What If It Costs Us?--November 18, 2025

What If It Costs Us?--November 18, 2025

[Jesus said:] "You will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” (Luke 21:16-19)

These words of Jesus were never merely hypothetical.  And the risks of following Jesus didn't end with the Roman Empire.  The question put to us by this passage from Luke's Gospel, which many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, is the same question Jesus asks of us today: Will you still share in my way of life if it costs you everything?

And in all honesty, I'm not sure many of us have really wrestled with that question as though it were a real possibility.  In the United States, at least, a good many folks tend to equate Christianity with being a model citizen--you could never be looked down on, hated, or disowned for being a Respectable Religious, person, right?  We tend to assume that physical injury, imprisonment, or even death were only dangers of the era of the Roman Coliseum, when they fed Christians to lions for sport or the Emperor blamed Christians for the fire that burned parts of Rome.  Or we make persecution seem far off and exotic--something that only happens in distant countries with official policies of atheism or communism.

But that's not the way Jesus talks here.  You don't get the impression that there's an expiration date for his warning, or fine print with an asterisk that says, "Danger only lasts until the end of 1st century AD" or "Residents of North America exempt from risk."  Jesus seems to be preparing any of us, and potentially all of us, to meet with the hostility of the world because we are committed not only to naming the name of Jesus but walking the way of Jesus.  We should at least be honest, too, that over the centuries, Christians have been jailed, tortured, or put to death not only for confessing the name of Jesus, but for taking the kind of stands that came with such a confession.

In the book of Acts, for example, when the Christian community was just beginning, the trouble we often got into came with charges like "disturbing the peace" or "inciting riots" even when we were not being violent, but rather absorbing the blows of others in the crowds who were being violent.  Or sometimes we were accused of threatening the local economy--there's a curious scene in Acts where Christians get into trouble because their teaching threatens the business of local silversmiths who make idols of the goddess Artemis.  At other times, we were accused of being subversive and treasonous because we wouldn't burn incense in honor of the Emperor or confess "Caesar is Lord." Nobody charged those first disciples with "being Christian"--rather, they found other charges to bring against us that grew out of our commitment to Christ.

Or, in a much more recent century, you likely know the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was a Lutheran pastor in German in the 1920s and 1930s, and eventually (but too late, he would admit) resisted the rise of the Third Reich.  His most famous words begin, "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists; and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist...." and then continue on about his hesitancy to speak up for the trade unionists or the Jews, because he was neither of those.  Finally, he writes, "Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."  Niemoller regrets that he should have spoken up for others who were being mistreated, arrested, and made to disappear, and he sees in hindsight that he should have done so precisely because of his faith in Christ.  That is to say, his lament is not, "They came for me eventually because I am a Christian," but rather, "Because I am a Christian, I should have been speaking out for the well-being of others, even those who do not share my faith as a Christian."  The way of Jesus--the eternal perspective that Jesus gives to our vision--should have prompted him to speak up.  But he did not. 

Part of the horror of Martin Niemoller's witness is that he lived in a nation that proudly claimed to be "Christian," and maybe that is part of what made it so difficult even for pastors like him to realize that his own Christian faith should have led him to care for those who were being grabbed off the street and loaded into vehicles, never to be seen again. It is hard to come to the conclusion that just because you live in a society that publicly names the name of Jesus, it does not mean that such a society is in tune with the character of way of Jesus.  It is sadly quite possible that a community or a country can talk the right religious talk but negate its words by actions that run counter to the character of Christ. Looking back, Neimoller had become aware that his faith in Jesus should have led him to advocate for others, but he did not make that connection until it was too late.  Of course, the hope of his well-known quotation is that we might learn from his example and not wait until it is too late.  We who have memorized the "First they came for..." poem are meant to let those words challenge us not to miss the times when our faith in Jesus leads us to speak up, to show up, or to act up for the sake of others who are being harmed, harassed, or dehumanized. These are not hypotheticals. These are questions for this day.

Maybe even the era of 1930s Germany seems too far and remote for us.  Maybe even that era seems too much "a long time ago in a land far, far away." But then we are hit with the witness, just last week, of seven or more pastors and other faith leaders who were thrown to the ground, zip-tied, and arrested in Chicago for praying and speaking up against the mistreatment of those who have been detained recently in immigration raids in their area.  These pastors, from a range of denominations including Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Baptists, as well as other people of other faiths, went to pray, to speak, and to witness, just last Friday--and they still have the bruises on their bodies from being there.  They were trying, as well as they knew how, to take seriously both the words of Martin Niemoller, and the challenge of Jesus in these words from Luke's Gospel.  They were trying their best not to make the same mistake Niemoller came to regret--of failing to speak up until it was too late.  And like the stories of the first Christians in the book of Acts, they knew that the charges against them would make them sound like they were dangerous subversives or violent criminals; they would be accused of being "violent rioters" or "disturbing the peace," just like in the first century church.  All of this is to say that the question of following Jesus even when it costs us our reputations, our families, or our physical safety is not a moot point in the 21st century.  There are fellow disciples of Jesus whose faith is leading them to pay those prices right now.  It is worth us taking time on our own to ask what we will do if we are led to speak up in similar ways for those who are most in danger right now.  It is worth our asking what counsel Pastor Niemoller would give you and me in our place and time today.

