When God Widens the Circle

When God Widens the Circle--February 18, 2019

"Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over to this chariot and join it'.” [Acts 8:26-29]

The circle is widening.  That seems to be a major motion of the book of Acts in particular, and of the whole New Testament in general—the rippling out of the Good News and the widening circle of the people claimed by this News. Geographically, the news and community of Jesus is rippling out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and out "to the ends of the earth."  And we have also seen that new community ripple out ethnically, too—from a handful of Palestinian Jews to the gathered Jewish crowds from all over the world at Pentecost to the growing community of Samaritans who come to faith in Jesus, and now to an Ethiopian eunuch.  Maybe it doesn't sink in at first just how radical it is that God is taking the initiative to widen the circle to include this man, but let's take a time out to consider it here.

First of all, let's be clear that God is the instigator here. It is alwyas a bigger step, a bigger risk, to be the one to act rather than the one to give silent, implicit approval of someone else's action. And now it is God--or, in truth, maybe it has been God all along--who clearly takes the "risk" of reaching out to this outsider.  And just to be clear, also, the Torah was unequivocal that eunuchs are not allowed into the assembly of God's people.  For a moment, let's just bracket out the fact that he is visibly of a different racial group (Ethiopia, even if not quite the same territory of the country we know by that name today, is clearly a place of black African population, rather than the more Mediterranean population of northern African places like Egypt). That would be a hard enough pill for us to swallow today, we who still live in a society that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, has Sunday mornings as the most segregated hour of the week.  But just the fact that this man is a eunuch should disqualify him from eligibility in the people of God, if the prohibitions of the Torah were to stand.  The ruling was that no one with variations, alterations, or injuries to their sexual organs, whether from birth or done later in life, was to be permitted to belong in the assembly of God's people (see, for example, Deuteronomy 23:1).  Being a eunuch, mind you, is something you are, not something you can "repent of," or "try not to be," any more than you can will your body to grow a third kidney. It sounds so black-and-white clear: this unnamed eunuch should not be allowed access to the news and community of God.  And then the Scriptures do a funny thing—they open up what seemed permanently closed—the prophetic voice in Isaiah 56 announces after the exile that eunuchs who keep God's commandments and covenant will in fact belong in the assembly of God after all.  

And now here in Acts, God puts his money where Isaiah 56's mouth had been, and God up and tells Philip to initiate conversation with this outsider.  The lines that had seemed to clearly black-and-white, in-and-out, us-and-them, have now been blurred.  And God is the one who has blurred those lines.  God is the one who has widened the circle. That means we can't blame Philip for being a soft-hearted "liberal" for going out on his own, as though he doesn't care what the Torah had said--God is the one who has instructed Philip to join this eunuch!  God resists being labeled in our categories as "liberal" or "conservative," and God instead surprises us left and right with welcome for the stranger alongside a relentless call for justice and mercy and holiness.  But let's make no mistake about it—God has taken the initiative to widen the circle in this story.

This one might take a while to sit and simmer for us.  What does it mean that God's earlier commands set clear boundaries, and then God does something new that rearrange those boundaries?  How can we believe in a constant God who seems to change the rules on us?  That's hard stuff to contemplate.  But note, too, that God has a way of doing this throughout the Bible.  We keep seeing a God who reserves the right to surprise us, a God who reserves the right include the "other," a God who reserves the right to bless those deemed unblessable, and a God who reserves the right to use unexpected vessels.  Perhaps it is enough for us today to invite God to lead us to let go of our assumptions and to let God surprise us again today, or in other words, to let God be...God.

Good Lord, help us to see how you are widening the circle beyond our expectations, and yet how we can be truly your people following your ways, and not just our inventions and theories.  Let us hear your voice, however it may surprise us.

...And to All

...And To All--February 15, 2019

"See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all." [1 Thessalonians 5:15]

"And to all."

Those three words (in English or the original Greek, it's still three) make a radical move that might happen so quickly we miss the seismic shift happening as Paul writes them.

Those three words make it clear (if it were not already abundantly so from, say, anything else in the New Testament) that the followers of Jesus do not just look out for one another, but for all.  That is, outsiders, too.  

This is a huge deal. 

I say that because religious folks are pretty good at looking out for in-group members.  We are great at making soup or cookies when someone else from church is not feeling well.  We do a fine job at showing sympathy when the person who sits in the pew in front of you is going through a rough time or a loss.  We can even be persuaded to help support other Christians in other countries (sometimes), if they are building a church... or need missionaries sent to them... or could use our old hymnals that we are tired of!

But sometimes we talk like these are perks only reserved for fellow Christians, but then assume that we are not supposed to offer the same level of care or concern for people outside the walls of the church.  We can (maybe) work up the nerve to forgive a fellow church member who has wronged us, or to rise above petty grudges when someone we know to be a Christian has said something to upset or offend.  But my oh my, how we change our tunes sometimes when it comes to folks outside the boundaries!

