God Without Fanfare--October 1, 2019

"God Without Fanfare"--October 1, 2019

"Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favour with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.’ So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, ‘Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.’ He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, ‘When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.’ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.’ But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, ‘Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.’ So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.’ But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, ‘I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?’ He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, ‘Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”?’ So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. " [2 Kings 5:1-14]

We're always looking for God in the extraordinary, you know?  Always up on the moutaintop, or in a booming voice from the sky.  We seem to think God is more likely to connect with us on a particularly important day, too--maybe a holy day in the church's calendar, or on the anniversary of someone's death, or at that moment you watch the sun rising over the horizon. 

But the ordinary?  We rarely give it a second thought.  That's surely not where to find God.  That's surely not where you'll see divine fingerprints.  It almost seems like we think God is like the "good dishes" you save only for special occasions, or the fire hose in the public buildings that is kept behind glass except "for use in emergencies only."  We have a harder time thinking that Christ dwells with us exactly in the mundane, the routine, and the unnoticed... because we expect something of the flutter of angel wings or heavenly light and the echo of angel choruses where Christ shows up.

And yet, over and over again, the Bible has to call our attention to seeing the fullness of the divine in the perfectly ordinary.  Not just on Sunday mornings, but on routine Tuesdays while you are slogging through your regular work load.  Not just in the glorious golden glow of the rising sun on a new day, but when it is forgettably grey as well.  And not just at the big impressive "rivers of Damascus," but even at the plain, old unremarkable waters of the Jordan river.

See the point of this story, where the foreign (enemy) army officer Naaman seeks a cure for his sickness, is not that the Jordan River in Israel was special, or holy, or even particularly clean water.  Just the opposite.  The power isn't in the water, but in the God who works in the midst of the ordinary.  If you wanted a more impressive river, you could go up to the ones Naaman thought of--the Abana and the Pharpar.  But this isn't really about the river, is it?  It's about the God who chooses to work healing in the midst of the ordinary, and who shows up unannounced in the backyard creek as well as on the shores of the Mighty Mississippi.

So often, we aren't any different, really, from Naaman.  We expect God's presence to be in the extraordinary, but we almost can't dare to imagine that the mundane is worthy of God.  We pray with fervor in times of crisis--like when we are in the emergency room with someone we care about... but our attentiveness has a way of falling off when our loved ones are home and getting around just fine again, as if we are saying to God, "We've got it covered from here, God--we don't need you anymore."  We might be beaming with praise to God when you get the promotion, or when your kid graduates with honors, or when you make your last payment on the mortgage... but, hmmm, it's funny how we have a way of missing the presence of God on the days when your kid gets a C-minus, or when your car insurance premiums go up, or when you just keep on keeping on at the job you've been in for years.  And yet, Naaman's story would seem to tell us that God reserves the right to show up--and to work for good--precisely in those situations we think are too "ordinary" to matter.

Sometimes we limit how much we will let God use us, too, for that matter.  I bet we would each be willing to do God's work if it were clearly a criticial situation--to save a life, rescue someone drowning in the ocean, or to sit at the bedside with someone before they have a critical surgery.  But somehow, we just start to shrug off the possibility that God might call you or me to something less dramatic or show, but just as vital from God's vantage point. And what a damned shame it would be if we decided that since it's not a "crisis," then we must not be "on-call" for God to use us for the people around us--you know, and we can get back to doing our own thing without worrying about God interrupting our plans for the sake of someone who needs us.

Maybe you'll be called today to check in on the friend who is down in the dumps--and you'll never know it, but your voice might be what pulls them back from the brink, just becuase you reached out, and not becuase you actually talked them down from a bridge.  Maybe the other person never gets to the ledge or the bridge because you were there and just said, "Hey," when they needed you to.  It's not flashy, and you'll never know the difference you made... but it's one of those moments that has divine fingerprints on it, even though it feels completely ordinary from your side.  

Maybe you'll be prompted to make some small monetary donation to the homeless ministry, or to the refugee-resettlement organization affiliated with your church (if you don't know one, let me know and I'll help you out!).  And you know full well that your ten dollars won't go very far on its own... but as ordinary as that Alexander Hamilton in your wallet might be, who knows how it gets put together with other small donations to give someone a new start and a safe place to sleep?

Maybe you're the one who offers the insight that makes someone think a little bit differently, or your example is what makes someone else give just a little bit more effort because you challenge and inspire them. Maybe you're the one who just shows up on an ordinary Tuesday, and in that ordinary space, mercy moves.

It's never about how impressive our actions appear at the moment--after all, it was never about the greatness of the river or the holiness of the water that makes Naaman well.  It's always about a God who shows up in the ordinary.  In the flat places as well as on the sacred mountains, on weekday afternoons as well as at sunrise on Easter Sunday.  In the moments that seem completely forgettable, as well as the days we have circled on our calendars as "special."

I guess that's the thing about this God of ours--the real and living God isn't hemmed in to making only cameo guest appearances for emergencies and liturgical processions with incense and robes.  The real and living God shows up in the muddy creek in the back yard, the non-emergency phone call, and the routine weekday.

The question, really, is--will we have our eyes open to allow ourselves to see God's presence without fanfare in the ordinary, the God who is already there...here... right now?

Lord God, show up in this day and let us see you here.

"Owning Our Mess-Ups"--September 30, 2019

"Owning our Mess-Ups"--September 30, 2019

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." [1 John 1:8-10]

Sometimes I think the three hardest words to pronounce in the English language are: "I. Was. Wrong."

And I say that as someone who has a hard time saying them myself, as well as having listened to a lot of non-apologies in my life, too.  We are all well-versed in ways of avoiding having to say, "I was wrong."  There is the classic passive-voice sleight of hand, "Mistakes were made," which conveniently deletes anyone having to own up to being the maker of the mistakes.  There are excuses upon excuses that get thrown out in an attempt to avoid having to take responsibility for one's actions.  There is the apology that doesn't accept ownership, as in, "I'm sorry if YOU took what I said the wrong way," or "I'm sorry that this thing I did upset you, but I'm not going to stop doing the thing that upset you, so tough noogies."  And there is the classic reaction of digging one's heels in and insisting that they did no wrong in the first place and therefore have no need to change, correct, restart, or repent. All of these are strategies to avoid doing the truly courageous thing of admitting where we messed up, owning it, accepting responsibility, and changing our actions.  And instead, they are all variations on either "fight" (dig in your heels and refuse to consider you might have done something wrong,) or "flight" (running away from the uncomfortable consequences of admitting we messed up).

