From Thinking to Doing--July 18, 2025

From Thinking to Doing--July 18, 2025

[Jesus asked the expert in the law:] "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." [Luke 10:36-37]

It's one thing for this to be a thought-experiment; it's another thing entirely to have to live out the conclusions.  And disciples of Jesus are not called merely to think about things or memorize the right answers, but to act in ways that fit with the way of our Rabbi.  We are called to do likewise.

It's one thing to be asked to speculate on hypotheticals about who, for the sake of argument, qualifies as "my neighbor;" it is harder to be dared to put those correct answers from our heads into practice with our hands.  In other words, it is much harder in life to actually go beyond our comfort zones to care for the person at the roadside, to offer help to (or accept help from) the person you see as "other," or to pay attention enough to the sufferings of the world around us to be moved to care for people we might have easily ignored.

It's one thing to identify the outsider from Jesus' story (the Samaritan) as the one character who truly understood the commandment to "Love your neighbor" despite the failures of the Respectable Religious Professionals who passed by the beaten man at the roadside. But it is altogether life-changing to follow Jesus' instruction when the story is finished. It is difficult to "Go and do likewise" with the real people in our lives whom we are sent to love.

And yet, of course, that's the whole point of this. Jesus isn't interested in writing a systematic theology or writing an essay about the nature of love or human relationships. He is interested in forming us into people who love the way he loves, as broadly and deeply as he loves. That's what it means to be a disciple, after all--not just people who think spiritual thoughts or posture themselves to look pious, but people whose actions and words reflect the character of Christ. And therefore, Jesus is interested in changing our way of seeing the world and the people in it, so that we will show mercy for strangers, practice compassion for outsiders, and be brave enough to risk ourselves for people who can never pay us back. You know, the same way Jesus has done for us.

In fact, I think we often miss just what a big deal it is for Jesus to tell this story the way he does precisely because of his own personal experience. The parable we call "the Good Samaritan" (which again, would have sounded like a laughable contradiction and a preposterous oxymoron to his Judean audience) comes just a chapter after Luke gives us a story where Jesus is rejected by a town full of Samaritan people. In Luke 9:51-56, Jesus intends to pass through a Samaritan village--which would make him the outsider and the foreigner on their turf--but they reject him. And in response, two of Jesus' inner circle of disciples, James and John, ask Jesus, "Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" Jesus, of course, rebukes them for so completely missing the point and just goes on his way. In other words, Jesus knows what it is like to have been the outsider seeking hospitality and to be rejected--by people in this very same ethnic group that everybody else in his culture hated and looked down own. And yet not only does he refuse to answer their rejection with hatred from his side, but he also still makes a Samaritan the unexpected hero of his story. Jesus has already put his money where his mouth is and crossed barriers to respond with love to people outside his little group. So when he tells the expert in the law that "loving your neighbor" includes people across those imaginary lines we have drawn, he is only calling him to do what Jesus has done first. This talk of loving across the barriers we impose on each other isn't just fanciful theorizing or wishful thinking for Jesus; he has done it himself before he calls us to do likewise.

So, now some twenty centuries later, the question turns to us: what will we do in light of Jesus' story? How will we move from learning about biblical texts to living them, and who might Jesus be sending across our path today? How will we respond when there really is someone broken down by the side of the road (and we are oh-so-busy with Very Important Things To Do)? How will you engage with the person whose politics are different from your own but who needs your help--or whose help you need, even if you didn't want to admit it? How will we reframe the ways we think of people mentioned in passing on the news, when it is easy to reduce them to faceless crowds of "those people" rather than neighbors beloved of God? How will we find the courage not to look away when children near and far go hungry, or when people seeking a safe refuge have nowhere to turn, or when parents just looking to provide for their kids find themselves shipped off to filthy cells in faraway places? How might Jesus be calling us to see the faces of people who live in rougher neighborhoods in the city not as threats to be afraid of or hopeless targets for our condescending pity, but as neighbors worthy of care, respect, and decent treatment? How will we move from hearing and reflecting on a story we've heard plenty of times to know the right answers about loving our neighbors... to actually going and doing likewise?

The next move is ours...

Lord Jesus, transform us by your love and then empower us to follow in your footsteps.

Embodying the Alternative--July 17, 2025

Embodying the Alternative--July 17, 2025

"[God] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." [Colossians 1:13-14]

So here's a confession: sometimes it is hard to pay attention to events around us, to read the headlines, or listen to the news, and still to believe these words.

It is hard to mouth an "Amen" over the claim that God has already "rescued us from the power of darkness" like it is an accomplished fact knowing that we live in a world where wars still rage on, where children who could be fed will go hungry, where bullies sure do seem to win the day a lot of the time, and where cruelty is often dispensed like currency.  It feels like we are still wading up to our necks in "the power of darkness" some days, and it doesn't often look like the gloom is letting up.