If our faith in Jesus is more than a brand-name we wear for status, we will have to take seriously Jesus' warning that following him will cost us--perhaps the support of our family, maybe our reputations as upstanding respectable citizens, and possibly even our bodies. The news of the last week reminds us it is still true, not far from where we live. Will we let that faith lead us to speak up and show up for others who are suffering, or will we find ourselves looking back too late, wishing that we had only been brave enough earlier?  Or maybe, beneath those questions is a deeper one: do we dare to believe, as Jesus promises here in today's verses, that even when we suffer because of following Jesus, that he will preserve our lives and help us to endure?

May God give us the courage and strength to dare such a witness, and not find ourselves one day looking back wishing we had been brave.

Lord Jesus, give us the confidence to go where you lead us, to speak what you give us to speak, and to risk our well-being in ways that flow from your character and love for all.

Before You Give Up--November 17, 2025

Before You Give Up--November 17, 2025

[Jesus said:] "...they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your mind not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to contradict." (Luke 21:12-15)

I am tired of the constant deluge of meanness around. No, not just tired--I am wearied by it. I am wearied, some days almost to the point of exhaustion, just of the dissonant chorus of voices that runs, non-stop, like a grating hum in the background all the time, selling a vision of a way of life that runs counter to the way of Jesus.

It is a constant angry babbling, and it is punctuated by bursts of hatred, of self-centeredness, of endless avarice, and of arrogant bragging.

It is the noise of the unending news cycle, reminding me how to keep track of the days by where the latest mass shooting was in our own country, how long wars have been grinding on in far-away places, and how many people have been unable to feed their families.

It is the din of pundits and politicians on the radio and TV, tying themselves up in knots as they bend over backwards to say the opposite of the thing they said yesterday, and telling us to forget that we ever heard anything different.

It is the dull roar of angry voices demonizing whatever group of people they see as "the other," and casting "those people" as the enemy.

It is the unnerving shouting of TV preachers and Respectable Religious folks posturing for attention and clamoring for positions of prestige and influence, but sounding less and less like the message of Jesus of Nazareth the more they talk.

I don't know about you, but that constant racket of noise in the background of life sometimes feels overwhelming, and I am just about exhausted by it. I am no longer surprised by it, but it still wearies me. And sometimes it is just so tempting to turn it all off and look away--to ignore the news reports of body counts, or to just give caring about the shouting-matches between the talking heads with a nihilistic shrug to say, "It doesn't matter who wins today's argument anyway, because they'll be back at it again tomorrow." It is tempting, too, to feel like our only options in response to all that noise are either to shout even more loudly and angrily, or to give into apathy and say nothing.

Sometimes, we can even feel like the question forming on our lips is a defeated, "In the face of all this, what's the point of even trying?" And maybe we struggle to come up with a solid answer to that unspoken question.

And yet, over against that daily babel sound, there is this whisper of a voice that says to us--to you and to me--"You are my witnesses in the midst of this. I will give you words. I am here with you now." It is the voice of Jesus, who has promised to give us wisdom to share when it feels like the world around us has lost its mind, and an authentic word to speak when it feels like the world around us has sold its soul.

I am reminded by these words of Jesus from late in the Gospel of Luke, words many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, that Jesus' promise to be among us now is not merely a sentimental thing, or a warm and fuzzy feeling. Jesus promises to be with us right here and now because he knows we'll need it. We'll need it to keep our sanity in times that feel deeply troubled, and we'll need it to speak a different message--what the book of Hebrews calls "a better word"--than the angry and anxious and fearful cacophony around us. Jesus' promises to be with us to give us words, because he has appointed us to be witnesses to another way--his way.

Jesus reminds his followers, even in the late days of his earthly ministry, that he is commissioning us to be a sort of counter-cultural witness. We will be the minority report that can both tell the emperor when he is wearing no clothes and also can speak of the amazing grace of God that clothes us in the righteousness of Christ. We will be the voices who say a firm but loving "No!" to the transactional thinking of the world's powerful, in which everything is reducible to "I do X for you, and you do Y for me in return," and who speak instead about God's economy of grace. We will be ones who risk being rejected, who risk being called "losers," who risk getting lumped in and thrown to the ground with whatever group is being cast as "the other." This is what Jesus calls his followers to do and to be--in other words, we are called to be an alternative to the endless noise in the background from all those other sources.