But it takes real guts, real chutzpah so to speak, to own up to your mistakes, and to seek to start again to make things right.  It takes real courage to say those impossible-sounding words, "I was wrong." And honestly, it takes zero courage to run from uncomfortable admissions or to dig your heels in and lash out at others as a way of avoiding having to own your own mess-ups.

This is the kind of honesty to which we are called as the followers of Jesus. And because all of us--certainly myself included at the top of the list--are cowards-seeking-to-be-in-recovery, this is our struggle.  It's the day-by-day struggle of taking a look at ourselves--especially where others help us to see our blind-spots--and admitting where we have been wrong.  And in a very importance sense, it's the sort of struggle you don't get through by pinning down the truth and wrestling it into submission, but actually the other way around.  You surrender to it, rather than insisting you are in charge of it.  Like David Foster Wallace writes, "The truth will set you free, but not until it is finished with you."

And this is the freedom we are given in the struggle: we don't have to be afraid anymore of admitting our mess-ups, because we know that there is grace in the truth-telling.  There is mercy precisely at the point of our mess-ups, and the only way to miss out on experiencing that forgiveness is to act like we don't need it.  There is the assurance, as the first letter of John puts it, that God is faithful to forgive our sins and put them away forever--but if we keep insisting we have nothing to forgive we'll never hand them over in the first place!

So today, what if we quit our various ways of running from the truth about ourselves?  What if, instead of evading blame for our mess-ups or digging our heels in with the insistence we don't have anything to admit, we listened to the voices convicting us?  What if we considered that each of us has the power to do the courageous thing and admit our mess-ups rather than insisting they are someone else's fault, and then from there, find the same courage enables us to start again?  

In other words, what if we dared to trust that promise that God is faithful enough and just enough to forgive us when we blow it, rather than thinking we have to convince God it wasn't our fault, or it wasn't a mistake in the first place?

Let us dare it today--let us allow the truth to have its fullest effect on us, even if it lead us <gulp> to say, "I was wrong."

Lord Jesus, let us find the courage to be honest, and to dare to trust your grace.

"On Not Wasting My Time"--September 26, 2019

"On Not Wasting My Time"--September 26, 2019

"Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil." [Ephesians 5:15-16]

I don't want to waste my time anymore.  

Maybe more than that, I don't want to waste the opportunities, the chances to be a part of grace and beauty and healing and love in this world, that come with my minutes and days.  I have misspent so many already.  I want to "make the most of my time," as the letter to the Ephesians puts it, or as an older translation put it, "redeem the time."

But to be clear, I don't think Ephesians means the same thing our wider culture usually means when it talks about "making the most of time."  We have a way of taking that phrase and putting the most self-centered spin on it as possible.  We turn this into some ancient version of the old Schlitz beer slogan, "You only go around once in this life, so grab all the gusto you can!" as if the apostle is telling us to do as much for our own gain as we can before we die.

And so, we who learned the Latin phrase, Carpe diem ("Seize the day") once upon a time when it was a popular slogan on coffee mugs, sweatshirts, and tote bags, we are tempted to hear this verse from Ephesians as if the writer is saying, "Do as much fun stuff as you can in life! Go to the beach more! Take more vacations! Go to more parties, watch more pro ball games at the stadium, and ride more roller coasters!  You've got to do these things while you can, because you've got to... make the most of your time and, you know, seize the day!"

Except, here's the thing--I just can't waste my time on that way of thinking anymore.  In a world where so many people of infinite value to God suffer, it seems like privileged whining for me to complain that I didn't get to go see this or that movie when it was in theaters, or to make a fuss about not getting to go see a Steelers game because I was at the hospital or in a counseling session or visiting someone at home who can't get out.   And I just don't want to be a part of that kind of self-absorbed nonsense anymore.  I know I will struggle sometimes and probably slide back into the old ways, but I don't want to do it.  I don't want to waste my minutes that way.

Because while I'm occupying myself with any of those self-indulgent ways of using up my minutes, somebody else was hurting, and I could be a part of the work of healing.  While I'm consumed with lazily browsing my Amazon recommendations or watching that TV show everyone says I just "have" to get into, somebody else is without a home, or is on the brink of taking their own life. Somebody is at the edge of despair, or is sitting alone in a hospital waiting room about to have their world shattered, or running for their life from violence and poverty and seeking a safe place to live.  While I'm content with my own little social life, or mowing my yard to perfection, or going out for the night because I need some "me time", somebody else is just trying to survive another day after running from an abusive boyfriend, or trying to get sober for the fifth time, or cutting themselves just to find out if anyone notices.  And it seems a damn shame to me to go another day being so focused on my self and my own amusement that I turn up the music on the radio so I don't have to think about the people only a few degrees of separation from my life who could use my help, my ability, my time, or my willingness to accompany them.

This, I think, is closer to what Ephesians has in mind when it says we need to "make the most of the time."  I don't think the apostle cares whether I get to go out to a new restaurant to try their appetizers, but whether I spent my minutes sharing a meal with someone who has no home of their own.  I don't think it matters whether I ever again get to watch a field full of adults move a ball across a line in the grass or hit a different ball into the stands or throw a big round ball through a hoop--at least if I'm doing it simply for my own entertainment.  The world has more important things that need to be done.  And people right around me--not only across the world, but even right across the street--are aching in ways I have never dared to ask about, because I have been so focused on making my own little comfortable, insulated world where we don't have to think about such things.  We just turn the music up on the stereo, or put on a movie to distract us, or buy more from our list of "recommended deals" so we don't have to think about any of those faces.

And I'm just tired of it.  

To be clear, this isn't about needing to impress God or having to do a certain number of religious service projects in order to get into heaven.  You'll notice that the writer of Ephesians here doesn't say anything about having to do "enough" in order to earn salvation, or a ticket to the afterlife, or anything.  This isn't about doing enough good deeds to win a prize, whether in this life or any other.  In fact, if my only reason for doing good deeds for other people is to use them as a means for earning religious merit badges so I can get some heavenly reward, I don't really love my neighbor--I am simply using my neighbor's suffering as a way of helping myself out.  