"Forgiveness has its place," we rationalize, "but it has limits, too!" Maybe I can make myself forgive (or at least not seek revenge against someone) when a neighbor who goes to another church in town accidentally backs into my mailbox pulling out of their driveway, or mows their lawn at 6:00am on my only Saturday morning to sleep in.  We can probably convince ourselves that it is prudent not to do the same things back to our neighbors, just because they live close to us and we know not to start a war over them.  Maybe we figure, "Well, my neighbors are still my kind of people, so I can overlook this.  The zinnias around the mailbox will grow back."

But the idea of extending that kind of grace to someone we don't know?  Someone outside the boundaries of church membership?  Someone who doesn't count as "one of us"?  Not just forgiving them if they accidentally slight you, but actively doing good even to the outsiders who have done me wrong?  Now we are getting pulled out of our comfort zone.

And that's just where Paul intends to take us: beyond the boundaries of our personal comfort, because the Gospel is all about the love of a God who reaches out in every direction all the time. So for Paul, it's not enough to say, "We look out for our own." For Paul, we are called to do good, not only to other people who name the name of Jesus, but also to all--and give up on the mindset that says we only take care of other club members.  Those words, "to all," are the tipping point.  It's a given that Christians will take care of one another, that we will not seek revenge against one another, and that we will not return evil for evil.  But Paul has made it clear (drawing on the teaching of Jesus here, no doubt) that we are not only called to do this for other followers of Jesus, but for everybody else, too.  Both are there in Paul's mind--we are to do good "to one another" (other Christians) AND "to all."  That means everybody else.  You can't get any clearer, really.  And yet we have spent the better part of the last two thousand years sticking our fingers in our ears for those last three words.

Those three words, "...and to all," are stubborn things.  They remind us that the scope of Christ's love is not only for people who already believe in him. They remind us that our forgiveness of another person is not grounded in whether we like them or not but in the way God has forgiven us already. They remind us that God relentlessly ripples out.

That is our hope, too--because that is how we know God's love includes us as well.  

Today, let us dare to practice the three radical words, "and to all," with and for whomever God sends across our path today as part of the "all."

Lord Jesus, let your love sink in and then flow through us. Always, always, always.

For the Un-Chosen

For the Un-Chosen--February 14, 2019

"So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child [Ishmael], and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.  When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, 'Do not let me look on the death of the child.' And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, 'What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.' Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a rink.  God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness..." [Genesis 21:14-20a]

Sometimes the people you looked up to--even heroes of the faith--really let us down.

This is one of those stories that I don't remember ever being taught on the flannel board in Sunday School, but I am glad that eventually the Scriptures themselves smacked me over the head to pay attention to this scene. And even though it is one of Abraham's worst moments, it turns out to show a depth and a surprising breadth to God's love for "the Other," the outsider, the un-chosen, as it were.  And because of that, this story messes with my neatly ordered faith... in a good and necessary way.

Maybe a bit of backstory is necessary here, just to make sense of what's going on, and what a cowardly louse the great father of faith, Abraham is being.  Abraham, of course, is remembered for being the one who trusted God when, out of nowhere, God called him to leave behind his old land and family ties and life and go to a new land without so much as a piece of identification on his person.  And you have to give Abraham credit for that much--at nearly one hundred years old, he and his wife Sarah left the land in which they were ostensibly citizens to become squatters and migrants on land that was not their own for the rest of their lives, and Abraham never in his lifetime owned a piece of land that he lived on ever again.  It takes a great deal of courage and faith to be a resident alien in a foreign land without legal permission to be there, and that was Abraham.  So, okay, the old patriarch gets ten out of ten points for taking a leap of faith.

But then, after God had promised him a child but no children seemed forthcoming, Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands.  Abraham used (and there is no better word than "used" in this context) Sarah's slave Hagar as a surrogate, to have a child through her that Sarah would claim with Abraham as their own.  (This will be remembered later as Bad Idea #1.)  And what do you know, but Hagar has a son, Abraham's firstborn, whose name is Ishmael.  Well, in due time, Sarah also has a son, whom you might know was named Isaac (his birth story was one of the flannel board stories from Sunday School), and Isaac is the child through whom God's promises will be kept.  

Ah, but now what to do with Hagar and her boy, Ishmael? Especially as the two boys get older and Ishmael starts doing what older brothers do and picks on little Isaac?  Well, now, Ishmael and his mother Hagar are expendable.  Abraham and Sarah can't use them any longer, and so the decision is made to kick them out.  (This should be known as Bad Idea #2.) The single mother and her young son are sent off with a few meager provisions, no legitimate rights, no status, and no hope for survival.  They are outsiders, anyway, so they are disposable, right?  Hagar is Egyptian, so her darker skin and different culture make her and her son stand out anyhow.  And so it is not long before Hagar has run out of her meager supplies where Abraham left her in the middle of nowhere, and she has no way of providing anything more for her son, whose only crime was having been born... by Abraham and Sarah's scheming insistence in the first place.

