The Blessed Alternative--February 12, 2026

The Blessed Alternative--February 12, 2026

"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.
 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 58:9b-12)

These days we are so used to finger-pointing, it is hard to imagine that there was (or could be) a time when people were not so severely polarized into factions, each blaming its opponent for society's troubles while simultaneously avoiding responsibility for its own failures.

These days we are so accustomed to the noise of demagogues barking from podiums about whoever is the most recently identified villain to blame that we forget the world doesn't actually have to be carved up into "us" and "them" categories.

These days, we are so used to thinking of hungry people as "over there somewhere else"--usually, we assume, in "bad neighborhoods" or "bad countries" and therefore, we further assume, somehow deserving of their hunger--that we forget there is no such thing as a human being God does not love, and no face who is not made in the image of God.

These days, perhaps we are so thoroughly stuck in the ruts of being fearful of strangers, hostile to those we disagree with, and indifferent to those whose struggles are different from our own that we cannot imagine life being any different.  Perhaps the misery of being distant and divided from one another feels so familiar we are afraid of leaving it behind to try something new.  Perhaps we do not have the imagination to see that it doesn't have to be this way.

On days like these, the voice of the prophet dares us to envision an alternative and calls us into a different sort of life.  These words from what we call the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, which conclude the passage that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, are one of those times when God raised up a visionary to get us to see the world differently.  He interrupts the routines of scapegoating and finger-pointing that had consumed his listeners and woke them up out of the comfortable numbness that made them apathetic to the needs of neighbors around them.  And in a sense, he is still doing the same to us as well.  The voice of Isaiah 58 stops us in our tracks and says, "Did you forget that the world doesn't have to be fractured into US and THEM?"  He says, "Have you failed to see that your neighbor is hungry, or have you failed to even see them in the first place?"  And he asks us to imagine what life would be like if we broke out of our old mix of animosity and apathy to live in God's kind of beloved community.

"You want to know what that would be like?" he asks.  "It would be like living in a watered garden.  It would be like you are rebuilding forgotten neighborhoods and repairing the broken houses.  It would be like a light shining in the darkness.  It would be the alternative we've all been waiting for."  Church folk these days love to talk about "shining our light" so that everybody else will see it (as we even looked at earlier this week in an earlier devotion).  It's worth remembering that when Isaiah 58 talks about how to be such a light, he immediately talks about feeding hungry neighbors, caring for those whose backs are against the wall, and leaving behind the tired old pass-the-buck scapegoating we were used to.  The prophet doesn't have to wag his own finger at us or threaten us with a list of rules here; rather, he offers a vision for how things could be.  He dares us to ask ourselves, "Why have we let ourselves become so comfortable with such a sad status quo that leaves us estranged from each other and constantly angry at one another?"  And then he dares us to ask a further question, as well: "What if it were different?"

What if we were different?

And what if the only thing holding us back from stepping into that different way of life was our own inability to see that were stuck in the old pattern?  What if the kind of neighborly life where we don't have to constantly spin the day's events into an attack on "THEM" were possible right now?  What if the kind of beloved community where nobody went hungry wasn't a pipe dream or wishful thinking, but a matter of choosing it in our priorities over insulated indifference? And what if the prophet has come to call us into that kind of community right now?

Good news: that is exactly what this voice is doing.  We are invited, right here and right now, to be a part of this blessed alternative.  It can begin now.

Lord God, pull us out of the miserable ruts we have been stuck in and pull us into your newness of compassion and care.

The Kind of Life We're Called Into--February 11, 2026

The Kind of Life We're Called Into--February 11, 2026

"'Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?' Look, you serve your own interests on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast, only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?" [Isaiah 58:3-7]

Maybe it's the church nerd in me, but I really do think that an awful lot of the rottenness around us comes from our inability to really think through what we believe about God. I don't mean to be a theology snob, but honestly, it seems like we human beings can be just utter jerks to each other while we are equally certain we've got the divine stamp of approval on our jerkiness, all because we haven't really thought through the things we say we believe about God.

And, boy oh boy, does this passage from the book of Isaiah have that on display in spades here. These words, which many of us heard this past Sunday as our first reading, are one of those times when God speaks directly to the Respectable Religious Crowd and lovingly smacks them upside the head to get their attention with a message. The people are intent on getting God's attention--they want help in rebuilding after the exile, they want prosperity for their businesses and their nation, they want security from their enemies, and they want to know they have divine favor in all their pursuits.

And so they do what Respectable Religion always does: they put on a show... for God. They pull out all the stops and play all the greatest hits: a ritual fast, signs of humbling themselves, covering themselves in ashes and rough sackcloth, and they bow down low as they cry to the heavens. They put on a whole National Day of Prayer and Fasting, convinced that's what will get God's attention. And when they don't get the response they were hoping for, the Respectable Religious Crowd lobs up another petition to God: "How come you're not noticing us? Why don't you see us doing all these things to get you attention, God?"

Well, right there is Bad Theology Move Number One--of course, God sees it all. It's just that God isn't impressed with any of that theatricality. God knows and sees everything--but not just their performed piety. God also sees the way these same folks who insist they are devoutly dedicated to godliness also ignore the needs of their neighbors, fight with each other, and take advantage of the most vulnerable in their community. God sees all of that, too, and God is more upset with the ways the people are mistreating each other to make a buck, ignoring each other because helping would be inconvenient, and fighting with each other because meanness is easy.

That brings us to Bad Theology Move Number Two: it's not that God doesn't see us when we are trying to get God's attention, but rather that God DOES see everything, including all the things we thought nobody noticed or paid attention to... and including the times we aren't putting on a religious performance. The people have sort of accepted that there's some kind divide between "sacred" things that God is supposed to care about [you know, prayers and rituals and fasting and the like], and then "secular" things that are outside of God's purview [things like business and everyday life and the Dow Jones Industrial Average]. And that just ain't so. God sees it all, and you can't buy God off over here on one side with well-produced religious pageantry while you're cheating your neighbors or letting them starve without so much as recognizing they're even there over on the other side. This should be obvious, but sometimes we human beings just don't think it through... and we end up trying to get God's attention with religion while we're also trying to get the same God to look the other way when it comes to our cruelty and indifference to the people around us.

Underneath all of this nonsense with a pious veneer is another vital truth that the people in Isaiah 58 had forgotten--or ignored--and that we are easily tempted to forget, too. We don't have to "do" anything to get God's attention--EVER. That's just not how it works. Trying to get God's attention through public displays of religiosity is like thinking you have to buy access to the air you are already breathing, or trying to bribe your parents into loving you, when they already do. There's NO way to "make" God pay attention to you, because there's no NEED--God is already completely aware and totally attentive to all of us, all the time.

And once we're clear on that, then we can finally get around to a final corrective God offers here to the bad theology of the Respectable Religious Folks: since God doesn't need us to "do" anything to get the attention of the divine, what WILL we do with our time, energy, and effort? To borrow the old question of the late Gerhard Forde, "What will you do--now that you don't HAVE to 'do' anything?"

So God speaks through the prophet to answer that question. Since you can't [and don't need to] get God's attention with all your holy hoopla, what things DOES God actually care about? Well, how about taking that food you weren't eating [since you were fasting, right?] and giving it to your neighbor so they can eat? How about, since you're going around dressed in all that pious-looking [and itchy] sackcloth, what if you gave some of your extra clothes to the neighbor whose closet is bare? How about, if you're so interested in shouting up to the skies with a loud voice, you use that voice to speak up for the neighbors who are being taken advantage of at work? How about, instead of bowing your head down on the ground to look devout, you unclenched your fists and quit threatening each other? In other words, when you don't have to put on a production to draw attention to your supposed piety, maybe you could actually listen to the kinds of things God cares about and realign your focus on those? Once you've thought through your theology and realize that you didn't need to do anything "religious" to get God's attention, you're amazingly free to spend your strength on the things that actually matter to God--and it turns out that looks like love. God never needed a National Day of Prayer and Fasting or a pious pageant of horn-tooting self-denial, but God's heart has always been centered on love for the most vulnerable without fanfare or applause.  God doesn't want a spectacle with fireworks and fanfare--only genuine love for the needs of others.  That's the kind of life we have been called into.  God was never looking for a show.