But that's not at all how the writer to the Ephesians sees this.  Instead, the question is simply, "What will you do with your days, because there is an awful lot of evil out there, and an awful lot of good that needs to be done?"  And I am just sick of the countless messages we get bombarded with that say, in so many words, "Don't think about the needs of other people around you--just let yourself go numb to it all by having a look at our dessert menu!"  I am tired of giving myself excuses to be indifferent to the needs around me, and the ways we all sort of give each other permission to be apathetic, too.  After all, as long as we all agree we're not going to care about the addict who is a friend of a friend, or the family that just got evicted from their apartment because their car broke down and they lost their job when they couldn't drive there, or the person whose only social interaction is the mail carrier, then none of us has to feel bad about not taking the time for these faces.  As long as we all agree to believe that "making the most of the time" is about filling our social calendars rather than about filling someone's empty belly, we all get to let ourselves off the hook.

And the writer of Ephesians just won't let me off the hook that way anymore.  I can't do it.  I can't let complacency and my first-world problems (like "They were out of my favorite brand of cereal today at the store!" or "I've got that big gala to go to next month, and I simply have nothing new to wear for it!") make me numb to the aching of people very close to me that I have chosen not to pay attention to.  And I can't give myself permission to waste more minutes of my life on my own self-indulgence when there are other faces whom God loves just as much as God loves me who are just on the verge of falling apart.

This is the struggle we are a part of, day by day.  It is the struggle, not so much between obvious evil and obvious good, but between the best way to spend our time and a whole host of not-wicked-but-clearly-kind-of-selfish ways of spending our time.  It's relatively easy, one hopes, to choose between the obvious evil versus the obvious good: you should know to pick the Jedi over the Empire, and Indiana Jones over the Nazis, and Harry Potter over Voldemort.  But it is harder--and often requires a level of maturity that we don't use as much as we might--to choose what is best rather than settling for one of the lesser options, because we tell ourselves, "There's nothing sinful about..."  Like the old saying goes, "The 'good thing'

 is often the worst enemy of the 'best thing'." It's hard work asking, "What is the best use of my time, my love, my energy, my attention?"  And it is hard work doing it when we get an answer.  Always easier to tell ourselves that a little retail therapy or another dinner out will make that pesky feeling of obligation to our neighbors go away.  

So let me ask you, if you find yourself in the position to do so, to hold me accountable.  Where you catch me settling for something less than love of neighbor in the way I use my time, call me out on it.  Where you see hypocrisy in me, bring it right in my face.  Where you see me wasting my time on more me-centric nonsense, help me to see my blind-spots.  And where you see neighbors I have forgotten to care for, smack me upside the head so I will see their faces, made in the image of God.

Somebody only a few degrees of separation from you and me really could have used our help, our time, and our love.  And today, someone with your and my sphere of influence could really use your kindness and the gift of your time today.  What will we do with our days, and what is the best use of the day that has been given to us?  Because it seems to me very clearly that at the bottom of it all, love is the way to make the most of your time.  Love, not in the sense of getting butterflies in your stomach when a certain someone walks into the room (because that's really just one more way of being all about myself anyway), but in the sense of spending yourself for the good of another, regardless of whether you "get" anything back for your effort, that kind of love is what it looks like to make the most of our time.

Dear friends, let us not waste another moment of this precious life full of people who are precious to God with anything less than love.  Help me not to waste my life anymore, too.

Lord Jesus, give us the eyes, the energy, and the love to make the most of the time we have, because we live in days where evil, indifference, and cruelty are all around.

"Reasons to Stay"--September 25, 2019

“Reasons to Stay”—September 25, 2019

If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. [Philippians 1:22-24]

What freedom there is—what amazing, love-rooted liberty there is—when you can let your life not be all about you. It gives you the freedom to be where you have been planted.

This is, to me, one of the most beautiful, and yet humbling, passages in the New Testament. It humbles me, because the kind of selfless love Paul shows here is ever seeking the good of others rather than his own--despite the fact that Paul is going through quite a struggle in his own life at the time. But despite the darkness that is brewing in Paul (and around him, too), he is freed to strive only to be useful to the people he loves--and that is enough for him. More than enough. 

And to be quite honest, that puts my often selfish love to shame. Paul knows the freedom there is to be found when you let your life not be all about yourself, but about others. He is so free that he is at peace, not just about the possibility of dying for Christ, but about the other possibility of going on living for others who belong to Christ. When Paul asks, “Is it better right now to keep on in life where I am, or to go to heaven to be with Christ?” he starts thinking of the people he can serve if he stays.

And this is what gets me: of all the reasons Paul could have to keep on living, what finally settles the issue for him is how he can show up for the other people God has put in his life. Their good, their benefit, is ultimately what convinces Paul that death can wait for another day. They are his reasons to stay.

“To remain in the flesh is more necessary for you,” he writes to his friends in Christ at Philippi. That, I tell you, is what love looks like: the freedom not to make it all about you.

That is all the more amazing when you think about all the other factors surely competing in Paul’s mind to help him decide whether it would be better for him to go on living or for God to take him through death (remember, Paul is in prison, awaiting a trial before the Roman government—he’s not being melodramatic about the possibility of death).

There would have been the voice of insecurity, whispering in Paul’s ear, “You know, there is coming a day when these friends of yours in Philippi won’t need you anymore.” And with it comes the voice of jealousy, cajoling Paul by saying, “They’re going to replace you with someone else, Paul, after all the time and energy you spent getting to know these Philippians and caring for them!” And it would have been easy to look for an escape rather than risk the rejection—in other words, to give up on life and hope for death at the hands of the Romans. It would have been easy to wallow in self-pity, rather than staying in this life and giving himself away for the people God had put in his life.  Those are strong temptations to struggle with, and they have a powerful pull.

Picture it: there’s Paul, sitting in some grungy prison cell, thinking about these fellow Christians he has come to love, and in the lonely silence, it would have been very easy to throw a pity party for himself, to feel like his friends in Philippi were going to abandon him and find somebody else to fill his spot. It would have been very easy for Paul to feel like he was all alone, and that he just wasn’t of any use anymore. And once you start down that spiral of feeling sorry for yourself because you feel rejected, it becomes awfully easy to slide into depression and desperation and to mentally check out on life altogether. That could have been the end of Paul’s story.