Hagar feels utterly hopeless.  She cannot provide for her son to live. She cannot bring herself to take her son's life as some kind of mercy killing.  And she cannot bear to watch him die the long and painful death of starvation and exposure.  So she leaves him under a bush and watches from a distance.  Abraham has abandoned her, and so, she believes, must the God of Abraham also.

But God reserves the right to love the people kicked out of the house.  God reserves the right to love not only the "chosen" child of the promise, but also the non-chosen son of the enslaved woman.  God is just getting started with the family line of Abraham and Isaac, and indeed that family line becomes the people of Israel and the redemption of all the world eventually through the son of a young woman named Mary who is descended from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob... but God is also still at work with the story of Hagar and Ishmael. And even though they are "outsiders"--no, strike that, precisely because they are the overlooked, unwanted outsiders, the living God provides for Hagar and Ishmael and chooses to be "with" the child as he grows.

This is a dangerous (in a good way) story for our tidy religious piles.  We tend to see the world, both our world today and the world of the Bible, in terms of acceptable insiders and despicable outsiders.  We tend to assume that God will keep on coming through for insiders--for Abraham, for Isaac, for Jacob, and for that family line... but that God will have nothing to do with those who are not dues-paying in-group members.  Blessing, we assume, is for "insiders," and there is nothing for those no-good dirty heathen outsiders.  

But God insists on being bigger than that.  Without denying that God will yet work through Isaac and his family line, God also reserves the right to be compassionate for a starving boy left alone and separated from his parents in the empty desert.  God provides a way, not only for the boy to quench his thirst and live another day, but to get to stay with his mother and grow to adulthood with God's own presence.   God takes our neat and tidy piles of insiders and outsiders, of "chosen" and "not chosen," and God says, "I choose to love them both."  Isaac, yes, but also Ishmael.  The son of the ninety-year-old Sarah, and the son of the dismissed, formerly enslaved foreigner.  Both are blessed.  Both receive love.  Both are given the grace and honor and dignity of having God go "with" them into adulthood.

Sometimes we Christians do a poor job of reading our own Scriptures.  We say, more often than I would like to admit, things like, "God is only interested in taking care of us Christians," or "We have to look out for the interests of Christians first in the world--you know, people who are like us, and the rest will have to fend for themselves." We say things like, "Any outsiders should have to wait for us to take care of our own before we get around to leaving scraps and crumbs for them."  And we presume that is because God has chosen us... and has not chosen "those people."  And so, it only "makes sense" to us that in addition to the spiritual blessings of being "chosen" (so we say about ourselves), the material, physical resources at hand should go to us first, too, because, after all, we are the insiders, the chosen, the acceptable ones.  It's like we don't even know that a story like this one from Genesis is there in the Bible, daring us to take it seriously...even just to read it.

See, this is the thing: the Scriptures themselves make the point, from the very first book, mind you, that God is both big enough and gracious enough to love the ones we have cast out.  God is able to love and bless Isaac, the insider, and the son of Hagar as well.  God blesses him, not just for his own lifetime, but blesses his descendants as well into becoming a great nation.  And if that makes us--who trace our spiritual heritage through Isaac and Jacob and David and Jesus--uncomfortable, well, tough.  God reserves the right to love in a way that is bigger and wider and deeper than our shallow, shrunken comfort zones.  That is exactly what the story of Hagar and Ishmael is all about--a love bigger than our ability to contain or control, and a grace that is stronger than the boundaries or barriers we try to erect.

Abraham just didn't have the courage to see that God had loved and cared for him, even though Abraham himself was just a migrant squatting on someone else's land, and that.  And that meant Abraham was unable to see that God's love was just as strong and true and good for the son of the enslaved Egyptian woman as it was for the long-awaited son of Sarah.  But good news: Abraham is not God.  And the salvation of the world does not hang on Abraham's courage or generosity, but on God's. And God did what Abraham either could not or would not do: God provided and included the outcast single mother and son, when the "chosen" one had sheepishly turned them out.

Today, before we dare to allow phrases like, "But we have to look out for our own first!" to cross our lips... before we baptize our cowardice and selfishness and assume that God only cares about "our kind of people" (whether we mean that spiritually, nationally, ethnically, or whatever), and before we permit ourselves to imagine that "insiders" have all the rights and privileges, while "outsiders" should get none, we should remember this story that has been shouting to us like the voice of an angel calling out from heaven in the wilderness.  At the very root of our story of faith is a resident alien named Abraham living as a foreigner in a country that was not his own without any legal permission to be there... and a God who steps up to protect and provide for Abraham's outcast son when Old Abe himself doesn't have the guts or compassion to raise both of his own kids.  Our Bible begins with God's insistence on being "with" the outcast and the un-chosen as well as the privileged  and chosen "insiders." 