It is hard to believe we have been already "transferred into the kingdom of his Son" like it is a done deal when it sure looks like we are still struggling through history's long chain of empires and superpowers and the violent clashes of one nation against another, in a seemingly endless loop.

It's hard to believe that redemption is something we already have, when so much of the world around us feels woefully unredeemed.  And it is very hard for me, as a would-be representative and follower of Jesus, to see the cross of Christ all too often used as a symbol to dominate or intimidate other people, rather than a sign of the Love that laid down its life for the sake of the whole world.

So yeah, some days, it's hard to believe the promises and claims of the Scriptures. I'll own it--and I'm a preacher. It's also one of those days that raises the recurring question, "Why would you, or me, or anybody else, stay put in a place where such rotten things happen--or, God forbid, where they are cheered?"

And again, to be really honest, that is always a difficult question to keep finding answers for. Why stay in the midst of a situation where there is so much rottenness, meanness, and hatefulness? Why stay in a place--a community, a country, a world--where such terrible things not only happen, but are all too often celebrated or defended rather than unilaterally lamented?

Well, okay, here's my answer. Maybe it only makes sense to me, and I won't assume it will be persuasive for everybody. But to me, the challenge of these verses from Colossians, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, is the same challenge of staying in a world, a place, a time, and a situation that doesn't feel like it's been "rescued from the power of darkness." And facing that challenge looks something like this: to say we have been "transferred into the Reign of Christ" doesn't mean we have been taken out of the world--after all, it is the world, all creation, and the whole universe that is Christ's rightful domain. To say, as Colossians does, that we have been rescued from the powers of evil and transferred into the Reign of God means that we are freed from having to live under the rule and order of the rottenness and wickedness around us. We do not have to participate in it. We do not have to play by the world's rules of cruelty and self-serving "Me and My Group First" thinking.  We are freed from having to live under its terrible logic, and we do not have to give our allegiance to its loud bellowing voices. We live, right under the nose of the powers of the day, free from their domination over us. We are freed to live by a different set of values, a different vision of life, a different Lord--the Crucified One, Jesus Christ. That is what it means to be disciples: we look to Jesus for our way of being in the world, and we do not have to obey the powers of the day when they bark orders to the contrary. But we don't leave the world in which we live to do that--we just discover that we can stop listening to the angry shouting voices that still think they are in charge of us.

Well, they ain't.

In a way, it's almost like every day we are presented with the same dilemma that theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer was given about whether to stay in a comfortable teaching position at a university in America, or to return to Germany during the days of Hitler's Reich, knowing he would be called to resist its evil if he went. In 1939, Bonhoeffer told an American colleague that he knew he had to go back into the belly of the beast--back into the midst of the evils of Nazi Germany, and it was his faith in Christ that led him there. He wrote, "I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people....Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose; but I cannot make this choice in security."

In other words, for Bonhoeffer, his faith in Christ was not permission to go somewhere easy and safe where he never had to be a part of resisting evil and speaking up for the powerless. Rather, his faith in Christ was the very reason that he chose to stay, and first to go back, in the places that were most difficult and hostile. Bonhoeffer believed, like the letter to the Colossians says, that he had been rescued from the powers of darkness--but he knew that didn't mean he didn't have to engage or face it. It meant he didn't have to be ruled by it as its subject anymore. Bonhoeffer could go back into the presence of the worst human evils and the demonic powers of the Reich and resist it--to say "No" to it as he said "Yes" to the way of Christ. And he knew that only if he was there in the midst of that situation could he also say "No" to the way Hitler's Reich was co-opting the church to make it give its loyalty and blessing to the Fuhrer.

Let me say it again, then, for clarity's sake: yes, we are freed from the grip of evil in the sense that we do not have to play its games or by its rules, and we do not have to believe its lies anymore. But we are very much called, with Jesus himself, to find ourselves in the midst of that rottenness as a presence of salt and light. We are called to embody the alternative. As disciples we are called to say our "No" when the signs and symbols of Christianity are co-opted by the powers of the day, the bullies, or the people punching down. We are called, on more ordinary days, too, to say "No" to the ways the name of Jesus gets mingled with hatred and self-centeredness in the name of being "great." We are called to name not just the big idolatries we cannot ignore when they make the day's headlines, but also the countless little ways we are tempted to sell our souls for a little more influence, a little more money, a little more comfort or power or reputation. We can only do that if we are willing, like Bonhoeffer and the ancient Christians in Colossae, to continue living in resistance in the midst of the tension, rather than looking to leave it.