Instead, Paul pulls out of that tailspin--or, maybe, he lets grace pull him out--by remembering that he is free from making life all about himself. In the end, he decides he is going to keep on keeping on in life, even if it would be easier to give up, lay down, and die. And he is going to keep on going, because that way, he can be more of use to the people whom he loves, the people God has sent him to. Paul decides that he needs to stay in this life, and in this flesh—which also meant for him the difficulties of living in a prison cell. And, mind you, it meant he was willing to live with those voices of insecurity and jealousy, too, always whispering in the background that he might get hurt by continuing to love these people. 

But he did it because… well, because that is what love does. 

I am reminded of an insight that has been poking at my heart these days, which resurfaced for me in a little notebook of quotations I keep.  The author Cynthia Bourgeault offers this insight in her book, The Wisdom Jesus: "There is nothing to be renounced or resisted. Everything can be embraced, but the catch is to cling to nothing. You let it go. You go through life like a knife goes through a done cake, picking up nothing, clinging to nothing, sticking to nothing. And grounded in that fundamental chastity of your being, you can then throw yourself out, pour yourself out, being able to give it all back, even give back life itself. Very very simple. It only costs everything."

That is what love does when it has come face to face with Love incarnate, whom we name Christ. That is the freedom of letting go of ourselves and pouring ourselves out for the people God has sent us to love. That is the life offered to you and me today. The people God has put in our lives, who are the face of Christ for us and who are also sometimes causes of our pain as well,  the people for whom we can be the face of Christ—they are our reason to stay.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to give ourselves away, and to find the freedom in a life that isn’t all about me.

"Holy Resistance."--September 24, 2019

"Holy Resistance"--September 24, 2019

"Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." [Hebrews 12:3-4]

Every time I come across this passage in Hebrews, I am brought up short.  It astounds me that we seem so out of touch in our age of comfortable, lazy (even lethargic) Christianity from what we so staggeringly obvious to the early generations of Jesus' followers.  We seem to have forgotten--either by accident or by willful ignorance--that the first generations of Christians assumed they would be brought into conflict with the powers of the day... and that their way of responding to that conflict would be suffering love, rather than threatening bluster at their would-be persecutors.

Let me just unpack for a moment what the writer of these verses is saying.  He starts with Jesus as our example, as if to say, "When you are going through difficult times, or you start to feel like the world is out to get you, remember how Jesus dealt with that, because he is the hallmark. And Jesus not only endured hostility from the lynch mob and the political and religious authorities who strung him up on a cross, but he responded to their hatred with self-giving love."  Jesus sets the bar.  More than that, he charts out the particular course we, his disciples, are to follow in the world (that fits, too, since just a sentence or two before in Hebrews, Jesus is referred to as the "pioneer" of our faith--like he is the one blazing the trail that we follow in). 

And quite simply, Jesus' response to struggles with others was the kind of transforming love that would not answer hate with hate, but even laid his life down for his enemies.  Jesus defeats the power of hatred, not with more hatred, but by refusing to accept hatred's terms.  Jesus defeats the power of fear, not with his own litany of intimidating threats, but by refusing to be intimidated by the blowhards in authority who say, "Don't you know that I have power to crucify you?"  Jesus defeats the power of violence, not by breaking out his own celestial army, but by taking the nails and exposing the ultimate impotence of the killers by rising from the dead.  Rather like the famous line of Booker T. Washington, often cited as, "I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him," Jesus simply refuses to accept the terms that evil plays by--and thereby evil is undone.

Now, that much should seem pretty basic theology, like Christianity 101.  The beating heart of our faith is that God's greatest victory came, not by sending in angel armies and a conquering hero but as a crucified homeless rabbi who rises from the dead regardless of what the Romans think.  As Jim Wallis has eloquently noted, the Romans placed an imperial seal on his tomb (see Matthew 27), so when Jesus rose from the dead and broke the seal, it was an act of civil disobedience against the empire.  Resurrection is resistance.  And, more than that, it is a resistance that refuses to kill or threaten or even hate the ones who placed the seal on the tomb.

But now, notice how the writer to the Hebrews takes that insight and turns it back to us--the people who dare to name the name of Jesus and claim to follow in his footsteps.  As soon as he has invoked the example of Jesus, who endured hostility from his opponents, the writer of Hebrews says to his struggling readers, "Look, you all haven't even had to resist to the point of having your blood shed yet!  It may come to that, but let's be clear about the lengths Jesus went to in his resistance to evil.  Jesus laid down his life--so that's what we should be prepared for as well.  And then just as Jesus broke the power of death with his own resurrection, we'll trust that we will be raised up to new life as well."

Look at what the writer of Hebrews takes for granted--that if it comes to a conflict between us as the powers of the day, or us and a hostile society, we will be the ones who offer up our lives, our blood, and our selves, in the name of Christ's love.  We will not be the ones shedding blood.  We will not be the ones threatening to shed blood.  In fact, we will not be holding the tools for killing at all--the writer of Hebrews cannot even fathom that as a possibility.  What he sees is that, yes, sometimes, the followers of Jesus will unavoidably run into conflicts with the powers of the day who want us to worship Caesar, bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's statue, or kowtow to Herod.  And when those powers demand that we give them their allegiance, we will say, simply, "No."  But the writer of Hebrews seems to take it as a given that we will not point a sword or a gun or a drone at anyone back.  We will simply say "No," because we are not afraid of what they can do to our bodies, and because we will not let them "degrade our souls" (like Booker T. Washington says) by making us answer their hate with hate, their threats with threats of our own, their violence with ours against them.  

This is the really and truly radical thing about the actual New Testament-era Christian community: for at least the first three hundred years of our faith, the default assumption of the Christian faith was that some wicked power or imperial blowhard might try to kill us for our faith in Jesus and his Lordship, and if they did, we would keep on loving Jesus and loving our neighbors, no matter what they threatened or did to us.  But we would not kill them or threaten them back.  That is not our way--because it is not the way of Jesus.  The writer of Hebrews assumes this, because it seems so blatantly obvious to him... and yet we live in a time when folks will often try to pair their Respectable Religiosity with some thought that we have to be able to threaten people back with weapons in case we get cornered.