And to do that, Jesus has promised to be with us--in order that he can whisper to us a different message than the yelling and posturing on our screens and speakers. Honestly, we need nothing less than his presence, because without him, we will just fall back into the same fearful and selfish shouting of everybody else. We are good at that by nature. But Jesus enables us to be an alternative.

Today, we are given a calling--we do not have permission simply to stick our heads in the sand, nor do we have authorization to answer immature and petty yelling with more of the same. We are called to speak the good news that there is an alternative to the wearying flood of the world's messages, and we are called to listen for Jesus (rather than our own inventions of what we would like Jesus to have said) to know what the alternative is.

Before you give up, just pause. Just hold on for a moment. Don't throw the radio or tv or your smart phone against a wall when the voices that drive you crazy are at it again. Listen, but over their noise, listen for the whisper of Jesus who, like the Creator in the beginning, speaks a word that makes new worlds come into existence. Listen for Jesus, who will give us a wisdom to answer the noise of this moment.

And dare trust that he will speak.

Speak, Lord Jesus, your wisdom to answer the nonsense of the day and times in which we live, and give us the grace to be your witnesses and your counter-cultural option for the world which you yet love. Touch our ears to hear you whisper.

A God Who Doesn't Need Defending--November 14, 2025

A God Who Doesn't Need Defending--November 14, 2025

"I call upon you, O God, for you will answer me;
    incline your ear to me; hear my words.
 Wondrously show your steadfast love,

    O savior of those who seek refuge

    from their adversaries at your right hand.

 Guard me as the apple of the eye;

     hide me in the shadow of your wings,

 from the wicked who despoil me,

    my deadly enemies who surround me." (Psalm 17:6-9)

God never needs our protection; we are the ones who constantly need God's.

Maybe that seems obvious--I would hope so, honestly.  But truth be told, sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks get the orientation of our faith all backwards and convince ourselves it's up to us to "defend" or "protect" or "fight" for God somehow, when in actuality that suggests a pretty weak deity. A god who has to be defended by devotees isn't worth worshiping, and a religion that needs people in positions of power in order to "save" it in some sort of culture war is hardly worth giving your life to.  The living God turns the tables on that perspective, by instead always being our refuge and never needing to hide behind us for shelter.

Again, I would hope that this much is already pretty clear, just from a cursory surface-level reading of the Scriptures.  That old cliche is right on the money: you defend God like you defend a lion--you just get out of the way.  And that certainly seems to be the picture here in these verses from Psalm 17, which many would have heard read this past Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary.  The invitation throughout the Scriptures, and especially in prayers like this one from the psalms, is always for us to find shelter in the strength of God, and for us to rest in God as our refuge.  It is never the case that God needs our firepower, fury, or ferocity to keep God safe from outside threats.

And yet, I've got to admit, for just about as long as I can remember, and I expect for longer before that, too, there's always been a chorus out there somewhere of religious voices, tv and radio preachers, and parachurch pundits, who always seem to be afraid of God being defeated by enemies or of Christianity being overwhelmed by external boogeymen.  In my lifetime alone, we have lived through the fears (which they have often helped to stoke) of "-isms" like Communism and Marxism, of quasi-spiritual movements like "New Age" or whatever the latest trend was, and of academic entities like universities, modern science, and philosophy. I've heard accusations aimed at institutions like the United Nations, public schools, and local libraries. We have lived through sermons that were both fiery and fearful labeling everyone from foreign nations, opposition political parties, or even other branches of the Christian faith all as dangerous enemies of God.  And over and over again, I know I at least have heard lots of loud and anxious voices trying to rile up church folks to "save Christianity," to "fight for God," or to "defend the Gospel," quite often by prodding us to push for more political power, elect a particular party or candidate, or leverage our influence in order to fend off whatever the Threat Du Jour happened to be.  I suspect you have heard them too. 

And what hits my ears, every time I hear one of those voices talking about how Christianity needs help from people in power in order for it to be "saved" or how we need people to "fight for God," is how weak and empty those sentiments make God out to be.  I am left with the impression of a god that is a needy pet or a fragile piece of porcelain--in other words, an idol.  The real and living God does not need our help in fighting off enemies--after all, ours is the God who simultaneously protects us in the face of those we feel are enemies while also calling us to love those same enemies.  But at no point is God dependent on our help or our power.

