Taking the Plunge--September 1, 2025

Taking the Plunge--September 1, 2025

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely.... When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 14:1,7-11)

As a rule, Jesus never calls us to do something he isn't also prepared to do; in fact, Jesus typically has done it first before he asks us to follow suit.  These words, from a passage that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, are a case in point.

This month, we turn to a new focus in our devotional life and our year of "Living on the Edge," to consider being "with Jesus on the margins," and the texts of the lectionary for this past Sunday point us in that direction already.  As we start this new season, we find Jesus as a dinner guest at the house of one of the Respectable Religious Leaders, people-watching as the guests vie for the best spots and greatest social standing.  Now, before we go any further, it is worth noticing that Jesus is willing to be a guest at the Pharisee's house just as surely as he had been willing to be a guest at the dinner parties of "tax collectors and sinners" earlier in the gospel's narrative as well, and just as surely as he would go ahead and invite himself over to the chief tax collector Zacchaeus' house in a few chapters.  Jesus keeps all these doors open, and he is willing to keep the table talk going with all sorts of unlikely people--even though the tax collectors are hated by many, and even though many of the Pharisees seem particularly upset at Jesus a lot of the time.  Jesus is willing to break bread with all of them, which by itself is pretty scandalous.

But while he's at this particular dinner party, Jesus offers a bit of wisdom to everybody racing to grab the best seats like it's a grown-up game of Musical Chairs: what if you stopped trying to force yourself to the center of attention, and instead learned to be content on the margins?  What if you didn't need to try to make yourself the most important, and instead could associate with the least?  In fact, what if you were just plain done with all the foolish game-playing that tries to measure our worth from our social connections, influential friends, or the amount of elbow-rubbing we do with the "Big Deals"?  What if we no longer spent our energy trying to convince everyone (and ourselves) that we were the "greatest" and instead were comfortable enough in our own skin that we didn't mind associating with the ones labeled "lowly"?

Now that by itself is a pretty radical move. It certainly was in the context of the first-century Greco-Roman world, in which "humility" was not considered a virtue (in fact, the word that gets translated "humble" or "humility" in New Testament Greek is really just their word for "lowly" or "lowliness," which doesn't sound nearly so noble and maybe sounds pitiable).  In the eyes of the Roman mindset, the goal in social actions was to puff yourself up, to talk a good game, to boast of your accomplishments, and to persuade people of your greatness.  You needed to earn clout in every social interaction, and that meant you needed to be seen with the right people, be friends with the powerful people, and get leverage with the influential people.  Jesus' counsel takes all that and unapologetically turns it on its head. He advises us not to play that game at all, because ultimately it's an exercise in futility like being on a hamster wheel.  The opposite course is just to make friends with the folks nobody else will befriend, to associate with the ones who cannot do you any favors, and to take the place with the least clout or prestige attached to it.

And to be sure, part of the appeal and growth in the early church's first decades as it spread like wildfire was that it welcomed those who were seen as "nobodies" by the rest of the world.  The first apostles were mocked in the opening chapters of the book of Acts for being "unschooled" (that is, possibly illiterate) and "ordinary," but it was that lowliness that said to other "ordinary" people, "There really is a place for you here with Jesus."  The churches that Paul founded a decade or so later had members who were enslaved, poor, uneducated, and lacking power, and he makes a point of reminding them that God's intention was to choose the things and people that the world calls "foolish" and "weak" to confound the so-called "wise" and "strong."  As an emerging faith in the first century AD, part of what made Christianity so appealing to many was exactly that Christians were apparently willing to hang out with anybody, without always having an "angle" to try and climb up the social ladder or gain more influence or political power.  And that willingness to associate with "the lowly" was genuine--those first Christians really did care about anybody and everybody they crossed paths with.  And that was evident to others who heard and saw us, because those first Christians actually spent time getting to know the folks on the margins.  We were the folks on the margins, truth be told.

All of that would be reason enough to take Jesus' counsel and to give up on the need to chase after positions of power and perches of influence with our social lives. All of that would be justification for getting comfortable with (or at least getting used to) life on the margins.  But there is a yet more fundamental reason for us as Christians to put ourselves in the lowly spots, to seek the place among the last and the least and the left behind: namely, that's where Jesus chose to go.  Jesus himself was always willing to risk being put last or written off as a nobody.  In a sense, that's what the whole incarnation is about, isn't it?  That the Savior of the world and the very Son of God is born, not in the palace of Caesar or from a high priestly family in Jerusalem, but to a poor family from a nowhere town who have to borrow barnyard furniture to lay their baby in before they flee for their lives as refugees, all while the baby is still in diapers!  In fact, in Paul's letter to the Philippians, he quotes what might well be an ancient hymn text that emphasizes God's surprising choice to be humble and lowly in Jesus.  He says (and you can go ahead and sing along if you know this one):

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:5-8)."

In other words, Jesus took the plunge first and sought the lowly place--among us. From God's vantage point, it is a humbling thing to take on the flesh and finitude of humanity.  And yet God didn't blush or shrink from the idea.  In Jesus, God has chosen to sit at the place of least importance.  In Jesus, God has picked a seat next to the least, the last, and the left behind. In Jesus God tells the kids that no one else will sit with at the lunch table, "I will be your friend."  If we dare to meet and love the people on the margins, it will mean going where Jesus already is. And somehow taking the plunge into the low spots of the deep end is less scary when you know that someone else has already done it before you and invites you into the water beside him.

So this week, we will have plenty of opportunities to live out Jesus' direction for us.  We can be the ones who seek out the person who is sitting alone and ask if they could use a friend.  We can be the ones who speak up for those whose voices are most often ignored or dismissed because they lack influence or importance.  We can be the ones who just make a friend with someone whose life and story are quite different from our own.  And we can be the ones who no longer need to spin our wheels wasting our energy trying to push ourselves to the place of most importance (and elbow out everybody else from the limelight), because Jesus reminds us that we can simply be free from that game playing.  Jesus has saved a place for us out on the edges of things--it's the seat right next to him.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to go where you lead, even when that expands our social circles beyond our comfort zones.

On the Side of Life--August 29, 2025

On the Side of Life--August 29, 2025

Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him. (Luke 13:10-17)

Here's an honest question: would we still follow the way of Jesus if it weren't seen as "Respectable Religion"?

For many of us, going to church and being identified as a Christian are seen as unquestionably positive things.  It gives the impression that you are a model citizen, a good and upstanding member of your community.  For a lot of us, our earliest childhood memories reinforced that going to church was "just what you do"--there was no question about it, no option to it, and you did it in part because everybody expected everybody else to go to church, to name the name of Jesus, and even to wear a cross necklace as a visible sign identifying our faith.  And again, for a great many of us, that came with an unspoken assumption that "everybody" (at least everybody in our own churchy circles) belonged to a church. From that perspective, Jesus wasn't a controversial figure--he was more the mascot or corporate logo that identified our brand.  And since that was how we saw the world, we assumed that's how it had always been, and how it always should be.