The mindset goes something like this: "We need to have the tools of violence at the ready in case some tyrannical government starts telling us to do things we don't like!  We need to have our swords and guns and whatever else at the ready so that we can resist the voices of tyrants! And if we don't have blades or bullets to beat them back, Christianity will be defeated and destroyed!"  The only problem with this way of thinking is... well, everything.  It completely forgets that for the first three hundred years, Christianity thrived--it spread like wildfire across the empire, even when it was brutally persecuted by the tyrannical government of the Roman Empire.  And for all those generations, Christians were simply taught and trained to understand that their form of holy resistance was to look like Jesus--not killing but laying down their lives, not giving into hatred but responding with self-giving love.  This was so obvious to them because they took it seriously that the Christian faith should produce lives that actually look like Jesus' life.  So if Jesus' way of dealing with the powers hostile to him was to die at their hands and then rise in resistance against their imperial demands, then our way of practicing holy resistance will be with the same self-giving love.  Like Walter Wink says so powerfully, "To have to suffer is different from choosing to suffer.... Martyrs are not victims, overtaken by evil, but hunters who stalk evil into the open by offering as bait their own bodies." 

Sometimes you'll hear folks lob an argument that goes, "What will you do if they come for you and you don't have weapons to defend yourself with?"  as though they don't really recall that the Christian faith is centered on the actual night in history when they came for Jesus and he refused to use weapons to defend himself, but chose to give his life up both for his followers and for his enemies.  So, in all seriousness, the answer to "What will you do if they come for you?" for an honest follower of Jesus is, "I will rise."  

How does Maya Angelou put it?

"You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise."

That has been our strategy as the followers of Jesus from the beginning.  It's just that from time to time--sometimes for many centuries at a time, even--we forget that is how our story goes.  We forget what was obvious to the writer of Hebrews: when it comes to the struggle of this life, our resistance to the powers of evil is so deep and radical that it doesn't accept the terms of engagement that evil wants to use.  We will resist against the powers of evil, hatred, and violence--but we will do so by offering ourselves up... and then, when they have done their worst, still we shall rise.

Practice resurrection today, dear ones.  Practice resurrection.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to follow in your footsteps through suffering love, into the grave and defeat and loss, and out through the other side into resurrection victory. 

"The Worst Kind"--September 23, 2019

"The Worst Kind"--September 23, 2019

[Jesus said:] "No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despite the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." [Luke 16:13]

There's a brilliant line in the classic rom-com When Harry Met Sally where Billy Crystal's Harry suggests there are three kinds of people in the world: low-maintenance, high-maintenance, and then, what Harry calls the worst of all--the people who are high-maintenance but think they are low-maintenance.  (You know the sort--the folks who are tedious to be around and are fussy about having things just so, but who can't see how they come off to others.)

Well, I want to suggest that maybe there is a parallel for the categories Jesus suggests, too.  You can serve God... you can serve wealth, or worst of all, you can serve wealth while you think you are serving God.  And indeed, that is definitely the worst.

The difficulty is that we really want to find ways to turn God into our means of getting more money, more wealth, more stuff, more... of everything.  And we dress that up into sounding like we are religiously devoted to God.  It's all around us: the obvious examples are the prosperity-gospel preachers on TV and on the radio, who sell the idea that being a good Christian will result in material "blessings."  But it's in the more subtle ways we are taught to pray for our kids to be "successful"--by which, our culture usually means "has a well-paying job."  Or it's the way we Respectable Religious folks have of trying to edit out all the Bible's references to God's care for the poor, so that we can instead latch onto the myth that poor people are inherently lazy, or unintelligent, or immoral, or less important.  All of it is a scam, and all of that is our crooked attempt to convince ourselves that we are really worshipping God, while we secretly confess our faith in money when we think no one is watching.

It really is a struggle in this life, especially for us who occupy the overlapping space in the Venn diagram of being both Americans and Christians, not to devote ourselves to the pursuit of wealth and then try to baptize it as piety.  It is tempting to assume that God's job is to "bless" those who are devout with prosperity, and that if we make a big enough public display of external religiosity, we will be rewarded with a financial windfall.  You can even find folks who want to build a "National Prayer Tower" in Washington, D.C. where planners say one day people will be able to overlook the city and pray for good things to happen, apparently with the thought that having a big tower to pray in will make the praying more effective.  

The ancient Hebrew prophets had to deal with voices like that in their own day, when the conventional wisdom was that if you had big public shows of religious piety to God, complete with special shrines where the prayer-reception was somehow supposed to be better, then God was obligated to increase the nation's wealth and prosperity.  We really aren't any different than the royal-government-approved priests of Amos' day who announced that increased wealth among the elites of Israel must be a sign of God's approval and pleasure, rather than a sign that their hearts were being corrupted and hardened by the influencing power of their wealth.

And here's the thing: all of that thinking really boils down to just trying to use God as a means to getting more money.  If my unspoken goal is really to get richer, and I just offer up prayers or public shows of religiosity in order to try and persuade God to give me a windfall, well, I'm not serving God--I'm serving myself and my wealth and trying to get God to be the agent for all of that.  But that isn't really dedication to God or love for God--that's love for myself and devotion to my wealth and the attempt to use God as means to an end.  Please don't confuse that with actually serving God.

The struggle of this day is to let Jesus keep pulling us away from our love and trust in our money--whether it's my paycheck, my retirement savings, or the closing number of the whole Dow Jones Industrial Average--and to stop us from treating God just as a means toward a bigger pile of cash.  That's not serving, loving, or trusting God--that's trying to use God as a means for getting the thing we really trust: cold, hard cash.  And instead, we will let Jesus open our eyes to the way God specially cares for and provides for the folks who don't have two pennies to rub together.

And as we do that, we'll become less and less tempted to just use God as religious cover for trying to make ourselves richer... and instead, we'll be led just to serve God regardless of the bottom line.

Lord Jesus, keep pulling on us to serve you, especially when we get confused as use God as a cover for loving our money.

"Hope for Hot Messes"--September 20, 2019

"Hope for Hot Messes"--September 20, 2019

"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" [Romans 7:15-25]

Maybe the thing to say at the outset here is that we are all hot messes.

Nobody really wants to admit that. I like to imagine I am in complete control of my life, my emotions, my choices, and my actions, after all, and confessing that I am a hot mess admits that all of that is a front at best.  It sounds too harsh on myself.

But honestly, I don't think we really want to admit that others we butt heads with are hot messes, too, because we think it gives them too much credit.  We don't want to consider that possibility with the people we disagree with are living the same struggles that we are, because we don't want to be that charitable toward them.  We want to imagine that the people with whom we have friction are all terrible, villainous, and knowingly wicked, trying to make the world an awful place while they twirl their mustaches and adjust their black hats, rather than seeing that the folks with whom we most struggle are also living their own inner struggle... the same one you and I are each living, too.

