The Biggest Table

Episode 12 (Andy Root)
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Andrew Camp: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Biggest Table. I am your host, Andrew Camp. In this podcast, we explore the table, food, eating, and hospitality as an arena for experiencing God's love and our love for one another.

And today I'm thrilled to be joined by Andy Root. Andy is the Carrie Olson Baleson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. And lately, his work has centered around the intersection of faith and our secular age, having just completed his six volume series, Ministry in a Secular Age. Although I should note, you said, you mentioned at the beginning this was only going to be three volumes. It turned into six. Um, but no.

But he has also written a number of books and has given lectures and presentations across the country and globe,

And academic communities. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his wife, Kara is a Presbyterian minister, and they have two kids and a dog. And when he's not teaching and writing, he watches a [00:01:00] ton of TV, he says. So thanks for joining me today, Andy. It's a privilege to get to have this conversation with you.

Andy Root: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Camp: Awesome. So, yeah, you did just finish this six volume series. And so I'm going to start by asking a question that's probably unfair, But for our listeners, do you have like a two minute elevator pitch of what this work has centered around?

Andy Root: Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question.

Actually. Um, I you know, I would say Probably people would say what it's been about is a dialogue with Charles Taylor And, um, a couple other thinkers, but mainly Charles Taylor. I, I think that's fair. I also get a little uncomfortable with that because I don't think it's really a, a kind of commentary on Charles Taylor or in any way, but there has been a lot of conversations with, uh, with Charles Taylor's book, A Secular Age and in some of the themes he has, but really what the project's been about is really trying to imagine how it is.

As we sit here in late modernity, um, in the third [00:02:00] decade of the 21st century, how it is that we encounter the presence of a living God and how, uh, faith communities and churches and pastors can have a vision for that and have an imagination for that. That's really what ultimately all six of them are are about.

Andrew Camp: Right. And, you know, you mentioned through Charles Taylor that we're living in this sort of secular three age. You know, where the world is flattened and there is no room, I guess you could say, for the transcendence or the breakthrough. Is that sort of, am I getting that correctly?

Andy Root: Yeah, I think very much so, that, you know, that, that book particularly is, is, um, essentially an argument that says what you think is secular is not really what's secular.

You know, that we usually tend to think what secular means is that fewer and fewer people are going to church. And that may be an empirical fact. I mean, I think we're, we've seen that across, you know, You know, the continent of Europe, and we've seen that obviously in just, well, we've seen it accelerate just in the last few decades here in the States where, uh, [00:03:00] you know, fewer and fewer people are connected to, to faith communities.

But really what he wants to point to is that's not actually really what it means to be living in a secular age. When you live in a secular age, you live in a time where all our forms of belief become quite fragile, and we're aware we could be believing something else, uh, or that we may even, Believe something else a year or two from now, you know, like that all of our beliefs are until further notice and, and this becomes, you know, part of the conditions of what it means, but it also means that having a kind of imagination where there's a living act of God or transcendence is just built into our lives becomes more and more unbelievable to people, not as even a direct rejection, but it just happens, uh, you know, that we live in a society where people can say things like, you know, I'm, I'm taking a break from God for a while and the fact that that's a logical and we're like, Don't think that's the weirdest thing you've ever heard, um, shows that we're in a very different epoch, that this is a very different kind of time, because if you said that in the 14th century, or in the 8th century, or in the 8th century [00:04:00] BC, people would have just been like, what does that even mean?

How, how is that even possible? But we find it very plausible that you could, you could even believe in God and take a break from God, you know, and just decide you're going to live your life without thinking about God much. And that's, that's what it means to live in this kind of secular age.

Andrew Camp: Yeah, no, and that's great, because then there's also this push then for authenticity, where we're trying to discover our true self, which is why we can say we're taking a break from God, because we want to be authentic to our experience of, of life.

Um, but you even mentioned that, you know, that life can't operate in this flattening of reality, that the age of authenticity pushes us to find meaning in all sorts of different activities. Yeah. Which is sort of what your last book, you know, brings together of what different memoirs and people, where they find activities.

Yeah. So, so how is it that then, So even though a deniability of God can be plausible, we still are finding this [00:05:00] bumping up against something for more in life, right? Yeah.

Andy Root: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that, that's the interesting thing about us human creatures. And what I do take from Charles Taylor is that what it means to be a human being is to have to believe in something that, you know, to be a human being, you are a moral believing animal, you know, and so you believe there's some way to live well.

Well, whatever will shape your good life, you, you, you hold to it, you're committed to it, you take, you take faith in, in it. So, um, what's, what's changed for us is we're not so sure you have to have God in that to, you don't have to necessarily believe in God to live well. Um, but we do think you have to deeply live well.

Um, that that's becomes very important. And I think one of the things that happens for us, which is, you know, I think really powerful in our time is that our own selves and the project of our own selves starts to bear that weight of ultimacy for us, you know, so it isn't outside in the rituals or the symbols of, of [00:06:00] a religion or a society that, that creates itself around forms of beliefs and forms of rituals and symbols, but it becomes the kind of internal life of ourselves, you know, so there's a kind of shift to why you, you visit Italy or.