Today, then, what if we were done with all the things we tell ourselves will show our devotion to God, and instead just practiced love that looks like God's love--care for the hungry ones, the ones without housing, and the ones being taken advantage of? What if we were finally done with religiously-dressed boastfulness, and instead trusted that we already have God's eye and God's ear? What if we were less interested in putting on a public show of Respectable Religion, and more committed to choices that simply made life better for the people around us, whether or not anybody else notices?  And what if that were what God has been calling us to be a part of all along?

Once we get our theology straightened out, we really do get clarity for what's worth spending our energy on, what matters to God, and what kind of life we are called into. So if we are a little bit more on track with our thinking, now let's get our actions in line, too.

Lord God, remind us who you are and where your heart is, so that we can spend our energy and time in ways that reflect your love.

 

A Certain Kind of Difference--February 10, 2026

A Certain Kind of Difference--February 10, 2026

[Jesus said:]“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:14-16)

It's not about power, and it's not about putting ourselves in charge. It's about giving ourselves away with such compelling love that the world around us catches a glimpse of the light of God's goodness.

Let's be clear about that from the outset here. Over the centuries, plenty of folks have latched onto Jesus' words calling us "the light of the world" and took it to mean that only Christians should be in charge of things, or that only Christians should wield political power or make decisions, or that Christians--by sheer virtue of believing in Jesus--are less susceptible to temptation and therefore inherently immune from abusing positions of authority and power.  That's a lot of meaning to cram into a single phrase, "you are the light of the world," and it certainly doesn't seem to be what Jesus had in mind.  Similarly, you can't just call yourself or your group "the city on the hill" and take it as carte blanche permission to do whatever you want.  The temptation is very powerful for us to take these words of Jesus and let them inflate our egos into thinking that Jesus is saying we (Christians) are better than everybody else and should therefore be in charge of everybody else.

But that's not really how Jesus' imagery works.  From Jesus' vantage point, light serves a purpose other than itself.  Light, like from the flame of an oil lamp, is what makes it possible to see enough in a dark room to find the thing you were looking for, or to do the household chore.  A source of light will stand out to our eyes, but typically the point is to illuminate the rest of the room, or the region, or the whole world (if we are talking about the sun, for example) so that everything else can be what it is meant to be.  The sun's light makes it possible for plants to grow and therefore for animals and humans to live.  The light in your kitchen allows you to cook dinner without cutting your thumb because you couldn't see where your hand was in relation to the knife.  The light in your workplace allows you to do your work.  Light doesn't function as a form of domination--it gives itself away for the sake of other things and people, so that all of us can thrive.  I have to believe that Jesus has something like that in mind when he looks at a hillside of people who have come to hear him and says, "You are the light of the world."  He's not deputizing us to take over the world--he is sending us out spend ourselves in love, like God does, in order to serve and bless people other than ourselves.

In that sense, the imagery of light is actually pretty similar to the word-picture we looked at yesterday (and also this past Sunday) of salt.  The way salt "works" is to give itself away in preserving something else, flavoring something else, or melting something else.  It isn't there for its own interests or advantage--just the opposite. The salt gives itself away in order improve or help the stuff you sprinkle it onto.  And that's the common thread with being the light, too.  To be a light in a dark place is certainly to stand out, but not for our own benefit, glory, or self-interest.  We're to make a difference and to be different--but it's a certain kind of different, you could say.

Maybe it's like this: I'll bet you have noticed how the world looks especially lovely in that "golden hour" light of early morning just around sunrise and just approaching sunset.  It's the same sun, of course, but as the sun's light is nearing the horizon, its light is bent differently through the atmosphere and it really does change the coloring of the sun's light to our eyes.  Things really do look more "golden" in the golden hour, because the warmer hues are being brought out.  And that golden hour coloring certainly looks more beautiful to our eyes than the sickly green-gray tint of old-fashioned fluorescent lights.  Well, let me suggest this: to be a light for the world in Jesus' sense isn't just to be bright and intimidating or gaudy and obnoxious, but to have the particular color of God's character.  We aren't gigantic roadside billboard lights or flashing neon signs meant to attract eyeballs to ourselves, but we are meant to be means through which the particular color of God's light is spread all around.  We aren't supposed to dominate the landscape by being so blindingly bright that nobody can see anything else, but we are supposed to let everything be colored in the hue and character of God's goodness, like the "golden hour" light falling on the faces and places around us.  The world will be different because of our presence in it, but in a way that brings out its beauty and blessedness.  And once we see that as our role in the world, we no longer have to fuss with being "in power" or "dominating" anybody or anything else around us.  We can see our role of being a light as a way of casting everything in the glow of God's kind of love, rather than the severe shine of office fluorescent bulbs or the ego-centric allure of a neon sign.  Like Madeleine L'Engle put it, "We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it."  That's it.  That's precisely it.

In the Sermon on the Mount, you don't hear Jesus saying, "Once you guys seize the reins of power and take control of government and culture, THEN you'll be able to be a powerful enough light to fix the world." He says we already ARE the light the world needs, because we have been given already the presence of God who shines through us--without needing to be "in charge" or "in power" to do that. We will stand out and be a distinctive presence in the world, to be sure, but not as bullies or blowhards.  The certain kind of difference we bring is the character of God's love that will refract through us into the world.

Lord Jesus, let your light shine in us that the whole world will be illuminated with your own beauty and love.

What We Are Here For--February 9, 2026

What We Are Here For--February 9, 2026

[Jesus said:] "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot." [Matthew 5:13]

Salt may not get a lot of good press in medical news these days, but if we dare to think in Jesus' terms for a moment, we may get a better understanding of how to love like he does by thinking in salty terms, of all things.

Okay, I know that most of us today in America don't have a problem with getting too little salt--if anything, we have too much sodium in our diets, and our doctors or our spouses shoot us glaring looks about how much salt we do get. So it can be hard, then, for us to hear Jesus talk about salt in a good way, or to try and understand what he is saying about salt, and what it means for us.

And I get it, too, that there are really only so many things you can do with salt--at least that us ordinary people would need on a day-to-day basis. Salt tastes good, and salt can preserve foods from spoiling--and in a day before refrigerators, that is a pretty handy thing. That's really about it--you eat it, and you can preserve other things to eat later with it.

But in both cases, the salt isn't there for its own sake, but for the sake of something else. Salt is a sacrificial seasoning, you could say--you use it for the improvement or preservation of something other than itself. You don't eat spoonfuls of salt by itself. You put it on some other food to season it, and you use it to preserve something else--your meat or fish or whatever. But in both cases, the goodness and the usefulness of the salt is only found when it is put to use for something else. Salt isn't much use just by itself or for itself. In fact, it's really most effective in small doses spread out through the whole of something else. This, really, is why your doctor or your spouse grimaces at you about getting too much salt in your diet. We all need a certain amount of the stuff, but too much and it starts to do more damage than good. Same with the preservative effects--put a certain amount of salt with your cuts of meat, and you can preserve food, which in turn helps preserve life when someone who is hungry can eat without having to invent the refrigerator and alternating current electrical outlets, first. But too much salt actually destroys life--salting the ground, after all, was a devastating tactic the Romans used to punish conquered enemies, as a way of ensuring that nothing would ever grow there again.

