Owning Our Older Brother-ness--April 4, 2025

Owning Our Older Brother-ness--April 4, 2025

"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'" (Luke 15:25-32)

"Privilege" is a complicated word these days, with a lot of baggage to carry.

When I was a kid, privilege was the word trotted out by grown-ups like parents and teachers to describe things like having a bike, owning a pet, being a big brother, or getting to stay up extra late on a night of summer vacation. These things, it was explained to me, were not owed to me, and they were the kind of thing that carried responsibility along with them. If one did not attend to the responsibilities, the grown-ups said, the privileges could always be taken away. Don't take care of a dog, and you won't be allowed to keep it. Don't go to sleep when it's time to go to bed after staying up, and you'll lose the later bedtime.

As a kid, the word "privilege" felt kind of like a badge of honor, and it felt like something that I had somehow achieved--despite the fact that this misses the entire point of what a "privilege" really is. But in kid-logic, if you weren't allowed to stay up last year, but now you are allowed to stay up, it seems like something you must have earned. If you weren't considered responsible enough before to have a dog, but now you are allowed the privilege of a pet, well, it sure sounds like you are being rewarded for your good behavior.

Funny, isn't it, how we take things that are given to us--the extra time to stay up, the dog, the opportunities--and force them into ways to tell ourselves that we have earned these things. Funny, in that bitter kind of way, I guess. Bitter, I suggest, because when you tell yourself that the free gift is something you have earned, you also set yourself up to look down on other people for not having been given the same gifts... opportunities... chances... that you have received... and you end up imagining that all the good things you have going for you are the fruits of your own sheer wonderfulness, rather than gifts beyond your deserving. The thing about privileges--from childhood bonuses like pets and later bedtimes to grown-up realities like the kind of education you received or the neighborhood you lived in--is that we have a way of pretending they are not there, or at least pretending we do not see them as privileges.

And see, that's what has made "privilege" into a dirty word in our day. And it is a negative all around, from all sides. When I am the privileged one, I don't want to acknowledge the things I have been given, the things that have been handed to me as free gifts, because I would rather imagine (that is, lie to myself) that my own achievement or effort or excellence has merited all the good things in my life. I don't want to have to admit times when I had an easier time, or was given special opportunities, or had chances (and second and third and fourth chances) that others did not have--because if I acknowledge those, it will make me see that my "greatness" is not all it's cracked up to be. And on the flip side, for those who can see my privilege (usually precisely because they have not been given the same things I have received), the difference feels like a cruel injustice. It begs questions like, "Why wasn't my kid able to have the same opportunities?" and "Why can't they see that they only won the race because they had a ten second head-start that they've all pretended not to notice or count?"

It is a frightening thing to have to come face to face with the privileges we have been given in life when we have been given them, because it forces us to admit we have not "achieved" or "earned" or "deserved" the things we puff ourselves up to think we were owed, and because it forces us to see that others we have gotten comfortable looking down on have overcome a great deal more than we give them credit for--likely more than we ourselves have had to go through, too. We are afraid of having the blinders taken off and seeing our own privileges, because we are afraid of finding out we are not as impressive as we pictured ourselves. It is so much easier to criticize others and imagine that they are the ones with the problems when they point out the number of times we had a leg up in life, or to wag our fingers at people we imagine as having an air of entitlement... because we don't recognize that we have the luxury of being able to hide our feelings of entitlement by telling ourselves we really do deserve the good things we have more than others--because we must have worked harder for them than anybody else. After all, why would I have the perks I have in my life if I didn't get them by being just plain qualitatively "better" than... those people (however I picture "those people")?

I was in an interesting conversation not too long ago. I was talking with someone who had recently had a frustrating schedule conflict and couldn't get done in one particular day all they wanted to have happen, and in the midst of venting about how things hadn't gone according to Plan A for the day, the other person says, "Doesn't it just feel sometimes like the whole world is against you?" And I thought for a moment... well, while I surely have some days when things don't go as I'd hoped, I'm a middle-class, white, married male who is a member of the predominant religion in the country where I live and who had a college education... Nope. I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to say "the world is against me." I'm pretty sure that list is a set of privileges that were not my accomplishment but were given to me. Nope--I don't get to complain that things are stacked against me; I just get to say, "I wish today had gone differently." But for a moment, as I thought about the question, it really haunted me to consider just how many ways I am probably not even aware of that I have it easy. And I realized that there is a big part of me that doesn't even want to open that can of worms, because there is this prideful beast inside me that wants still to live in the illusion that every good thing that happens to me is my achievement, my reward, or my accomplishment. And they are not--they are privileges.

