The Barnyard Gospel

The Barnyard Gospel--March 18, 2019

"At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, 'Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.' He said to them, 'Go and tell that fox for me, Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wing, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord'." [Luke 13:31-35]

Mama Hen doesn't gather her chicks for no reason. Chickens are not huggers, generally speaking.  Mama hen gathers her brood under her wing to protect them... with her own life.

That is the underlying idea here that Jesus taps into.  He has it in mind to offer his own life to protect his beloved.  He has hatched a plan to put himself between the danger and his own.  Jesus offers up his own life as the shield which protects ours--an image which is lovely if you are the one behind the shield, but which means that the shield bears the force of each blow from the enemy.  That's what Jesus offers--his own life like a mother hen's, offering her own body to protect her own.  Jesus chooses to be a human shield.

And because Jesus is so utterly clear about what lengths he is willing to go to for the sake of us scattering peeps, he is willing to be defiant toward the powers of the day and vulnerable to the ones he seeks to gather in.

That's the other amazing thing to me about this scene from the barnyard gospel: Jesus is both outrageously brazen in the digs he takes against Herod, and at the same time, he lets himself be rejected by the very people he loves enough to die for.  Both the defiance against the "fox" Herod and the vulnerability come out of Jesus' choice to be the mother hen who offers up her life with courage and grace.

In this scene from Luke, the voices of conventional wisdom advise Jesus to get out of Dodge, as it were, because the Roman-installed puppet king Herod, next in the family line after the previous ruler Herod "the Great," wants to kill Jesus.  The warning of these respectable religious people is simple enough: Herod is willing to kill you to silence you, just as he did to John the Baptizer, so you should stop the work you are doing, Jesus, and save your own skin.

But Jesus will not be intimidated.  He will not give up or give in.  He will not allow Herod's threats to stop him.  And so Jesus says as much.  "I still have work to do.  Herod doesn't frighten me.  I'm going to keep doing exactly what I've come to do, and no pompous, bullying blowhard on a throne is going to stop me."  Jesus knows--and drops a hint that he knows--that his mission will eventually cost him his life, and that it will all be completed "on the third day" (a winking resurrection reference).  But he doesn't run from that destination or seek to preserve his own life.    Jesus is courageous enough not to let Herod intimidate him, and just keeps on doing what he intended to do--healing, casting out evil, and bringing the Kingdom of God close in human skin.  

And at the same time, Jesus shows himself to be profoundly vulnerable at the same time.  Not to Herod or his threats, mind you.  But to the very people he has come to rescue, to save, to deliver.  Jesus laments over the city of Jerusalem because, like God voiced so many times in the days of Israel's past, God was willing to risk being rejected by the very people God had specially chosen.  Like God lamenting to the disheartened Samuel, saying that the people had rejected God from being their ruler, Jesus too speaks of God's unrequited love.  Jesus longs to gather, and yet also bears with our hard-hearted rejection of God--and Jesus doesn't give up.  He is perpetually opening up his arms, offering up his embrace, and bearing the heartache when we insist on turning our own direction.  Jesus is vulnerable enough for us to break his heart.  And that is exactly what we did to him.

All of this points right to the cross of Jesus. The cross is the place at which Jesus' defiance against Herod (and the other powers of the day) meets his heart-rending willingness to bear our rejection over and over again.  That's what a mother hen does, too: she doesn't run away from the danger, but instead faces it head on with her chicks under her wing... and at the same time, the mama hen keeps chasing after the chicks who don't understand what she is doing and go running off.  Not a bad picture for the reach of Jesus' open arms at the cross, actually: he offers to lay down his life even for us when we are running away and scattered.

That's the barnyard gospel: over against a world full of salivating, self-interested foxes, Jesus lays down his life gathering us up under his wings so that we can be restored to life.  That's news worth telling someone today.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your choice to lay down your life.  Let us dare to believe it is true.

A Call to Weep

A Call to Weep--March 15, 2019

"...weep with those who weep." [Romans 12:15]

I have been fumbling, grasping, for words today.

I cannot pretend that I will have "the right words" for the news of this day. Job's friends were wise simply to keep silent and sit with their bereaved friend in his grief on the ash heap, and I know there are many ways to go wrong in trying to speak in the aftermath of terrible acts of violence. And I know, too, that others have already begun to speak in response to the horrific act of cowardice, hatred, and terrorism perpetrated by a gunman at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 49 of our Muslim neighbors were killed while they were at prayer.  