This seems to be the point Jesus is making about us--his followers, who dare to live the Kingdom life--that we are meant to be a salt-like presence in the world, for the sake of the world. We are here for good, but not for our own good. We are here to be a blessed presence, scattered and sprinkled throughout society, to season, to enhance, and to preserve. But that only works if we are willing to give ourselves away in the process. And it only works if we realize that we are meant to stand out for a reason, not just to make noise. That's what we are here for.

Salt has its distinctive, even pungent, flavor, but when you put it in food, its purpose is to enhance the other flavors and seasonings in the meal. You never hear anyone say (at least in a positive sense), "Mmm... you can really taste the salt!" That is a sign you'll be getting a glare from the doctor about your sodium level. But when it is rightly put in the food, salt lets the other flavors be what they are supposed to be. It helps and aids the other flavors, but doesn't draw attention to itself when it is used in the right proportions.

Same with the preservative use--Jesus never pictures his followers dominating the world with such a heavy presence that we stifle life, but that we are used in a preservative way. We cannot create or manufacture life--that remains only God's to do--but we can support, nurture, protect, and preserve life among us. And that's the kind of life we are called to. Again, it may well be behind the scenes, and we may not call attention to ourselves, but our purpose is to be a blessed presence for the sake of others. And that is enough, Jesus says. People might not be able to put their finger on what is going on--they might not always know that you are going the extra mile because of your love for Jesus, or they might not realize that you put in extra time and energy because of the joy God has given you. But you and I have the opportunity to be that kind of blessed presence, without worrying about getting proper credit for it.

That's what makes salt such a picture of the kind of love we meet in Jesus: it doesn't need to draw attention to itself, but is there for sake of whatever it is placed in the midst of. It gives itself away for the sake of enhancing the whole, without dominating or overpowering. That's the way Jesus' love works. And that's the kind of love we are sent to embody for the world--to give it a foretaste of what the Reign of God is really like.

On the other hand, if we lose that sense of being here for the sake of others, maybe we have lost our reason for being Jesus' followers altogether. After all, as Jesus says, if salt loses its saltiness, it's not good for anything other than traction under your feet. If we lose either our distinctiveness--our way of sticking out and being willing to look like holy fools because we are seeking to be like Jesus--or our willingness to give ourselves away, the way salt is meant for enhancing or preserving something else, what's the point of gathering together in Jesus' name? We know, all too well and too sadly, that it is an easy trap for Christians and congregations to fall into--to become only narrowly focused on preserving themselves: on how to "keep the church alive," or how to just make ends meet, or how to make themselves financially prosperous. There are a lot of loud voices, too, angling for Christians to take charge, to get special treatment or recognition, or to occupy positions of power, all of which sounds a lot more like a lethal dose of sodium than a light touch of salt to enhance the soup. And when that happens, we have lost our purpose, our reason for being, our Jesus-given identity as a people meant to enhance and preserve others so that we can be a picture, a living parable, of what God has done for us in Christ.

We are meant to be ripples, reverberations, and echoes of the kind of salty, self-sacrifice of Jesus that gives life to us and to the world. That's what this is all about. Today, be an echo of mercy. Today, be a behind-the-scenes reverberation of grace. Today, be salt--Jesus says it's what we are already.  That is, after all, what we are here for.

Lord Jesus, let us be today what you have called us to be and said we are in the first place--a blessed, distinctive, and preserving presence for the sake of the world, so that people will see in us what you have done for the world, too.

On Walking With God--Feb. 6, 2026

On Walking With God--February 6, 2026

"He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)

There doesn't need to be drama between us and God. If we find there is drama in that relationship, you can be sure that we're the ones who have added it.

This is one of the things I love about this well-known verse from Micah, a verse many of us heard this past Sunday in worship as part of our first reading. Micah cuts through our melodrama and calls our bluff when we are getting all worked up about what God wants, and he just says, "It's never been complicated, and God is not trying to make things difficult." God isn't looking for us to prove our worthiness or achieve our way into some saintly status. God has never been holding auditions or try-outs--God has only ever called us to share the road as we walk together.

What's hard for us, of course, is that so often we want to make a big production out of our faith and make it a quest... a burden... a crusade. That allows us to see ourselves as heroic, rather than as humble, and quite frankly, our egos need to be stroked. If we can tell ourselves that we've endured fierce persecution, or sacrificed life and limb in the name of God, or left some monumental legacy to the impact we've made for our faith, then we can tell ourselves we've "earned" a place in heaven. But to hear that God has simply called us to walk in God's own ways of justice and mercy, well, we can't pretend we're "heroes" when we are doing that. We have to see ourselves as children being invited on a walk with a parent, as recipients of grace.

I think of that story in the book of Kings about the Syrian general Naaman who goes to see the prophet Elisha looking for a dramatic and spectacular show of power to heal his leprosy, only to be told to go wash in the Jordan River seven times. And at first, he gets mad that Elisha won't come out and wave his hands over him to make him well, until a servant points out to him that if he had been told to do some big and daring quest to be healed, he would have done it--so why not do this small and easy thing? And of course, that's just it--some part of Naaman wants to have to "do" something big to be healed. His ego needs a "quest" or an epic battle or a perilous journey or something like the Twelve Labors of Hercules to let him believe he's earning the help he is seeking. He wants to be able to boast, if to nobody else other than himself, that he's "won" the favor of God. In the end, what it takes for Naaman to be healed is for him to let go of that need to be heroic, and instead to let a humble dip in an unimpressive river be the means of his healing.

Micah seems to be telling the same to the people in his day, and in ours. To be drawn into relationship with God is to be pulled into love, and love doesn't need to perform for the beloved--love just seeks to walk together. There's no need for putting on a show; God just calls us to share the path. It's like the difference between all those overly dramatic love songs, proudly insisting that the singer would climb the highest mountain or swim the deepest ocean for the beloved, and what actual love looks like--that is more likely to actually just want to wash the dishes together or fold the laundry side by side. God has never needed us to "prove" our devotion or commitment with some hero's quest; God has simply invited us to walk along the same way.

Today, then, part of learning both how to love God, and to let ourselves be loved by God, is to learn to let go of that need for dramatic shows of piety, and instead to see the ordinary as the place we relate to God, and grace as the currency of that relationship. God was never looking for us to prove ourselves; God has only been calling us to walk together. Realizing that means we are finally free to abandon our pretense, our posturing, and our boasting, so that we can just enjoy the walk.

O God, enable us to walk humbly with you today, and always.

Called Just As We Are--February 5, 2026

Called Just As We Are--February 5, 2026

"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." [1 Corinthians 1:26-29]

You and I are evidence of the table-turning ways of God.

Wow. You. Real, actual you. And real, actual me. God's call to us--not just people in Bible times, or halo-encircled saints from stained-glass windows, or famous heroes from history, but us in all of our ordinariness and our diversity--shows the world how God operates. And God's ways are always to take the foolish and the frail and the forgotten in order to let some of the hot air out of the puffed-up, the proud, the pompous, and the powerful. Paul says that the very fact that we have come to faith in Jesus is evidence to the world of God's upside-down ways.

