is that she she's constantly moving during the week, right? Like she's at work doing the business that that Jesus left her in charge of.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Birthing the new world, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Yes, and so sometimes I feel like I can easily miss her when I'm walking or riding my bike or walking to dinner or meeting a friend, or like I miss, I can miss her because she's so close and she's constant, and and she's everywhere all the time. And some people say, Well, isn't that Jesus? Maybe, maybe it is Jesus, maybe for other people it's God, and maybe for a whole different group of people, it is Rumi or Mary Oliver, or you know, someone else that is connecting them to the divine. And so, in this, in this tapestry of life, she can be missed, maybe more than seen, more than understood. And so, what does that require? What has that required of you or me or others? The mystics who have locked themselves in a cell with only one window and said, I had this divine revelation of her, or of him, or them, or they like, does it require that of us in this century for us to understand what spirit is up to and and what she is about in the world? Or can we take a walk? Can you go out in nature? You know, can you see her in a new birth? Can you see her in the plant that's greening outside the window? I think the ordinary, the ordinary rhythm, the ordinary way that she meets us and greets us along our journey is how we make room to notice her.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

There's an invitation, though, to walk together. Again, the Emmaus Road is such a beautiful path. Didn't our hearts burn within us? They have this conversation and they start talking about impossible things. They start talking about what they know, and then Jesus interrupts and changes the way that they know it. But what was the what was the burning? Well, I wasn't there, but I assume it was their own spirit. Can you imagine? In my mind, it's their it's the spirit within them. This spirit that is turning them into God friends and prophets.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Yes, because the spirit had not Pentecost had not happened yet, according to Right.

Trusting Inner Witness In Community

SPEAKER_01 23:26

According to this would be outline. And so at that particular time, this idea of what if in our own lives there is a walking away from Jerusalem? What if there is for all of us an invitation to have a conversation with a friend and go, ah, I have a feeling. I have this deep inner knowing, maybe language not around it. And I can't make it, I can't make it fit into what I know the Talmud to say or the rules to have said. That's right. But I feel this inner witness. And I believe that what the Spirit offers to us is a returning to ourselves, to trusting our own bodies that are temples of the living God, to trusting that inner witness. And very often we just so now you want to preach about Mary Magdalene. Go ahead. But we discern together. We discern together. We find other people who have also heard the whispers of spirit, who have seen the wind blow through the trees and go, I see what this is. I see this to be gentle. I see this to be loving, kindness, I see this to be this new creation promise, following the spirit, but trusting the inner witness that has been given to us. I think very often we've been told we can't trust ourselves. And I understand what someone was trying to tell us. Like you cannot trust a selfish ego or your own ideas of things, but we can trust the spirit, and we can trust the spirit that is with us, and we can trust the spirit that has been given to us. This is what Jesus promised us. I will give you a spirit. The Father will send a spirit, and the spirit will be comforter, and the spirit will be nurturer, and the spirit will be companion, and the spirit will be guide, and you will have no need of a teacher because the spirit. Which again, on the road to Emmaus, we see they had all the scriptures. They knew what they knew. And then Jesus comes and illuminates to them and changes the perspective. This is the working of the spirit to change our perspective, to change the way that we see things, to allow us to see with an inner eye, to allow us to participate in this new creation. When humanity is given its first job in the Genesis story, it's to name. And there is such an incredible gift to be able to name the work of spirit. But it takes effort to learn, it takes, um, it takes intention and it takes community for us to discern the voice of spirit. And once we know the voice of spirit, once we can trust that we hear the spirit, that we've that we can see witness of the spirit, it becomes easier, but then our call is then to go and tell, share the good news. You have a spirit. There is one that makes all things new. There is a spirit that binds us together in absolute unity, in oneness. And there is a way for all of us to return to God.

Emmaus Table And Open Communion

SPEAKER_00 28:17

And to help people see that the good is within, that the kingdom and the queendom is within. Because sometimes we we look outside ourselves for the source to trust, which closes the sanctuary of the sacred inner knowing off. It shuts it, slams it, locks it. But this is what it I believe that we love about the Magdalene is like she understood this in her gospel, return to the good. Get inside that inner sanctuary of knowing and trust it. Trust what spirit is communicating. Maybe the whole world is saying something totally different than what spirit is revealing to our hearts, to our bodies, to our thoughts. And sometimes it's hard to trust when every other voice is saying something different.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

So Jesus is um walking with this couple on the road back from Emmaus, and he is explaining things to them that they have no idea to see it that way about himself, about God's plan, about the world, about the spirit, and they end up back at a table, a communion table, and then he takes the bread and he breaks it and he offers it, and it says then their eyes were opened. Then they saw. And so to practice an open table, to practice communion, to intentionally give ourselves to the work of hospitality and oneness, of practicing offering ourselves to the world the way that Jesus offers himself to the world. The offer is then allowing the spirit to use those things to come upon those things and to illumine. And it says then their eyes were opened. And they saw for who he really was. And this is the hope for us that we would also see the spirit for who the spirit is at the communion table. What does it look like for us to practice, to prioritize, to be intentionally reverent around the communion and saying, What am I doing to offer holy communion to the whole world?

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Yeah, that that's a sore place for a lot of people, Heather, communion, because they haven't been welcomed at that place. Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

And that's exactly where the spirit, who is the healer and the nurturer and the comforter, would want to come. The very place that we have been excluded, the comforter would come and say, No, come to the table. This is for you. You're not outside of this. This is for you.

Renaming Sorrow And Wisdom Blessing

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Yeah, it would be a beautiful world if every communion table was open to all. Let's make it that. Which I believe, I believe that was Jesus' invitation on the road to Emmaus. Absolutely. Is this for all, right? So let's imagine that. Whether he was in a spiritual body or natural body, um, this is not us for us to argue, but if spirit was moving in Jesus to offer this communion to, I'm sure he already knew these people from afar. Um he knew the conversation that they would have. Um, and so breaking bread with them was not a strange thing because he wanted to include them in the work that was that was coming that Spirit was bringing. And um I love that communion can be that sort of meal where all are welcome. But perhaps we should close with the manifesto.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Um, I don't know if you have other thoughts that you want to linger on there, but um we could talk forever about the communion table and what is being awakened in us, this ancient remembering, this belovedness, this wholeness, this you are one with all things. There's a poet, she then hearken, and one of the uh poems that she wrote is uh renaming your sorrow is a direct path to God. And I was thinking how that is in fact the work of spirit to rename, to call back those things that have been given other names and say, Oh no, this is the work of the spirit. No, you are one with God, and our sorrow is often how we come back into unity with ourselves and with others.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

That's a beautiful invitation to come home, you know, to come back to yourself of about who you are in God. I think that's her invitation, spirit's invitation. All right, we're gonna close with this. You want to read a line, share a line? Um, this beautiful wisdom passage.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

From the book of wisdom, chapter seven. Within her is a spirit, intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, active, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, sharp, irresistible, beneficent, friendly to all, steadfast, dependable, unperturbed, almighty, all surveying, penetrating all intelligent, pure, and most subtle spirits.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

She is quicker to move than any motion. She is so pure, she pervades and permeates all things.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

She is the breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty, so nothing impure can find its way into her.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

She is a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God's active power and image of all goodness.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Although alone she can do all.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Herself unchanging, she makes all things new.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

She turns people into God's friends and prophets.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

She is indeed more splendid than the sun and outshines all the constellations.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

She deploys her strength from one end of the world to the other, and she governs the whole world for its good. It was our joy to have you listen to our conversation today. If you would like further information or for more content, visit us at expansionisttheology.com.