You know, you go to the, um, you go to Jerusalem and visit, you know, some of these old Byzantine churches that are there, you know, and, and you see these really intricate outer spaces. And now for us late moderns, and really it's been the whole of the modern project, we turn the intricate space from what's in the building out there into our own, the kind of textures of our own inner life.

So people then can take a break from God, but they can never take a break from trying to find some. significant thing that they're holding to that, that shapes their, their lives. So in our time, I think particularly the self, um, and being an interesting self, being a, uh, creative self, being a, uh, yeah, a singularly unique self that can win recognition from others and admiration from others becomes a way of infusing your life with purpose and meaning [00:07:00] and, uh, Yeah, in, in some ways shaping your life symbolically and, uh, in a ritualized way, but it becomes very much about how you continue to kind of win in the project of yourself.

Andrew Camp: There's always this push for more and this desire, the accumulation of more resources for the self. Um, and so then what does that then do to, to the Christian faith and how has this infiltrated the church and maybe even wreaked havoc on our faith in this, in this

Andy Root: Yeah, well, I mean, it definitely has, has given us a different ways of thinking about what a human life is.

There's no doubt about that. You know, this, this kind of sense that we're on a project of our, ourself, I think is, is pretty formative to, to how we think about it. But it does, I think, you know, you had mentioned this earlier that we all are authenticity seekers now. That in every way, we're, we're kind of trying to seek an authentic way of being a self, you know, that, that, that finds its way with within the church.

And that's [00:08:00] not all bad in itself, you know, like, and Charles Taylor himself doesn't think that authenticity is a bad pursuit necessarily, but it does make things different. It makes them, you know, radically different. And I think the way that this ultimately filters into the church is, is another concept he uses that I find really informative and helpful is that we just tend to encounter our world through what he says is an imminent frame.

So we presume imminence over transcendence, like the, the kind of. Lens we look at the world through tends to presume more natural and material answers to things Than kind of supernatural ones now what's fascinating about that as you ask most people Do they believe in ghosts or do they believe in spirits or you know?

Do they believe in even you know something after death and they will say they do But it's fascinating how it doesn't really shape people's lives that directly, you know like it's really hard to get late modern middle class people to Commemorate publicly commemorate the death of a loved [00:09:00] one or to remember an uncanny spiritual experience that they have, you know, it's almost like people are willing to tell those stories when they're telling ghost stories, you know, um, one late night with friends, you know, around dessert or something, but it doesn't seem to shape people's lives as directly as it would have if you were say a medieval person or something where if someone in your village had an experience of the transcendent or saw an angel in the woods, uh, you would commemorate that.

You would make a, uh, a kind of ritual, a ritual remembrance, uh, a, some kind of, um, you know, uh, commemoration in stone or something to remember that. And, and we tend not to do that as, as modern people. So these experiences we even have of, of a kind of transcendence as a kind of fullness, um, they get just kind of flattened by imminence.

Andrew Camp: Right, and this is where it gets so tricky, because I don't, if you talk to most pastors, I don't think they would say, they're denying the transcendent, because they're saying, oh, we baptize people, we celebrate the Lord's table. [00:10:00] But it, there, it feels different, and yet you, so how do you push, like, our, how, because it feels like there's a very fine line, like, it's not a neat demarcation that we can make, but there does feel like the loss of transcendence is important.

important. So like, how do you even talk to pastors then? Because I don't think many pastors would acknowledge, would say that, yes, we were denying the transcendence.

Andy Root: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the way I would respond to that is, um, I don't think intellectually or directly any of us or most of us, uh, would, would refuse a kind of transcendent referent, but it is fascinating to think about.

As we lead our churches, what sets the terms for what we think is a good church? Like, what does a good church look like? Or what does good pastoral ministry look like? And it is so easy, I think, inside of this kind of secular age and some other forces that are going [00:11:00] on within it for us to think what a good church is has something to do with what you said earlier.

Like, it has an abundance of resources and a bunch of cultural relevance. And for myself as a pastor, one might think, like, the good pastor is the one who has A significant reach out beyond the world with, you know, uh, with books or, you know, some kind of writings or a podcast or whatever. And uh, what it means to do good ministry, uh, has something to do with these realities.

So I don't think anyone, anyone maybe directly. I don't think anyone under their breath is saying when they, when they do the words of institution over the elements, like, yeah, this is BS. Uh, I, I don't think there's most people that do that, but it is just really quite amazing how easy it is to kind of just let.

Let other goods replace that, or, you know, like what's the purpose, do, does being the person, [00:12:00] person who kind of oversees and gives the sacraments to this community, does that radiate enough meaning to keep you doing this? You know? So the question just becomes, and this is where I think all six volumes have tried to, fruition.

To go, maybe break ground, maybe not, but it's tried to really articulate how is it that us late modern people, where is it, what, what's the shape of how we encounter, uh, what I call divine action or the, the, the act of God in the world. And, um, I think to me that becomes the real challenge of how to keep that as the primary objective of ministry and congregational life.

How do I help these people encounter the presence of a living God? Not like. How do I, how do I build a seawall against all the decline that's out there? Or how do I even look in the mirror when, you know, this church a decade and a half ago had X amount of people and now it has, you know, 15, 20, 30 percent less and.