The Gospels, however, remind us that in his actual lived life and ministry, Jesus was nobody's mascot, and he seemed to be always upsetting people--even (or especially) the people most identified with Respectable Religion.  Even the actions that seem obviously good and certainly miraculous--like healing a woman who had been bound by crippling pain for eighteen years--got him into trouble with the self-deputized Gatekeepers of God.  It is worth remembering just how provocative Jesus' words and actions were--and are--even when those actions are clearly about bringing people more fully to life.

This passage, which many of us heard as our Gospel reading this past Sunday, is a case in point.  Luke, our narrator, certainly sees this healing as something to rejoice over.  The crowds at the end of the story get it right this time: they rightly celebrate "all the wonderful things being done" by Jesus.  But in the lived moment when the woman with the hunched back steps into the worship space, and in the heavy-handed scolding from the religious leaders after Jesus heals her, Luke also shows us just how provocative Jesus' actions really were.  It wasn't that a healing happened that bothered them, but that Jesus worked this healing on the sabbath day--the day, as we saw earlier this week in our devotions, which was set apart for rest and renewal in ancient Israel's faith.  And while the best of Israel and Judah's faith tradition understood that sabbath rest would have allowed for helping to heal someone so they could be spared pain and given rest from their suffering, there were also other sects within Judaism that interpreted things differently.  There were voices who insisted "no work on the sabbath" meant no medical treatments from physicians (as limited as medicine was in those days), no labor to heal, and nothing that could even possibly be considered physical exertion.  They had their own reasons for that particular interpretation (and certainly they were concerned about how often and how easily previous generations of the ancestors had simply blown off resting on the sabbath because it limited profits and had been called out by the prophets as one of the reasons the people ended up in exile).  But to be clear, there were several different sects and partisan groups within the broad umbrella of Judaism in Jesus' day who had different understandings of what it meant--and did not mean--to keep the sabbath.  

And what I think we often fail to acknowledge in this scene is that Jesus does not blush at all about having a particular understanding about the meaning of sabbath, and going ahead and living in to it without apology and without bitterness, even though it made him provocative.  Jesus is never cruel or power-hungry in his choice to be controversial, but when it comes to either helping the woman who has crossed his path or ignoring her, Jesus has a clear answer and draws a clear line.  There is no hemming and hawing from Jesus like, "Some people think it's OK to heal people on the sabbath, but then other people would rather stick to their interpretation of The Rules than to offer compassion and relief to another human being, and I really don't get to weigh on that subject because it might upset somebody."  Jesus is clear about what he is called to do and clear about what sabbath is really all about (restoring and renewing life), so he both heals the woman and calls out the Religious Leaders who started harassing her.  

And surely he knows that by doing this, Jesus is making himself offensive to some, an impious rulebreaker to others, and just downright divisive to another segment of the population.  There will be those who would take an episode like this and vilify Jesus: "See? He doesn't care about the commandments!" [He does.]  "He is disputing and denying the Word of God!" [No--he is correcting one interpretation of the Word with his own interpretation.]  "This Jesus isn't a good upstanding member of society--he is subversively attacking our most-cherished values!" You can see how the Respectable Religious Leaders could easily weaponize this encounter with Jesus and paint him in the public eye as a partisan hack who alienates the people who disagree with him.  And in fairness, Jesus does come down pretty hard on the interpretation of the Sabbath law that would have said it's permissible to untie your animal to lead it to the water trough but it's against the will of God to unbind this woman from her ailment.  Jesus is taking a particular stand here, and he is advocating for a particular position, without apology, without sheepishness, and without shame. Jesus is unabashedly on the side of life: of restoring, renewing, and relieving people so that they are more fully alive in every way they need it. And on that point, Jesus is willing to draw a line, regardless of whether that makes trouble for him with the religious leaders or the political powers of the day.

As we reconsider this story, I want to ask us to think about what it means for us particularly as Jesus' disciples.  After all, we are not simply spectators who watch the stories of Jesus unfold like an audience in a theater, and we are not simply to read the words of Jesus on pages of a book as though Christianity were merely a holy book discussion club.  We are called, precisely because we are disciples, to follow in Jesus' footsteps, to come to see the world through his eyes, and to respond to the world as Jesus does.  So part of this story's meaning is how it calls us to take particular stands the way Jesus does.   Now, as I say, Jesus is never a jerk about things.  He never punches down or picks on the powerless.  He never resorts to cruelty, crude name-calling, or threats.  And he never coerces people to do what he wants under threat of divine lightning bolt or plague of locusts.  But he does know where he stands, and that is always with a predisposition for mercy, for healing, for compassion, and for life.  Where that means parting company with other people's priorities--even if they claim that they are the spokespersons for Respectable Religion--Jesus will let those lines be drawn. Rather than build a meaningless compromise that said, "We don't really have a policy on compassion--it's up to each of us whether or not to be merciful, as you see fit," Jesus takes a clear side and a clear position. Following him will mean interpreting the rules in light of compassion rather than shoehorning compassion into the cracks and crevices left by the rules.  

Jesus intends for us to adopt his interpretation of sabbath.  Jesus intends for us to follow his example of helping others, regardless of the day of the week, because those other people are worthy of love, life, and care.  Jesus intends for us to be courageous like him and to be willing to speak up for the people who are being picked on by the Respectable Religious Leaders at any given time.  And Jesus intends for us to join in his work of bringing people everywhere more fully to life.  He doesn't claim that we're bound for hell if we struggle at it, or fail.  He doesn't say he hates us if we have a hard time shifting from one perspective to another.  But he does call us to a particular way of life--one that is shaped by his life--and Jesus doesn't apologize for that.

Today, then, we should be honest. Following Jesus may not always be popular--at least if we are actually following Jesus and not merely a vacuous mascot with a beard that we label "Jesus."  Living as Jesus' disciples will lead us sometimes to particular positions, particular commitments, and particular practices in the world, and they will sometimes be upsetting or provocative to others.  Forgiveness seems foolish to those who are used to holding a grudge.  Loving your enemies seems controversial if you have been steeped in the old "If they attack you, you've gotta attack them back!" mindset.  Touching the untouchable seems taboo if you are more concerned about the rules of purity than the needs of people.  And speaking up to advocate for those who are being stepped on will seem controversial if you have been taught that "quiet" is the same thing as "peace."  

Jesus intends to shape us in light of his own unique presence in the world, which includes when it is provocative.  But because of who Jesus is, that kind of scandal is worth making, because Jesus is always on the side of life.

Lord Jesus, stir us up to be bravely committed to your work of bringing people more fully to life.