Privilege is, in a sense, like grace. Grace demolishes any sense of "earning" or "merit," and has a way of humbling us when we see it, because we realize what we have been given is an undeserved gift and not a reward. Perhaps we could say that when I am conscious of the ways I have been afforded benefits I did not earn, and when I then use my position to offer something good to someone else, so that they can be blessed, too, then we transform "privilege" into grace. But so often, my frightened refusal to see the truth makes "privilege" a source of bitterness, envy, judgment, and division. And because we have these hearts bent on puffing ourselves up and comparing ourselves to the person next to us, we don't want to dare to see honestly how we have been graced, and that leg-up opportunities are meant to be used to help someone else, not to push ourselves ahead at someone else's expense.

That's why my heart is still so unsettled every time I come to the end of Jesus' amazing story of the recklessly gracious father with two sons (we call it "the Prodigal Son" sometimes, but that kind of misses the point). Many of us heard it in worship this past Sunday, and we've been working our way through the story here through our devotions all week, too.  And in a sense, we have now come to the hardest part of the story, at least for us church folk. We love to identify with the redeemed and restored lost son, because things work out well for him. We don't mind singing, in words that echo this story, "I once was lost, but now am found," because we bend the words to sound like an accomplishment in our own ears--I was on the wrong road, but then smart ME got my act together and look how I have fixed up my life!" But we have a really hard time with the presence of the older brother in this story, especially because he is so much like us. He is privileged as much as his younger brother, but he has the added danger of blindness to it. He has been given all he needs in life from a generous father, and he is promised that he will continue to have all that he needs ("All that is mine is yours," says the father). But he still paints himself as the poor, put-upon son who has never had a special opportunity and never got a free gift. That makes him able to condemn his brother as a freeloader with an entitlement complex, because he cannot bring himself to see that he has been given just as much privilege as the younger son. He doesn't want to see that--because he is afraid.

And that's what makes this story's ending so haunting--Jesus' parable is left open-ended, like the old story, "The Lady or the Tiger", in that we don't know what the older son will do. Will he choose to be ruled by his fear of having to admit his privileges... or will he come to see that he has had grace and privilege and opportunity given to him in abundance, knowing that he can no longer judge his brother once he sees it? Will the older brother stay outside with his arms crossed and brow furrowed, or will he let down his guard, admit his own privileges, and come to the party to celebrate?

We are all, in that sense, the older brother in this story. Even if there are ways we are like the younger, "lost-but-found" son, too, we are all like the older brother, and we have a really hard time admitting our own privilege... our own reliance on grace. We, too, are afraid of what we will see if we start actually looking around our blind spots for places we have been privileged. We, too, are afraid of how it will change our relationships and views of others that we had already conveniently pre-judged.. We, too, would rather paint ourselves as the poor, put-upon, hard-working, underappreciated hard workers, rather than see that we are a part of a household that is run solely on the economy of grace.

But what Jesus offers us in this story is essentially what the father offers his older son in the story--mercy. And mercy allows us to finally be free from the fear of facing our privileges and naming them for what they are, so that we can be honest about them--and use our situation to bless the lives of others. Blessing is never meant to be a cul-de-sac in the Bible, and it is not meant to be one in our lives, either. Privilege, you might say, is what happens when blessing becomes a dead-end, and grace is what happens when I can be honest about how I have been blessed and then let blessing flow to reach others, too.

So, here in this day, the father in the story approaches you and me--and he says to us, "Look--everything you've ever been had in this life, these things are all gifts of grace. Would you quit puffing yourself up and looking down on everyone else long enough to see that you have been given good things that are meant to be shared rather than hoarded? And would you dare and celebrate when someone else is given a gift beyond their deserving, too?"

Now it's up to you and me--what will we do with this day, and what will we choose to acknowledge about ourselves? Can we dare to name the ways and places we have been privileged--and then let it change and humble our perspective, or will we stay outside of the party forever?

Come in. Come into the party. Take my hand, too, and lead me to go in with you.

Lord Jesus, give us honest eyesight about our own privilege, so that we can be conduits of grace rather than dead-ends of bitterness and resentment.

Back into Relationship--April 3, 2025

Back into Relationship--April 3, 2025

"Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe--the best one--and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate." [Luke 15:21-24]

In some ways, grace is less like a courtroom scene and more like a reunion.

Over the centuries, Christians have been known to talk about the gospel like it is a grand courtroom scene in which God (the judge) bangs a gavel and declares us "not guilty." Or, depending on how they have wanted to push the metaphor, they might say the judge declares us guilty but then Jesus serves our sentence. Or, we are declared guilty, and then the sentence commuted and Jesus pays all of our fines. You can see how the variations could play out. And sure, there is something--something--about the good news of grace that is somehow like an official decree or verdict that you are free and there will be neither a life sentence nor a lightning bolt.