Why is that my, you [00:13:00] know, how, how do I, how do I not take complete blame for that? You know, and I'm trying to point to these deeper realities that are at play.

Andrew Camp: Right. And yet we're trapped in this resource accumulation mode that to actually break through that and having been in the evangelical world and up until recently, like it's the machine is so hard to stop, um, just because so much depends, you know, my salary was dependent on people's giving, you know, and Um, we think, you know, we set goals and goals are good, but when those goals are number focused, we get lost, it feels at times in, in that we, we lose sight of the ministry that we're called to.

Andy Root: Yeah. Yeah. There's just a deep temptation for everything we do to become instrumentalized, you know, so we even think caring for people, um, walking them through death or a cancer diagnosis, we think like, what do we get out of this? Like, [00:14:00] um. How do we, how do we turn this into more? And what we mean tend to mean by more is like more resources, um, more relevance instead of just the sacredness of what it means to live with these people, what it means to prepare them to die, what it means to, to take them into the scriptures, to, to make them holy.

to commune with God in the midst of these moments. There's just this deep temptation and, and I get, you know, and I guess in a kind of late modern capitalist system, but you know, just really the modern project is that the way you stabilize yourself is through certain kind of logics of escalation. You need to kind of keep escalating things.

They need to, you need to grow things. You need to, you need to get more out of those. And that does have the acidic kind of rebound effect of turning all of our Encounters with people into some kind of, uh, trying to parlay them into some kind of ends and we, we lose the, the beauty and the gift of what it means to really encounter and minister and, and, and live with,

Andrew Camp: you know, and that, so [00:15:00] then I would love to transition then to actually what then faith looks like for you in this project, because you talk that faith becomes.

Um, sort of a lived death experience of Jesus to paraphrase maybe, like in that it's about a death experience. It's about waiting. Um, so what is it about the death experience and waiting that seems important in this secular age?

Andy Root: Yeah, I mean really what goes through all three books is there is a sense of what we need and people will respond, like even your listeners right now will kind of have an aversion to this, but what we need is a kind of disposition of passivity.

Uh, we need to be Put in a place in ministry is inviting people into a place of receiving a particularly receiving a gift that is outside them To them so the whole series kicks off like you were just saying with a real train I mean it really kicks off a conversation about Charles Taylor because I was really confused on how faith was being defined at the practical level [00:16:00] when we kind of thought about Passing on faith, what we meant by that, or even on the measures of, of the state of kind of Protestant faith in America.

It always seemed like the definitions of faith were taken over from sociologists. And that isn't to throw any shade on sociologists, other than to say sociologists, by disciplinary demand, have to count things. So there was always kind of reports on participation. And you can see how this becomes what Taylor is afraid is the wrong definition of the secular, which is fewer and fewer people are participating.

So we know Protestantism is in bad shape in America because we've seen, you know, a 12, 13, 15 percent drop in participation. And like, like I said earlier, that's important. I mean, that's really important and we should learn from that and we should be very thankful for sociologists who have methods who can tell us those things.

But what I was seeing was a one to one correlation of that being what we meant by faith. Like, you know. The state of faith in America, in Protestantism in America, is in bad place because, you know, people used to go to church three times a month, and now [00:17:00] they're going less than two. Isn't that awful?

That's just a really bizarre way of defining faith, and Paul would never define it that way. If, you know, you want to go with Paul, but Paul for sure would not see it that way. And so the, what. Paul thinks faith is something quite radical. He thinks that it is the fact that he no longer lives, but Christ lives in him and the life he lives in the body lives in faith, you know, so that there's this deep sense of, I mean, to use a big philosophical word, there's a deep sense of an ontological participation.

Like you are in the being of Christ and this is the eminent frame at play again. Like we have even the hardest time thinking, what does that mean? Even mean, what would it mean for my being to be in something else? I like, we have nothing that kind of can think about that where maybe more ancient people, more medieval people would have like, that can kind of make sense.

How something, how an infinite and a finite can participate in each other. But for us, that's, that's really hard, but that seems to be where Paul is going. And what does seem to then connect [00:18:00] with us or be able to get us back into that kind of ontological language is that, um, It's our real lived experiences of loss and brokenness.

Um, and when those are confessed and shared in and ministered to human person to human person, there is a spiritual dynamic. And, you know, so I try to draw out the story of Paul and Ananias in Acts nine, and that really it's Paul's confession of his death experience that on the road. to Damascus, he loses everything.

He loses his whole story. Um, and in the midst of kind of that experience of losing your story, that death experience, he finds a new story. And that new story is the very life of Jesus Christ. And that seems to be faith where our very Identities are very senses of, of our own being, um, that we confess that they're, they're in Christ.

We have this kind of transformational experience. And I don't know any other way of talking about this kind of ontological depth for us modern people than to actually talk about. Death, you know, to talk about, and I [00:19:00] mean death in the capital D way, like, you know, you're going to die, but also in this way of just loss and grief and, and, and brokenness and my big kind of overall theological dynamic is that, uh, The way this God acts, this God of Israel, this God made known in Jesus Christ, is that this God takes what is alive, takes what is dead and makes it alive.