But I also know that not to speak up is to send a message as well.  And it is too easy for us, half a world away in the United States, to pause only for long enough to read the headline as a chyron on a screen and then to move on with our days.  It is too easy for Christians, of which I am one, to feel indifferent because the violence was directed at people of a different faith.  And it is too easy for pastors, a group of which I am also a member, to limit how we address such atrocities to a momentary mention in corporate prayer for one Sunday and then to keep our heads down, attending to sermons that are already prepared and hymns that are already chosen.  And it may well be that the best way to sit on the ash heap today with those whose lives have been shattered by the mosque attack in Christchurch from half a world away is to speak our grief and outrage so that our Muslim neighbors (as well as my fellow Christian sisters and brothers) will know and hear and see.  But saying nothing is too convenient and too complacent a response.

So even if these words are clumsy or inadequate on their own, they need to be spoken.  Forgive me where I fall short of what is necessary.

I have been grasping for words over the attack in Christchurch because the news has provoked in me both deep sorrow and deep outrage. At one level, that outrage is directed at the gunman and his accomplices who planned and carried out this despicable act.  I am appalled at the disregard for human life, at the callous cruelty of the violence, at the profanity of seeking targets at their time and place of prayer, and for the wicked use of social media to spread the video of the attack and the manifesto of the perpetrators.  Every piece of this evil act sickens me.

The attack also deeply saddens me.  And it needs to be said that my grief is for Muslim neighbors as Muslim neighbors--that is to say, not pretending that my faith is the same as theirs, not because it means that violence could break out at my place of worship, too, and not because I am directly affected by today's events.  I need to say that these people, these lives that were precious and of infinite worth to the living God, these faces and stories must be mourned on their own terms, and not merely because their deaths mean "it could happen here, too, in my community or congregation." 

And I need to say, too, that it is precisely because of my Christian faith that I--and I believe all followers of Jesus of Nazareth--am called to grieve both with and for my Muslim neighbors, both in New Zealand and in our own communities.  Ours is a faith which teaches us to "weep with those who weep," and there are no boundaries set over whose weeping "counts."  Ours is a Lord who teaches us that love of neighbor expressly includes those whose faith, nationality, and culture are different from our own.  And ours is a gospel which centers on the claim that God has entered into our human suffering completely, from weeping with the friends of Lazarus at his grave, to a shameful and violent death on a cross.  It is not, therefore, merely out of vaguely religious sentimentality that I am called to grieve with my Muslim neighbors, near and far, today--although, to be sure, our common humanity is reason by itself to share this sorrow together.  But at the very core of my faith as a Christian is the calling to love my neighbor and to weep with those who weep, regardless of the faith my neighbor practices.  The man left by the roadside between Jerusalem and Jericho will testify to that as well.

All of these things, I hope, are obvious.  There was once a time when I believed that things that were so obvious could go without saying--that we all simply knew to be outraged by violence and terror like this, and that, of course, Christians would be moved to share grief and stand in solidarity with those who were victims of this attack.  But I fear that we may have left "things that go without saying" unsaid for so long that Christians where I live may think we do not have a particular position on how to respond to an attack like this, or that it is a matter of personal preference or multiple interpretations.  Let me, then, at the risk of saying what should have been self-evident, remove any confusion: followers of Jesus are unequivocally called to stand with those who were the targets of this attack in New Zealand, and to mourn with those around the world whose hearts are broken by the violence, as well as those who now live in renewed fear for their own lives and safety because of their faith, regardless of whether we share that faith or not.  This is simply what it looks like in this moment to weep with those who weep and to love our neighbors.  Today, our calling is to love our Muslim neighbor, much as it was our calling last fall to love our Jewish neighbors after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and much as it is our calling when violence breaks out against fellow Christians, people of no faith, people of many faiths, people in schools, people in movie theatres, and people in war zones seeking refuge and food.  