And that's just it: we are all, every one of us, each a walking bundle of contradictions--a mix of beautiful possibilities and noble aspirations alongside selfish impulses and short-sighted appetites.  And to hear the Apostle Paul tell it, this is the struggle of each of us--including Respectable Religious folks, deeply devout disciples, and committed Christians.  We are just perhaps some of the worst at admitting the struggle is there, because we want to project the image of having it all together.  Jesus is watching, after all--and so is our neighbor.

Let me offer an example or two, so that we don't just keep this conversation so vague and abstract that it never pierces me where I need it. For one, I watch my kids seemingly turn on a dime between sweet and selfless one moment to being nasty and vengeful toward each other the next sometimes.  They can be playing happily, taking turns, and looking out for one another, and then without almost no explanation, erupt into a shouting match of pushing, shoving, grabbing, yelling, and insulting each other.  It's not that they haven't been taught to share or to be kind or to take turns. And it's not that the blow-ups are so big or long-lasting that they can't reconcile before dinnertime usually.  But it seems more like they are living in a struggle between, well like Paul puts it, two different "laws," or two different sets of operating systems.  One moment they are living like they love each other and therefore want to put the good of the other before their own interests... and the next, they decide it's every kid for themselves and they are at each other's throats.  Two different programs running--two different sets of inner logic, so to speak.

Or I caught, by chance, a random comment of someone on social media the other day (I know--this is a rabbit trail of terrible possibilities already).  It was someone who would no doubt describe themselves as a devout and committed, church-going Christian who had no trouble at all spewing really rotten things about a politician they didn't like--not their policies, not their hypocrisy, not their temperament, but the elected official's existence.  And with no hesitation at all, they rattled off some nasty remark about the public official like "That 'Person' is a waste of oxygen" (and yes, "person" was in quotes, as if the angry commenter was suggesting the one they were criticizing wasn't really a full human being, on top of being a "waste" of oxygen).  Now, in a sense, that kind of comment is relatively tame in the big scheme of things--there are no words that would get bleeped or censored on television there, and there was no direct threat of violence.  And yet, what struck me was that this same commenter was sharing schmaltzy and sentimental "Christian" posts in the next five minutes, too, talking about the love of Jesus and how important it was to "put God back" in our public life.  And what jars me in all of that is that I'm sure we are all living these kinds of contradictions all the time.  I happened to notice one commenter on one day on social media with one slant, but we are all living with these inner hypocrisies all the time, and maybe we are so used to them that we no longer see them as contradictions any longer.  It's like we don't even recognize the disconnect between praising Jesus one moment and telling all the internet how important we think he is, and then the next moment we shout cruel things at the person we don't agree with, as though our disagreement refutes the image of God in which they are made.  Paul would tell us we are living the tension of having two different "laws" at work within us--the old logic of Me-and-My-Group-First versus the new operating system based on the values of Christ, who loves even his enemies and who does not respond to unkindness with insults.  And, whether we get called out on it in the world of social media or not, we are all doing it.

The same contradiction shows up a million other places in our lives.  It's the recovering alcoholic who swears up and down on one day that he's done with his days of binge-drinking forever, only to "just happen to find himself" at the state liquor store two days later carrying out boxes full of bottles to start the cycle all over again.  It's the churchgoing citizen who talks up a storm about the importance of "family values" in politics, but then who leaves their spouse because they just stopped wanting to make the effort to work things out any longer.  It's the friend who says in one moment, "I'm here for you, and I'll listen while you go through this dark time," but then bails out after a few minutes of listening because they've got something more fun to do and didn't really want to get dragged into your mess in the first place.  It's the preacher (ahem) who talks a good game on Sundays about loving neighbors, strangers, and enemies, but then get swept back into his old patterns of selfishness and isolation when he's not wearing his stole and robe.  We are all, all the time, hot messes like this. And you could surely add more to the list--things you see in others, things you see in me, and if you are really brave, things you see in yourself.

What do we do with this unpleasant truth about each of us?  Or, to use Paul's phrasing, "Who will rescue us from these bodies of death, these walking bundles of contradictions that are our lives?"  And maybe we should even ask, "What would that rescue look like?"

Paul just throws his hands up and says, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ!" Jesus, in other words, is the answer.  But it turns out that this one-word answer (Jesus) is two-fold.  And ultimately we need both halves of the answer.  On the one hand, Jesus accepts us exactly as we are, while we are walking contradictions. Jesus loves me, died for me, rose for me, and raises me to new life while I am a glaring hypocrite and a divided self.  Jesus knows when I am thinking loving thoughts as well as when I make some rude comment on social media--in fact, even before I click "share"--and he does not abandon me when I make mean and hurtful remarks or selfish and short-sighted choices.  He loves me, this mess that I am.  And that is a remarkable thing.  And at the same time, Jesus doesn't simply leave us in the hell of the living contradiction for ever.  Jesus has an agenda, and he is at work in us, shaping our hearts, our values, our lives, and our loves from the inside out, to make us more and more fully to reflect the beauty of his own reckless love.  Jesus keeps pulling us, sanding us, poking at us, and leading us, because his unapologetic intention is to make me to be less of a jerk and more of a reflection of him.  He loves me as a jerk, but he does not leave me as a jerk.  He doesn't mind getting all covered in the hot mess that is my life, but he also insists on making a new creation of me.

And maybe it is only in little ways that the change comes.  Maybe you don't notice it from one day to the next.  Maybe today is one step forward, and then tomorrow is three steps back.  Maybe sometimes my motives are mixed and I say or do something that is simultaneously graceful and selfish at the same time.  The good news then is that my belonging to Jesus doesn't depend on the purity of my heart first, but rather the other way around: when Jesus says I belong, it has a way of purifying the garbage out of my soul.

So there's the truth of it, friends.  We are hot messes, every one of us. It is worth being honest about that rather than pretending it ain't so.  And then with that awareness, we can hopefully be more gracious with the people we struggle with, and we can be more honest with ourselves and our own pet hypocrisies.  

Bottom line: you are loved, hot mess that you are, right here and right now, forever and always.  And as that love goes to work on you and on me, it does something to us.  Be we remain beloved, even in the midst of the mess.

Lord Jesus, bless this mess that is me.  Make me to be like you.