You could say it's God's calling-card--this divine habit of taking the ones looked down on by the strong, the powerful, and the elite and calling them to belong in God's Reign. Like the old Zorro stories where the masked vigilante hero leaves behind the letter "Z" slashed into the scenery to "sign his work," or like the two robbers in the movie Home Alone who always leave the water running in the faucets of the houses they break into, so that people will know they've been hit by "The Wet Bandits," God has left a calling card, a way of working in the world, by deliberately NOT calling only the so-called best and brightest, but intentionally calling anybody and everybody "beloved". That's you and me. We, just in the very fact of our belovedness without riches or political power or social influence, we are how God deflates the arrogant and turns the usual order of things upside down. We are the way that God shames the strong and shows the world's "winners" that they are not nearly so special as they like to tell people they are. We are the evidence that none of their accumulating, blustering, fist-shaking, or intimidating really had any sway in the big scheme of things--because here we are, ordinary and unassuming, and Christ has called us--chosen us!--to belong to his movement.

Think of it--it's really quite a beautiful design on God's part, how God both lifts up the people who have been told they are nobodies and silences those who have puffed themselves up as "somebodies." God does it by picking... us. And God calls us without auditions, without being impressed by our skills, our charm, our net worth, or our job titles. God calls us and loves us in all of our wonderful ordinariness, as a way of telling the Big Deals of the world that they aren't such big deals after all. And that turns out to be part of how God is changing the world--by creating a totally new kind of community, in which we no longer fuss over who has more money or who wields more influence. God is creating a fellowship of the ordinary, the lowly, and the struggling, so that we will understand that our belonging has everything to do with grace and nothing to do with our raw talent or even our greatest achievements.

It's a bold--and I dare say risky--plan on God's part. Risky, not because God can't do amazing things through ordinary people without having an elite team of the smartest, strongest, richest, and most successful people... but because we still keep missing the point of how God operates and we Christians keep falling into the same old thinking that being a Big Deal is important. We do it institutionally as "The Church" when we play games like, "Whose Congregation Is Bigger?" or when religious-sounding hucksters on TV sell the message that "God wants you to be rich." We do it when pastors give up on their call to be Elijahs to the Ahabs of the day because they (we) would rather have a seat at the table of power rather than risk being called "irrelevant." We do it, each and every one of us, when we try and puff ourselves up to make ourselves feel better, or more significant, than our neighbor down the street. Day by day, followers of Jesus miss the point of the fact that we have been called, just as we are, in all of our ordinariness--and that this is God's choice. We fail to see that this is part of God's surprising way of redeeming and restoring the world--by calling the nobodies and telling them they are beloved somebodies... by choosing the ones who have been overlooked or unseen in order to send a message to the ones who want to keep putting themselves in the center of attention. We miss the sheer surprising genius of it, and instead so often we still play by the world's rules that you have to convince people you are a "winner" or a Big Deal in order to matter... when God has actually bent over backwards to show us that we are called--and beloved--just as we are.

And yet, for all the ways we miss the point, God does not give up on working with--and through--us. That's one of the risks, you could say, of not going with only the best and the brightest and the most well-skilled and charismatic: God deliberately runs the risk that we will miss the point of what God is doing by having called us in the first place. God chooses to work through us, despite how dense we can be, even when our dense minds miss the beauty and the wonder of a God who loves and works through people who are not necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer.

We, in all of our thick-headedness, are the calling card of a God who deals in reversals. And any time you see the weak lifted above the strong, the outcasts welcomed while the elites and celebrities drop their jaws, or the last put ahead of the first, it is Christ "signing his work" like Zorro and his rapier. The turning of tables is God's signature move.

So even when I have missed the point and give in to the old thinking that says only the Big Deals, the "strong," and the "winners" matter, God doesn't "uncall" me because I don't "get it." God chooses and claims and calls a world full of us who don't "get" it on our own. And that is the wonder of grace--the God who calls us doesn't select only from the Varsity Team, the Honor Society, or the Homecoming Court. The God who calls us in Jesus doesn't get impressed with any of them. The real living God who calls you just loves... you.

Own it today. Know it. And know that nothing else is needed but that love, that call, that Christ.

Lord Jesus, help us to hear that you have claimed us as we are, and help us to see the ways you love us despite our drawbacks, limitations, and frailties.

Called into Foolishness--February 4, 2026

Called into Foolishness--February 4, 2026

"For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.'
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolisness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishess to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." [1 Corinthians 1:18-25]

Let me rattle off a few of the basic tenets of "common sense" that I regularly hear tossed around. There are plenty of variations, but I bet you've heard enough of these that you could sing along, too, if you like. The "pearls" of convention wisdom that we've all heard before go something like this:

"You have to look out for Number One--yourself!--in this life."

"You have to get THEM before they get YOU in this dog-eat-dog world."

"The only people who really matter are the 'winners' of life, and you can tell who the winners are, because they have more money, more influence, more power, more fans, more muscle, and more stuff."

"If you're a winner, you can do anything you want. The losers are forgettable."

If that isn't conventional wisdom, I'll eat my hat. And it is that kind of conventional wisdom that leads people to bully and intimidate others into bending to their will. It's the mindset that shows up when folks bellow and fume in inane and childish fights on social media. It's the rationale for always wanting to have a bigger stick... or sword... or rifle... or cannon... or nuclear missile, so that you can get the other guy before he gets you. We are drowning in the sea of conventional wisdom.

So it shouldn't surprise us that when God sends us a life-preserver on those billowing waves, the watching world thinks that God's way looks weak and stupid. God knows that's what the world thinks. God just doesn't care about conforming to it. And even more significant, God won't get lured into a petty shouting match with the world that thinks God's way of saving the world looks like losing. God is big enough not to need to answer every childish taunt or idiotic comment from the world, and God won't be baited into sinking to that level. (This by itself should make it clear that God's way is NOT the prevailing conventional wisdom of the world's so-called powerful and expert classes.)

Now, to hear Saint Paul tell it, that is exactly what the cross is all about--God has chosen to rescue a world full of powerless nobodies and unschooled anybodies whom the world labels "weak" and "losers," precisely by becoming one of those "weak losers" too. The cross looks like utter defeat, and it sounds like nonsense to say that the way to save anybody (much less the world) is by getting killed by your angry enemies. The world, both the sophisticated minds of the intellectual crowd, and the folks who want shows of power and greatness, sees a man getting executed and says, "That's a terrible shame--if God had wanted to mount a rescue operation, God should have consulted us for advice and muscle." The world's assumption is that the way to get things done is by having more force, more power, more guns, more missiles, or more money--possibly all of the above. It looks at the cross and figures that Rome must be the hero of the story because it killed a troublemaker who was foolish enough to let himself get called "king" without bringing an army to back him up. Jesus, the crucified one, must be the defeated opponent.

But Paul teaches us to see just the opposite. These words from First Corinthians, which many of us heard this past Sunday, make it clear. It's true that the cross of Jesus doesn't look ANYTHING like what the world calls "greatness." But that's not a design flaw on God's part--it's actually the whole point of everything! It's the world that's got it all wrong and bass-ackwards, as they say. It's the loud yellers of conventional wisdom who bark about "winning" who are really so pathetically out of touch. God's way of saving the world is decidedly NOT to play by the world's rules--those rules about winning and losing, about "greatness" and "weakness," they are at the root of the problem with us all in the first place! Of course God doesn't redeem the world at gunpoint with an army or a masked assault team in riot gear or a team of lawyers and a pile of money--that stuff has never worked to solve things. That would be like telling the drowning man that what he really needs is a lead weight tied around his ankle and a tank of water dumped over his head. God refuses to use the expected methods of "conventional wisdom" because conventional wisdom is really so often just our way of defending our own sinful selfishness. What we need--and what God does at the cross--is to rescue us from the terrible death-dealing morass of what the world calls "conventional wisdom" and "greatness."