The early Christians, after all, all lived under the rottenness of the Roman Empire, and they didn't run away from it to go live in some imaginary "other" place where it was easy to live. They lived their lives right under the nose of Caesar and all his violence, cruelty, and arrogance, but they knew that they did not have to listen to his orders or his propaganda. They had indeed been rescued from the powers of the day--but they never left the places they lived when it happened. They chose to stay, because it allowed them to be faithful witnesses to Jesus.

So here's the deal, dear friends: I know that there will be other days when the meanness of the world seems to carry the day. And you and I will have to face those days, no matter where we go and no matter what happens. We aren't given a pass to "beam out" of the world, and we aren't given permission to just go somewhere where there will be less tension or less hostility or less friction. We are called to go where Jesus sends us, even if that feels like living our lives right under the noses of the powers of evil. But we are freed in that living, too, because we don't have to accept the terms or play by the rules of the powers of the day, either.

That's how a light is seen to be shining, anyway--you notice it when it is put in a dark place. If we're called to be a light, then we had better get used to the idea that we may be called to remain in situations that feel gloomy and dark. That's why we stay.

They may think (and say, or shout) that they have power over us, but they don't. We are freed, by Jesus himself, to tell them "No, thank you," and instead to live like we have been made citizens of an alternative domain--the Reign of Christ, whose way of being King was to lay down his life, and whose throne is a cross borne for the love of even his worst enemies.

The powers of the day won't have a clue as to what to do with us if we live in the freedom of that kind of love. We don't have to go anywhere else to live in Christ's Reign--we can do it right here, right now, even though it is hard a lot of the time.

Come on, let's make them wonder--whatever else comes our way in this day.

Lord Jesus, free us and remind us we have been rescued already so that we do not have to live by the ways of the rottenness around us. Help us to stay where you have placed us, and give us the courage to offer light to places of gloom.

Jesus' Kind of Strength--July 16, 2025

Jesus' Kind of Strength--July 16, 2025

"May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light." (Colossians 1;11-12)

Strength doesn't always look like muscle-power, horsepower, or firepower.  And being strong doesn't always look like punching, kicking, towing, or shooting.  

In fact, quite often in the Bible, God's kind of strength is described in terms of God's endurance to take the punches, absorb the blows, and take the arrows that come raining in from enemies outside.  That's how we end up getting images like God is a "refuge" or a "fortress," or that God is like a crag in the rocks you can hide underneath when a storm comes and you are out in the dangerous wilderness.  God is the One who can take the hit, like a mother hen gathering her brood under her wings when the fox or the fire comes.  That's a very different picture of "strength" than a tank steamrolling over an enemy or a Roman legion marching to conquer a city, isn't it?

So before we get carried away or misunderstand what these words from Colossians that many of us heard this past Sunday are really saying, we need to ask a clarifying question: what kind of strength are we talking about here?  What kind of strength is the apostle praying that we would be given, and what does it mean for our actual lives?

I ask because Respectable Religious Folk often make the mistake of picturing the "firepower and punching" picture of strength, and assume that God is offering to let us tap divine power to dominate, to obliterate, or to intimidate others, all in the name of "getting things done" on the agendas we assume God has also already endorsed.  Or we assume that God is offering to grant us wishes like a genie. Or maybe we even think that God intends to bulk up our muscles literally--I remember hearing about a traveling "Christian" weight-lifting team that would put on shows with literal feats of muscle strength interspersed between testimonials and altar calls, all with the implicit messaging that if you were a good enough disciple, then you, too, would be able to tear a phone book in half or improve your bench press.  But all of those pictures have made the fundamental error of disconnecting the picture of our power with the kind of power that Jesus has.  

And that just doesn't work, because the only power the apostle here in Colossians has in mind is Jesus' power--the only strength offered to us is to receive Jesus' kind of strength.  And Jesus' way of being strong is much more the "enduring while keeping on taking the punches" sort of strength; it is never the "we have to make our enemies suffer" kind.  Jesus' strength is the capacity to outlast and exhaust evil when it attacks without being overcome by it--in fact, answering such evil with good.  But it is never just the firepower to answer evil with more evil, hatred with more hatred, or cruelty with more cruelty.

Of course, that's why, so often, the world mistakes Jesus' kind of strength for weakness.  The world insists on "You gotta hit them first before they hit you!" or "We have to be cruel to those we want to make an example of, so they will fear us and give in to us!" kind of thinking.  The world says you are only strong if you can bend others' will to your own or force them to give you something you want while you twist their arms.  The world cannot understand that the ability to bear suffering but not to inflict it is a deeper kind of strength than dominating and bullying.  So it looks at Jesus' disciples the same way it looked at Jesus: it calls us "weak," "losers," or "failures," because we endure the hostility of others without answering back in kind.  That's the kind of strength that the writer to the Colossians has in mind, the kind that "endures everything with patience" the same way Jesus answered hatred and violence without returning them.  Jesus' kind of power makes us like the walls of a fortress or the face of rocky crag--strong enough to absorb the blows of hail, lightning, flaming arrows, or whatever other ammunition is incoming.  Together, we create spaces of refuge for one another and for the most vulnerable, because Jesus has done the same for us, protecting us with his own life like a mother hen guarding her chicks or a Captain America on the silver screen jumping on a grenade to save the people around.  That is Jesus' kind of strength--that is what we have been given.