So to my Muslim neighbors, in my own community, in New Zealand, and around the world--I am heartbroken with you, and I am moved by the stories of courage and self-sacrifice that have emerged already from Christchurch of those who tried to protect others, those who offered their bodies as shields, and those who tried to help others escape the danger.  And I condemn both the violence and the worldview which kindled that violence against you and your faith.  As a Christian, because I am a Christian, I condemn the violence, the terror, and the ideology of white nationalism that gave rise to the attacks in New Zealand today.  I know that one person saying so cannot bring back the lives that have been lost or assuage the fear of further violence, but I grieve with you, and I will speak and act against the wicked mindset that fueled the terrorism in New Zealand today, the same way I am called to speak and act against violence and hatred against any neighbor.  We share a common humanity, and I grieve today for fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, whose lives were taken because of fear and hatred.

I am convinced that this, too, needs to be said, loudly and clearly: what happened in New Zealand today was not a random occurrence, and it was not merely a matter of mental illness.  It was sparked by a sin which is bigger than one person or group of conspirators, and it was fueled by an ideology which is in some ways so present and so familiar we can forget it is all around us.  The attack in New Zealand, by all accounts was the product of the ideology of white nationalism and white supremacy: the notion that people of particular European ancestry need to be afraid of--and fight back against--being outnumbered, pushed out of power, or replaced by other groups of people.  It is a mindset rooted in fear of "the other," rather than in love of neighbor, and on that count alone, Christian theology should call it out as a heresy.  The heresy of white supremacy and white nationalism knows no geographical boundaries--it was revealed in New Zealand today, but it is present in the United States, and it is being seen across Europe as well.  Precisely because I am a Christian, whose faith is founded on the hope of a God who will gather all nations in a renewed creation, I can do no other but condemn the mindset that begins with fear of those who are different and then assumes that "the other" must be stopped, killed, or destroyed, rather than loved as a neighbor.  I know that there have been times when people, bearing the title of "Christian," have invoked that name to justify hatred or violence against people of other faiths, not only Muslims, but also including those of the Jewish faith, and many others as well.  And it needs to be said loud and clear that these are distortions and deformations of the way of Jesus of Nazareth, even when they have been said by respected teachers, reformers, and theologians over the centuries.

It is our calling in this moment of history, precisely as Christians following the way of Jesus, to renounce the mindset of white supremacy that is used to justify violence against "the other," and to call it out for what it is--the product of fear that has fermented into hatred, rather than anything having to do with the real and authentic Jesus of Nazareth.

I read somewhere recently the insight that people do not fear change so much as they fear loss.  That may well be true, although I suspect that nearly every change in life also means a loss of something, even if only the loss of the familiar.  The mindset that gave rise to the attack in New Zealand (and the shooting at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, and the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and so many others) is fueled by the fear of losing perceived "control" and being pushed out by newcomers--whether of a different nationality, skin color, language, or religion.  And when that fear is allowed to drive our actions, we retreat into looking out after "Me and My Group First" rather than seeking the good of the neighbor before our own.  It builds from resentment toward those who are perceived as "invading" to outright hostility toward those groups, and then when it has metastasized, it erupts in violence like the world saw today in Christchurch.  But even in kernel form--even when it is simply the fear that leads me to view someone different as someone dangerous--this mindset is wholly opposed to the way of Christ.  And it is precisely as Christians that we must condemn it.  

That will mean we are called to do the even more difficult work of taking an ongoing, honest look at ourselves, to weed out all the places where this kind of hatred and fear have taken root in our own hearts. The attack in Christchurch, and other attacks like it, do not occur in a vacuum.  They have been fed and fueled by either our outright support of this mindset that insists on forcefully "reclaiming" what its proponents feel they have lost, or by our silence and complacency in the church and our failure to name this sin for what it is.  It is easy, in a day when many churches feel like they are in decline, to lament the loss of influence, or numbers, or prominence we remember once having.  And from there it is easy to let that lament sour into bitterness and resentment, and then to find an easy target for blame in the presence of others of different faiths.  And because it is easy to do, we give ourselves permission to hate others, to blame them for what we perceive as decline, and from there it is terribly tempting to cast ourselves as persecuted victims who are justified in "fighting back" against those who we see as "the enemy." That is precisely the kind of mindset that sparked the terror attack in New Zealand.  When the church is silent about this mindset, we become complicit with it, even if we have never taken up arms against another religious group ourselves.