Burning Clarity--August 28, 2025

Burning Clarity--August 28, 2025

"At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he has promised, 'Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.' This phrase, 'Yet once more,' indicates the removal of what is shaken--that is, creating things--so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe. For indeed our God is a consuming fire." [Hebrews 12:26-29]

There's a tune by the band Switchfoot playing in my head as I write--a song that comes back to me when I read these words from Hebrews. The opening lyric goes, "Ashes from the flame, the truth is what remains..." And then in the heart of the song, lead singer Jon Foreman belts out, "There's a fire coming that we all go through--you possess your possessions or they possess you. And if the house burns down tonight--I've got everything I need when I've got you by my side.... and let the rest burn."

Sometimes it takes the loss of everything you didn't need, in order to find out what you couldn't live with out. And in those times, maybe the thing that makes us let go of the baggage turns out to be a good and necessary--if also difficult and even painful--reality. Sometimes we need our foundations to be shaken to remind us of what we shouldn't have been treating as load-bearing in the first place. Sometimes we need the disruption of our old routines to wake us up and make us pay attention to what matters. Sometimes, we find ourselves agreeing with that line of Marilynne Robinson's narrator in Gilead, who says, "Grace is a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials."

I think that's what the Switchfoot song and the writer of Hebrews have in common here--they can look ahead to the events that shake us to our core, not with fear, but with a sense of purpose. In this passage that many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, when God says that the heavens and the earth need to be shaken, the writer of Hebrews doesn't see that as a punishment so much as the gift of clarity--a way of removing the rubble that we shouldn't have been trying to build our lives on. Maybe we need that burning clarity more than we realize.

Times of shaking have a way of compelling us to see just who--or what--we have really put our trust in after all.  If I insist that my money is not my god but still panic every time there's a sell-off in the Dow Jones, it might be a sign that I've put my trust in the stock market rather than in God.  If I can no longer see the ways that my preferred political party is out of alignment with the character of God's Reign shown to us by Jesus, it may be that I have switched my allegiance to my party rather than to Jesus.  If the institutions and role models I had put my trust in let me down or betray their values or sell out for popularity or power and influence, it might be the wake-up call I needed to show me where I have misplaced my confidence--and it might be what I need to get pointed back to Jesus.  Those seasons of disillusionment are not fun or easy to go through, but sometimes they bring the clarity that we needed but had been afraid to face.  Sometimes we need those experiences of having the unnecessary distractions burned away like dross in a refiner's fire to leave behind what is precious.

The fire of clarity can also compel us to see where we have let our faith in Jesus become just one more bit of kindling in our lives, ready to go up in smoke, and where we need to let our faith lead us in bolder and more daring directions that go to the heart of who we are. Maybe we have had to look at the places we have settled for just being "admirers" of Jesus or "fans" of his, but not "disciples." Maybe we've been forced to see that the popular "Me and My Group First" thinking that is all around us just isn't compatible with our non-negotiable call as disciples to love our neighbors and seek their good above our own convenience or comfort. And maybe--even if it's uncomfortable for the preacher to say it--we have needed someone to come along and shake us out of our complacency... and all the things we've been trying to build on that just couldn't bear the weight of what we need to endure.

Going through times like ours is never easy--and we may wish, like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, that difficult things not have to happen in our times. But maybe we can see in the difficult--and sometimes fire-like winnowing--times we have been given to live through, the gift of clarity to decide what is worth spending our lives on, and what isn't. Maybe the fire that burns the house down helps you to see that you have all you really need in the person who loves you and takes you by the hand to lead you out to safety. Maybe the earthquake that shakes the very creation to the ground shows us not to have put our trust in the Almighty Dollar, the notion of eternal abundance on the shelves at the store, or the powers of the day in the first place. Maybe we have needed all along to lose or let go of them all... so that we could find ourselves surely in the grip of an unfailing, unshakable God.

It turns out, I do believe, that being in the hands of such a God is the best possible place for us to be anyway.

Lord God, let us rest in your goodness, and then let the rest be shaken as it needs to be.

To Rest in God--August 27, 2025

To Rest in God--August 27, 2025

 "If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath,
  from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
 if you call the Sabbath a delight
  and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
 if you honor it, not going your own ways,
  serving your own interests or pursuing your own affairs;
 then you shall take delight in the Lord,
  and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
 I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
  for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 58:13-14)

At some point, you've got to decide if you would rather have money be your god, or let God be your god. At least the folks who bow down to golden idols are honest about the real object of their adoration.  All too often, folks who talk the right religious talk and say they are devoted to God also look for ways to give their allegiance to their pocketbooks and bank accounts at a time when they think that God isn't watching (which is, of course... never).  And here, the prophet we've been listening to this week (since many of us heard this passage in worship on Sunday) just reminds us that God isn't fooled by any of that game-playing.  God is fully aware of every time we mouth the right religious words on Sunday while putting our hearts and energy into the endless quest for "more" that is the hallmark of the worship of money.  God invites us here to abandon the impulse to only look out for "Me and My Group First" and instead simply to rest in the assurance that God will give us what we need, even when we haven't made more widgets or earned more profits for the company today.

Today's verses conclude the section we've been looking at from Isaiah 58 this week, and once again, they are words offering clarity.  Earlier in this passage, we heard the prophet say that what God really wants of us is to care for the most vulnerable around us rather than putting on a religious show (whether in our houses of worship or in the public square--God is impressed with neither).  Then we heard yesterday the reminder that the kind of legacy that really matters is a life spent rebuilding and restoring community rather than looking to get statues or monuments built in our honor or our names in gold letters on towers.  Today, the prophet turns to a central practice in ancient Israel's faith--the sabbath.

Sabbath, of course, was remembered in Israel's storytelling as God's gift of rest that completes the rhythm along with work and play.  We need times to be productive--to build, to grow, to harvest, to cook, to plant, and so on--and we need times to rest.  As the ancient Israelites remembered it, part of the reason God instructed them to have one day of rest in every seven-day week was the rhythm of creation itself, and part of it was as a response to the slave-labor conditions they had in Pharaoh's Egypt (when they never received rest, and when their worth was entirely based upon how many bricks they made, how much straw they cut, and how much they added to the Gross Domestic Product of ancient Egypt).  Before anything else, sabbath was meant to allow everyone--including farm animals, delightfully!--to be renewed, and to learn anew that the world didn't fall apart or stop spinning just because you took a day off.  Sabbath was meant to prevent work from becoming an idol, as well as the subtle idolatry of "But We Can Make More Money If We Never Take A Day Off" thinking.  Before anybody added the layer of going to public worship, before there was any expectation of corporate chanted prayers, sung hymns, or listening to sermons, there was simply the calling for everyone to cease from work.  The cost was clear, too: if you don't work for one day out of the week, collectively, you are not maximizing profits.  You are potentially leaving one whole day's worth of earnings left unattained. God knew it, and commanded it anyway.  That was actually part of the whole point of sabbath--to say that resting in God was more important than maximizing profits.  It was money left on the table, because God knew that there is a better quality of life for everyone when nobody has to work themselves to death.