When we are clear on that, we can pray with the poet here in the psalm: we can truly and confidently ask for shelter in the "shadow of God's wings" like we are baby chicks held within Mama Hen's downy presence.   We can ask--and believe that we can rely on God when we do--for God to be our refuge, as well as for God to be the refuge of all who have been forced to flee from their former homes and places of safety.  We can count on God to guard us like the ramparts of a fortress that absorb the incoming fire of the enemy's arrows.  After all, that is exactly what the cross is all about, isn't it?  There at the cross, God in Christ chooses to absorb every last attack, to take the hit for us, to bear the blows and beatings, all the way to death, in order to provide refuge for a world full of people desperate for protection?  The Crucified Christ doesn't call out for his followers to rally together to protect him or to defend him from the hostile forces of the Romans or the angry mob. He doesn't summon his disciples to form an army to keep him safe. Just the opposite--in the Passion stories, Jesus is the One putting his own body between the danger and his disciples.  He is the One telling the soldiers and temple police, "I am the one you are looking for, so let these men go." Jesus is the One who offers protection for his beloved; he does not need them to keep him out of danger or pain.  That's the One in whom we put our trust.

All of that gives us to reasons to breathe out in relief and peace: for one, it means it's not up to us to have to defend Christianity, protect God, or some other such culture war nonsense.  And second, it means we really can rely on this God--who doesn't need defending--to be our guard, our refuge, and our shelter, because the living God never needs our protection in the first place.

O God, be our shelter, and free us from the illusion of thinking we ever had to defend you.

Spotting the Fool's Gold--November 13, 2025

Spotting the Fool's Gold--November 13, 2025

"Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction.  He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-5)

At some point, I bet you learned about pyrite.

Maybe it was your eighth-grade geology class, or chemistry in high school.  Maybe you were one of those kids who had a rock collection or who got a science lab kit for Christmas one year.  Maybe you spotted some of the stuff out in the real world somewhere and thought you had struck it rich--only to discover that in actuality, you had fallen for fool's gold.

That's the more common name for pyrite, the mineral also known as iron sulfide. The presence of sulfur (yep, literal brimstone) makes it shine with a yellowish metallic luster, and plenty of people over the ages have been duped by its appearance into believing they have real gold, when in truth they have a much less valuable rock.  If your only criteria are, "Is it shiny and yellow?" you are setting yourself up to be disappointed.  There is a reason that Shakespeare gave us the line, "All that glitters is not gold."  The Bard knew in his day what is still true today: it is easy to fall for counterfeits and to be fooled by fakes.  And it requires a sharper, keener kind of vision to be able to know whether you are looking at the genuine article or a ginned up fraud.

Believe it or not, the early church wrestled with a similar concern when it came to the coming of Christ.  As we saw in yesterday's devotion, reflecting on a passage which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, there was some worry among the church in Thessalonica that maybe they had missed Christ's coming in glory.  And the response in this letter was, "You didn't miss him!  Don't let anybody make you worry that you missed out on Christ's coming or the Day of the Lord--you won't be able to miss them!"  Well, that must have been something of a sigh of relief for that congregation... but there's more to be said.  The apostle continues, warning that they do still need to keep their eyes open for counterfeits, frauds, and fakers who will try and convince the world that they are the Real McCoy, but are in fact pretenders.

In particular, these verses describe a figure referred to as "the lawless one," who "opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God."  Now, on the one hand, that sounds like some pretty exceptional idolatry, the sort of thing that would stand out in unique ways.  But really, over the centuries prior to the New Testament era, there had been a whole host of empires, kings, and regimes that put themselves in the place of God or demanded worship as divine.  In ancient Israel's own history, there were the Assyrians and Babylonians who had conquered the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah and whose kings claimed divine status and demanded worship of their own likenesses in statue form. Then there were the Greeks, including a particularly nasty ruler named Antiochus IV, who called himself "Epiphanes," which meant something like "the god made manifest" and who set up a shrine to the Greek god Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple, on which he sacrificed a pig (an unclean animal by the Torah's commandments, making this an especially egregious act).  And by the time of the Roman Empire, you had Caesar Augustus calling himself both divine and "savior" and the beginnings of a tradition of emperors demanding worship and incense to be burned as an act of devotion in their honor.  In other words, by the time the letter we call Second Thessalonians was written, there had already been a long line of rulers and demagogues who put themselves in the place of God (or gods) and claiming to be divine.  This notion was old hat.

So when the writer of 2 Thessalonians warns of a "lawless one" doing this same thing, I don't think it's meant like some esoteric Nostradamus-type prediction of a single specific person who is fated to come on the scene as some wholly new and original malevolent force.  I think it is a warning that this same pattern, in which evil tries to pass itself off as good like a cheap knock-off, will keep repeating itself until Christ's coming, and the Christian community needs to be prepared to spot a fake whenever it appears and to call it out as a fraud when that happens.  In other words, we are called to be able to tell the difference between the real precious metal and the fool's gold of pyrite, and not to fall for the frauds.