This is a moment, then, for fellow followers of Jesus, to be clear.  It is not only the attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, that we condemn, but the mindset of white supremacy--especially when it uses the trappings of Christianity for support.  It is not only act of violence on one day that we grieve, but the ways this act will reverberate around the world to make others live in fear, or to try to inspire other similarly motivated attacks.  And we condemn the whole mindset of "Me and My Group First" precisely because we are followers of Jesus, whom we confess to be the Christ, who taught us to love our neighbors without regard for our neighbor's identity, who did not respond with fear or hatred even to those who killed him, who entered into our common humanity by suffering death as one of us, and whose resurrection makes possible a new humanity in which all nations are drawn to dwell in God's presence.

This is a moment, finally, for us to condemn both the event in New Zealand and the worldview that spawned it, because we dare to take seriously the Scripture's calling for us to "weep with those who weep."

God give us the grace, the strength, and courage, to love our neighbors today and always.

Where God Puts A Doorstop

Where God Puts a Doorstop--March 14, 2019

"My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." [1 John 2:1-2]

The world, huh?

Yep.  In fact, the "whole world," as the writer, John, puts it.

Just let that sit for a moment.  Take it in and let it bang around in your heart.  Let it push the boundaries in your heart wider, too.

There's not even wiggle room to try and rein this verse back in by saying, "Well, obviously, he only means Christians, because there are Christians all over the entire world, and that must be what John meant, otherwise that means Jesus is for everybody.  And we can't have that!"  John has closed off that possible interpretation for two reasons: first off, when John wrote, back in the first century, Christians simply weren't spread out "all over the entire world."  They were beginning to spread, to be sure, out of the cradle of Judea where the movement began, and there were probably growing pockets across modern-day Turkey, Greece, and even Rome.  But in the first century, Christianity didn't have franchises in every town like Starbucks or McDonald's today.  Second of all, and more to the point, John goes to additional length to make clear that Jesus is "the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world."  See--the moment we want to shrink this grace in to keep it more "manageable" and under our control, the New Testament itself blows it right back open like a door yanked by a gale-force wind.  In fact, John here seems to think that God has put a doorstop in to prop the thing open in spite of our attempts to shut it.

So there's where we start on this day.  The love of God is so wide as to include the whole world, and the love of God is so deep as to offer up God's own life in Christ Jesus for the sake of all of our sins.  

The moment we want to turn this Christianity thing into a club, whose benefits and perks are for members only, the Scriptures themselves slap our hands and say, "No--this is for everybody.  Jesus' life was offered up for the whole world, not just yours, not just people like you, and not just people who sit in pews around the globe.  The whole world."

So many other voices around us try to make it sound like "Me-and-My-Group-First" thinking is just plain logical, as if, "Hey, that's just how life is, buddy.  We've all got to look out for Number 1."  But at every turn, the Scriptures themselves redirect us and say, "Nope.  God's interest is in the whole world.  Jesus didn't just come for you and your group.  He is the atoning sacrifice for the whole world."  What we have so easily come to accept as "just the way life is" the writers of the New Testament declare to be the opposite of God's way.

Notice, too, that the writer here doesn't try and sneak in a bit of moralizing threat-making in here, either.  He says he is writing so that we don't sin, but he doesn't take the leap that so many religious professionals want to make by threatening to withhold forgiveness.  He doesn't say, "I hope you don't sin, because if you do, Jesus will rescind the forgiveness he gave you at the cross, and it will just be for other, non-sinning people." In fact, he does just the opposite--John says that we who follow Jesus are called away from sin (the rottenness in us that gets bent-in on ourselves and breaks relationships with one another and with God), but then he makes the point of saying that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice not just for us who are trying to be good little girls and boys, but for the whole world, which includes a whole bunch of folks for whom "repenting of sin" isn't even on their radar.  John knows that runs the risk (or rather, that God knowingly runs the risk) that people will keep on being screw-ups.  He is just convinced that God is more determined to reconcile with all creation than God is with being a bean-counter.

Today, then, here is the challenge: don't try to close the doors that God has propped open, and don't try to be holier than Jesus closing off entry where God has put a doorstop to open the way wide.  Here, despite all the ways we tend to want to control access, to control who gets "in" to God's good graces, and who is "covered" by Christ at the cross, the Scriptures themselves insist that God has had "the whole world" in mind all along.