Once we are clear about that, we have direction for how we face the challenges of the day and the violence and evil of the world.  We are not sent to take over as show of strength, and we are not directed to enforce our way or our interests on other people. We are sent, rather, to protect those who are most vulnerable--even with our bodies and our lives if need be, and to bear the mistreatment, name-calling, and intimidation tactics of others without resorting to them ourselves.  That is very much a different kind of strength than most folks think of.

But I dare say it is exactly the kind of strength that the world needs.

Lord Jesus, give us your kind of strength to respond to the world in your kind of way.

Oaks in Waiting--July 15, 2025

Oaks in Waiting--July 15, 2025

"...so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God." (Colossians 1:10)

Scientifically speaking, an acorn belongs to the category of oak trees. Sure, it's a seed, but all the DNA, all the instructions and blueprints for making an oak tree instead of, say, an orangutan, are there in the acorn already. An acorn doesn't "earn" the status of "oak-ness"--it already has it, before it's done a thing. In fact, to be precise, it is the already-given "oak-ness" in the acorn's DNA that enables it to take raw materials like oxygen, nitrogen, soil, and water, and to become a giant of a tree in the forest. It's all right there, waiting to become fully, in a sense, what it already is.  An acorn, you might say, is an oak in waiting.

You could also say that the acorn seems to be more fully itself when it finally sprouts leaves puts down roots, and grows into a tree (which in turn puts forth acorns), but it's not a matter of earning or achieving. It is a matter of becoming.

I want to suggest that this is what the Christian life looks like for us as disciples. It is a matter of becoming, not of earning. We aren't used to thinking like that, in a time and culture like ours that seems obsessed with how you impress, accomplish, and win things like status or belonging or some title or another. We have been taught to strive and struggle (and if necessary, step on people along the way) to get ourselves to the position of "winning," no matter the cost or what we have to do to get there, in order to achieve this elusive thing called success. And frankly, that impulse we have learned is destroying us--the terrible things we'll do to get that status of being seen as "winners," the ways folks will sell out their convictions or stoop to all sorts of crookedness rather than risk not "winning," they all reveal how deeply terrible that mindset really is. It is slowly killing us all, the more we give in to it. But it isn't the way the letter to the Colossians sees things. No--it's not about climbing and clawing our way up to the top, no matter how crooked that makes us. No, from the vantage point of this verse that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, the life of discipleship is about becoming what God says we already are. It is about being made more fully ourselves, not vying for a lone spot on the top of the heap.

We are, you could say, acorn people.  To be a disciple is to be an oak in waiting.

So when the apostle calls his readers to lead lives that are "worthy of the Lord," it's not like we have to drum up votes to win a religious popularity contest, or impress God into accepting us, or earn our way into a status of being "worthy" by pretending to be the winners we really aren't. No, it's about becoming more fully what God says we already are. And in Christ (who is God's Beloved), God says you are beloved, too. In Christ (to whom we belong) God says you belong as well, forever. In Christ, who is God's Word through whom all the world was created, God says that you are good--just as God declared creation "good" in the beginning. We are acorns--given the "status" (if you can call it that) of belonging-to-the-oaks in our innermost selves. What we are called to is to become. Nothing more, and nothing less. We are called to become fully ourselves, to become what God has intended us to be, like an acorn becoming an oak tree patterned on the very same oak tree which produced it. We are called to become the embodied love that first embraced us in Christ himself.

That, of course, is very very different from the rat race our culture has tried to teach us, where we have to constantly impress, constantly try to convince others we are successful or acceptable or "winners," and constantly pretend to be something we are not, in the hopes of fooling someone into thinking we're the real deal. I mean, honestly, how embarrassing to get stuck in that mode of operating! How deeply sad, how truly pathetic we are when we try and earn the world's approval and and strive to make ourselves look like winners to do it. That is exhausting, and it never succeeds for very long. The truth eventually does come out, and the charlatans and fakers are revealed for what they really are, even if the trick worked for a bit. Eventually, if we have been playing that game, it will suck the life right out of us. It isn't worth playing.