This is important for us to be clear about, for starters, because sometimes Christians have gotten particularly hung up on identifying a singularly diabolical figure, sometimes given the title "Antichrist," to be on the lookout for, as though there's only one dangerous counterfeit out there. Sometimes that line of thought has led Christians to focus so exclusively on an expected super-wicked evil figure that we fail to speak up against ordinary evils or dismiss lesser frauds as unimportant just because they're not "The Big Bad," so to speak. You end up with church folk debating whether the antichrist is Hitler or Stalin, or whether to look for a charismatic but insidious leader in Europe or in Asia or in America, rather than being able to speak up against any and all instances where popular leaders invite people to worship them unquestioningly. We forget that the one place in the Bible that uses the word "antichrist" (the letter we call First John) actually refers to "many antichrists" who had "already come" by the time it was written (see 1 John 2:18) in the first century!  

In other words, the New Testament isn't trying to narrow our focus to just a singular evil leader on the world stage (even though an awful lot of religious fiction has made it seem like that's all we need to worry about), but rather to keep our eyes open to recognize the pyrite pretenders who want to put themselves in the place of God wherever they might turn up.  The Scriptures are teaching us to spot the counterfeits so we don't fall for them, whether they come wearing Caesar's diadem marching in an imperial parade or a suit and tie shouting from a podium, and so that we continue to give our allegiance solely to our true Lord, the One whose throne is a cross and whose crown is made of thorns.

Taking these verses from Second Thessalonians seriously, then, will mean that we are prepared to call "Baloney!" on any figure, from political leaders to cultural icons to tycoons of business and technology, who calls for our unquestioned devotion or casts themselves as savior.  It's not just that we are supposed to be on the lookout for one bad actor who will turn out to be "The Antichrist," but rather than we be courageous enough to speak up against any powerful voices that run counter to the way of Christ--the way of enemy-love, the way of mercy and justice, the way of lifting up the lowly, the way of serving and self-giving love, and the way of the cross.  Any voice--past, present, or future--who tries to get us to shout "Me and My Group First" or to value money and power over love of neighbor is speaking contrary to the way of Jesus; that is to say, such voices are anti-Christ. We are called to recognize them as counterfeits that might be shiny, but are not genuine gold.

The best way, of course, to get better at recognizing a fake is to become more familiar with the genuine article.  You learn how to recognize fool's gold by knowing how it is different from real gold, just like bankers learn to spot counterfeit bills by knowing what real money is supposed to look like.  So we are called to get to know Jesus more deeply, then, in order that we will know how to spot the frauds from a mile away and we will know not to listen to them when they try to get our attention.  Today, how can we be listening more closely to the voice of Jesus so that we will know its sound and cadence over the din of all the others?

Lord Jesus, help us to recognize your way and your voice today.

No More Fear of Missing Out--November 12, 2025

No More Fear of Missing Out--November 12, 2025

"As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2)

Countless young men and women have sought guidance from their parents about the matters of the heart, asking in some form or another, "How will I know when I've found the person I want to spend the rest of my life with?"

And countless mothers and fathers have replied with a twinkle in their eye, "Oh, you'll know.  Don't worry.  When it's true love, you'll know it."

There's something funny to me about that repeated exchange across the generations, since typically the parents who give their response remember what it was like when they were young asking, "How will I know if I'm in love?"  And for so many of them, when their parents first gave them the same mysterious advice, they had been frustrated at how ambiguous it seemed; now, when the tables have turned and their own children are asking the question, they find themselves coming back to the old line, "You'll know.  Don't worry--you won't be able to miss it when love gets a hold of you." And they say these same words to their children, not to frustrating the next generation, but precisely because there's not really any better way to put it.  There is no litmus test or rubric. There is no parting of the clouds with a ray of sun falling on the beloved.  There is no scientific proof. There is only the sudden gripping awareness that you have been caught hold of by love and, well, rather like Elvis sang it, you "can't help falling in love."  And so, the older generation keeps coming back to the best words they know to answer the question of each new generation: "You'll know.  Don't worry--you won't be able to miss it when it happens.  You'll know."

I find myself hearing similar echoes when I read these verses from what we call Second Thessalonians, which many of us heard back this past Sunday.  Except the question being asked and answered in this first century letter isn't "How will I know if I'm in love?" or "How will I know I've found The One?" but rather, "Did we already miss Jesus' coming in glory?"  I know it might seem hard to believe, but there were at least some early Christians who found themselves looking around at the world, seeing that life was pretty much continuing on as it always had, and wondering if maybe they had missed something.  Had Jesus already come?  Did the "day of the Lord" that they were taught to hope for already happen and maybe they didn't realize it?  Or, even more pessimistically, was this it?  Was life-as-they-knew-it as good as things were going to get, and maybe should they lower their expectations a bit and settle for the status quo?  In short, the question is, "How would we be able to tell if we were experiencing 'The Day of the Lord'?"