Lord Jesus, let our vision be as big as yours, to see that your self-giving at the cross is as wide as the whole world.

All Is Forgiven

All Is Forgiven--March 13, 2019

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." [2 Corinthians 5:18-21]

From God's vantage point, all is forgiven.  All.  Really.

We are the ones who so often still have a problem.  Maybe we can't dare to recieve a free gift without some sense that we "earned" it by doing something religious on our part, or at least giving ourselves credit for being smart or spiritual enough to say "yes" to God's great offer.  Maybe we can't bring ourselves to swallow the idea that God has forgiven the most terrible, horrible actions of history, whether in our own lives or over the centuries.  Maybe it just sounds too good to be true, or like there has to be a catch, or some signs of moral improvement for those applying for forgiveness before it can be granted (conditionally, of course, in our minds, with a fine-print section of escape-clauses for God to cancel the forgiveness if it turns out we are bad investments).  There are lots of reasons we may be skeptical about this notion that all is forgiven.  Maybe the number of broken promises we had pinned our hopes on in life, only to be let down have just beaten the optimism and trust out of us.

But for whatever reasons we bring that keep us from daring to believe it, here is none other than the apostle Paul himself making a full-throated declaration that all is forgiven. God has repaired (from God's side) the bridges that we burned (from our side).  And to be clear, if these verses are to be believed, God has done it for "the world." Yep--the world. Not just me.  Not just current church-attenders.  Not just people in my country.  Not just people with my skin color, language, philosophy, or politics.  There is no place for Me-and-My-Group-First thinking in the gospel. The question, then, is whether we'll tell the rest of the world about what God has already done.

So... this happens with my son from time to time.  When my son gets caught doing something he knows he should not, often his reaction looks like anger (at everybody else around, who can call him on it), but really there is a lot of shame underneath.  He gets embarrassed, and then angry that he's been found out, and often, he will go storming up to his room in a show of protest and seven-year-old-style outrage.  There was a time not long ago when I called to him, while he was up in his room, and he was dead-set on staying angry with the door shut.  And I called to him. Not to yell at him, but with the hope of telling him it was OK, and that if he was ready for the hurricane of anger to be over, we could start again.  He wouldn't have it.  He was still wanting to be mad, or thought he had to be mad, or didn't know how to unclench the anger like it was a charley-horse in his heart.  So he stayed mad.  And I kept calling up.  Eventually, I had to knock on his door, letting him continue to be mad while I knocked, letting him be mad as I opened the door, and letting him be mad while I sat down next to him to ask him to tell me again what was upsetting him.  

And of course, from his vantage point, I was the bad guy.  I was the one who was mean (for insisting on things like not hitting his sister, needing to do his spelling homework, and not having endless hours of television, or whatever else we cruel parents do.  But I needed to let him be mad--I needed to let him say out loud that he thought I was the mean one, the angry one--the one, in other words, who had sinned.  I needed to bear the wrath of my son, fuming and frustrated, in order to hold him and tell him I loved him, and that we were starting over.  I had forgiven him, if you want to use that word, before he had ever stomped upstairs in a huff.  But in order for him to be able to hear it, I needed to let him be mad at me and direct all his childish fire and fury at me, and I needed to be the one to keep knocking, speaking the forgiveness and new beginning that was already his.  Maybe one day he will see that it was his before he even accepted it. But for now, he may well need to think that he set it all into motion by letting me open his door.  Love is funny that way--you don't really care if you get the proper credit for your efforts.

This, in a manner of speaking, is what the apostle says God has done for us.  Reconciliation, from God's vantage point, is already a done deal.  Already an accomplished fact.  Apart from our efforts, and even apart from our approval or acceptance of it.  In fact, while we were all stomping upstairs in a huff, trying to cut off relationship, there was God already saying, "We are starting over now."  And when we refused to listen, God let us be mad.  God let us pour out all our anger, all of our rage, and all of our accusation onto God's very own self in Jesus, even to the point where we accused God of being the one in the wrong, of being sinful.  Paul says it this way: "God made him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God."  Jesus bears all of our rage and accusation while he is in the act of saying, "All is forgiven.  Already."  And the ongoing work of Jesus' people is to announce that same news to the world that is already completely forgiven, while we are all shut inside our rooms, huffing and fuming and unwilling to dare to believe it could be true.