And God appears to be committed to that presence still today, whether we like it or not.

So... will we scowl at the idea of unworthy outsiders getting help, or will we rejoice at a God who opens eyes and provides springs of water in the wilderness for the single mother and son who have been left to fend for themselves?

I recommend rejoicing.

Lord God, where we attempt to box you in and contain your care and compassion, smack us upside the head as you reach out to outcasts and people who have been thrown away, especially by respectable religious people.  Let us learn to rejoice at the way you love far and wide.

The Rule-Breaking God

The Rule-Breaking God--February 13, 2019

"Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, 

     'The LORD will surely separate me from his people';

 and do not let the eunuch say, 

     'I am just a dry tree.'

 For thus says the LORD:

 To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,

     who choose the things that please me

     and hold fast my covenant,

 I will give, in my house and within my walls,

     a monument and a name

     better than sons and daughters;

 I will give them an everlasting name

     that shall not be cut off.

And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD

     to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD,

     and to be his servants,

all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,

    and hold fast my covenant--

 these I will bring to my holy mountain,

     and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

 their burnt offerings and their sacrifices 

     will be accepted on my altar;

 for my house shall be called a house of prayer

     for all peoples.

 Thus says the Lord GOD,

     who gathers the outcasts of Israel,

 I will gather others to them, 

     besides those already gathered." [Isaiah 56:3-8]

The rules were clear... until God started messing with them.

I mean it--there were very clear, like painfully clear, rules and commandments and laws within Israel's Scriptures, about who was allowed to belong... and who was not.  And the rules went something like this:  foreigners were dangerous troublemakers who would surely lead the people astray to worship idols, and anybody whose reproductive system and organs had any deviations from the standard models were not allowed to belong among the assembly of God's people.  There are commandments about staying away from foreigners and eunuchs right there in the Scriptures, and there are stories about when some of the Israelites tried to enforce those rules, even times when certain religious leaders making people leave their foreign-born spouses in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah when the people had come back from exile.  

Are we clear on this? There were commandments in the Law that said, very clearly, "Foreigners don't really belong, and anyone whose body doesn't fit our expectations for gender and the possibility of reproducing, you are definitely out of the club."  And those rules were a part of Israel's Holy Scriptures--words that were treated with the authority and weight of God.

And then along comes this passage from the prophet Isaiah, who says (on behalf of the same God), "God says they are in.  Foreigners, eunuchs, "those people," outsiders, people on the margins, people who are "other"... they can belong, too, and just as genuinely, just as truly, as anybody else who calls on the name of the living God.

In other words, the rules were clear that these people were unacceptable... until no less than God comes along to say, "I am now letting them in. I declare them acceptable.  And I have the power and authority to make that call.  They are in now."

What other conclusion can we draw but that God loves people--even people we regard as "other"--more than God loves rules... even if the rules were declared to be coming from God in the first place?  What other conclusion can we draw but that the living God always reserves the right to expand the family, so to speak, to widen the circle, and to take down the barriers and boundaries that had previously been set up in the name of religion and piety?  In other words, what other conclusion can we draw but that God reserves the right to change what we had assumed were fixed rules, solid and unchanging like steel beams and hardened concrete?

I know--this can be a scary thought.  It can feel like the pulling of a thread.  I know the worry--that if we start suggesting that God's rules can change, then everything will be up for grabs! I know the fear--that if someone suggests that foreigners and eunuchs used to be forbidden, but now are welcomed in as foreigners and eunuchs, then all of a sudden anything goes and chaos and wickedness will run amok. I know the anxiety--I have heard and spoken it myself over the years--that once you start suggesting that the rules can change, you are heading down a slippery slope or setting yourself up for a slow boil until you are cooked without knowing it.  

But here's the thing we can't ignore--at least I can't ignore it anymore: here in Isaiah 56 (as one example among many), it is apparently the same voice of God who is declaring the change, who is widening the circle, who is reaching out beyond the boundaries.  That's the thing about this passage from the book of Isaiah--it doesn't say, "God made all these strict rules about who is and is not allowed in, but I don't like them, so I'm going to change them whether God likes it or not!" No, just the opposite: it is God who is speaking and declaring the change, even when the first listeners of these words surely would have squirmed and scowled and gotten upset when they heard them.  They had a solid, unchanging system, for crying out loud!  They had immovable, fixed answers and boundaries and lines, gosh-darn-it!  They had the peace of mind of having God and God's ways all figured out--and now the real living voice of God comes along through some upstart prophet and starts saying that God is doing a new thing?  That had to be at best a shock to their system, and at worst a crisis of faith.  No wonder the prophets had a habit of getting run out of town or killed--they keep on insisting that God reserves the right to do new things that defy our old categories!