And at their best and most faithful moments, the people of Israel and Judah understood that about the sabbath.  They saw it was a gift, and they honored the day by collectively stopping their work, giving each other the space and time for renewal, and not scrambling incessantly to make a buck.  Work stoppage on the sabbath was a way of valuing human beings more than the money we can make at our jobs or the profits we can store in a vault.  And again, at least some of the time, the covenant people understood that it was a better way of life to give one another rest by practicing sabbath, rather than constantly trying to one-up your competition by taking fewer and shorter breaks than the next guy.  That mentality is just a death wish dressed up in a business suit.

But somebody always has to ruin a good thing, it seems.  And over enough time, there came to be voices who wanted to give less and less rest for their workers, their household staff, and their animals, so that they could make more and more in profits.  There were sellers in the marketplace who wanted to reduce the hours they had to be closed in order to increase their window for making sales.  There were more and more people who wanted only more profits and didn't care what the loss of rest time did to their happiness, contentment, health, or over all well-being.  It became easier and easier to profess that you were devoted to God (saying the right prayers, going through the right motions) while still only caring about seeking the interests of Me-and-My-Group-First, and only caring about making more money.  And those are precisely the folks that the voice in Isaiah 58 has complaints about.

Here the prophet calls the people away from the relentless chase of Bigger Profits, directing them instead to receive the gift of rest and to trust that their worth was not reducible to how much money they made for the company today.  Isaiah 58 calls all of us away from the merciless impulse to work ourselves (and our neighbors) to death in the quest for "More," and to leave behind the mindset that only seeks our own interests. And instead, the prophet calls us back to receiving the practice of sabbath rest as a gift to be savored, not an obstacle to get around.  When we rest from work and allow others around us to rest as well, we collectively dethrone the idol of Profit, and we allow the living God to renew us as a gift of grace apart from the tyranny of having to outdo one another. That's what the prophet speaking in Isaiah 58 is calling us into--a life in God's economy of grace as opposed to the eternal hamster wheel of unending profit-seeking work.

Sometimes being a disciple of Jesus means doing more and going to extra lengths because Jesus is calling us to do what he does.  But sometimes being a disciple is also about allowing the living God to give us rest, and to give one another rest as well--as a way of preventing the impulse for More from becoming our god.  Will we allow God to give us sabbath rest in a culture like ours, which is built on the need to constantly "get ahead" of the next person?  That's the challenge in front of us--simply to rest in God.

Lord God, enable us to rest and to give space for others to rest as well, even if that runs counter to a culture that often only cares about profit margins.

Mending the World--August 26, 2025

Mending the World--August 26, 2025

"The LORD will guide you continually
  and satisfy your needs in parched places
  and make your bones strong,
 and you shall be like a watered garden,
  like a spring of water
  whose waters never fail.
 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
  you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
 you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
  the restorer of streets to live in." (Isaiah 58:11-12)

When I die, I hope there are no marble monuments with my name on them, no bronze plaques laid in my honor, and certainly no statues of my likeness (what would we be trying to do--scare small children?).  But I do hope that when I'm gone, there will be a legacy of things I leave behind that were mended after being broken, rebuilt after falling into disrepair, and restored after coming apart.  I hope there are signs that I was here on earth for however many years it turns out to be, but I sure as heaven don't want them to be carved in granite or--God forbid--with my name in big gold lettering on a building somewhere.  I want there to be evidence of my existence in a well-maintained house that didn't fall apart, the sturdy craftsmanship of something I built that remained useful, or even the marks something that wasn't thrown away when it broke, but was repaired and made good as new.  Every time I fix a closet door, patch a hole, replace the porch screening, or improve something around my house, I feel like that's the mark I hope to leave on the world. Monuments are cold.  Plaques are a waste.  But signs of mending are worth spending your life on.

In the Jewish tradition, there has come to be a beautiful phrase to describe that work as, basically, the essential human calling--and the vocation of all who would seek to do God's will.  In Hebrew, it is "tikkun olam," and it translates to something like "the mending of the world" or "the repair of the universe."  And the idea is that all of creation is the handiwork or craftsmanship of God, for which we have the opportunity to care, improve, and mend whatever places have come apart, been broken, or worn down.  (Of course, another part of the conversation is to name the ways that we human beings are often a major part of the reason that something is broken, damaged, dirty, or polluted in the first place, and it would be wise of us to identify the ways we cause harm in God's world, so that we can stop actively making things worse!)  This notion of "tikkun olam" comes from the Mishnah, a later collection of Jewish oral tradition around the Torah, but you can see the beginnings of the idea here in this passage from the book of Isaiah, which many of us heard in worship back on Sunday.  You can hear the voice of the prophet lifting up the idea of being remembered for what we have repaired, how we have mended things, and the ways we left the world better than we found it.

Of course, these verses follow right on the heels of the verses we looked at yesterday, which culminated with the words, "If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall arise in the darkness..."  The same train of thought continues here.  In other words, the prophet is directing us toward what kinds of actions really matter, and what is worth spending our lives on.  And as far a God is concerned, it is worth giving our lives to feeding one another, to alleviating the pain of those who suffer, and, yes to mend what is broken around us--both in buildings and in hearts.  Today's verses continue with the imagery of someone rebuilding a neighborhood--fixing up the old family homestead, repairing the holes and cracks in the walls and restoring what had fallen down, so that that communities become revitalized, neighborhoods become good places to raise families in, and streets become safe to walk in.  And the prophet is again trying to point his listeners in the direction of what is worth leaving as a legacy. 

If, in yesterday's verses, we were reminded that God isn't impressed with big flashy shows of piety or displays of religion in the public square, then today, the prophet tells us what would make for a better way of spending our energy.  When we care for the most vulnerable, the prophet says, that's how we rebuild the neighborhood (and not, for example, setting up a predatory payday-lending storefront).  When we make sure folks around us are able to feed their families, that's how we mend the broken walls and restore the empty streets (and not, say, closing down the only grocery store around that sells fresh produce). The prophet says that's the kind of heritage that matters. Monuments eventually crumble (just ask Ozymandias in the famous poem). Metal plaques rust to illegibility. The prophet says it's not worth devoting your life to that sort of legacy. What will matter in the end are the ways we have helped the hurting and mended the broken places.  What will last, in the big scheme of things, are the countless ways, small and great, that we have repaired the world, because it is the world that God loves, and it our calling to share in God's work of mending it all.

To be a disciple, ultimately, is to learn to seek the things that the teacher seeks. To be a part of the people of God will mean aligning our priorities and values with those of the God to whom we belong.  Part of what that will mean is learning to get to of the impulse to get name recognition for ourselves in monuments or plaques and instead investing ourselves in the things that truly matter to God. In other words, today we are called to care less about the statues they will build in your or my honor, and more about the houses, neighborhoods, and communities that will be standing for generations to come because of the work we did to help repair the world.