That's what I think these days when I hear someone make a remark like, "Why would anybody risk their own comfort or well-being to protect a total stranger who was in danger?" It's what I think any time I hear someone say, "We have to put ourselves and our own interests first--that's just common sense!" It's what comes to mind when I hear parents teach their kids to 'punch the other kid before he punches you' to avoid looking weak." And it's what I need to remind myself of, too, every time I catch that same voice in my head that wants to judge the success of congregations by who has more people or more money or more followers of Facebook. All of those, from the need to have more missiles to blow up the world than your enemy, to the worry over whether your neighbor will think your kids are "weak," they are all evidence of the conventional wisdom of the world, which is the very thing we need rescuing FROM in the first place.  And we are called into something different--something better.

Of course, the way God mounts a rescue operation will look different from the world's standard operating procedures--they're the thing that's killing us in the first place. That's why it makes its own kind of perfectly upside-down sense that God's way of saving us is through death, through weakness, and through loss: because the un-ending race to "win" and look "strong" has really been killing us with a slow, terrible death.

Now, if we dare to take the message about the cross seriously, it is going to dramatically change how we see everything else--including our own lives. Paul talks about us as being "called" into this new way of life, and that brings with it a change of perspective. We are called into the foolishness of God. That will mean we care less and less about looking tough or impressing our neighbors. It will mean we no longer need to rely on having more sticks or sabers or shotguns or surface-to-air missiles to feel secure or keep us safe. It will mean we no longer have to call attention to our titles, our degrees on the wall, our professional status, our tax bracket, or our kids' varsity jackets to make us feel acceptable. In fact, we won't need to seek our own advantage anymore, because we will see that God's way of saving the world frees us from that tired old rat race once and for all.

Taking the upside-down perspective of the cross is going to mean serious revision to how we evaluate our lives, and that will take work. Maybe a lifetime of rethinking what has mattered all along. So maybe for today it is enough to begin to ask the question: what things have we accepted as "the way the world works" that are actually killing us? What things have we assumed to be true because we were told they were "common sense" but are really at the root of our pain as humans? And what might it do to the day in front of us to let the Crucified Christ turn our old picture of victory upside down?

What if we just didn't have to care anymore what the world thought "success" or "greatness" or "winning" looked like... and what if instead we could simply look to the cross for a new vision? What if we answered the call to share in God's foolishness?

Let's dare it today.

Lord Jesus, turn our old vision of the world upside down in the light of your way of saving that same world.

A Blessed Alternative--February 3, 2026

A Blessed Alternative--February 3, 2026

Jesus said to his disciples and the crowds:
 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
  Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:7-12)

Sometimes they'll say being merciful makes you look like a "loser." Or that peace is only possible through brute force. Sometimes they'll say "You won't get into trouble if you just do what you are told and comply." And sometimes they cast folks who were doing good as villains in order to take the focus off their own rottenness.  Jesus knows not to believe any of it.

And instead, Jesus offers a blessed alternative to all of that misguided thinking and misdirection.

In this second half of the Beatitudes, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, we get further illustrations from Jesus about the upside-down values of God's Reign.  And as we saw with the first section, in which Jesus announced blessing on folks likely to be looked down on (the "poor in spirit," the "mourning," the "meek," and the ones who have been denied justice and are therefore hungry to see things put right), once again Jesus reveals a set of priorities at odds with conventional wisdom.  In both the first century and the twenty-first, all of those folks are typically viewed as pitiable or pathetic, not blessed with divine favor.  Now here, Jesus again uplifts values that the Roman Empire (and all of its copycats ever since) would have dismissed as nonsense.  

Being merciful, for one, means refusing to use your power or leverage over somebody else but rather showing compassion to help them--even when they can't pay you back in return.  The Big Deals of history would say, "No! When you've got 'em over a barrel, that's the time to squeeze them for all they're worth and press your advantage!"  But mercy says, "This is someone loved by God, who has shown mercy to me as well.  If I were in their shoes, I would need compassion shown to me." Being merciful means leaving possible "advantage" on the table unclaimed in order to show favor to someone without concern for whether they have earned it or whether you will get anything out of it.  Being merciful requires being able to see the world in more than merely transactional terms where everything is a deal.

Similarly, to be "pure in heart" will mean a willingness not to always seek your own advantage or your own self-interest in what you do. As Soren Kierkegaard once put it, "purity of heart is to will one thing." And if we are supposed to be committed to seeking God's will and aligning our hearts with God's, that will mean there is no place for a self-interested side-hustle of grabbing for ourselves in addition to that.  And again, that just sounds foolish to the thinking of many.  "You've got to look out for Number One!" the thinking goes.  "It would be crazy NOT to take advantage of every situation you're in for yourself!" they say.  Jesus knows that to many, it seems like common sense to blend our devotion to God with some strategic self-interest. He knows that for a lot of folks, "Me and My Group First" sounds like an article of faith.  He just doesn't agree.  Instead, he points us to a different set of values--where we seek God's will rather than muddying the waters with our own corrupt impulses on the side.

Peacemaking, too, sounds preposterous to the thinking of the Powerful Empires and the Big Shots.  At least, genuine peacemaking does.  Rome, of course, was happy to tell its subjects that it was bringing peace--but what the Empire meant by "peace" was really conquest.  They meant, "If you give in to our demands, we will stop stomping on your neck." And again, history keeps showing us that every empire and strongman since has tried to use the same playbook.  What is really radical is Jesus' call not to use the language of "peace" as a talking point or propaganda, but to actually do the hard work of reconciling with other people, whom we treat as equal dialog partners rather than pawns.  To the world's mindset that thinks of peace as something you can only enforce by intimidating your opponents at the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun, Jesus' call to peacemaking is outlandish.

And those final two statements of blessing--about those who are persecuted, reviled, and defamed for the sake of doing justice (the same word as "righteousness" in Greek) and for being associated with the name and way of Jesus--those are countercultural, too.  You know as well as I do how often conventional wisdom says, "If you just obey what the authorities say and don't make waves, you won't get into trouble." And you know as well how often those who get into such trouble are often blamed as though they brought it on themselves: "They should have complied. They should have kept quiet. They shouldn't have stepped out of line." That was the advice of people in the Roman Empire whose neighbors got crucified or flogged as a public example. It was the same criticism aimed at the ones who worked in the Underground Railroad to help the formerly enslaved get to freedom at great personal risk, just as it was lobbed at the ones who helped Jewish neighbors escape the Reich when they came knocking on doors in the 1930s.  And it was the same conventional wisdom used to condemn the Freedom Riders, sit-in participants, and marchers across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, and throughout the Civil Rights movement.  Criticism was aimed at those who were arrested, beaten, hit with firehoses, or who lost their lives, as though such punishments were only ever doled out to wrongdoers.  Jesus knew better, and he knew full well that sometimes you get vilified for doing the right thing.  Sometimes your faith in Jesus leads you to speak up, stand up, or act up--and when the powers of the day do not like it, not only will they try to stop you, they'll try to inflict pain and cast you as a villain in the process.  Jesus tells us in advance: don't worry about what they say about you--you just stick to pursuing what you know is right, what is just, and what corresponds to the way of Jesus.

If we dare to actually practice this set of values, we will look strange in a world that keeps telling us to keep our heads down and only to look out for our own interests.  We will certainly seem odd and against the grain of what is expected.  But of course, that's the whole point.  Jesus has called us to be a part of the Reign of God, which is always a blessed alternative to the self-serving bullying and calculated cowardice of The Way Things Are.  We are called to be different--to live deliberately out of step--in the ways we practice mercy, the ways we make peace, the ways we keep our integrity, and the ways we risk our reputations for the sake of doing right.

That might just turn some heads if we dared it today.  What do you say?