This God takes what's dead and makes it alive. And so faith really is this deep sense of turning over our deaths to God, to stop, to be put in a point of passivity. But then to receive something in it, and to receive the most profound thing. That's quite, you know, first and second Corinthians, backwards and foolish.

But that backwards and foolishness is bringing forth of life right out of death, and that this is a God who brings resurrection, a resurrection, um, through a cross, like through the confession of the cross, which is why Paul says, I choose to know only Christ and Him crucified, um, because in, confessing the experiences of the cross, there becomes the dynamic, the [00:20:00] actuality of the encounter of God bringing life out of it, of the community participating in that.

So that's really where I'm kind of going. So waiting becomes a way of being together as persons and attending to God's stories and really attending to our stories of loss and death and turning them over to God.

Andrew Camp: Wow. Yeah. And that passivity, that receiving, um, as I read your work, that's where I was beginning to wonder the space for the table, you know, and one, it starts obviously, you know, every Sunday as we gather around the Lord's table, because we, we receive death, you know, remembering Christ, um, you know, and it's, I have a big thing that, Um, we never take communion.

We always need to receive it. Um, just because I, I think it fights against, you know, just a one word fights against this consumeristic mind for the taking accumulation. Uh, but where does then the the Eucharist or the Lord's Table, then how do you see that operating within this project? [00:21:00]

Andy Root: Yeah, I mean very similar to how you said it just there.

One of the interesting things I think, um, about kind of the work I've done, maybe in relation to others who have worked with Charles Taylor, is I tend to be more of a personalist than a, like, Like taking a liturgical turn, um, you know, there's been other perspectives that have kind of said that the way we respond to this kind of reductive kind of secular age is that we have to return to a kind of liturgies that open us up, that re enchant the world maybe in some ways, or at least, uh, kind of reform us and give us new different visions.

And in, in some ways that's where Charles Taylor would be. I, I am, uh, at the end of the day, my kind of theological spiritual animals, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you know, so, uh, Bonhoeffer's kind of perspective that the concreteness of revelation, the re encounter with God's presence happens with persons in relationship is a central dynamic for me.

So I think the way beyond this, again, is the death experience becomes the [00:22:00] kind of, openness, the event, the receiving of other persons. So Bonhoeffer says this about, you know, he's a good Lutheran and he, he definitely believes that the sacramental dynamics of, of communion, particularly, but also baptism are significant.

But he also reminds us that when we take communion, it's always, um, our brother or sister who gives it to us. It's always a human person who shares it with us. So there is something truly, um, powerful about the elements themselves that, uh, That, that Jesus Christ is real presence is in the bread and the wine under around, uh, beside, um, is there, but there also, you could never, you can never give yourself communion.

Like even when we were in the pandemic, when we took it, um, I mean, it gets a little fuzzy when you're doing it as a recorded service, but we took it together even if we weren't. Together. Like we took it together through, through zoom or whatever. Um, you know, you can't baptize yourself and in the same way, you can't give [00:23:00] yourself the elements.

You know, you, you have to have some way of, like you're saying, receiving it. I think that's a huge piece of it that you have to enter into what Bonhoeffer would say is person structure, a structured reality where persons are present. Um, it's often why in a lot of traditions that the confession of sin happens before the kind of surrendering, the confession of what it means to be a human being happens before it.

So for me, really, even in this kind of more personalist vein, a sacramental dynamic runs throughout. All my work in the sense that I'm really interested and think the church needs to be more focused on the sacramental than the kind of participatory if you will like the the way the sacramental sense of how the divine in the human the infinite and the finite Participate is a much more generative reality to focus on then.

How do we kind of build institutional structures? Not that it's mutually [00:24:00] Exclusive. We still have to think about roof leaks and, and, you know, budgets and things like that. It would be completely naive to not hold to those things, but it's amazing how we get our imaginations sucked in one direction. And so I want a very broad, open kind of sacramental perspective.

So the table itself is. utter importance, but the table always radiates out to how we're sent in the world to care for persons. Um, and so we come and share this meal as a way of sharing in Jesus Christ's death to be, um, renewed to receive, but then go into the world and participate in others. Death experiences become Ananias to Paul in many ways, and we need the table to do that.

And then we bring people back to the table too, as in many ways, you know, Ananias brings Paul back. To the table, um, which is also a risky thing, you know, they're all like, what's this guy who's, we got intel he's here to kill us and now here he is taking this meal and yet [00:25:00] it is a meal that does turn enemies into friends that does, um, because we all share in the being of Christ, they're doing this.

Andrew Camp: So then as we take communion, you know, you, I love it how you said it's, you know, to motivate us or to send us out into the world as ministers, then how does then the table not become a place of re enchantment, but a place of deep relationality, which is, I think, yeah, what you're calling us to is a deeper relationality with each other.

Um, so how then can our home tables, our tables in our neighborhood. Be used as an avenue for this.

Andy Root: Yeah. Well, this is the beauty of the table and that, that the table, um, well, I'll just put it this way. Uh, we have a son, our, our oldest son is now a freshman in college. And so we're discovering in our, in our youngest is a, is a junior in high school.