How might you and I be a part of that good work today?

O Lord our God, realign our priorities with yours, to care for the world you love and the broken places within it.

For the God Who Has Everything--August 26, 2025

For the God Who Has Everything--August 26, 2025

 "If you remove the yoke from among you,
  the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
 if you offer your food to the hungry
  and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
 then your light shall rise in the darkness
  and your gloom be like the noonday." (Isaiah 58:9b-10)

Every year, the question comes back, just in time for the holiday shopping season: "What do you get for the person who has everything?"

And ironically, every December, I see that question show up as the headline for online articles and targeted ads that then proceed to list for me "Suggestions for what to buy for those people in your life who already have all they need."  This is the culture we live in, isn't it?--where "having everything you need" is seen as a problem because there still must be presents bought and money exchanged, and everyone must be turned into a consumer of commodities.  And so these "helpful" guides come into existence, arising out of thin air every year like ghosts summoned at a seance, offering quirky and unique gifts for the people in your life who already have so much stuff they don't have a place to put it all.  And so you and I find some new gadget, or trinket, or funny t-shirt, and we shell out our money and buy these gifts for the people we know who already have everything, because we have been told (and have come to believe) that this is how it works.  We live in a time where the assumed answer to the question, "What do you get for the person who has everything?" is "More of what they do not need."

The Scriptures ask us to imagine a different question, however.  Particularly the voices of the prophets, like this passage from Isaiah which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, comes from a larger section of the book which basically poses the question, "What does God really want?"  If you thought it was hard shopping for your tech-savvy brother-in-law who already owns every gadget, or for your parents whose cupboards are already full of decades' worth of charming coffee mugs you have gotten for them, just imagine how hard it is to shop for God.  After all, God is quite literally, the One who has everything--right?  The Scriptures are full of reminders that the whole earth, and indeed the heavens, the seas, and whatever other realms are beyond our comprehension or categorization, all belongs to God.  "Every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills," God says in Psalm 50:10, with the reminder that God doesn't need to be fed with our sacrifices, and God does not have to accept our offerings if we have brought them like they are a bribe or a transaction in exchange for services rendered. (And while we're on that subject, here's a reminder to every Loud Voice from a Podium out there who talks about "getting into heaven" as though it is a matter of "making a great deal" or doing enough to "get in"--not only is that not how it works at all, but God takes it as a personal affront when we speak like God is a business negotiator.)

So... what do we get--or do, or say, or offer--for the God who has everything?  What is it God really wants us to do with our time, our talent, our treasure, and our energy?  Well, earlier in this passage from Isaiah, the prophet rules out a few of our standard wrong answers.  When the people have tried to impress God by declaring a national day of prayer and fasting, God responded by saying, "I am not interested in your theatrics." When the people put on sackcloth, sang their hymns and praise choruses, and covered themselves in ashes as shows of their piety, God said, "Do you really think this is what I wanted?"  And when the people put on big public displays to demonstrate that they were "taking back their country for God," the Almighty responded, "I'm not even paying attention to your hullaballoo."  

And instead, God replies (see Isaiah 58:6-8) that what God would rather have had from the people instead of a "fast" or a special day dedicated to God was for them to care about the folks with their backs against the wall.  "Is this not the fast that I choose," God asks, supplying these examples: "to loose the bonds of injustice... to let the oppressed go free... to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house?"  In other words, God tells the people, "If you are trying to offer me your gratitude, love, or worship, I don't need you to have a public fast or a religious pageant." God says, "What I have always wanted is for you to take care of each other, and in particular, to take care of the people you have overlooked, pushed aside, or actively stepped on." God has never needed (or wanted) us to put on a show of our religiosity, but instead to authentically care about the people for whom God cares.

It's out of that line of thought that today's verses flow.  These verses continue the examples of what God really wants--things like finally outgrowing petty scapegoating and cruel speech, or like feeding the hungry and attending to the needs of those who suffer.  This is what you do for the God who has everything--you love other people, starting with the folks we have been overlooking.  Now, none of this is meant to be about earning God's love or racking up "points" with in heaven.  Not how it worked in ancient Israel, and not how it works now.  But it is about the question that comes on the other side of being graced. The late theologian Gerhard Forde used to put it this way: "What are you going to do, now that you don't have to do anything?" Once you realize you have already been loved by God and that it wasn't something you could achieve with shows of piety or religious hoop-jumping, what do you do with your life?  Chances are, when you realize what you have been given, you are going to be moved to gratitude--to thanksgiving, to some kind of response of love back to the God who has loved you first.  And when you get to that point, you'll find yourself asking the Big $50,000 question: what does God want from us anyway?  What do you get for the God who has everything?  Here, God speaks and gives an answer: you show love to the people who are most vulnerable, most at risk, and most on the margins. You show empathy for people who are suffering, because that is the way God loves, rather than asking, "What will I get out of it?"  You share your abundance with those who have nothing, because that is the way God runs the entire universe on an economy of mercy.  And you welcome those who are without shelter, without food, and without belonging to find a place set for them at your table, under your roof, and among your family.

Even more so than your tricky-to-buy-for relatives, the living God doesn't need anything we could buy out of a catalog, order from Amazon, or work up into a catchy praise chorus.  God doesn't need anything--period.  But if you want to get on the same wavelength of seeking the kinds of things that God seeks, you might start with love for the folks who are hungry, homeless, and harassed. God always sees through our attempts to "take our country back for God" as so much posturing or power-grabbing dressed in piety. Instead, God would rather have us feed hungry people and provide housing for the people without it, and just skip the empty show.  What do you say--should we give God what God actually wants?

Today, part of being a disciple of Jesus is to listen when God gives us clear direction about the things that are on God's heart and priority list, even if it's not the kind of splashy show we wanted to put on.

Lord God, teach us to want what you want, to seek what you seek, and to love whom you love.

Relentless Love--August 22, 2025

Relentless Love--August 22, 2025

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:1-2)

An awful lot of disicpleship is just learning to walk in Jesus' footsteps.

We get it wrong an awful lot of the time, to be sure. And, yes, we often find that our lives throw us into situations for which we don't have a perfect analogy in the Gospels (we don't have any stories of Jesus modeling proper social media etiquette, or deciding whom to vote for since he didn't live in anything like a democracy). But in the most basic sense, the New Testament keeps coming back to a rhythmic internal logic that goes something like this: "Because Jesus has done X, we do X as well."

We know verses like: "We love because he first loved us," or "If I, your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." Or there's Jesus teaching his disciples that they are called to serve one another and place themselves in the lowest place, directly because of his own way of serving: "for the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." Over and over again, that's the pattern of the New Testament: Jesus loved, so we love... Jesus forgave, so we forgive... Jesus served others, so we serve others... Jesus associated with the lowly, so we associate with the lowly... Jesus took up his cross, and so we bear the cross, too.