So maybe here's the question for the day... and for every day: could we dare to allow the rules to change, if God is the one doing the changing?  Could we allow the possibility that God can do what God very well sure seems to be doing here in Isaiah 56?  Could we dare to see that the Respectable Religious Crowd of Isaiah's day would have argued, "But we have commandments that say THOSE people do not belong! Are you saying you are overturning GOD's commandments?" And could we dare to see, too, that the prophet's answer back was basically, "Hey, this isn't MY idea--GOD is the One who has declared the boundaries are opening!"  Even if God has to drag us kicking and screaming sometimes, God will carry us beyond the fixed points we thought were uncrossable.  If it were just our decision to try and overrule God, we would surely fail and be headed in the wrong direction.  But if God were the one saying, "I know the old rule--the rule ascribed to me--said that foreigners and eunuchs couldn't belong, and now I'm saying a new thing!" would we let God speak... or would we insist that God is not allowed to do something we cannot understand?

"Well, how could God ever contradict himself?" comes the nagging question in our heads--I know, because that has been my question before, too.  "How could God say the sky is blue today and then just up and change it to red tomorrow?"  And I know that kind of question can be very upsetting, especially because we expect our faith to be a source of security--which we often assume means never changing--and it sounds like Isaiah 56 here is pulling at a thread that could make all of our theological systems unravel.  But maybe--just maybe--God loves people who have been left at the margins move than God loves our carefully calibrated religious systems and theological propositions.  No, more than maybe: definitely.  And maybe it's not so scary to pose the question, "Could God just say the sky is blue today and change it to red tomorrow?" when we actually look up and see that the sky itself is clear, but that it indeed does change from blue to red to orange to yellow to purple (and to gray and black and white, too, mind you) on a daily basis.  Our perspective changes, and the light that hits our eyes changes, to be sure, but the sky was never actually permanently blue, even though that's what we were all taught in kindergarten.

So maybe this is less about the anxious fear that God might contradict something else God said, and maybe more about seeing a constant through-line in all the Scriptures, of an ever-widening love, an ever-increasing family, an ever-growing understanding of how the Source of all Life gathers in people from the center, and the middle, and the margins.  And maybe this is about daring to believe in a God who is bigger than our conceptions, even if that means from time to time it looks, from our perspective, like God is changing the rules we thought were carved in stone.

And the God we meet in the Scriptures, Old Testament and New alike, sure seems to have a way of pulling rank for the sake of including the people we had written off as lost causes, undesirables, and unacceptable.  The living God sure seems to choose to love the very people we label as "other," even when we have labeled them that way for seemingly religious reasons.

We can either get fussy and nervous about such a God and such a love, or we can let the beauty of that grace move us to joyful tears.

I am not always very good at letting God be as big and gracious as God insists on being, but today, I will choose to try it.  I will choose the love that surprises me to tears.  I can, to borrow a phrase, do no other.

Lord God, do as you will--include those we had written off, turned away, or kept out--and stretch us beyond the boundaries we had set up when you do.

Good Barbecue and a Good God

Good Barbecue and a Good God--February 12, 2019

"Praise the Lord!

 Praise the Lord, O my soul!

 I will praise the LORD as long as I live; 

     I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

 Do not put your trust in princes,

     in mortals, in whom there is no help.

 When their breath departs, they return to the earth;

     on that very day their plans perish.

 Happy are those whose help is in the God of Jacob,

    whose hope is in the LORD their God,

 who made heaven and earth,

     the sea, and all that is in them;

 who keeps faith forever;

     who executes justice for the oppressed,

     who gives food to the hungry.

 The LORD sets the prisoners free;

    the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.

 The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;

    the LORD loves the righteous.

 The LORD watches over the strangers;

    he upholds the orphan and the widow,

    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

 The LORD will reign forever,

     your God, O Zion, for all generations.

 Praise the LORD!" [Psalm 146]

Let's talk about barbecue for a minute.

There are all sorts of variations on doing barbecue the "right" way, both around the world and even just within the United States.  You can have Carolina style pulled pork, or Kansas City style with beef.  You can have Caribbean infused jerk-style, or Memphis-style ribs.  Barbecue can mean a dry rub of spices, or a gooey sauce that drips onto your plate (and shirt).  It can skew spicy with heat, sweet with honey or molasses, smoky with hickory wood in the fire, or tangy with a heavier vinegar taste.  And if you are passionate about such things, you will likely consider one way to be the most authentic, most definitive style of barbecue.  If you bring me a plate at a picnic and say to me as you offer me a bite of your sandwich, "Mmmm, this  sure is some GOOD barbecue!" I'll learn quickly what counts as good barbecue to you.  I'll learn, by the examples you put in front of me, what you believe makes "good barbecue" good.  Even for something as familiar to Americans as summer grilling season is, we can each have rather different pictures, different competing definitions, of what "good" looks like, even if they all require a stack of paper napkins at the end.