And, and there's just, maybe this is just us as parents. I don't know if other listeners have this experience, but like [00:26:00] late teenagers, you know, like late high school kids, Getting them to sit down at the table with you is nearly impossible, you know, like, uh, and then we would demand it from, from our son particularly.

And then he would, he'd like, because of the way school was, he would eat before, like he had to eat at like 3. 30 cause he was starving. And then when we would eat at six, he wouldn't be hungry. So then he would sit there and not eat. Um, and so we'd have these like arguments, like you have, first of all, you have to sit down with us and eat.

And then secondly, like, it's really weird for you to watch us eat. Like you need to eat something too. And so I'd always make these speeches on how human civilizations and connections are built towards eating together, you know? Um, but what is really fascinating is how we've lost that. And that makes sense inside of this kind of secular age, unfortunately, is that in such a kind of accelerated time and the other major dialogue, Partner, at least descriptively for me in this, this project is, uh, uh, a German thinker named Hartmont [00:27:00] Rosa.

And he really thinks what it means to be modern is to be in this kind of constant state of speeding up and even trying to stabilize our institutions and our own individual lives by, by going faster, by growing, by, by accelerating and accumulating that, that just seems to be the way that we stabilize ourselves.

And when that happens, um, The table becomes, the table must become efficient. The table no longer becomes a place to linger in personhood, and hear stories, and tell jokes, and, uh, laugh together, and cry together. It becomes a place to get people fed and get people on. Like, you need to eat because, you know, You won't be able to do good work if you're eating, but the point is get through and move on.

So the elementary school my kids went to, they would eat lunch in 20 minutes. It was 20 minutes and this is Minnesota. So during the winter they would, if they wanted to have recess, so if they wanted 15 minute recess, they [00:28:00] had to eat lunch in like 10 minutes and they had to eat lunch with their coat on so that they could then Get out of there.

Right. And I partly understand like getting smaller kids in coats and mittens is awful, but I just, I always thought like, if the French heard we were doing this, they would go crazy. You know, like, uh, the, the kind of cultural sense of what it means to eat and the linger in a meal and to taste and, um, that we've lost that in this kind of sense of acceleration.

So I think there's something incredibly prophetic and profound about a table in the world where we invite persons to be in it. And to hear each other's stories and to tell jokes and to essentially waste time together. Um, which is of course never wasted, but it really is an experience of feeling connected, that a table is an invitation where enemies are made into friends because it becomes non instrumental.

It becomes a place where if you come to my table, you are my friend. And the point of our connection [00:29:00] is to be together, not to. Be something else to close a deal or something like that, you know, and now we kind of feel like every meal really is needs to be a lecture to kids, or it needs to be closing a business deal, or it needs to be something like that, instead of it just being the invitation to linger in each other's being more than having to accomplish something.

Andrew Camp: No, for sure. Are, you know, we. We turn it into the performance, you know, whether in our homes, if hospitality has to look a certain way or dining out becomes a, this meal gets five stars. Yes. Yeah. The experience, you know, and, and I think there is a place for that because I think food and what great chefs are doing is, is just like great art in my opinion.

Um, but it, it, again, it's putting it in its right place versus using it as a means of, of an experience, you know, and seeing it. Yeah. As, as a tool for resonance or transcendence [00:30:00] versus a place where the food becomes transcendent. Yeah. Right.

Andy Root: Yeah. And a good meal with all the art behind it is something only persons can do, you know, like, um, I guess that would be an interesting thing.

Like, do we ever create robots who can become our chefs or do you need a certain human dynamic to really share in a meal? And is that one of. One of our, uh, whether it's fair or not, one of our kind of, uh, kind of pushes away a fast food is that there's not enough humanity in it, you know, that it's, it just is, it, it, it's too fast.

It's too, uh, kind of, uh, you know, assembly line made, and there's not this sense of craft to it, the sense of being in it. So, yeah, I think there's something about food that's really important. And you can see a kind of renewing of people being really interested in food, because I think it is a kind of counter.

Um, yeah, countercurrent to, to this acceleration we feel. [00:31:00]

Andrew Camp: And so then we're, you know, as we're thinking about this personhood and sharing in each other's personhood, um, what I love about Rosa's work, um, is this idea that, you know, this resonance is something we, we long for, but we can never create.

Andy Root: Yeah.

Andrew Camp: And so I think it's something too with faith that we can, we long for these moments with persons and sharing in their personhood, but it's not something we can actually manufacture or share.

Which is really a hard space to sit because it's like, well, then what do I do? Like, just because there's a bad passivity, but then there's the good passivity you're calling us to. So like, how do we embrace this tension then knowing that ultimately we're waiting for something we can't. Yeah,

Andy Root: and this is just the problem of being a modern person, you know, like Modernity in itself is for good reasons actually trying to control the [00:32:00] world, you know, like it's it's it's good It keeps people alive that we can control the temperature in houses with air conditioning or with heat It's great to have roads that can control the travel to get up into the mountains and, you know, to see these beautiful things like these are all good forms of control, but, um, it ends up turning on us and everything becomes instrumentalized again.

And there is something that I think we do know that our most profound transformational experiences are. Almost always like 99. 9 percent of the time uncontrollable. Uh, if you try to control them, especially with human persons, you know, if you think like, okay, this meal, we are going to connect, we're going to come out of this.