And so it makes total sense that when the writer of Hebrews talks about endurance and perseverance, the example of Jesus is our touchstone one again. We are called to keep enduring, "running with perseverance the race that is set before us," because none other than Jesus did the same first. Jesus showed us enduring, persevering love first, and therefore we have both an example to follow, but also his enduring love makes our own love possible. We are able to endure and persist in our lives, because Jesus makes us able--he gives us the capacity and strength to keep going when it would be easier to give in and give up.

So far, so good, right? Makes perfect sense to say that because Jesus "endured" that we are now both called and enabled to "endure" in this life as well. That's New Testament Ethics and Discipleship 101 stuff. So then, let's just take the next step and ask the unavoidable question: "What exactly does it mean to say that Jesus 'endured'?" What did Jesus persist at that we are called to follow suit with? In what ways did Jesus persevere, and how are we supposed to follow him? Again, that seems like a necessary and obvious question to ask, because there are some ways we can't be like Jesus (we don't have divine power to multiply loaves or cure leprosy at a distance, I'd wager), and there are some ways that aren't at the core of who Jesus is that aren't necessary to imitate (it's OK, for example, that Jesus' skin was almost certainly darker and browner than mine, or that I don't speak Aramaic or wear sandals all the time--those are not required of me to follow in Jesus' footsteps). So what does the writer of Hebrews mean when he says that we're supposed to "run the race with perseverance" while we "look to Jesus" as our example?

Well, for starters, the obvious answer is what the writer of Hebrews himself offers: Jesus "endured the cross, disregarding its shame." Jesus' kind of enduring love led him to a particular response in the world--to be willing to lay down his life as his response to evil. Jesus "endured" the cross--choosing to be crucified by his enemies rather than to crucify them, and accepting the mockery, shame, and the appearance of weakness that came with a cross, rather than to inflict those on others. The cross, after all, was not Jesus' defeat by the Empire, evil, and death, but exactly the place of his victory over them because of his refusal to resort to their terms and tactics. Jesus' enduring victory is precisely that he is unwilling to add more evil into the world by killing his enemies or hating his crucifiers; he endures in the path of self-giving, non-vengeful love that would rather absorb and exhaust evil's fury than give it more power by returning evil for evil, violence for violence, or hatred for hatred. This is what it means to say that Jesus "endures." It is his love that persists, even when his heart stops beating. It is that same defiantly persevering love that causes Jesus' lungs to breathe again on the third day. And it is that same commitment to self-giving love as a way of life that the writer of Hebrews calls us to.

I do think we need to be clear about that, because otherwise it can sound like "endurance" and "perseverance" are just about endless repetition of futile labor, like the old Greek myth of Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill every day, only to have it roll back down and require him to start again. Jesus' kind of "persevering" isn't meaningless expenditure of energy for no point. And it isn't just about mindless repetition of the same task that never gets done. When the writer of Hebrews calls us to "run the race set before us," it is not an eternally looping race course of infinite laps without a destination. Nor is he just yelling at us to "Get back to work and don't complain!" He is calling us very specifically in a particular course of action in the face of hatred and evil--we are called to follow Jesus' example in the way he responded to evil by not giving into its tactics, and absorbing its fury without weaponizing it and lobbing it back. Jesus was mistreated, abused, and tortured by the Romans, but he would not inflict abuse or torture back on them (even though that would well have been within his divine "power" to do). Jesus was mocked and shown no mercy, but he refused to answer on those terms, and instead prayed for mercy for his killers ("Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do...."). Jesus was made a victim so that the Empire would look strong and tough and great (that's why they crucified people--their cruelty was a warning that "You don't mess with Rome... or else!"), but Jesus would not do the same back to the ones holding the hammer. Maybe hardest of all for us to swallow is that Jesus was willing to bear the smug looks on his enemies' faces, as they were certain that they "won" and he "lost" because he wasn't fighting back on their terms--and yet for him to know all the while that it was his refusal to fight on their terms that was his victory. That's hard stuff. Jesus' kind of endurance was the indefatigability of his love--and that is what we are called to follow, according to Hebrews.

We may not be literally crucified for it, but we may well lose our lives or our livelihoods by following Jesus' example. We may be looked down on as weak or foolish or naive, but then again, so was Jesus. Whatever else it may mean for us to walk in Jesus' footsteps, the one thing the New Testament is unequivocally clear about is our calling to love the way Jesus loved. That love is not only wider than we would have expected (including outsiders, sinners, and enemies) but also deeper and longer than we could have imagined (persisting even in the face of hatred, mockery, and a cross). There will be days, for sure, when it feels like our energy sputters out, but ultimately it is Jesus' own relentless, cross-bearing love that moves through us--and Jesus' love is indefatigable.

Today, how will we be called to love people in the pattern of Jesus: answering hatred with compassion, responding to mockery with decency, and choosing not to fight evil with more evil or cruelty with more cruelty?

I know it's hard to imagine what that would look like, or how we will survive the attempt, but the One who went ahead of us as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith shows us that there is resurrection victory waiting through the way of the cross. Let's take the next step on that path today.

Lord Jesus, give us the clarity and the courage to love the way you love--refusing to answer hatred with more hatred, cruelty with more cruelty, evil with more evil. And let your kind of cross-shaped victory become our own.

No Lone Ranger Disciples--August 21, 2025

No Lone Ranger Disciples--August 21, 2025

"By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground.

Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect." (Hebrews 11:29-40)

Batman is famous for saying he works alone in order to protect his loved ones--but he's got Robin, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, and a whole Bat-family of other supporting heroes to assist the Caped Crusader.  Superman is the same, too, except that he's also got Supergirl and Krypto the Dog, as well as more recent additions like Superboy, Steel, and in his most recent cinematic adventure, the help of Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Mister Terrific.  Even the Lone Ranger wasn't really alone.

We keep telling stories about extraordinary heroes who take on impossible odds by themselves (even Pee Wee Herman had the great line on the silver screen, "You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me--I'm a loner, Dottie.  A rebel..." before he went off, clad in his trademark bow tie and gray suit, to find his missing bike). But more often than not, even the heroes who see themselves as "lone wolf" types turn out to have a support network of others who stand beside them, encourage them, and fulfill their own calling in their own ways.  The myth just doesn't hold up.

That's especially true for us as the people of God.  There are indeed amazing stories of people God used in extraordinary ways, but none of them did it alone. And none of us today are left to fend for ourselves against the challenges we face living out our faith, either.  There is definitely no such thing as a "Lone Ranger Christian," and the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews makes that clear.  In this passage that many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, we get a veritable who's who of outstanding characters from the stories of ancient Israel in the Old Testament.  The anonymous writer includes the obvious big name biblical celebrities and epic moments, from the Red Sea crossing with Moses and the walls falling down in Jericho with Joshua to the memories of David and Samuel. But he also includes people and moments that don't sound as glamorous or glorious--the stories of those who endured torture, mistreatment, and mocking for their faith, as well as those who were killed or exiled, "of whom the world was not worthy," as he says in such a lovely phrase.  Even those who were forced to wander in deserts and take shelter in caves were not alone, the writer says. They belong to a community of people claimed and called by God--what we sometimes call "the communion of saints"--which means that none of us lives the life of faith in isolation, even when we can't see the others who are sharing the journey with us.