"A Slender Hope"--September 19, 2019

"A Slender Hope"--September 19, 2019

"After some days Paul said to Barnabas, 'Come, let us return and visit the believers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.' Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul decided not to take with them the one who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not accompanied them in the work. The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out, the believers commending him to the grace of the Lord." [Acts 15:36-40]

This is going to sound weird to say, but I find a great deal of hope in this story of a friendship that went through strain and struggle, even to the point of parting ways--a story we don't get to know the end of (yet).  

Maybe that's what allows me to be unexpectedly hopeful: the lack of completion, the unresolved tension, the honesty about conflict and disagreement between even deeply devout and faithful Christians.  Knowing that the Bible doesn't shy away from telling stories like this--and to help us to see them as an unavoidable part of any Christian community that has real people in it--that helps me to be honest about the struggles and strains in our relationships with one another. And it helps me to see, too, that I can be held by God at the very same time that others are held in God's hand, even if disagreement keeps us from a closeness we had had before.

And so I find that I need to be reminded of stories like this one--stories which never make it into Sunday School coloring pages or lists of people's favorites--and I need it exactly because it doesn't have a spectacular miracle at the end or a happy ending, or really even an ending at all.  I need to know that God really does work in the midst of messy human lives and wounded feelings and vulnerable hearts and the consequences of words we cannot take back... because that is the world that I live in every day.

I need to know that even though these two deeply faithful giants of the early church, Paul and Barnabas, had become very close in their friendship and their collegiality and work together, they could still reach a point where they struggled to maintain their friendship in its earlier form, and they couldn't make it work.... and yet both of them continued to be loved by God, used by God, and even to reflect Christ for the world by God.

The backdrop of this falling out is hinted at by Luke the narrator here.  On their first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas had traveled around the Mediterranean, bringing the news of Jesus and planting churches as they went.  And at some point along the way, a young man named John Mark came along, too, but he bailed out on them and left midway.  So when Paul decided he wanted to go back to visit all those congregations they had started, Barnabas wanted to get the whole band back together, as it were, but Paul wouldn't agree. And as Luke narrates, eventually this got to be a dealbreaker for Paul and Barnabas, and they decided to part company.

This story, as sad and regrettable as it is, just seems so very real to me.  This is part of what reminds me that the Christian faith isn't (or shouldn't be) wishful thinking or fairy tales.  Sometimes we slide into that, and we allow ourselves to think that being Christians will mean either that (1) there will always be a way to work out our relationship problems, if only we just put in enough willpower, (2) there is always a clear happy ending, (3) "real" Christians can always find ways to work together, or (4) that if you can't come to an agreement, it must mean that one of you is "right" and one of you is "wrong"--maybe even that one is a true believer and the other is not.  Those are always tempting oversimplifications, honestly.  But this scene from Acts doesn't go putting white or black hats on anybody.  This isn't about who was the good guy and who was the bad guy, who was spiritual and wise versus who was worldly and foolish.  This is about two people who both love Jesus and care very much for one another, but who see things differently and cannot come to a resolution about it.  And it costs them--not their salvation, but their cooperation.

And to be fair, both have a point.  Barnabas wants to give John Mark a second chance--after all, the Christian faith is very much about second (and third and fourth and hundredth) chances.  He wants to train a new potential leader for the church, and he sees promise in John Mark, despite his past mess-ups.  That's noble.  On the other hand, Paul has a good point, too.  It would be easy to read ego into this, but I don't think it's a matter of Paul being jealous or feeling like he's being replaced by John Mark.  I think Paul honestly is concerned about what will happen to the quality of their work if Barnabas has to divide his attention and energy between serving the congregations they visit and the one-on-one time he is going to have to spend babysitting John Mark.  I think Paul is concerned, too, about seeing John Mark letting them down again.  And I think Paul can foresee that if John Mark is now added into the picture, there are a lot of ways the whole project can go south. Ironically, I'll bet Paul is even worried that if John Mark comes along and does mess things up again, it could permanently damage the friendship between all of them, with Barnabas feeling like he has to pick sides between John Mark and Paul.  And Paul would rather just avoid all of those possibilities by just having John Mark stay home.

Maybe the particulars are different for us in our daily lives, but a lot of those same dynamics are there as potential minefields in our relationships as well.  It's the question of whether you extend forgiveness to the friend who let you down or hurt your feelings before, knowing that they could hurt you or leave you hanging all over again.  It's the question of whether someone who has messed up publicly in church life gets a second chance, or whether those chances can never be granted again because of the severity of their mistakes.  It's the question in families of how kids--both in childhood and even as young adults--deal with the separation of their parents, or later, whether a parent's new boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancé is edging them out for the attention of their mom or dad.  It's the question of how a friendship survives when it is strained severely enough, whether someone hurts you in a single moment or slowly fades away over time, and whether you can reverse the momentum to regain the trust and closeness that feels somehow lost.  It's the question of what happens when you find out someone you respected a great deal also does or says something that causes you to lose respect for them--and whether you are willing to overlook the disagreements between you.

None of those are easy, and yet all of them are the stuff of actual, real, lived-in relationships.  And instead of thinking that "real Christians" can always work out those differences, maybe it's worth remembering that these two major leaders in the early church couldn't find a way to work out their differences on this issue.  And it meant, in this case, that they did part company.  Looking at our own lives and the messes we find ourselves in quite often, it is somehow comforting to know that God can still use us and love and hold on to us, even when we can't find a way to hold onto or work with each other.  That reminds me in a humbling sort of way that God's ways and abilities are bigger than mine, and it also gives me hope when I can't find a way to restore a relationship I have struggled--and failed--to heal.

Paul and Barnabas' story doesn't give us permission to just give up on each other with a shrug, but it does remind me that the story of Jesus' people in Acts is the story rooted in the messiness, heartaches, and struggles of real life. Now, we don't know what ever happened to the friendship between Paul and Barnabas in the rest of their earthly lives--there's no story given to us in Acts where they eventually reconcile and make peace with one another.  We never find out if Paul was really just jealous that Barnabas was spending so much time on John Mark, or if Barnabas was being too naïve about whether John Mark might flake out on them.  What we do know is that even after the separation, God continued to bless each of them.  Paul went on to at least a second and third missionary journey, bringing the Good News of Jesus to Europe and getting into a long list of wonderful, holy troublemaking. And Barnabas and John Mark surely did important work where they went as well.  God didn't have to pick sides, even if Paul and Barnabas couldn't work thinking out themselves.  And sometimes, that may be all we can say about our struggles in friendships, collegial relationships, and ministry: we sometimes find ourselves led in different directions from one another, and cannot "work things out"... and yet we trust that God remains with both of us--you on your path, and me on mine, too.