This is, they're never going to forget this. Usually it's the exact opposite. Like it just does not. Go that way. But you can, I mean, there's, there's things we can do. We can't control it. You can't, you cannot [00:33:00] manufacture an experience as Rosa calls it of resonance. It's, it is uncontrollable. That's one of its major dynamics.

But you can create semi controlled experiences. And that's what the table is. That if we have good food, if that, if we have a kind of attentiveness to one another, if we can have conversation, um, there's a possibility That maybe the conditions will be right for the kind of connection that brings resonance.

But if you say, it's got to happen, and we're not leaving this table until everyone has an experience of resonance, you'll never get it. There's got to be freedom in the midst of it. There's got to be a kind of openness. But we do, we can't know having Kids eat lunch with their jackets on and telling them they have eight minutes to eat their lunch.

If they want to have the resonance of going outside and playing for 15 minutes, you can almost guarantee that will never be an experience of residence. You know, that will never, ever happen. So if we want that, then we have to create these spaces where there's time, where [00:34:00] there's maybe good food, where the smell, where the light is a certain way.

Um, and then we have to have the humility, um, in, in some sense, a holy apathy to be like, well, does this mean we'll get it? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe it, maybe it will, maybe it not, but we know for sure it will never happen if we're saying keep your jacket on, you know, eat, open it up out of this package, uh, eat it, you have 30 seconds to eat that, and, and one minute to eat that, and, and, and then we're gonna push you through.

It will never happen. So there is an invitation of, of, of, Putting ourselves in a posture of receiving resonance, but that's all we can really do. But that is spiritual formation in itself, you know, is to invite people into a posture. And I really like Rosa because I, I, you know, working from a certain theological tradition, that's trying to remind us that God is God.

We cannot control God. The pastor can never promise with a sermon, um, with any kind of part, part of congregational life that they know that, you know, she could [00:35:00] promise God will show up now. Um, no, if, then you're not talking about God, you're talking about some religious product you're, you're trying to sell.

Um, God is God. And what we can do, however, in what the classic, Christian practices and forms of prayer and reading Scripture teach us to do is to put ourselves into a posture of attentiveness to how this God acts and moves and to wait for it. And I think that's, that's what happens at a table too, you know, with a family or with friends is just to set the conditions to wait for it.

But you will never get the friendship if you're like, after this meal, we're all going to be good friends. We're going to be best friends. You almost guarantee that. People are going to be like, that, that dude is very controlling and, uh, let's, let's not, let's not have dinner with that person again, you know?

Andrew Camp: No, for sure. But they're, yeah, like, and that's where, you know, I think I feel the weight as somebody who has been a pastor or, you know, even with a small group, like you want these experiences to [00:36:00] be. formative. And so you have expectations and then you, you know, like, and so you can't be a human without expectations.

It feels like, and so how, you know, to, to, as we think about being spiritual and meeting and connecting and longing for this God who wants to invade our lives, like to just tell people to wait feels really hard, you know, because, because people want, like they're after the next experience. It's like, you know, it's, it's that fear that they're going to go find it elsewhere.

If we don't give them the good.

Andy Root: Yes, absolutely. And I do tell people, like, when I tell you the answer to a lot of this is to wait and to wait on God, though I do want to remind them, like, the church starts, we think the church starts in Acts 2. Like, that's what we think. That's the Pentecost experience. And we particularly, as late modern people, love to wait on God.

The text, the, the verse in, in that text of Pentecost, where it says, and thousands were added [00:37:00] to their number, like, that just feels delicious to us, but that's really not the first command. That's not really where the church starts. The church starts in the command of Jesus to the men on the road to Arimaeus to return to Jerusalem and to wait.

The first command is to wait. Um, Now, as late modern people, especially those of us who've lived in a consumer society, we're told that waiting is the worst thing ever. You know, like in many ways, what our economy tries to do, and particularly our consumer part of our economy is to take all the waiting out of wanting, you know, so your Amazon droid is coming, coming soon to drop off, you know, your, your, uh, drop off your, your, your package.

If we can get that time down, you know, that's, that's. All the better. Um, so I understand there are there and there is negative waiting, wait there. Some waiting just is really awful. I just got a, uh, update on my watch for, uh, a different apple watch. And for some dumb reason, I told the guy to pair my [00:38:00] watch in the stories.

Like, do you want to? Have it paired now or do you want to take it home? So let's pair it now. And so getting on the Apple Store Wi Fi, they had to do a software update, and it was the most excruciating wait ever, as watching the, the bar of the download, and it was a busy store, and the bandwidth was all eaten up, and then I was like 30 percent in, and I'm like, do I abort this, or do I stick with it, and then I'm 70 percent in.

It was awful. There was nothing spiritual, there was nothing humanizing about this kind of waiting. Waiting for a software update is just brutal. There's no resonance in it. Um, but that's not the waiting. I think we're after the kind of waiting we're after is really a lot like what you're trying to do with the table, which is to come into eat and to laugh and to be, to be together, um, and.