For us as disciples in the 21st century, that's a much-needed reminder.  For one, we live in a time, as we noted earlier, that still perpetuates the myth of the loner-hero... even though that myth doesn't hold water when you look at it very closely.  And second, especially in the wake of these post-COVID years, it is still very easy for us to get used to being disconnected from other people, because pandemic life taught us to settle for life on screens rather than being together in the same place.  In the age of ever-increasingly fragmented social media enclaves, too, we find it is more comfortable to retreat to our own personalized, algorithm-selected feeds of images and posts we that will reinforce what we already like or think--and which also further insulates us from having to see or interact with other people who are different.  We are more primed than ever to fall for the mistaken belief that we can do it alone.

And maybe that's why we keep finding ourselves drawn to these stories, these names, and these faces of other disciples.  We find that the myth is lacking, and that we really do need to be in the presence of others who will encourage us.  We find that the company of other disciples gives us courage to face the things in front of us individually.  There are indeed times when I have to face a situation that is unique to me--a decision that is mine alone to make, or a conversation I need to be the one to initiate, or an action that I have to take that nobody else around me can do.  But even in those times, I rely on the witness of those who have gone before me, on the comfort of those who are beside me, and the hope of those who will come after me.  

As we keep reflecting on the life of discipleship in this season, these words from Hebrews assure us that we don't have to follow Jesus alone--in fact, they humble us with the reminder that we can't.  We couldn't if we tried, because we already stand in continuity with the prophets and patriarchs, rebels and revival leaders, saints and sojourners of the generations that have come before us and brought us to this place and time.  Some of their stories are in the pages of your Bible. Some of them are in the centuries of the church's story, including faces and names from every language, culture, and nation.  Some of them are the people in your life who have inspired and mentored your faith, from the well-known names like Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Henri Nouwen, or Mother Teresa, to the stories known only to you, like your fourth-grade Sunday School teacher, childhood pastor, or the family that used to sit in the pew behind yours in church who smiled and sang the faith in your ears every week.  All of them together make up the fabric in which each of our individual threads is woven into something new.  And to be sure, there will be people who tell stories of how you were the face, the hand, the voice that gave them exactly what they needed to follow Jesus in their own life as well. We do this together, learning from the examples of those who have gone before us, leaning on support of those who walk beside us, and looking ahead to the witness of those who will follow Jesus after us.

Whatever it is you are called to do as you live out your faith today as a disciple, you don't face it alone. 

Know that is true.

Lord Jesus, remind us of the lives and support of those who walk with us as we follow you together.

Doing Something About the Weather--August 20, 2025

Doing Something About the Weather--August 20, 2025

[Jesus] also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain,’ and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Luke 12:54-56)

You know the old one-liner attributed to Mark Twain, I'll bet:  "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."  Insert rimshot and laugh-track here.

The point of the joke, of course, is that even though small talk frequently turns to the weather as an easy, non-controversial subject for conversation, there's nothing we can really do about the weather, except to receive it.  My willpower can't make a sunny day out of a rainy one, and no number of signatures on a petition can make it rain when we're in the middle of a drought.  We are all great at talking about the weather, but we can't do much of anything to deal with it.

But, as Jesus points out, we can see it coming--at least some of the time.  And when we do see the signs of a looming rain, we take down our porch umbrellas and roll up our car windows.  When we do foresee scorching heat, we give the flowers some extra water and make sure to keep our dogs off the scalding blacktop.  And when they call for a snowstorm, we make sure to have extra milk, bread, and toilet paper in the pantry and fridge.  We do know how to read the signs of the weather--you could even say that in our day technology makes it even easier to predict tomorrow's weather with better accuracy through radar and satellites and such.  And we also know how to respond or prepare for what we can see coming with the next cold front or storm cloud.  Maybe that's what we're afraid of when it comes to the rest of our lives: we know if we are paying attention, we will be held accountable to act in light of what we see.

And I think that's why Jesus is so fired up here in these verses many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  We often don't keep our eyes open to the world around us--what Jesus calls "the present time"--because we know that if we pay attention to it, we will be called to respond to it, rather than burying our heads in the sand.  And Jesus knows how tempting it is for us just to stay in the bliss of ignorance, so we can justify staying put in the stillness of indifference.  All too often we look away from what we know will make us uncomfortable, away from news we don't know how to deal with, and away from the suffering of others in the world, because we don't want that knowledge to spur us to respond--to do something about any of it.  Many know the famous quotation of Maya Angelou: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." But more often than we would like to admit, we try to stay safe hiding in the inverse of that insight, telling ourselves, "As long as we don't learn, we don't have to do better."  As long as we don't pay attention, we can tell ourselves we didn't know what was happening... and let ourselves off the hook.  As long as we don't look at the darkening skies, we can say it wasn't our fault we didn't bring an umbrella to avoid getting drenched.

Jesus knows that about us--and while he absolutely loves us no matter what, he calls us to be honest with ourselves and to start opening our eyes to the needs of "the present time."  That means finding the courage not to look away from the headlines that break our hearts, not to ignore the faces of people we would have rather kept in our minds as an anonymous, abstract "them," and not to cover our eyes from the resources and opportunities we have in our hands to respond to the situations around us.  In both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, we are given the witness of prophets and apostles who call God's people to pay attention to the things they would have preferred to ignore.  

There's Amos, telling the well-fed and comfortable Big Deals of ancient Israel that God is upset at how apathetic and indifferent they are that others are suffering and hungry while they just turn up the volume on their music and refill their wine glasses.  There's Isaiah, pointing out the homeless in their streets and the hungry poor in their communities and saying, "These are the people God cares about more than God cares about our religious rituals!" There's the early church in Jerusalem, realizing that they had been ignoring the needs of widows among the Greek-speaking minority, and then stepping up to change the system and appoint people (also from that Greek-speaking minority) who could oversee the food program to make sure that they were not left out or unseen any longer.  There's the apostle James, helping his congregation see that they have been showing favoritism to the rich and shoving the poor aside--and of course, his intention is to get them to change their practice so that nobody gets treated as "less-than."