But to live a life of becoming? Well, just the opposite--we actually become more fully alive the more it happens. When we can be done with pretending and preening and trying to impress--anybody--then we are free to come fully alive and to discover the good news that God has already said we are worthy, beloved, and accepted. The question is whether we will dare to believe these things are already given to us by grace--like an acorn is given DNA as a gift in its own creation--and whether we will let God's grace in Christ enable us to become what we are made to be. See how different that is? It's not play-acting at being a winner in the hopes of fooling the judge; it's growing to maturity with the gifts that are already in you, and trusting the status of belonging you already have.

That's the invitation in this day: not to try and force or pressure or cajole or fool or trick anybody into any particular impression of you, but simply let yourself believe what God says about you already in Christ... and to let that move you from acorn-oak-ness to full-grown-tree-oak-ness.

That's the adventure all of us disciples are on. We are, after all, acorn people... and oaks in waiting.

Lord God, bring us to maturity and help us to become fully what you say we already are in you.

A Long Obedience--July 14, 2025

A Long Obedience--July 14, 2025

"For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding..." [Colossians 1:9]

Okay, so here's the thing: your cell phone is not God (a statement I hope goes without saying), but neither is God like your cell phone, either.

You may want to insist that those are both the same and both obvious, but it seems to me that we often have this unspoken assumption that God functions in our lives like a tool of technology--like our cell phones--and whose job is get us things we want. Honestly, we treat our faith sometimes (maybe quite often) like the role of having God in your life is to acquire things, to make things the way you want them in life, or at least to arrange things the way you want them in the afterlife. Our lists may be different--sometimes we wish for money, job, career, "winning" (whatever that means), our political party to be in charge, or romantic relational fulfillments. Sometimes the wishes are more "spiritual-sounding"--like "inner peace," or "contentment," or just the hope of going to heaven when we die. But however you or I would word it, we often operate like God is a service provider--like your cell phone network carrier--and that God's job is to get us access to the things we want.

Now that by itself is, in all honestly, theological garbage, but then here's the second layer of garbage we add on top of that: we often treat "faith" like it's the on-off setting on your cell phone that scans for available networks. We assume that if we are feeling unspiritual, disconnected from God, or out of sorts in our souls, then it just must be a matter of flipping the right switch, so to speak, to get out of "airplane mode" and to start picking up God's signal again. If we just do that--whether we imagine it's by going to church enough, praying the proper prayer, or having the right one-time come-to-Jesus moment, then we'll be instantly back in touch with God, we'll clearly see God's direction in our lives, and we'll be back on track to getting all the things we want God, our spiritual service provider, to give us access to.

If that sounds like a crude or unfair caricature of popular religion, listen closely to how so much of Respectable Religion out there sounds: "You didn't get what you wanted because you haven't been praying for it enough..." or "We all must put on a show of religious contrition and start up a revival to get our land and our society 'back' to some glorious time in the fog of our memories that we think actually happened" (but was probably a good deal imaginary). Or it's, "You must pray hard to get your candidate or party to win... and if your candidate or party doesn't win, it must be the devilish forces of darkness fighting against you getting the thing you want." Or even, "If you want that success in business, or your kid on the honor roll, or to meet that special someone who will make your life cookie-cutter complete, you have to "name it and claim it" in prayer, and then if you believe hard enough, God will give you want you have claimed in faith. Those aren't far-fetched--that's an awful lot of the pop theology floating around us all the time.

And to be clear, every one of those notions operates from the assumptions that (1) God is here to grant our wishes and provide a service to us like a cellular network carrier, and (2) getting in touch with God to make all that wish-granting happen is just a matter of some one-time religious action you must do. The voice we hear in the letter to the Colossians begs to differ.

In fact, this one verse from the passage in Colossians that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday challenges both assumptions, first by turning the tables on whose will is most central, ours or God's... and the second by reminding us that getting in tune with God's will is not a matter of a single one-time flipping of a switch, but an ongoing, daily seeking and striving for clarity.  In other words, the letter to the Colossians insists that this is a matter of discipleship.

Let's start with the first. Contrary to the religious thinking in our age that often treats God as a glorified vending machine or spiritual service provider, the apostle says that what's most important is that we be filled with knowledge of God's will--not some leverage to get God to do our will. Think about that for a moment. When the apostle prays for these Christians in Colossae, he doesn't ask for God necessarily to give them their list of wishes, but that their wants, thoughts, desires, and hopes would be brought into alignment with God's will. So if I've been yearning for a McMansion and a Lexus and haven't gotten it, maybe the problem isn't how to get God to do my bidding and cough up some keys--maybe what I need is for MY heart to be re-shaped, and MY will to be re-formed, in light of what God's good vision is. And maybe instead of me getting a bigger house and more expensive car, God's design is for me to use the resources I already have to help make sure someone else gets to eat and doesn't have to sleep in a bus stop kiosk to get out of the cold. If I've been praying (or selfishly wishing and dressing it up as prayer) for more stuff or for my political party to get more power, and it hasn't happened, maybe what I need is for God to change me so that my priorities become aligned with God's priorities of justice and mercy and enough for all.  In other words, maybe the Christian life isn't about how to more effectively get God to do what I want, and more about how God shapes my will and desire to align with what God wants.