And in response, the answer from the author of the letter feels a great deal like a wise parent with a knowing smile and a twinkle in the eye: "Don't you worry--you won't be able to miss it.  When it happens, you'll know."  In other words, it's not a response meant to gin up fear and anxiety, but hope and assurance.  "We beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed," he says.  In other words, "Don't worry.  You haven't missed anything.  Jesus' great and glorious coming to restore all things hasn't happened yet, and you didn't sleep through it.  When Love comes to make all things new, you'll know it.  In fact, you won't be able to miss it."

Part of the reason behind these verses, then, is to calm the worries of early Christians who didn't know what they were really waiting for or how long they were supposed to wait.  They had been told from the very beginning that Christ was not only risen from the dead but coming in glory, and that God was going to set all things right and make all things new--but a good many of them assumed that Jesus was coming in a matter of maybe days, weeks, or months, rather than years, decades, or... millennia.  So after having heard that Jesus was coming "soon," and that the Day of the Lord was nearing, and then nothing happened that felt like what they were expecting, you can understand why some might have looked for a voice older voice and asked, "Uh, did we miss it?  Is it over?  Is this all there is?"  

Everybody who is new at love is a little uncertain of how it works and what to expect, right?  Same thing for those who were just figuring out what it means and what it looks like to be loved by Jesus.  "How will we know that this is the real thing?" we ask. "How will we be able to tell that the time has come?"  And of course, sometimes folks think they are looking for a set of predictable signs or events in world history.  There have been folks for all of the last twenty centuries convinced they had the date of Jesus' coming in glory firmed up and locked in on a certain date on the calendar, or they knew what events would trigger it.  A great many self-described end-times experts have published predictions, called out the headlines they thought would usher in the Kingdom of God, and then all proceeded to be wrong.  Every last one of them, so far.  Maybe the coming of Jesus really is a lot like finding "The One" and falling in love--maybe all you can say is, "You won't be able to miss it.  When it happens, you'll know."

At least as far as today's verses, that's how the author of Second Thessalonians begins.  "Don't worry--you haven't missed it.  You won't be able to miss it when the real thing happens.  You'll know."  That kind of answer frees us up not to obsess over the timing or trying to predict when Jesus will come.  It frees us from constant fear, from constantly looking over our shoulders for ominous signs or secret messages, and from the worry that we might miss out on the party.  And instead, we are freed for something: we are freed to pay attention to the needs of the people around us, the opportunities we have to share our faith in this day, and the direction of God in our everyday ordinary lives.  We don't have to be constantly nervous about whether today is the end of the world when Jesus comes in glory and instead can simply focus on today as a gift of God in this world and where we will cross paths with people who bear the face of Christ for us as we bear the face of Christ for them. When I'm not constantly overcome with "fear of missing out" (what they sometimes abbreviate as FOMO), I can actually be more present to the people in the world around me, instead of seeing everything merely as cogs in an end-times countdown clock.

And there's one other thing that these verses do for us.  By assuring us that we won't be able to miss the day of the Lord because of its sheer obviousness, it reminds us not to settle for the brokenness of the status quo as the final verdict.  Instead of saying, "This is the best it will ever get, so learn to like it," over all the pain and suffering of the world, the New Testament says, "It is not God's will to leave the world broken, or to abandon creation. It is God's intention to make all things new."  That's important, because quite frequently the loud voices of our culture will tell us, basically, to settle. You know how the logic goes: "Look, in an ideal world it would be great if there were no war and everybody got to eat, but hey that's not realistic, so you should only care about your own belly and your own skin. That's just how it is."  Or sometimes it's, "Look, I would love to help out all the hungry people or the ones sleeping in their cars, or the ones fleeing from rubble piles and war zones, but we've got to look out for Number One in this life, so that's all we can hope for."  All of that thinking is aimed at getting us to stop hoping for the fullness of God's great restoration of all things, and just to fall in line with supporting the status quo.  

But the writer of Second Thessalonians points in the opposite direction.  He says, rather, "The coming Day of the Lord will be so dramatic and so complete a renewal of creation that you won't be able to miss it.  So don't give up hoping for it to happen, and don't settle for merely accepting the crookedness of the Way Things Are as the most you can ever aspire to.  Keep holding out the vision of a new creation.  Keep holding out the hope of a love that sweeps you off your feet.  Keep holding onto to the promise that when The One we've be waiting for comes in glory, you won't be able to miss him.  You'll know."

That's the word for us today: don't give up hope, don't let fear of the future freeze us in our place, and don't fall for any ploy to settle for less than the fullness of God's Reign that Jesus will bring in his own good time.  He is worth waiting for.  And, like anybody who has ever been loved before can tell you, when he shows up to meet us, we'll know.

Lord Jesus, free us to use this day well while we wait in hope for your coming in glory.

Who Gets The Last Word--November 11, 2025

Who Gets the Last Word--November 11, 2025

[Job said:] "O that my words were written down!
  O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
  they were engraved on a rock forever!
For I know that my vindicator lives
  and that in the end he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been destroyed,
  then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
  and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” (Job 19:23-27a)

Does death get the last word in the world... or does life?