All right, are we OK so far?  Can we all nod our heads in agreement that there are different (sometimes very different) pictures we carry in our heads when we talk about what makes good barbecue good?  And can we grant that one person may have a rather different working definition of why this plate of barbecue over here is good, and why that plate over there doesn't fit the same definition?  Good--because now we have to talk about what makes God "good," too.

I'm willing to bet this is a less easily asked question.  We tend to just assume we all know what "good" looks like when it comes to God.  You know... good.  But, we don't often stop and listen to the way the Scriptures themselves actually sketch out what God's kind of goodness looks like.  And because we don't actually listen to the Scriptures, we will instead substitute our own working definition of "goodness" and assume that God's kind must be the same as ours.  And this, it turns out, is more dangerous than assuming a Carolina-style BBQ restaurant will be the same as a Tex-Mex food truck's menu.

I have this sneaking suspicion that we all, to some degree or another at some time or another, just assumed that God's kind of goodness is reducible to "pleasant things happening to me" or "becoming prosperous" or "God doling out gold stars for good behavior to promote better morals." Plenty of religious-sounding voices out there can make it sound like God's "goodness" is when you get the promotion at work (as though the other people, who didn't get the promotion, don't also want to be able to provide more for their families), or that God's goodness is on display when your football team wins, when you get a good parking space, or when the Dow closes at an all-time high.  God's "goodness," according to popular piety, is when "our side wins," and of course also when "their side loses," and when things favorable to me happen.

But that ain't God's flavor of barbecue.  And it sure as heaven ain't God's kind of goodness.

See the Scriptures themselves, like the powerful words of Psalm 146, have a particular angle, a certain flavor, if you will.  And when the psalmist starts holding up examples of what makes Yahweh ("the LORD," the particular name for the God of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam) so good, the poet talks especially about how God cares for people on the margins. Not "people just like me." Not "mainstream, everyday folk," and not at all the "great, powerful, successful ones."  When the Bible talks about what God's goodness looks like, what it tastes like, it holds up the ways God takes care of the people labeled "the losers" rather than the prosperity of the "winners."  The Scriptures celebrate how God cares for "the Other," not "me and the people just like me."  What makes God worthy of praise, in other words, is not the days when the stock market closes at a new record high, but the way God provides for foreigners, the elderly, and the children with no families.  It is the way God is kind and does right by the so-called "nobodies" that makes for God's flavor of goodness.

I am convinced more and more that a great many of the ways we are divided from one another in this day and age is that we live with competing (and often with only a small amount of overlap between one another) visions of what "good" looks like.  There are voices that can only imagine God's "goodness" in terms of what is good "for me" or "for people like me."  There are folks who imagine that God's "goodness" is reducible to an increase in my take-home pay, or a higher GDP, or having bigger and bigger piles of money.  And then there are these minority-report voices, like the psalmist here, who says, "No, that may be someone else's definition of what 'good' looks like, but it isn't the way the God of the freed Hebrew slaves defines 'goodness'." It is tempting--damnably tempting--to see goodness only in terms of what will help me acquire more, what will protect me-and-my-group, what will keep "our" resources for "us" and win compared to "those people" and "their side."

And I suppose you are free to operate with such a definition of "goodness" if you are determined to do so.  But let's be clear--that isn't how the God of the Bible defines goodness.  What makes the living God good is the way God tends to the needs of the folks "with their backs against the wall," to borrow a phrasing of Howard Thurman's.  What makes the God of the Scriptures worthy of praise is the way divine care is provided for the ones on the margins, the ones we overlook as "other," the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the prisoner, and the bowed-down.

Over against the self-centered saccharine sweetness of the "Me-and-My-Group-First" mindset which is so popular these days, God's flavor of goodness may well be an acquired taste.

But... it is a taste worth acquiring.  

"Taste and see," says another poet, "that the LORD is good."  The LORD, the God who cares for migrants, for retirees on fixed income, and for children whose parents cannot hold them in arms tonight, this God is good indeed.

Good Lord, be your own good self and pour out provision and protection on those who are most vulnerable.  And as you do, give us your own definition of goodness to see the world by.

The Company Jesus Keeps

The Company Jesus Keeps--February 11, 2019

“And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him.” [Mark 2:15]

One of my favorite song lyrics is a line by Jon Foreman of the band Switchfoot, who sings, “We are a beautiful letdown, painfully uncool—the church of the dropouts, the losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools.”  I think he’s got it right about what it looks like when Jesus chooses his own company: we get a motley crew that he makes into something blessed. 