Here in this verse from Colossians, that's basically the move that the apostle makes: instead of fervently praying that his readers would get what they want necessarily, he prays that God would shape what they want to be in line with what matters in the Reign of God. And I've got to tell you , sometimes it's hard for each of us--myself included--to admit that my wish lists and personal priorities are out of whack with the vision of God's Reign as we see it in Jesus. Sometimes I want my pet hatreds reinforced, or I want to only see good things happen for Me-and-My-Group-First. Sometimes I can only think in terms of my immediate comfort or convenience, rather than what people far away from me might need--and how their needs might need to come first before my privilege. Sometimes I don't want to admit that God loves people that I can't stand, and I don't want to allow the possibility that God not only loves them fiercely, but is doing good in their lives in ways that will shape them to be more like Christ as well, even if I can't see it yet. All of that is hard, and Colossians reminds us here that this is happening all the time--God is at work (in answer to prayers like Paul's) changing each of us from the inside, so that what-I-want is slowly being brought more fully into alignment with what-God-wants. Admitting I'm out of step with that is hard. But then realizing that someone else might be praying for ME to be brought back in line with God's will and values is even more humbling.

And that's the second piece we need to spend a moment talking about here, too: getting aligned with what matters to God--what we sometimes call discerning God's will--isn't some instantaneous flip of a switch or speaking of a prayer. It's something that grows and deepens over time (and yes, sometimes we take steps backward between steps forward, too). That's why you can't just read a pamphlet once pray a prayer, or take a correspondence course in discipleship. It's about a lifelong journey--what the late Eugene Peterson (riffing on a phrase of Nietzsche) referred to as "a long obedience in the same direction." We want our religion to be reducible to a one-time prayer or an easy, oversimplified set of propositions (like, "God always wants this political party to win, so always vote for them," or "God always sides with this nation of the world, so nothing they do can ever be wrong," or "God is always aligned with policies that lower your taxes... or help your business make more money... or maximize your personal freedoms" or "God's will is to make you more comfortable and privileged, and who cares about people who are outside your group"). But Colossians suggests (and I would add that I believe the whole of the Biblical witness backs Colossians up on this) that discerning God's will is often a lot messier, foggier to figure out, and interconnected with all of us. And that means it's not simply a switch you can turn on. It's not just a matter of asking one time, "Dear God, show me your will" and then assuming that every gut impulse you have after that is the word of God or the nudging of the Holy Spirit.

It means that seeking God's will in our lives is going to require patience, wisdom, humility, and the presence of other people. That's what it means to be disciples, of course. We need others who will pray for us, sure, but also people who will be checks and balances in our lives and hold us accountable. We need people to tell us when our gut impulses are really just our own wishful thinking rather than direction from God. We need people who can tell us when our actions or priorities don't line up with the way of Jesus, and who can call us out on them. And we need the patience and grace with ourselves to keep muddling through on the days when God's will or direction doesn't seem clear yet.

All of that mean that the Christian faith is a lot less like paying for a spiritual service provider (where I am the customer who is always right), and a lot more like a daily walk in which we need the voices of companions on the journey--and a map and compass, too--to keep leading us in a good direction. There are no switches to flip, and no simple setting buttons to toggle, to make God connect up to us. There is instead the step by step adventure of a journey, shared with other sojourners along the way, on which God's voice becomes clearer as we go.

It's a long road, but it's worth giving your whole life to traveling it. Let's go.

Lord God, help us. Re-align our wishes and wants to the shape of your Reign of justice and mercy. And speak to us in ways that get through to us, so that we will recognize the sound of your voice leading us onward.

The Backside of the Kingdom--July 11, 2025

The Backside of the Kingdom--July 11, 2025

[Jesus instructed the seventy:] "Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near'." (Luke 10:8-11)

No matter what, the kingdom comes near.

Did you catch that?  In this passage that many of us heard on Sunday, as Jesus commissioned seventy disciples to go ahead of him, the Reign of God becomes visible either way, no matter how the people of any town or village respond.  In fact, in part of God's cosmic genius, even when people explicitly reject Jesus' messengers and message, the kingdom becomes evident.