Lord Jesus, enable us to live as your blessed alternative in the world.

God's Policy Priorities--February 2, 2026

God's Policy Priorities--February 2, 2026

"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:
  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
  Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled..."(Matthew 5:1-6)

Every winter, Americans go through an annual ritual, as mandated by the Constitution, in which the current president of the United States addresses a joint session of Congress, along with the Supreme Court, special guests, and a watching television audience to inform us all about "the state of the union."  You know how this goes, I'm sure, even if you are not a regular watcher of the annual speech.  It is a bit of political theater, with pauses for applause, choreographed pageantry, and in more recent years, a prepared response from the opposition party as well. To be honest, I don't expect that a State of the Union address reaches as many people these days as it used to, since now our public figures are on television already all the time, as well as using social media, press secretaries, and pundits to push their perspectives on the other 364 days of the year as well.

But I will grant this about a State of the Union address, even in these late days of our republic: it's still a pretty good place to get a feel for the policy priorities of the current administration for the year ahead.  The things that get mentioned in this speech are the places that the executive branch will be giving special attention to or turning greater resources toward.  That doesn't mean that other areas which don't get specifically named in the speech aren't happening or are unimportant; it just means that the ones mentioned by the president are particular priorities. Sure, there will be unexpected events that might redirect or change the government's focus.  Sure, there will be pushback and opposition from the party on the other side of the aisle.  Sure, a set of priorities is not the same as getting legislation passed or getting action taken.  But if you want to know at the start of a calendar year what the current regime thinks is important, the State of the Union is a good place to start.

So, I mention all of this because the Gospel of Matthew gives us something with a similar feel and meaning here in the opening of the fifth chapter.  Jesus gives the first large block of teaching in the gospel here, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, in what we often call "the Sermon on the Mount." And because this is the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, this has the feel of being a sort of "State of the Union" for Jesus' mission.  Jesus has already begun telling people that "the kingdom of heaven" or "the Reign of God" is at hand; now he tells us what that means and what makes God's agenda different from the kingdoms and empires of the world.  In a very real sense, the Sermon on the Mount is like a State of the Union address. And beginning with the Beatitudes, Jesus reveals that God has a very different set of priorities from the need for power, status, wealth, and domination of the world's regimes.

The Beatitudes, in other words, are not a checklist for us of things we have to be or do in order to earn ourselves a spot in the Heaven Club; they are a list of policy priorities for the Yahweh Administration. And instead of seeking what the world calls "greatness" or "winning" or "strength," Jesus reveals God's heart for the hurting, the lowly, and the empty-handed.  That's especially clear in this first half of these statements of blessing.  Jesus doesn't say that wealth, abundance, or ambition are signs of God's blessing, but rather the opposite. God's priority is on showing kindness to the runs who are running on fumes... to the ones whose hearts are broken... and to the lowly and softspoken.  It doesn't mean that God doesn't love other people, not any more than a State of the Union speech names the only things a government will do in a given year.  But they both do point to priorities.  God's priority, you might say, is to lift up the ones who have been stepped on, the ones who are weary, and the ones who are aching for the world to be put right--precisely because they have experienced so much of what is wrong in the world. Howard Thurman, the great theologian of the 20th century who was a mentor for Dr. King, would say that God's blessing is turned especially toward "the ones with their backs against the wall" and "the disinherited."  Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian theologian of the second half of the 20th century, used to talk about it as "God's preferential option for the poor." It doesn't mean that God doesn't care about others; it does mean that God's heart is for the ones who are most in need and hurting.  That's where God's policy priorities are focused, Jesus says.  These statements of blessing are not about what we have to do or endure in order to earn a spot on God's good list--they are declarations about what especially matters to God, and how God cares for those who are most often overlooked and underserved.

The Big Deals of the world's regimes have a tendency to focus on their own interests, their own power, and their own legacies.  They build monuments to their greatness, ignore the vulnerable, and try to accumulate more "stuff" for themselves.  That same tired list of priorities gets dressed up with new slogans and marketing in speech after speech, year after year, and we all know that nothing much is different when we hear it repackaged again out of the next person at the podium.  Jesus, however, turns everything upside down. He shows us what--and who--matters with special concern to God, in the hopes that our priorities will be shaped by God's.  He reveals what God is "up to" in the world, so that our character will be formed in the likeness of God's.

How will our hearts be turned toward God's priorities today--and how might we be attuned to the needs of those whose backs are against the wall right now?

Lord Jesus, realign our priorities to fit with your own.

The Crucial Difference--January 30, 2026

The Crucial Difference--January 30, 2026

"For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Corinthians 1:18)

The world has some assumptions about how things get done. 

For example, the world's loud voices these days insist that the way to succeed is through brute force. You shoot first, and ask questions later... or preferably not at all.  You get the other guy before they get you.  You look out for your own interests, and you bully everybody else until they give in and surrender what you want.  Conventional wisdom calls all of that being a "winner," and it can't stand the thought of being called a "loser."  The loud voices, the talking heads on TV, and the bombastic barkers at podiums will all insist that in "the real world," this is just how things have to be--you resort to force, coercion, and threats, and you do it before the other side can do it to you.

To such a perspective, the notion of a God who saves the world by dying for it sounds like nonsense, pure and simple. It looks weak. It seems like defeat. It makes God to be a loser, rather than a winner. And the logic of the world just can't accept that.

It's interesting to me that one of the titles Caesar applied to himself was "Savior." If you asked the Empire what a Savior looked like, Rome's response would have been, "Salvation is when we come to conquer you, and the emperor leading the charge is the savior.  Hail Caesar, the Savior of the World!"  For the Empire looming in the background when Paul wrote this letter, "saving" was about applying brute force to make others do what you wanted them to do. The Romans were proud of "saving" the lands and peoples they conquered from any undesirable barbarian opposition. They were bringing "civilization," "prosperity," and "health" to all whom they conquered. And they seriously thought that made them the liberators, the good guys, the saviors.  I suppose if you tell yourself long enough that you are unquestionably the hero, you start to believe it--and from there, it's easy to assume that anybody you are opposed to is a villain, and your very act of vanquishing them is what makes you a savior.  It's terribly circular logic, but that's how empires think.

The Christian claim, by contrast, sounds completely bonkers to that sort of worldview.  Instead of the Savior as the one commanding armies, killing enemies, and defeating any and all resistance, the One whom Christians confess as Savior got crucified by the empire, praying for God's forgiveness for his executioners, breaking the cycle of violence, and laying down his life rather than taking somebody else's.  That's the crucial (literally) difference: the world insists that victory looks like zapping your adversaries to show them you are more powerful, and the message of the cross says that God's victory comes as Jesus puts his body between the murderous powers of death and those who are in its target sights.  There are two competing pictures of strength out there in the world, you could say: one insists that power means you obliterate your opponents to make everyone else fall in line, and the alternative says that real strength looks like offering up your life to shield and guard someone else and make sure that they are going to be ok. Paul insists that the power of God is the latter of the two, and you see it supremely in the cross of Christ.

To be a follower of Jesus is to be called to share in an upside-down point of view.  We are called, not just to recite a creed that Jesus is Lord and Savior, but to recognize that if we confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, then we are committed to his way of saving rather than the world's kind.  We will be the ones who lay down our lives for others, but we will not give in to bullying and intimidating others.  We will be the ones who shield others with our bodies, but we will not be the ones to threaten or harm.  We will interrupt the age-old cycles of violence and retribution, but we will not repeat them. And even when the loudest voices of the world tell us that we look like fools for that sort of cross-shaped way of life, we'll know that in truth we are tapped into the real power of God.