This is the thing that throws a monkey-wrench into any and all attempts to pretend that Jesus was or is a respectable teacher of religion.  He was and is neither, and by his own choosing, at that.  We all know the common-sense rule that “bad company corrupts good morals” (Paul even quotes that old chestnut in 1 Corinthians 15:33). And yet there is Jesus, deliberately choosing to surround himself with the sinners and sell-outs.  And not just to be in physical proximity with them (after all, I probably have no association at all with the people I am standing behind in line at the grocery store, and I’m right next to them.), but actually to eat with these “tax collectors and sinners” by his own choosing.  That’s a big deal in a first-century Mediterranean culture, where table fellowship was a sign of acceptance and of friendship. 

In other words, Jesus has no “plausible deniability” with this crowd. He can’t say, “Well, I’m near these people, but I didn’t know about their unacceptable lifestyle.”  He can’t issue a press-release declaring, “I’m acquainted with these people, but I don’t want to be associated with them.”  And he can’t pretend that he’s holding his nose while he sits at table with them. Jesus consciously and deliberately opens the messianic banquet table, the royal table of the Kingdom of God, to people who are unquestionably unworthy. He realizes he’s breaking not only the common-sense rule about “bad company” and “good morals,” but also all the tenets of basic religion that say you’re not supposed to hang around sinners or reward them with attention. But that’s Jesus for you—much less interested in doing what the rules and rule-givers would tell him to do, and much more interested in bringing the Reign of God to all the places is isn’t fully happening yet.

That’s bound to make a motley crew of a community—a church of, well, “dropouts, losers, sinners, failures, and fools.” Jesus knows it and is willing to live with it. In fact, these are the people he chooses to surround himself with. He doesn’t settle for sinners—he seeks us out. And yep, I said us, not them.

We are going to have to get that straight before we go any further, because it lets us see ourselves truthfully. We are the sinners and sell-outs that Jesus chose and keeps choosing to have over for dinner.  No, more than that—he comes to our houses, invites himself over, invades our space, and sets up shop in our dining rooms. He is not only willing to be seen with the likes of you and me, in all our brokenness, and not only willing to be counted as our friends by sharing a table with us, but beyond that Jesus is willing to put himself in the place of guest at Levi’s house, receiving what this shameless sell-out puts out for dinner. It’s so much more respectable, so much more a position of power, when you get to be the host, the one providing for your needy the one patronizing and putting up with them. But Jesus even lets go of that kind of position—he lets himself be the guest of these unacceptable people, making them acceptable as he does it. And, we must admit, he does the same with us.  For all of our Respectable Religious attempts to keep out "those people" (the ones we deem unacceptable and "other"), we are among the messes, stinkers, and sell-outs Jesus keeps choosing to join for supper.

That, to be utterly honest, is a better picture of what goes on every Sunday morning than most of our mental images. We often talk about going to church as a gathering of good, moral, religious people being reminded to stay good and moral and religious or else God will get a bad reputation by association.  But much more truthfully, every Sunday, Jesus bears with us all and shows up in the house of sinners and sell-outs once more, willing to be present at the Table we set despite the fact that we have broken the rules and missed the mark yet again.  Every service of worship, every celebration of Holy Communion, every gathering of Christians is the story of Levi’s house all over again, with Jesus choosing to show up at table with "those people" and surround himself with this “beautiful letdown” of a community.

Once we get over the strangeness of that and realize that our picture of church as “our-good-show-for-God” is all wrong, that turns out to be wonderful, beautiful news. It means that Jesus, our Savior and Lord, is not just willing to tolerate us “in theory”… at a distance… with his finger pinching his nose, but comes close to us--and all the people we thought were too sinful or too unacceptable or too different--in all of our messiness, with all our baggage, and despite what the rules of common-sense say. And thanks be to God for a savior like that.

Lord, help us to admit that we are "those people" you choose to surround yourself with—and praise you for it.

Walking the Talk

Walking the Talk--February 8, 2019

"From there [Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, 'Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.' But she answered him, 'Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.' Then he said to her, 'For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter.' So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone." [Mark 7:24-30]

Let's start with what I think is a reasonable presupposition: Jesus was not stupid.

That might seem like an obvious assertion, maybe even something so self-evident we don't bother to say it, but in a story like this, I think it is really, vitally important to start with a common agreement that Jesus was not stupid.  Let's give him at least the benefit of the doubt that he was, and is, at least (!) of average intelligence, and that this level of intelligence informed his choices, actions, and words.

Fair enough?

I want to start there because without that presumption in the background, I think we are left stumbling through this story wondering whether Jesus was either surprised that he ran across this Gentile woman while he was out on personal retreat in Gentile territory, or whether he was deliberately, cruelly trying to withhold help because it came from an outsider pagan--a Gentile.  