Does injustice win out in the end over justice, or does good get the final say rather than evil?

Those might seem like abstract quandaries for armchair philosophers who don't have enough real-life worries to attend to, but really at the core of each moment of our lives are these fundamental questions. Will death and rottenness carry the day in the end, or will it be life and righteousness?  And how do we know?  On what basis do we come to our conclusions?

These questions are the beating heart of the book of Job, which was the source material for these verses that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  And while the whole book is a sort of extended debate set within the story of one man's story of profound suffering, these verses get at the crux of it all.  By this point in the story, Job has lost everything--his wealth, his children, his health, and even the support of his spouse.  He is lamenting all of that loss, and his three friends who had come to console him at some point got tired of empathy and decided to start blaming him for his suffering, each of them basically trying to convince him that since God is just, Job's suffering must have been deserved, and all that he is going through must be because of some sin that Job has committed.  Job, however, insists that he hasn't done anything to warrant all this tragedy, and he is convinced (or at least he hopes) that at the last, he will be vindicated.

The verses that many of us heard on Sunday are one of those moments in the saga where Job confidently declares his belief that at the last justice will be done, and he will be shown to have been in the right.  He believes that his suffering will be revealed not to have been a divine punishment, and that it will be clear that the calamities he and his family have endured will not be the end of his story.  Even if his sickness leads to his own death, he says, he believes that his "vindicator" (other translations render this word as "redeemer") will be revealed, and even beyond death, he believes that God will turn out to have been on his side.  Job is both confident that he hasn't committed some terrible sin worthy of all this particular pain, and that in the end, God will ensure that things are put right.  He doesn't know how that could happen--Job doesn't rattle off some list of reparations or compensation, and he doesn't exactly speak of "resurrection" the way Christian voices of much later times would.  But he does have this deeply-rooted conviction that the last word will not go to death or crookedness.  Somehow, he believes, life and justice get the final say.  That is what leads him to keep going, to endure through times of immense pain, and to keep speaking up over against his friends, or his wife's advice to simply "curse God and die."  Job will not, because he believes that death will not get the victory in the world's story, even if he can't prove it or see it.

Now, I sincerely hope that you never have to endure the kind of intense, all-encompassing kind of trauma that the book of Job describes for its main character.  I hope you are spared such intense loss, grief, and devastation, and I hope that in whatever times you do have to bear suffering, that you are not surrounded by pompously pious so-called "friends" who think they know it all and invoke terrible cliches like "Everything happens for a reason," or "God won't give you more than you can handle," or "Heaven must have needed another angel."  But I do think that Job's words here speak to us on the days when the world feels like a dumpster fire and when it seems like rottenness is winning the day.  It is all too easy to see crookedness going unchecked and violence running roughshod over victims and to decide, "There's no justice in the world, and all that matters is who has the most power." It is tempting to believe that there's no point in being decent, fair, or honest in a world where terrible things happen and where perpetrators so often seem to get away with their crimes. It is easy to give in to despair and to give up on the hope that the world could be put right.  And once we go down that road, it becomes terribly easy to justify doing whatever we feel we have to in order to get ahead.  If I don't have any real hope of justice being done, and if death is going to eventually win out over everybody anyway, then it is very alluring to believe that life is just about seizing as much for ourselves as we can, stepping on as many people as we have to, and insulating ourselves from pain at the expense of others. Read the headlines or listen to the news on any given day, and you'll see just how popular that mindset is.  But Job dares us to believe, in spite of the evidence, that crookedness will not win the day, and that death will not get the last word.

That's the choice we face every day: in the face of plenty of examples of violence, suffering, and death, we can either say, "All of this rottenness is inevitable, so there's no point in trying to defy it. And if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?" or we can say, "No.  I won't be complicit in any more of this. I will act as though life wins out against death in the end, and that good gets the last word rather than evil."  It is a choice to see the world from a different perspective from what seems obvious, though, and sometimes it is difficult to hold onto that alternative vision.  Plenty of folks will tell us we're crazy, naive, or out-of-touch to spend our energy in the work of healing rather than harming, and of seeking the good of all rather than just our own narrow self-interest.  Even Job's friends try to get him to give up hope that he will be vindicated in the end and to just confess to some sin he didn't commit.  But Job also reminds us that it is possible to keep living our lives even through pain, and even when all the evidence at hand suggests that the bullies win every time (including the biggest bully of them all, Death). Job's witness dares to trust that death will not get the final say, and that crookedness will not get the last word, and to make choices now in light of that hope.  Like Douglas John Hall used to put it, "God reigns, all of the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding." Living by that kind of hope will always make us stand out, because it means we will be standing off to a distance from the crowd of common sense on the edge of eternity.  But it is possible to see the world from there, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other in spite of all the reasons not to.