Here's what I mean about the brilliance of Jesus' instructions.  When two of these missionaries (they are traveling in pairs, you'll recall) get to a town and are welcomed, they are directed to heal the sick and share tables with the people there. And in that breaking of bread and healing of sickness, there is a glimpse of the Kingdom.  When Jesus directs these disciples to say, "The kingdom of God has come near to you," it's not a sales pitch to sign up for a new religion or a spiritual country club--it's a description of what the people will have just witnessed.  Where God reigns, bread is broken and shared, strangers become friends, and diseased bodies are restored to health.  The message the missionaries bring is simply to explain what will have happened among them.  How do they explain their ability to heal? How are people supposed to interpret the arrival of these strangers to town?  Ah--this is what it looks like where God reigns.  The healing, the shared meal, the giving and receiving of hospitality--these are what the kingdom of God looks like.  In other words, these traveling disciples are not going from town to town as mere event promoters ginning up interest and ticket sales for Jesus' traveling road show.  Rather, they are bringing the Reign of God in their very own presence, because they bring the message and power of Jesus with them.

Now, that's the easy part, I think.  What floors me about this scenario is that Jesus has designed it so that even when his disciples are rejected, there will be a glimpse of a different side of the Reign of God, but a true one all the same.  If (or honest, when) there comes a village that rejects Jesus' visiting disciples and they will not open their doors to them, they have strict instructions not to seek revenge, not to make threats, not to insult or belittle the residents, and not to call down fire from heaven. (There had been a moment, just a few paragraphs earlier in Luke's gospel, where a village of Samaritans didn't want to welcome Jesus, and James and John offered to Jesus that they call down divine retribution in the form of firebolts from the sky, and Jesus rolled his eyes and rebuked them for even suggesting such a thing--see Luke 9:51-56).  In other words, Jesus is telling his disciples to take seriously his earlier teaching not to return evil for evil, and not to answer meanness with more meanness.  Why is that important?  Because that's also what the Reign of God is like.  Jesus famously teaches (see the Sermon on the Mount especially) that God's way of ruling the world is not to answer hatred with more hatred or evil with more evil. Rather, Jesus insists, God sends the good gifts of sun and rain on both the good and the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous, the thankful and the ungrateful alike.  This is not a bug in the code--this is a feature.  This is what it looks like where God reigns.  This is how the Kingdom comes--not by coercion, not by heavy-handed intimidation, not by steamrolling over people or invading like an empire, but in vulnerability and non-retaliation.  So when Jesus' disciples are rejected, their refusal to answer that hostility with more hostility is itself a glimpse of what God's Reign is like.  They show a different side--perhaps the backside, like the famous story of Moses' glimpsing God from behind--of the kingdom, but they show it all the same.  Even in the act of rejecting the kingdom, the townspeople will inadvertently catch a glimpse of the kingdom because the visiting disciples will not seek revenge or unleash wrath on them for rejecting it.  They will simply declare, "This was the Kingdom of God that had come to your door. This was a chance given to you to share the life of God's Reign."  Like someone who turns away from the sunset in anger but still catches a reflection of the oranges and purples of the sky in a window or a mirror, you can't help but still see signs of the Kingdom of God even when you are turned dead set against it.  That's part of God's genius.

All of this is to say that whatever "the kingdom of God" means, it's bigger than just a show of power. Sometimes we misunderstand that. If we focus only on the scene of disciples curing the sick or casting out evil spirits as they go from town to town, we can end up thinking that God's Reign is just a euphemism for divine firepower, or spectacles that dazzle people into believing in God. But Jesus seems to think differently.  He is convinced that God's Reign can be glimpsed in healing, but also in a shared meal between strangers who become friends, and in the courage it takes to welcome a newcomer and open your door to them.  And beyond that, Jesus believes that God's Reign is evident every time his people answer hostility with grace and non-retaliation.  Every time they meet up with rejection and do not give in to the impulse for revenge or threats, the vulnerable self-giving nature of God's Kingdom becomes clear, even if for just a moment before the parade moves to the next town.

This is the real revolution of understanding Jesus brings about the reality we call the "kingdom of God." It is terribly easy to hear that phrase and think we are talking about an empire that conquers, a nation that expands with invading armies and overwhelming force, or a posture that threatens, arrests, or kills anyone who disagrees with it.  That's how other kingdoms operate, after all. But Jesus makes it clear that God's Reign is never advanced by dropping bombs or killing enemies. God's presence is never revealed by taking away food from a hungry stranger to keep the resources hoarded for yourself.  God's Kingdom is never advanced by threatening wrath on those who disagree with you. Rather, you see the Reign of God in self-giving vulnerable love... love that is brave enough to risk rejection without retaliation.

Sometimes I hear Respectable Religious Folks who sound convinced that what Christians need to do is to wield more political power, to enforce their ways and their thinking on everybody else, and to get rid of anybody who stands in their way.  That is the perennial lure to do things according to the rules of every other kingdom and to follow the playbook of every empire in history.  But it is not the way God's Reign works--full stop.  Jesus shows us instead that God's Reign is strong enough to bear being rejected. God's Reign is gracious enough to love even in the face of hostility.  God's Reign makes us brave enough to risk meeting new people as well as being turned away by those people.  The Kingdom of God isn't merely about flashy shows of divine power--it is about the kind of self-giving love we see in the face of Jesus.