What happens at the cross, in other words, is that the living God bears all the outrage we think God should get because we are childishly throwing a temper tantrum, while God all the while keeps saying nothing but, "We are OK now.  We are starting over.  All is forgiven.  All of it.  Always."  All the church was ever meant to say is a coda to that--just to say again to a world that cannot dare to believe it that God has built the bridge all over again from God's side.

And that is the work of this day, too.  Let's get to it.

Lord Jesus, let us dare to believe your gift and to share it... with all.

The Impossible Curse

The Impossible Curse—March 12, 2019

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” [Galatians 3:13-14]

Two millennia ago, outside the city gates in a backwater province of the empire of the day, something impossible happened.

God—the Source of blessing, the One rightly addressed as, “Blessed are you, O Lord, our God,” the One, as the old doxology puts it, “from whom all blessings flow”—that God, becomes cursed. 

If that doesn’t sound impossible enough, let me try it this way: on a Roman execution stake in occupied Palestine, the Holy One absorbed all the unholiness, impurity, and profanity the world had to dole out.  All of it.  Down to the last drop.

The Blessed One becomes accursed.  The Holy One takes all of our unholiness.  That, and nothing less, is what the cross of Jesus is all about.

Maybe in our day, in a culture that doesn’t find talk of “blessing” and “curse” very fashionable, and in which “holiness” and “unholiness” perhaps seem foreign and strange to many ears, this doesn’t seem like an important point.  But let’s allow this tea to steep just a bit: the apostle Paul has a plan to blow our minds open with these couple of sentences from his letter to the Galatians.

See, sometimes, you’ll hear folks—religious-sounding folks, mind you—say things like, “God is holy, and therefore, God cannot tolerate being in the presence of anything sinful, unclean, or unholy.”  And in a sense, I get it.  If I have just cleaned the kitchen and bleached the countertops, I don’t want you bringing in a dead raccoon carcass and laying it out where I was about to start preparing the chicken cordon bleu.  The roadkill is unclean, unsanitary, and unsafe to leave where food will be prepared, and we would all rightly protest using the same counter for a raccoon autopsy and meal preparation at the same time.  

So, sure, take that sense of disgust you have brewing inside your gut right now over my unpleasant mental picture and multiply it by infinity, and we can find ourselves extrapolating that God, who is infinitely holy, must be infinitely disgusted at all the ways we wallow in cruelty and self-centeredness, the ways we let our lives get infected with complacent tolerance of hatred, the smiles on the faces of lynch-mobs who strung up black bodies convinced they were doing good, the terrible ruthless efficiency of gas chambers and concentration camps, the many ways we love things and use people, and the ways we abuse and pollute our relationships with each other and with creation.  If we think in those terms, sure, it makes sense to say that a God who is holy cannot abide what is un-holy, any more than you would let someone plop down some roadkill on your kitchen counter before supper time.

And yet—and this is the really, beautifully, impossible thing about it—here’s the apostle Paul saying that in Christ Jesus, we have nothing less than God-with-us becoming the godforsaken, the Holy One absorbing all the unholiness there is, the Blessed One becoming an object of curse for us.  Jesus doesn’t just let the dead raccoon up on the counter—he become the roadkill, so to speak.  Jesus, Paul says, takes on all the revulsion, the shame, the disgust there is to be found, into himself at the cross.

Mind you, this is the same as saying that a holy God chooses to become unholy for our sake—in particular, for the purpose of welcoming in outsiders (Gentiles) who had been labeled “unholy” by their very birth and identity as Gentiles, so that all can belong.  So whatever God’s “holiness” means, it can’t be like an allergy, a weakness, or a limitation on God’s part, like someone who can’t be in a room with peanut products.  God chooses to absorb the ugliness and scandal of being lynched.  That can’t be reduced to a neat and tidy bit of accounting, the way we sometimes talk about the cross as a divine bank transaction.  If you give me a million dollars to pay my debt, you take a loss, but you are still the respectable hero of the story.  If you sacrifice your life for me in battle, you still get to be remembered in glory and honor.  But God does something scandalous at the cross.  God absorbs all the revulsive, disgusting stuff there is to be doled out, and bears our revulsion when we look at Christ the Crucified One. 