That might seem a slender hope to lean on, but it is a solid one--solid enough for today, at least.

Lord Jesus, hold us and those we struggle to relate to, and be present on both our paths.

"Playing by Different Rules"--September 18, 2019

"Playing by Different Rules"--September 18, 2019

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." [1 Corinthians 1:26-30]

I decided to try an experiment: I tried playing by different rules without telling anybody what I was up to.

It started like this: this morning in the space between breakfast and going to school, my daughter approached me and said, "Will you play Old Maid with me, Daddy?" Well, I will confess, it had been a few years since I had last played that old classic, but with a quick reading of the instruction card that came with the special kid-friendly deck, I was refreshed on the rules: get as many matched pairs as possible, so that you don't end up with the card labeled "Old Maid," the one card in the deck that doesn't have a match, a pair, or an identical corresponding partner.  Okay, got it.  So I shuffle and deal out the cards, and played a standard game of Old Maid with my six-year-old.  Not to brag (since this is essentially a game of blind chance), I won that first round.

My daughter, disappointed for the moment, winced as she saw she was left with the losing card, and blurted out with a furrowed brow and a frown, "Oh--I got stuck with the granny!"  And it occurred to me in that moment that, while the stakes of this particular card game are pretty low for a Tuesday morning, there was something that made me queasy about this moment.  Maybe it was memories of being the wallflower kid back at the junior high dance watching the other kids pair up. Maybe it was the years' worth of seeing people be told you have to be "coupled off" in order to be successful at life or else you will risk being regarded as "damaged goods" or as the proverbial "old maid," only to see them rush themselves into a bad relationship that imploded before long. Or maybe it was looking at how my own family is not made of matched identical sets, but has brown hands that are different from my own pale pink ones.  

But, even though I know this was just a card game played while killing time before school, I didn't like the idea of playing a game in which the goal was not to get stuck with the person who didn't fit.  I know the figure on the card isn't a person, and can't feel left out. But I also know how easy it is to get drawn into the game-playing that treats others like they are dead weight because they don't fit.  We human beings cling to that strategy like an inflatable raft on the ocean, and we have to learn it from somewhere.  And here was my six-year-old daughter making a face of disgust to be stuck with the old maid, and there I was reinforcing the idea that the goal should be to get rid of these undesirable ones that end up in your hand. And because these cards have faces and characters on them, there was this notion, however subtle or implicit, that some people are just not valuable because they don't fit, because they don't match up, or because they don't have the marks of status that everybody else has.

So as I say, I tried an experiment.  Or, maybe I should say, I began it--because I can only imagine where this will go or how long it will keep running.  I asked my daughter if she wanted to play a second round of "Old Maid," and I decided that this time, I would try as hard as I could to get the "Old Maid" card, without letting her know that I was trying.  I could tell by the way she held it out from the rest of the cards in her hand (first-graders don't have great poker faces) where she had placed it (and even that was interesting--she held it out, sticking out from her deck as if she didn't want it to touch or taint her other cards!).  And so I plucked the Old Maid from her hand when it was my turn, and let the game play out so that I would either keep it or could take it back from her before the end of the game.  And when she won, I wanted her to see that there was no "disgust" on my part--not at losing the game, nor at having the "losing" card. I just smiled and said, "Looks like I got her--and I kept her!" without a hint of disappointment.  I wanted to begin to plant the subversive but vital idea that one does not simply have to accept the rules we are presented with in life for how to be "successful" or to "win," and that you certainly do not have to accept the rules the world gives us about which people don't matter.  I began playing the game intentionally trying to gather up the one that the rules of the game say is to be avoided and shunned.

And I think I'm going to keep playing that way for as long as possible, just to see what happens, and whether she notices or ever asks why I am not upset to get the card everyone else says is the "bad one."

Now, this little social experiment isn't just to mess with my kids.  Not at all.  No, I think this is actually the beginning of one of those lifelong lessons that goes to the heart of the Christian faith.  No less an authority than the Apostle Paul saw that God's way is quite often to gather in the ones discarded by the world at large and to make something new and wonderful that includes them all.  "God is always taking beggars and turning them into kings," Martin Luther once wrote.  And I think that same idea is what Paul has in mind as he writes to the Corinthians.  "Not many of you were wise... or powerful... or of noble birth," Paul notes, writing to the fractious house churches of Corinth. They were a whole church full of discarded people, all told at some point along the way that they were disposable, replaceable, broken, or damaged goods.  And yet, Paul says, God has created a whole new beautiful humanity with them, and has used exactly their unimportance in the world's eyes as a way of shaking the whole system the world uses to decide who is, or isn't, important.  

That means the church is--and always has been--a motley crew of anybodies and nobodies, people who don't match, people who don't fit, and people who have been thrown into the discard pile.  And day by day, we are a part of a two-thousand-plus year experiment in playing the game of life by a different set of rules, where we seek out the outcast and the unvalued and regard one another as chosen and precious to God. It is a beautiful thing to be a part of... and I'm not really sure what will happen as we keep at this experiment. 

The struggle for us day by day is that we are sent into a world still playing by the old rules, and which might not understand when they ask us what we are up to.  The world around us might even start to use religious language to tell us that only the ones who fit, who match, and who conform to the cookie cutter are acceptable to God.  The Respectable Religious folks among us might say that you're only a spiritual success if you fit the mold and match up to everybody else. And as loud as those voices can sometimes be, we might be tempted to believe them.

So day by day, the followers of Jesus are sent out to play by a different set of rules, seeking to gather in the very faces that the Rule-Makers say are supposed to be discarded, and welcoming in with genuine love the people who don't look like "winners," don't have prospects, or don't fit our categories.  The world and its authorities will look at us, this beautiful church that looks like the Island of Misfit Toys, and declare us with self-assurance to be "losers."

And when it happens, we will not frown with disgust or throw our cards down in bitter disappointment.  We will simply smile, knowing we are all held like precious treasures in the hand of Christ, and knowing that he has gone to great lengths to gather us all up into his grip.  We'll spend our lives playing by different rules--whether the world around us ever catches on or not.

Lord Jesus, as you have gathered us when we were the odd ones out, move us to gather up all the people who have been discarded in life, but who are precious and beloved in your sight.