To live together in this way. And so I think the waiting is really to stop thinking again, we have to parlay this into something like the point of us eating together is because if we [00:39:00] eat together, then this will become a membership program. And then we'll be able to be able to build a kind of laddered tiered, uh, uh, pyramid system out of this.

And so that's where we got to do this because then look at, we'll be able to get all these returns. No, there's a goods in just being together and laughing. Um, and. Just seeing each other's humanity and, uh, that, that, that's enough in many ways.

Andrew Camp: Wow. That's no, that's beautiful and it's hard and it's so hard.

So how, as you've written these six volumes, like how has your faith then changed, you know, what does faith then look like for you now? Yeah,

Andy Root: yeah, well, I mean at its most direct. It's it is really living in a small community like this you know, my my wife is a Presbyterian pastor and in a small city church in South Minneapolis and I mean in some ways these books have To [00:40:00] be a slightly reductive.

These books have been a way of Really articulating and justifying the ministry she does, and it is not, I always get kind of uncomfortable telling people about that because then they're like, Oh, there's so much church tourism. People are like, Oh, I'd love to come check this church out when I'm in Minneapolis.

And you're like, if you come and check it out, you will be so unimpressed. I mean, it is just a little community. I've just ordinary people and you really could never understand the depth of it until you were in it for six months or for a year, you're not going to go away and be like, wow, that was so different.

But there is a sense of what it means to inhabit a certain kind of way of being. And to really be with each other around experiences of death and yearnings and loss and, uh, what it means to try to reach for resonance and connection and not kind of acceleration. So it's watching that has been [00:41:00] deeply, deeply transformational.

And I think it's also been really transformational to think about, especially the last two volumes of the book, about how the kind of performance of the self is such a. Tantalizing temptation in our time, you know, so it's really, it's, it's a really, um, well, it's, it's a hard, uh, it's a thread, the needle of like being on your podcast or being on any podcast or writing a book and hoping people read it and not be kind of on social media talking about myself all the time or trying to win people's attention, um, and knowing that that's really spiritually, um, Acidic like how to think of how do I honor these books and give them a chance to live?

But how do how do I continue to remember daily that this is not about me like this? This is me offering this back. This is not about myself Obviously me I'm in it like, you know, you can't you can't [00:42:00] disconnect my humanity from these books But the point is really to try to encourage people to seek for Christ in him crucified and not think You That I'm super clever.

Um, and so, you know, like, how do you do that in a publishing world with, like, you've got to have a social media, you know, um, platform. You gotta have a, you have to have a growing social media impact and not be, you know, like, out there saying, this is what I'm eating for lunch. And, oh, I had this really interesting experience.

And this person emailed me and told me I was super cool and loved my book. Like, how do you, like the humble brag, how do you avoid that? And, um, so it's made me more aware of those realities and how to kind of. Confess those vulnerabilities and live in those.

Andrew Camp: Thank you for sharing that. Um, as we begin to wrap up, it's a question I'd love asking.

Um, and you've sort of hinted at it, but I'd love to hear a summary. As you think then about the church and look at the church, um, let's stick with America, right? Because that's what we know. What's the story you would love the church to tell? [00:43:00]

Andy Root: Yeah, that is a really great question. Um, well, I, I would, I would answer it two ways.

Um, when it comes to the leaders of the church, uh, what I would want, the story I want pastors particularly to tell themselves is that this, it's a little bit of a, a goodwill hunting, which is one of my favorite movies, um, is a little bit, it's not your fault and that isn't, it's not your fault. to get you off the hook and even to justify kind of real lazy or uninspired ministry.

But it is to say there are huge cultural currents that have shifted here. And so you can't think that I think a lot of us were told, especially coming out of conservative Protestantism in the 90s or whatever, like we were going to save the church. We were the hope. And then it's been really hard. Three decades, you know, of the 21st century.

And it's [00:44:00] really easy to feel like it's my fault. Like I wasn't creative enough. Like I, I blew it. Look at those other people who are making such a bigger impact and I, and I want to release pastors from that. And I also want them to, and I guess there's a little bit of a judgment here is like to repoint them to the absolute depth and beauty of ministry, um, to not think that there's something more profound than ministry itself, that walking with people as they live and as they die.

It's just. you know, use the, the, the kind of perspective of this podcast to set the table for people, um, both literally and figuratively is an incredible privilege and is an amazing thing. And that ministry seems utterly powerless, you know, per. Compared to other forms of human action, like law or entrepreneurship or politics or, you know, celebrity, all those forms of human action seem more powerful, but it just could be in its absurdity that [00:45:00] ministry is the most powerful form of human action.

It looks weak. It will always need to be weak, but it's the only form of human action that participates in. death and has life come out of it. Um, that that's a profound form of action, that life comes out of death in this form of action. So I want to encourage the leaders, both lay leaders and kind of pastoral leaders, that there's something utterly beautiful in the practice of ministry.

And so the story I want the church to live out of is that in this moment, the crisis we face is not the crisis of decline. We. We're in a, we're in a tough moment, there's no doubt about it. Um, that, but it's not, that's not the story that should keep us up at night. Um, the story or the crisis that should keep us up at night is how do we create space, sit at a table together again, and be able to listen for, um, the speaking of a living God?