Today those two competing pictures of power are on display. The choice for us is this: whose version of strength will guide us today--the conquering sort used by every empire in history, or the cross-shaped kind revealed in Christ Jesus?

Lord Jesus, enable us to see the world through your kind of power--the self-giving love of the cross.

The Next Step--January 29, 2026

The Next Step--January 29, 2026

"What I mean is that each of you says, 'I belong to Paul,' or 'I belong to Apollos,' or 'I belong to Cephas,' or 'I belong to Christ.' Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" [1 Corinthians 1:12-13]

There's a contradiction I live with every day, and I might as well say it out loud here at the outset for honesty's sake. I get Paul's point here, about not lining ourselves up into teams according to the names of people who happened to have taught us, people who happened to have been our initiators into the faith. I understand that there's danger in breaking Christianity into a million little shards, based on whose slightly different "take" on the gospel we follow, because it will lead us to--well, exactly where Christianity is today in the world, especially in the late days of the American empire: a bunch of people fighting with each other over both big and little things so often that they can no longer tell which are the differences they can set aside, and which are the ones holding the line for. I understand all of Paul's reasoning for why we shouldn't go around labeling ourselves according to whose school of thought we ascribe to, or which tradition or person we most associate with.

And yet, here I am, a pastor in a tradition named for a specific individual, who is not Jesus (Martin Luther), that helps to identify my particular understanding of the way of Jesus. Paul might very well be disappointed in me for being a "Lutheran" pastor, although he would then also have to be upset with every other Christian group--including the ones who think they have outsmarted him by just naming their particular brand "non-denominational" or "Christian" while still having all the same hallmarks of a denomination. Here we are, people whose way of being church is in direct contradiction to Paul's warning here about claiming that we belong to these other sub-groupings, still trying to wrestle a blessing out of his words and to see how we may need to change our way of being church in light of what he has to say.

And while we're at it poking bears and all, we should probably also note that contemporary Christianity has added a whole mess of other labels that are intended only to sound like neutral adjectives or general descriptions rather than denominations or groups, but in practice cause the same kind of division that Paul is upset about as he writes to the Corinthians. We have labels like "evangelical" or "Protestant" or "mainline" or "Pentecostal," or "liberal" or "conservative," or "progressive" or "Bible-believing," and as often as not those labels are used as sharpened weapons to criticize others (those you want to judge as "non-Bible-believing" or "too traditional" or whatever). Of course, at least those labels are honest, more or less, about the additional layers we are adding to our understanding of the Christian faith. Most dangerous of all, I think, is the temptation to assume my particular set of beliefs is the only right one, and therefore that MY group is the "true Christan perspective" and to call myself "Christian" without any other modifiers or labels because I'm convinced anyone who disagrees is damned to hell. At least a label, like "Lutheran" or "Methodist" or "Catholic" or "Ukrainian Orthodox" says something about the particular branch of the family tree from which you come without necessarily saying that everyone else is doing it wrong.

In Paul's day, the divisions were over different details, but the pattern is the same. When Paul had gotten word from an important church leader named Chloe about the factions developing in Corinth, they were lining up into groups according to which early Christian leaders had first brought them into the faith--Paul, a preacher named Apollos, Peter (Cephas in the Aramaic), or somebody else. And of course, too, there were people making the move of saying that they belonged to Christ, while giving a side-eye to everybody else as though they were NOT truly Christian. So we've been here before. I don't know whether that's comforting or disheartening, but we've been in the position of fragmenting since the beginning it seems. And Paul has been calling us to question those divisions, and whether they have cost us our allegiance to Jesus, for twenty centuries now.

I think that's the piece that we can't ignore in all of this. We may well find it helpful to own the traditions we come from, and the importance of those whose perspectives have shaped our own. It's helpful for me to be able to say from the get-go that I have been influenced by the tradition that grew out of Martin Luther, like it's helpful for folks who have been shaped by John Wesley or Saint Francis of Assisi or Gustavo Gutierrez or Teresa of Avila to be able to say that as well. But I think Paul's point is that these voices are never an end-goal for emulating. The goal for me as a Lutheran Christian isn't to become more like Martin Luther, but to become more like Jesus. The goal for my Methodist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, Catholic, Baptist, non-denominational, and progressive siblings in Christ isn't to become simply better at promoting our own brand, but to become more like Jesus, and more shaped by his love. Where my own tradition is helpful for that, great--I need to listen to my tradition for ways it helps me grow in the love of Christ and the way of Jesus. Where other peoples' traditions are helpful, especially in revealing the blind-spots and hidden corners of my own perspective, I need to listen to the input and voices from those other traditions to help me deal with the things I cannot see in myself that keep me from being more fully like Jesus. And where any of our traditions are hindrances, we need to be able to keep revising, re-forming (this is why traditions like those from the 16th century movement had a slogan "semper reformanda"--always reforming), and re-envisioning what it looks like to follow Jesus, to be loved by Jesus, and to love like Jesus.

And Jesus does have a particularity to him. His way does have a particular direction. Jesus may not have left commandments chiseled in stone about the proper rate for the capital gains tax or the amount of water we should use in baptizing, but he does have a particular way of being in the world--marked by love for all, truth-telling even when it is costly, humility in serving, commitment to doing justice especially for the most vulnerable, and a welcome to the least, the lost, and the left-out. Where my tradition as a "Lutheran kind of Christian" helps me to embody that more fully, great, I should dig in deep and put roots down. And where my tradition keeps me from, holds me back, or gets in the way of living out that Jesus-shaped way of life, I need to be able to let go of the pieces that are obstacles.

I don't want to be naive and suggest that all we need is just to try to be like Jesus more and all of our disagreements will fall away (and I'll be shown to be right in all of my particular beliefs, of course). But I do think that the only honest way forward has to keep Jesus at the center of our view. That will mean we practice a willingness to keep examining ourselves and being open to the possibility that we may be wrong about something, or that others may show us something that brings Jesus into focus more clearly. It will mean, too, that we constantly be willing to look and look again at whether we have made our particular social or political commitments more important than Jesus, or whether we have tried to baptize our agendas and then force Jesus to fit into the mold they make for him. It will mean recognizing that people of other cultures, languages, backgrounds, and life experiences have things to show us about following Jesus, or perhaps that they will be able to point out things getting in the way of our following that we don't even recognize are there. And it will mean surrendering our illusion that "my" way of following Jesus is the only way to follow Jesus.

That's the challenge for today--and again, it can't ever be the "last step," but it is maybe the next step for today--is to commit to looking at Jesus, and seeking for us to see what helps us to love more like he does, and what things in our lives (or our traditions, our culture, our background, and our politics) are keeping us from loving like Jesus. That at least keeps our focus in the right place.

Lord Jesus, we offer you our selves and all that makes us--our traditions and backgrounds, our life experiences, and even our sense of "right-ness." Help us sift through it all, to hold onto what is good, and to be able to let go of whatever has taken your place.

Where We Start From--January 28, 2026

Where We Start From--January 28, 2026

"Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been made clear to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters." (1 Corinthians 1:10-11) 

I'll be honest: it's kind of hard for me to read these words, or to have heard them in worship like many of us did this past Sunday in worship, while also keeping my eyes open at the actual world in front of me. Here in this passage from Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Christians, he pleads for them to be "knit together in the same mind and the same purpose" with "no divisions," and the moment I turn on the television, read the news, or scroll on my social media feed, it feels like we are tearing ourselves apart in a host of different ways all at once.