And then there's Jesus, calling attention simultaneously to the generosity of a widow who gives all she has to the temple offering plates and the greed of the Respectable Religious Leaders who get rich foreclosing on widows like her (see Mark 12:38-44).  Jesus is the one who sees a man whose hand is withered while he is teaching in the synagogue, and when the rest of the congregation wants to ignore him, Jesus heals the wounded man and calls the rest out for being willing to pretend the man isn't even in the room.  Jesus looks up in the tree and spots Zacchaeus, even when everyone else chose to ostracize the tax collector; meanwhile Jesus invites himself over to Zach's house for dinner.  Over and over again, Jesus compels people to see the needs, the faces, and the pains of others around them, even when we have been deliberately hiding our eyes.  So it's no surprise that Jesus speaks up again in today's verses to tell us open our eyes to read the needs and the calling of the present moment.  He knows we are good at feigning ignorance to get out of responding to the needs of the world--and he is intent on changing us.

In our own day and time, we know the temptation to turn our heads rather than acknowledge the panhandler at the street corner or the parking lot, because we don't want to have to wrestle with how to help them if we do admit they are there.  We know the impulse not to listen to the news because we are worried it will depress us, and "We just don't know what to do..." about the children starving in Gaza, or the rubble accumulating daily in Ukraine, or the local food program that lost its funding.  We would rather not have to pay attention to the stories of people who have been abused, or who have been mistreated, or have been victims of discrimination, or have been ignored all around. There are a million ways to keep our eyes from seeing what's right in front of us, and we have tried them all, because we don't want to take action to respond to the suffering we would see.  Jesus has come to take off our blindfolds and yank our heads from the sand so that we will see... and so that we will act accordingly.

I wonder... what might we need Jesus to help us to see today--what might we have been covering our eyes from recognizing or facing?  How might we be stirred up to action in response to what we will see if we let Jesus deepen our vision?  

Maybe we'll be provoked at long last from just making small talk about the weather... to offering an umbrella to the person in front of us at risk of getting drenched without our willingness to share.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to open our eyes... and to open our hands in response to what we come to see.

Blessedly Provocative--August 19, 2025

Blessedly Provocative--August 19, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." (Luke 12:51-53)

The bottom line is that Jesus doesn't particularly care what is popular or polls well with the right demographic group.  Jesus is clear about the trajectory he is on in the world, and while he welcomes any and all to be a part of his Kingdom movement, he knows that some will follow... and some will not.  The line between those who want to participate in the Jesus movement and those who walk away does not algin with a national boundary, a language barrier, or a tax bracket; it runs even through families to divide folks under the same roof.  Jesus has not come to stoke a war between countries, a riot between ethnic groups, or a class conflict between rich and poor--he has come to embody what it looks like for God to reign. And that will rearrange all of our lives in different ways.  Some folks will just decide they don't want to have their boats rocked, and Jesus will not force them onto his.  So... there will be divisions.

Now to be clear, that's not the same as saying that Jesus' goal is to make people hate each other.  Jesus doesn't intend to split up families or wreck homes. He isn't trying to add more misery or conflict into the world (although we should probably note that these verse, which many of us heard in worship on Sunday, do not make Jesus a likely candidate for "family values," whatever that phrase means).  Rather, Jesus is headed in a certain direction, and he is not taking votes, polls, or suggestions about changing course to something less radical.  Because he will not compel people to do what he says, there will be unavoidable fractures. Because Jesus refuses to be a tyrant, a bully, or an authoritarian ruling by fiat, there will be disagreement and discord between those who dare to live the Jesus way and those who would rather stay stuck in the tired old "Me and My Group First" mindset. Jesus is just being honest as he speaks to us, who are his disciples, so that we know that there may well be a cost to following in his footsteps.

What could be so controversial about Jesus that it splits up households and brings division? Well, to be honest, just about everything Jesus does is provocative in some way--we are just so used to sanding the rough edges off and coloring biblical scenes in soft pastel colors that we might not recognize how scandalously Jesus moves through the gospels.  In his inaugural sermon in his hometown (see Luke 4), after pleasantly reading from the book of Isaiah and announcing, "Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," Jesus proceeds to rile up his own neighbors, friends, and family enough that they want to throw him off a cliff because he dares to suggest that God's mercy includes outsiders and foreigners and not only them--how's that for starters?  He forgives the sins of a man brought to him on a mat by from friends, and the Respectable Religious Leaders just about have a conniption because he claims to have divine authority to forgive sins.  He invites himself over the notorious tax collector Zacchaeus' house and goes to dinner parties full of "tax collectors and sinners," only to get scowls from the well-behaved community leaders for associating with "those people." Even when he heals people, he upsets the guardians of morality and piety when he cures people on sabbath days.  And both the large crowds and his inner circle of disciples grumble when he insists that he is headed toward a cross, rather than leading the charge to conquer and crucify his enemies.  Once you start to actually pay attention, Jesus doesn't go very far at all in the gospels before upsetting the next person, from his words to his actions.

And Jesus' movement becomes even more controversial once his would-be followers realize the implications for their own lives.  It might sound relatively harmless to hear Jesus say, "Blessed are the poor," as long as he never follows it up with anything that affects MY pocketbook. But as soon as Jesus starts telling his followers to sell their possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and trust that they will have "treasure in heaven," (as many of us heard him say just a few Sundays ago from Luke 12:33), people back away.  It might not be offensive to hear, "Blessed are the peacemakers," until Jesus clarifies that with "love your enemies, and go good to those who persecute you" and it becomes clear that this discipleship stuff will make people call you "weak" or a "loser."  You might be excited to follow when Jesus is handing out free bread and fish, but when he follows it up with, "Now take up your cross," a lot of folks start looking for an off-ramp.  This is the source of Jesus' kind of divisiveness--it's not Jesus being a jerk, but rather Jesus being clear about what his way of life in the world will look like, and what it will cost.  Jesus' way in the world is scandalous, to be sure--but it is blessedly provocative.

And if I think about it, I suppose in that light I wouldn't want a version of Jesus that doesn't create that sort of division.  I wouldn't want a Jesus who was about to welcome the outcasts until he found out it would offend someone else and then backed down. I wouldn't want a Messiah who intended to say, "The greatest must be the servant of all," but then learned it wasn't polling well and decided to ditch the towel and basin in favor of boastful arrogance.  I wouldn't want a Savior who rejected the scandal of the cross because he found out it was unpopular compared to the Conquering Christ platform. We need a Jesus who is clear enough about the character of God's Reign to be divisive, so that we know he won't water down God's peculiar goodness when it becomes controversial.

Maybe the question we have been avoiding is this: when Jesus lays out his agenda in the world--a new kind of beloved community where the last are put first, the lowly are lifted up, the hungry are fed, old debts are cancelled, and the Spirit brings abundance all around--will we still follow him, or will we find ourselves walking our own way? When we see that Jesus' way in the world will challenge us, stretch us, provoke us, and almost certainly push us out of our comfort zones, will we still want to stick with him... or will we be the ones who call Jesus "too divisive" and parting ways with him?

The way we answer that question tells us a good bit about the direction to point our feet today.

Lord Jesus, enable us to keep following you even when it is challenging, and conform our wills and hearts to yours.