And maybe that is the real sacrifice that happens at the cross—the real burden that God chooses to bear. God chooses NOT to look heroic—not a bit.  God chooses to save us in such a way that while Christ is doing the saving, everyone around him was damn sure he was godforsaken.  The empire convicted him of being a troublemaking seditious enemy of the state.  The Respectable Religious crowd was certain he was a blasphemous rule-breaker tainted by eating at the tables of sinners.  And the folks standing by were all sure that he couldn’t be the Messiah they were waiting for, because in their books, messiahs didn’t die ugly deaths—they killed their enemies as the marched on to victory.

The cross takes all of our expectations of where God is supposed to be and how God is supposed to behave and turns them all upside down.  And when all of our old notions of holiness-as-allergy have fallen out like loose change, what is left is the Gospel: the God who is not afraid to be infected with all of our shame, curse, and uncleanness, making our cries of “Crucify him!” into the end of all that accursed stuff once and for all.

It all sounds a bit impossible.  It should.  Any way of talking about the cross that sounds perfectly reasonable with neat-and-tidy diagrams is surely a human invention.

Today, let it just sink in that at the cross, the Blessed One from whom all blessings flow absorbed all the curse we could throw, and held it there, strung up on a tree so that nobody would have to get strung up again.

Lord Jesus, you who became a curse for us, give us the grace simply to take it in what you have done for us, beyond our ability to diagram, contain, or explain it.

The Urgency of Love

The Urgency of Love--March 4, 2019

“Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.” [Mark 3:1-2]

Except for the fact that he’s the Son of God, you might say Jesus was deliberately trying to stir up trouble.  He knows that the religious professionals are watching, and that they will make a big stink about doing any work on the sabbath. We heard just yesterday about how they flipped out over his disciples plucking a few heads of grain in their hands as they walked through a field.  And if that counted as “labor,” then surely a feat as wonderful as healing a man whose hand was withered would be forbidden by the religious rule-keepers.

Jesus knew it.  And he knew perfectly well that he could have avoided any confrontation with these piety police by just waiting a day—or coming a day earlier!—to meet up with this man to heal him.  Come on now, let’s be honest, Jesus has got to know already about the man’s situation—the town isn’t that big, and he knew where he would find the sick and hurting.  Jesus knew what he was walking into that day, and rather than keep the peace with the religious professionals and just whisper to the man, “Come back in the morning, and I will heal you,” Jesus steers things toward a confrontation right then and there with the spiritual enforcers.

Of course, those religious so-and-sos have been plotting this moment, too, of course.  They are watching to see whether this rabbi Jesus will take the bait and commit such a public and undeniable violation of the commandment about not working on the sabbath day.  Perhaps the grain-picking was a bit excessive, but surely to heal a man was labor, and they would have him on the record if they caught him here.

Let’s be clear, then: both Jesus and the religious leaders know what they are headed for in that synagogue, and Jesus is not about to flinch.  There is courage that undergirds his compassion.  He is willing to get into trouble for the sake of preserving and giving life.  He is willing to get labeled as a rule-breaker and transgressor of commandments in order to heal.  He could have just compromised.  After all, it would only have been a day longer that the man with the misshapen hand would have to wait.

But Jesus will not wait.  In this moment, saying “not now, but try again tomorrow,” would be the same as putting the religious rules above the God who gave them, and whose deepest concern is always to give life.  Jesus will not compromise on this matter, and he is willing to deliberately provoke the spiritual experts in the room by refusing to flinch on this.

I wonder, do we spend our courage in the same ways Jesus does?  We only have so much strength in a day, you know, and so often we spend our courage for the day sticking up for ourselves, rather than standing up for others.  So often, we silence our courage altogether to look after our own interests.  So often, we find ourselves in positions to do good, to preserve life, to love the loveless and unlovely, and we decide to wait for another day.  So often, we are afraid to stand up for the people around us who are waiting there at the margins, or we say, “Not today… maybe later… your time will come soon enough… it would just make too many waves today…” We are afraid to see the face of the homeless around us, afraid to accept those who have been told they are unacceptable, afraid to open up our lives or risk our comfort for the sake of people in need around us, because we are afraid of making waves.