Let's name one of the biggest elephants in the room as an example. We are living in a time of deep unrest erupting in places like Minneapolis, and now we have witnessed several lives taken, including those of American citizens, in recent weeks, shot by agents of our government as part of operations meant to crack down on illegal immigration. And part of what makes it especially difficult is knowing that there are folks who name the name of Jesus who view those events very differently--in ways that seem diametrically opposed.  Some watch the events in the news and their understanding of the faith frames it all in terms of protecting law and order and submitting to civil authorities. Others are outraged at the shooting of civilians or the detainment of young children and hear the words of Jesus, "Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me," echoing in the background. We end up with people, who all go to church on Sundays, viewing the exact same events from very different perspectives, some cheering on the federal agents as they detain immigrants in the name of supporting God-given authorities and others supporting those who are trying to provide for their families or who put their bodies at risk to protect others from possible mistreatment because they see them all as God-given neighbors. It is awfully difficult to hear Paul's prayer for Christian unity when we see the events of the day, often including the same video footage, and have come to interpret them in completely different ways, shaped by different emphases in our our supposedly common faith.  That isn't just hard; it is often heartbreaking.

And of course, that feels like it is only the very freshest layer of discord between groups who all claim the title "Christian." We are fragmented along partisan lines and labels like blue and red states. We are fractured into Christian denominations, who seem increasingly unable (or unwilling) to work together, even within the same branch of the family tree. (I think of how even among Lutherans we have a splintered witness and cannot share common fellowship in many ways, not to mention our differences from other Christian groups.)  And you can add onto all of those the differences and disagreements we have on matters of taste and style: "traditional" versus "contemporary" worship, formal versus informal, "high-church" liturgy versus "low-church" seeker friendly atmosphere, and our perennial inability to agree on a color of carpet for the church social hall. All of these divisions seem to make a mockery of Paul's urging that there be "no divisions" among us who name the same "Lord Jesus Christ."

So what are we to do about all of this?  Is it all a naive pipe dream to imagine Christians having the "same mind and purpose" when we are split from each other on issues from the liturgical and the theological to the ethical and the political?  Is it empty wishful thinking that we could still be "knit together"?  After all, some observers today would even say that we cannot speak of a single thing called "Christianity" any longer, but of many different "Christianities," each of which has a claim of continuity with the twenty-century history of the church, even though they are often in sharp disagreement with one another? Are they all valid versions of Christianity? Does any building with a cross on the steeple have an authentic witness to the gospel? At what point are our differences merely matters of taste and preference, and where do they become matters over which Christianity stands or falls--and how would we know?  I find myself hearing these words of Paul's and sometimes feeling like he didn't know how hard we would have it, or what sorts of controversies we would face.  I find myself thinking, "Paul, it sure sounds lovely to imagine that all Christians could be of the same mind and purpose, but in our time it feels like we are living in completely different worlds from the folks who see things differently. We can't even agree on what the facts of reality are, so of course we can't agree on how to respond to them!"

And then something happens.

For one, when I read these words of Paul's, it occurs to me that he is also writing at a time of deep divisions within the early church--and it probably felt even more precarious to him because there was no track record of the church enduring through those divisions when he wrote.  I can at least point to some glimpses of persistent, enduring Christianity over the last two millennia, in spite of all of our schisms and splits, while Paul and the church in Corinth was very much making all of this up as they went along.  Paul, too, knew that the church of his day was splintered along lines of culture, language, practice, politics, and practice.  Paul, too, had to watch groups forming at the First Church of Corinth, and he was worried that the splintering might never stop.  Oddly enough, that gives me hope--because it reminds me that Paul was not naive when he wrote his plea for being "knit together." He didn't live in some idyllic time of perfect Christian unity and assume it was easy to maintain--he lived through a time, just a few years after Jesus' own ministry, when it felt like the Christian experiment might break apart as it spread to include formerly outcast Gentiles and learned to appeal to citizens of the Roman Empire beyond Judea.  That Paul--the one who has wept and struggled and suffered for the sake of holding the Christian community together--is the one who hasn't given up on the prayer for being "knit together" and having "the same mind and purpose." Even at my most despairing, I can't forget that.

The other thing that hits me as I read these words of Paul's in context with the fragmentation of our own time is that the apostle does give us direction for where our shared mind and purpose will come from: he points us to the particularity of Jesus.  Not merely as a brand-name or a mascot or an empty vessel for us to fill with whatever meaning or value we wish. Not as a means of baptizing our own agendas and calling them "God's will" because it's what we wanted to do already.  But Paul keeps pointing us to Jesus, and the particular character of Jesus' way in the world, as the thing that will hold us together. He doesn't merely throw his hands up with a shrug and say, "We will just have to agree to disagree on everything, as long as we can recite the Creed and wear our cross necklaces." Paul is convinced that the way of Jesus has a certain trajectory to it, one which is always characterized by self-giving love, care for the most vulnerable, and a willingness to lay down our lives for others rather than to dominate them. That means something. It gives clarity to how we view the events unfolding around us and our place within them.

In Paul's own day, for example, that meant that the Christians in Corinth were called upon to share some of their resources with the folks around Jerusalem who were living through a famine (see more about that later in the Corinthian epistles). Following Jesus had a certain trajectory to it, which would lead Christians to give toward others' need rather than hoarding for themselves alone.  Or when it came to including Gentile foreigners (non-Jewish people) into the church, Paul again was convinced that the character of Jesus was the definitive reason why all were now to be welcomed rather than just people from one language, nation, or culture.  Paul was convinced that the way of Jesus really did--and still does--give us the clarity to shape our perspective in the world.  It leads us always to compassion rather than cruelty, always to answer with good rather than evil, always to heal rather than to wound, and always to lay down our lives rather than to take the lives of others. That will help us as we face the events of any given day to know what truly fits with the perspective of Jesus... and what does not.  

Paul reminds us that it is the particular person of Jesus Christ through which we see the meanings of events and decide how to act within them.  And Paul sure does seem to believe that the particularity of Jesus really can give us the guidance to make sense of the world without being fragmented into countless feuding factions.  The question we might need to ask--and to keep asking, day after day and generation after generation--is how the perspective of Jesus frames the way we will see the day before us.  Rather than starting with what the talking heads on television tell me I should believe about an event or a headline and then looking for ways to slap a cross on it, we are called to start with the kind of love Jesus embodies and to let that become the lens through which we see.  Paul is convinced it really will make a difference to let Jesus be the place we start from. I won't pretend that is always easy, or that simply invoking the name of Christ will make our disagreements vanish into thin air like a magic spell. But I do believe, and with Paul I think, that the particular character of Jesus really does give us direction for making sense of the world if we are willing to see all of life through his lens.  

And because Paul gives us the witness of his own time when the church struggled through division, we know that this isn't merely a naive wish.  It is possible to do the hard work of seeing life through the lens of Jesus.  It is possible to find common ground where we are, if we are willing both to ask how folks who see things differently from us are trying to act in light of the way of Jesus, and if we are willing to ask that hard question of ourselves.  Sometimes the people we have the sharpest disagreements with really are trying to live out of their faith, and they have latched onto a different element of our Christian heritage. Even if we don't see eye to eye, it does make a difference to see that others are doing their best to try to follow Jesus.  From there, we can ask the deeper questions of what values are priorities for Jesus, and which things are secondary or on the periphery for him.  But it does something to humanize those we struggle with the most to ask, "How did you get to this conviction?" and for those who share our faith in Christ to ask, "Help me to see how you see your faith in Christ leading you to this conclusion?" When we can listen and answer that question ourselves, at least we are starting in the right place.

Lord Jesus, we long for clarity in the midst of the many kinds of disagreements and divisions among us--and the stakes are very high.  Give us the humility to listen, the courage to speak, and the willingness to let you shape our common vision in the light of your particular way in the world.