I know I have struggled with this story for nearly four decades, and I have heard plenty of sermons from plenty of other preachers, too, over the years, floundering with a story that doesn't seem to paint Jesus in a very compassionate light at first blush.  I have heard folks say that Jesus knew all along what he was going to do for this woman and just strings her along for a while with the rather racist-sounding exchange about "dogs" and "crumbs" and the "children's food."  I know others who suggest almost the opposite--that Jesus  was planning on not helping the woman, changed his mind, decided he had been wrong before, and then had to be corrected by this woman's faith.  That take seems to present other complicating problems of its own.

But both of those approaches seem to forget what I believe is a vital starting point: let's grant that Jesus was not stupid.  In particular, let's take it as a given that Jesus would have known that heading into Gentile territory would certainly mean running into Gentile people.  That seems obvious, doesn't it?

Well, if that's so, then it seems obvious, too, that Jesus has intentionally set himself up for this kind of encounter.  In other words, Jesus has deliberately crossed a line--the border between Jewish territory and Gentile territory--knowing that he is bringing the very presence of God to whatever and whomever waits on the other side of that line.  Jesus chose to make this trip into the territory of foreigners, of the "other," and he leaves himself open and vulnerable to however he is received there.  You don't deliberately take a trip from your home town to New York City without also expecting to run into some New Yorkers.  You may not have in mind whether they will be kind or rude, whether they will take your wallet or take your picture for you in Times Square, but you would certainly know in advance and expect that you will meet some New Yorkers.  Can we seriously not presume that Jesus knew, too, that if he went into a Gentile city he would cross paths with Gentiles?

If that was part of Jesus' awareness all along, then it reframes this whole scene, I believe.  Instead of picturing Jesus like he got stuck with an unexpected layover for his flight and is stuck in Chicago while he was planning a direct flight home, we have to see that Jesus chose this destination, knowing who would surround him there.  Jesus isn't being short-tempered because he's stuck in an unknown airport and upset when some local person recognizes him in waiting in line at Cinnabon.  Jesus has deliberately headed into the unknown for him--he chooses to go where outsiders, foreigners, and all sorts of "those people" will be at home, and where he will now be the outsider, the foreigner, and the one on the margins.  Jesus, in other words, doesn't just reach out from the safety of his own yard to pat marginalized foreigners on the head as they walk past his back porch.  Jesus himself becomes one of those people on the margins, a foreigner himself, traveling without permission or papers outside of his own land and into Gentile territory.

In other words, if Jesus was smart enough (and I am convinced he was and is) to know that there would be Gentiles waiting for him when he got into Gentile territory, I think it means Jesus made this trip knowing he would be put into a situation where he would have to choose whether to extend the grace and power of God to "those people" or not, and that he chose to put his money where he mouth was when it came to the width and depth and breadth of God's love.  Sort of like you may think you know what you would do if a friend called you in the middle of the night to help them get to the hospital, or you may think you know what you believe about helping homeless people, you really find out what you actually would do and believe when the phone call comes or someone without a place to stay comes across your path. Jesus has been saying that God's love is big and wide and includes anybody and everybody... but until those anybodies have real faces, it's awfully easy to say that without really living it.  Jesus, however, intentionally has painted himself into a corner, or set himself on a collision course with having to live into the Gospel he has been preaching.  Jesus sets himself up for a situation where he will have to walk his own talk. He might not have been picturing this particular woman's need, or this particular setting, but Jesus had to have known that at some point, he was going to have to make the choice about whether he would share God's love and power and deliverance with someone who was "other." And that's what Jesus does: he extends grace to this Gentile woman as a Gentile, without making her convert or pray a prayer or renounce whatever Syrophoenician gods she grew up worshipping.  That's because grace, like any genuine gift, never depends on the supposed worthiness of the recipient--it is always grounded in the goodness of the Giver.

So here's the take-home for all of us today, kids:  it is really easy in this life to say that God's love is for everybody.  That makes for a swell slogan and a delightful marketing campaign for our churches, doesn't it?  But all too often we say those words without ever thinking we will have to mean them for someone who we regard as "other," and it's so easy as to be practically meaningless for me to say them only for people who are basically identical to me.  But if we really believe that God's power, God's love, and God's grace are poured out recklessly and generously for everybody, then we will deliberately let God send us into situations that take us out of our comfort zones to share God's goodness with people whose stories, appearance, language, love, culture, politics, or passions are vastly different than our own.  And when God sends our paths to cross with theirs, we will find out in that moment, whether we really do believe that God's love is for everybody, or whether we were fooling ourselves with a nice slogan all along.

Jesus gives us an example, I believe, of just that kind of courageous experiment that pushes us to live into what we say.  He had to have known what he was getting himself into.  

Do we?

Lord Jesus, send us where you will, to live out your love and to walk the talk of your Gospel.