How, how do we form communities that are attentive in, in a [00:46:00] posture to hear God speak again, God move again. Um, and how do we become aware of that? Because I think this God is acting and moving. Um, how do we do that? And how do we, so then how do we live in the crisis of a God who is God that we cannot control?

That's a story that should keep us up at night, keep us wondering, keep us wrestling with, not the story of we don't have enough. How do we get more? How do we parlay this into more gains? Um, yeah. Again, it's not being naive. Some of that stuff really matters, but I do not think we'll be able to get to a point of even stabilizing our institutional structures until we have a kind of opening up to a deeper theological realities.

And. I think, I don't think one can feed the other. In other words, I do not think being concerned just about the crisis of decline and the crisis of lost resources will ever get us to the depth of theology we need to get to, but maybe really [00:47:00] attentively asking the question, where is Jesus Christ? How are we faithful to Jesus Christ?

How do we live out of this story will put us in a position, um, That the church institutionally will be okay, um, but we, we go the other direction all the time. I think

Andrew Camp: there's so much that you just said there. That's probably worthy of unpacking, but we'll leave it there, uh, just because I think it is a great, um, last, yeah, a challenge and, and an inspiration to all of us.

Um, and so as we end to a few fun questions, just to change the mood a little bit, that was a, that was a heavy moment, a beautiful moment. Um, What's one food you refuse to eat?

Andy Root: Ooh, that is a really, uh, good question. Um, what I refuse to eat is, um, like, this is more information than anyone on here wants to know.

I refuse to eat, like, a, uh, curry. And, like, um, [00:48:00] really, Indian food, not because I don't like it, but because it, uh, doesn't sit well with my Northern European system and it becomes a few days of problems. Let's just say that, let's just say that I taught somebody took me, uh, To, to eat some great Indian food right before I taught an intensive class and for the next few days that we took a lot of breaks.

Is that more information? Yeah. You can edit that out. If that's just disgusting. Hey,

Andrew Camp: no, I appreciate it. That's, that's what this podcast, Hey, we're setting the table, you know, or,

Andy Root: or needing to leave the table as it was. Yeah. Right.

Andrew Camp: And so then what's the best thing you've ever eaten?

Andy Root: Mm. So one of the best things IEII ever had was in a restaurant in Rome, and it was like this pasta dish, um, with this incredible sauce and I, I like dreamt of it for, for months.

And then, uh, got to take my family back there and [00:49:00] went to this restaurant, had the same dish. I still found it to be amazing and. Everyone else in my family was like, eh, it's okay. And I was just, I was just gutted by that. I just couldn't believe it. So yeah, the best thing I've ever had is this, uh, yeah, this pasta dish in, in Rome.

Andrew Camp: Nice. And then finally, there's a conversation amongst chefs about last meals, as in like, if you knew you had one last meal to enjoy, what would it be? So if you, if you knew you had one last meal. Do you know what you would have?

Andy Root: Yeah, I think I would have like, is this like in a kind of dark situation? Like, uh, that's my like death death row.

Last last meal. I throw last meal. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Camp: Okay. But from a Christian perspective, we can say you're going to meet

Andy Root: Jesus, you know? Okay. Okay. All right. Um, I think I'd have surf and turf, like a really good steak, maybe with a lobster tail or something. Um, yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Andrew Camp: Please tell me it's not a [00:50:00] filet that you're going to have.

Um,

Andy Root: I don't know. It depends on how it's made. I think. I don't know. You're opposed to a filet.

Andrew Camp: I, I, I, I think fat is flavor. So I, I'm, I'm a New York state guy. So like, if I'm going to a steakhouse, I'm going that route versus.

Andy Root: I would probably, I would like to do it like a porterhouse. That would be. Okay.

That's fair. And you get a little filet with it, but you get, you know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We can still be friends. Okay. I took the, the political in between answer. That's fair. Yeah.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time, Andy, to do this with me. Um, it's been a rich conversation. Um, if people want to learn more about your work, is there a place, um, they can find you?

Andy Root: Yeah, I mean, they can just go online and, uh, you'll find me there, but I have a website that's just andrewroot. org, which don't ask me why it's a dot O R G, but it is. Um, I'm not an organization, but, you know, [00:51:00] maybe in my own mind I am. So you can find me there and, uh, Yeah, I'm also on that, uh, that terrible cesspool called Axe or Twitter, but, uh, I rarely do anything on there other than follow people who are tweeting about my hockey team.

So, yeah. What's

Andrew Camp: your hockey team?

Andy Root: The Minnesota Wild.

Andrew Camp: Okay. That's fair. And what TV show? You said you watch a lot of TV. Any, any good TV shows?

Andy Root: What are we watching right now? So we're watching, um, constellation that's on like three episodes in on Apple TV. Plus it's a little kind of like sci fi space movie or space TV show.

That's pretty good that we'll see if it stays good. Um, but we're, we're watching that and we did just finish true detective, the, the, uh, most recent. Jody foster season of true detective, which, um, we need a whole other podcast to talk about what I thought about the finale. So,

Andrew Camp: yeah, [00:52:00] thanks for joining us today on this episode of the biggest table, where we explore what it means to be transformed by God's love around the table and through food until next time.

Bye.