Let us dare.

O God, assure us again of your promise to bring life out of death and goodness out of evil.

In God's Grip--November 10, 2025

In God's Grip--November 10, 2025

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to [Jesus] and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.” (Luke 20:27-38) 

Jesus keeps showing us that God's vantage point is likely to surprise us. Quite often, he says, the view from the edge of the eternal takes our usual perspective and turns it completely upside-down.

We saw that last week when we looked at Jesus' statements of blessing and woe from the Sermon on the Plain, to be sure.  In a world where conventional wisdom says you know you're blessed if you're rich, and you know you are under God's disapproving scowl if you are suffering, Jesus turned the tables and announced, "Blessed are you who are poor" and "Woe to you who laugh now."  Underneath those individual statements is the reminder that God's view of reality is often the opposite of our human perspective.  And of course, Jesus' intention is to change our vision--so that we will no longer settle for the "conventional wisdom" version of things and instead let our perspective be shaped by God's way of seeing the world, the most vulnerable people around us, and ourselves.

Now today in this passage, which many of us heard this past Sunday as our Gospel reading, Jesus does it again.  This time Jesus shows us that from God's vantage point, even those who have died remain alive and present to God.  As Jesus talks with this group of Sadducees, he insists that God is not bound by our limited understanding and our finite mental categories. These religious leaders have come to Jesus with a question cobbled together from a Bible verse (a commandment from the Torah) and their own reasoning, which to their minds disproves the possibility of resurrection from the dead.  They take the commandment from the law which directed the brother of a deceased man with no children to raise children with his widow to keep the family line going and provide for the widow in a time where there were no other structures of a social safety net.  So they imagine a hypothetical in which a whole family of seven brothers had all been married, in succession, to the same woman, and then they ask Jesus whose spouse she would be in the resurrection, since she was married to them all.  Their assumption is that because they cannot imagine how to sort out these matters of marriage in the resurrection life, therefore resurrection must be impossible.  And even though they don't say so explicitly, the underlying assumption of these Sadducees is, "If I can't understand how resurrection would work in categories that make sense to my mind, then it can't be true."

Jesus' response is interesting, not so much because he gives them a logical argument to prove metaphysically how the dead could be raised, but because ultimately he grounds his conviction in the character and identity of God rather than in some rational proof or quantifiable scientific evidence.  In the end, Jesus' confidence in the hope of resurrection comes down to saying "God is the God of the living, not of the dead."  Therefore, Jesus says, from God's vantage point, even those who are separated from us by death remain alive to God.

For Jesus, the critical issue is not, "How can I prove to another person that resurrection is possible?" but rather, "Who is God?"  And for that answer, Jesus hearkens back to the classic refrain of ancient Israel, that theirs is the God "of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (and, of course, the God of Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel, as well).  But, of course, those patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel's earliest memories had lived hundreds of years before even Moses, who was remembered as the one who wrote down the commandments of the Torah.  Jesus, however, says, that since God is "the God of the living" these patriarchs and matriarchs of many generations past must still be alive to God.  Somehow in God's presence, in God's perspective, they have never been lost--not even for an instant.  Jesus once again insists that God's vantage point views things quite differently from the human perspective.  To us, those who have died are gone, leaving us to mourn and make into trick hypothetical questions to trap Jesus with.  But to God, those who have died have never been out of God's grip.  

I am reminded of how Robert Farrar Capon describes God's power to hold onto our lives, as the late Episcopal theologian described the story of the biblical Lazarus (whom Jesus revived from the dead in John 11).  Capon writes, “Jesus says that as far as his way of holding Lazarus’s life is concerned, Lazarus was never unplugged at all—that when Lazarus died, he lost only his own power to hold his life. He emphatically did not lose Christ’s power to do so.”  We are once again back at the question of whose vantange point really counts in the end.  By human accounting Lazarus is dead and all hope is lost for him.  The same would be true of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, too, I suppose, along with everybody else who has shuffled off this mortal coil.  From our vantage point, death gets the last word over all of us, and there is nothing we can do by our own reasoning or power to stop it.  But from God's vantage point, none of us have ever been out of God's view, God's grip, or God's power to give life. Even after I lose the ability to hold onto my own life, God keeps holding onto it with God's own grip.  That's the hope--even when we don't know how to prove it, diagram it, or proof-text it.

The challenge on this day is to let Jesus shape our view of the world this way--in the confidence that God never lets go of any of us, even through death--and even when it flies in the face of what seems obvious to our senses and "common sense."  Today, we are invited to see our lives, as well as the lives of every face that has ever been, held in the tireless grip of the God of the living, the God before whom all of us come to life.

Lord Jesus, help us to see our lives and our world in light of your resurrection promise.