But not Jesus.  He won’t put off until tomorrow the holy troublemaking he can accomplish today.  And he is unafraid of the consequences.  How might you and I find ourselves speaking up, offering welcome, opening our arms, and opening our tables, to people without advocates today?  How could we say “Yes” to the urgency of Jesus’ love? Whose path will you cross today, and how will you respond when the temptation is strong to say, “Tomorrow, perhaps, but today is just so inconvenient….”?  Let us not miss out on the moments Jesus gives us to be holy troublemakers like him, and let us not put them off until later.

Christ our Lord, send us with your compassion and courage, for we need both to find our voices and to bring your love to all we will meet today.

Finding Ourselves Found

Finding Ourselves Found--March 1, 2019

"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." [Ephesians 2:13]

It is Christ who does the finding.  We get found.

That notion is really the key to what makes the Gospel actually "good news," and not just one more religious sales pitch.  Christ does the finding--at best we find ourselves "found" by him.

That's another way of saying that from the New Testament's perspective, we are the "other," the "outsider," and the "stranger" who have been stuck in a corner somewhere, and Jesus is the One who seeks us out, grasps us by the nape of the neck like a mama cat, and brings us in close.  The effort is God's.  The labor is God's.  The acceptance is God's.  And the finding is God's.

So often you'll hear religious voices posing the question, "Have you found Jesus?" (which always sounds to me like someone has misplaced their car keys), which makes the terrible mistake of getting it all backwards, at least according to the letter to the Ephesians.  As the writer to the Ephesians puts it, Jesus isn't lost, and we aren't the ones doing the searching.  Christ has found us.  Christ has brought us near.  And Christ is the one who laid down his life to do the finding.

But then that also means that a second frequently-asked religious question needs to be revised. Because you'll also hear people from time to time thinking they have corrected the first question by asking, "When the day of judgment comes, will you be found in Christ?"  And again, the question itself is a nonsense question, like asking (to borrow an old illustration of C.S. Lewis'), "Is yellow round or square?"  The question itself has a faulty premise, because it's not up to my efforts to make sure I will be "found in Christ."  It is not even a future event, but an accomplished fact and a present reality.  Being "found in Christ" is not a matter of my doing religious actions, praying the right prayer, agreeing to a set of ethical positions, or getting a certain number of questions correct on my theology exam.  It's not even about how hard I am holding on to Jesus--it has everything to do with how tightly he is holding on to me.  And as Ephesians puts it, we were the outsiders, strangers and "Others," whom Christ sought out, pulled in close, and found while we were staring off into space unaware, or even when we were kicking and screaming not to be found.

The New Testament doesn't see "being found in Christ" as a badge of honor or club membership that you achieve by holding a sufficient number of orthodox doctrinal beliefs or and moral principles.  "Being found in Christ" is a gift you are given--and as Ephesians goes to great lengths to make clear, it has already been given!  It is yours.  Done deal.  No further payment required, not even shipping and handling.

Sometimes we forget that.  Maybe sometimes we have a hard time believing it is true in the first place.  We human beings are terrible at accepting free gifts, and we are even worse at letting those same free gifts be given all around to others as well when it includes folks we don't think have earned them.  As much and as often as God keeps insisting, "It's all grace," and as much as Jesus keeps saying, "I am the one who found you!" we keep wanting to make belonging in Christ something that is up for debate, subject to review, or waiting to be decided based on our future performance, morality, or theology.  And it just ain't so, children.  It just ain't so.

The Good News, both back in the first century when Ephesians was written and in the twenty-first century as we read it today, is NOT that "if you do a decent enough job believing the right propositions, doing the right actions, and condemning the right list of sins, the odds are good that you'll one day be found in Christ." Rather, the Gospel's promise is more like, "You have already been found--in Christ, and by Christ, and for Christ. You already belong.  You who were once far away have already been grabbed hold of by grace, and you who were "other" and "outsider" are now members of the family forever."

You cannot lose that belonging, no matter what anybody else says--they don't get a vote.

You cannot get yourself lost beyond the reach of Christ--you are found in him and you are blessedly stuck with him.

And you cannot disqualify yourself from it with future behavior or poor performance.  It was never about your performance in the first place.

Or, as Ephesians puts it, "now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ."  You're found.  Live like it's true.

Lord Jesus, give us the ability to believe your promise that we are found, and to live like it is true.