How will we put ourselves out there in the world today--risking both the presence of strangers and the possibility of rejection as well--in order that God's Reign might be seen in us either way?

Lord Jesus, let your kingdom be seen in us today, and give us the direction to know how to respond to this day's encounters in ways that show your face to the world.

On The Kindness of Strangers--July 10, 2025

On The Kindness of Strangers--July 10, 2025

[Jesus told the seventy:] "Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house!' And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you...." (Luke 10:5-8)

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," Blanche DuBois famously says in the classic line from A Streetcar Named Desire.  Of course, in the play, she's not necessarily held up as a role model, and her sentiment isn't exactly meant to be taken as the moral of the story.  There is something reckless, something risky, maybe even scandalous, about living one's life dependent on the hope that someone will show up on the scene to provide for your needs.  Every time you and I drive past someone standing at a street corner with a cardboard sign asking for help, we give ourselves a lesson on just how difficult it can be to live your life relying on "the kindness of strangers."  When we are the strangers on whom someone else depends, we have a way of being remarkably unkind, or at least indifferent, sometimes.  We are the evidence, sadly, that it can be a precarious thing indeed to depend upon the kindness of strangers.

And yet, that is precisely what Jesus calls these seventy disciples to do as he sends them out to introduce his movement and message to the towns and villages of Galilee.  They are sent in utter dependence, learning how to be good guests and how to share the lives of the people they encounter, from the living space of those who host them to the food that is set before them. Now, that might well make these traveling missionaries uncomfortable--after all, it can be hard to learn to try new foods and to be grateful even if you don't particularly care for the dish they have prepared, or to sleep on whatever pull-out sofa or futon (or the first-century equivalents) they have available. And beyond that, it can feel awkward to be in someone else's social debt by being their guest--there is always the fear you are imposing, or worrying whether you are putting your hosts to too much trouble, or adapting to the time they like to eat supper or when they go to bed.  But part of how you earn the right to be heard when you have a message to share is to break bread together, to share ordinary life together, and to learn to listen to the people you would also like to have listen to you.  Part of how you gain the credibility for someone to hear what you have to say is that you have first invested the time to hear people where they are, to accept them as they are, and to honor the good gifts they have to offer. After all, you're much less likely to believe the sales-pitch of a traveling peddler at your door or the paid announcer on a TV informercial, but if your good friend who has shared many a cup of coffee at your kitchen table with you tells you about some great new book, you're more likely to take their recommendation.

What Jesus calls these traveling disciples to do, then, is to take the risk of getting to know people on their own terms--to share their lives, to break the same bread, and to see the world from the vantage point of their front door--before they start telling others about how great Jesus is or announcing the that Kingdom of God has come near.  That means they will have to slow down enough to get to know the places and people they are visiting, and they will have to come to care for the people in each town rather than just seeing them as statistics of new members for their club or new streams of income for their venture.  All too often in our day, so-called church grown "experts" focus on numbers rather than faces, on how many interchangeable people in crowds show up in interchangeable amphitheater-style worship spaces, and focus only on Sunday attendance, livestream views, or follows on social media--none of which require you to get to know people where they are, as they are.  Jesus, on the other hand, begins with a model in which we take the take to get to know one another, to care about the stakes of each other's lives, and only then once trust is earned, to talk about the itinerant rabbi we follow.

In fact, maybe once we are guests at someone else's table or welcomed into someone else's life, we come to see that they are the face of Christ for us, as much as we were sent to be the face of Christ for them.  Maybe the people who extend hospitality to us have been sent by God into our lives, just as truly as we have been sent by God to share the news and love of Jesus.  At the very least, by meeting people where they are, sharing a table with people as they are, and listening to their stories over food and drink as Jesus instructs, we are less likely to come off as condescending religious know-it-alls who blow into town, make a quick buck, and catch the midnight train to the next place.  

Maybe the takeaway for us as disciples today, then, is that the best way to share our faith in Jesus with others is to listen to the same ones we want to introduce to Jesus. Maybe the way to convince people that Jesus cares about their lives... is for us to actually care about their lives.  And maybe the way to show someone that God's love is for them, just as they are, is for us to love them, too, just as they are.

What would it look like for us to do that today?  Where would we go? Who would we meet?  What sort of adventure might be in store if we dared to depend on the kindness of strangers as our way of introducing people to the Kingdom of God?

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to listen, to meet people where they are, and to trust that you will provide hospitality as we bring your love to the world.