But there is a critical difference between the gospel's promise of grace and the verdict scene in the courtroom: when you walk out of the courtroom, you are done with the judge. Relationship (such as it was) over. There is no future or continuation of your connection with the judge. Honestly, the judge may never give you another thought again, unless you end up on trial again for something else. In other words, a judge may declare you "not guilty," but that doesn't really give you a fresh start with the judge--it gives just an ending.

But when the Bible really gets going talking about what the grace of God is like, it shifts away from courtroom language pretty quickly in favor of the language of relationship. Grace is not God saying, "I'll cook the books and pretend your debt is gone, but we'll never speak again..." but more like God saying, "Here is a robe and a ring and new sandals. Here is a party in your honor. Here is a renewed relationship, because you had been dead and are alive again. You were lost and now you are found!" In other words, it is a welcome back into relationship.

And, rather unlike the formal, drawn out proceedings of a courtroom, in which both sides have opportunity to make their speeches and call their witnesses, the grace of God stops us mid-speech like the returning son in Jesus' famous parable. Before he can offer a deal back to his dad by which he could try to earn his keep on the payroll as an employee, the father in the story cuts him off and just lavishes all the signs of belonging on him. The father doesn't wait for the son to beat himself up sufficiently, or even make the offer to be a hired hand. The father (a picture of the grace of God if ever there were one) just cuts him off and restores the father-son relationship.

The son and the father will start over again--but as father and son, truly, not as boss and worker, or debtor and creditor. But the idea is a relationship that stretches out into the future, not something in which they each walk away from the transaction unchanged.

That's how it is with us and God. God doesn't just bang some forgiveness gavel and say, "You're covered up through here, but afterward you're all on your own." God pulls us back into relationship--back into the daily dependence, daily sharing, daily hope, daily love, rather than saying, "You're on your own now, kid...." That means that even our starting over is not a starting alone--we are promised that God goes with us.

For us today, the hope we are given is not merely that we are on our own, with a clean slate but left to fend for ourselves. But rather our hope is that God starts us over like a returned son coming home to find open arms waiting for him. The relationship continues. We are brought back something that will keep on going. The Gospel is not about "getting away" with our sins but more like getting into something good--or maybe more to the point, discovering that even if we thought we were "kicked out of the club" or "voted out of the family," we had never lost our belonging at all--robe and ring and sandals were waiting for us all along, kept ready for us while a pair of worried eyes kept looking out for us on the edge of the horizon day by day.

We were never out of the grace of God. You cannot "fall from grace," as though you were out of the reach of mercy--you can only, rather, fall into the arms of grace and discover they had been held out all day long for you.

That's what grace is like--that's what holds us on this day. That is so much more than a heavenly "get out of jail free card."

Go and know you are beloved today.

Lord God hold out your arms, and let us fall into them today.

Forgiven Already--April 2, 2025

Forgiven Already--April 2, 2025

"But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him." (Luke 15:17-20)

Both father and have prepared for this moment, each in their own way.  I don't know that I had ever realized that before, for as many times as I have heard this story of Jesus (which many of us heard this past Sunday).

Of course, the lost son's preparation is a matter of getting a speech ready.  At his point of desperation, he realizes what he has lost by leaving home and blowing his share of the inheritance and going off to a far country where no one is neighborly enough to help him when a famine comes and he is completely broke.  And so, Jesus tells us, he concocts a plan to go back home and offer his father a new arrangement.  He is convinced he has burned the bridge of family once and for all, but perhaps he could be taken on as one of his father's hired hands.  

It's a gamble, of course.  There is not only the very real possibility that a father who had been so grievously disrespected might not even look a returning son in the eye, much less let him speak, but also there was potential danger to the son's own life.  The Torah had provisions for addressing disrespectful and insolent sons, and the punishment was death.  The commandment from what we call Deuteronomy 21 says that the parents of a child who does not obey are to take him to the edge of town where the community elders meet and "shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst."  You could easily imagine a father, already humiliated by the request of the younger son to mortgage the family farm so that assets could be liquidated and a share given to him, deciding to press charges as soon as the son came back, tail between his legs, to his old house.  You could imagine a father grabbing such a son to the gate of town and hefting rocks to put him to death.  You could even more easily imagine a lynch-mob deputizing itself to "purge the evil from their midst" and taking it upon themselves to stone the son to death as soon as they saw him walking down Main Street and recognized who he was.

But, obviously, that's not what happens.  We know, of course, that the father in Jesus' tale saw his son "while he was still far off" and "he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him."  And while that might at first seem like a completely spontaneous, unplanned response, I think it actually suggests just the opposite.  The fact that the father sees his son from a distance, "while he was still far off," means that he had been looking for his son--watching the horizon and keeping his eyes open, ever since his son left home.  For however long it had been since his son had left home with his share of the inheritance, burned through it all, and found himself in dire straits, the father had been watching for his son to come.  And he was ready when he spotted him.  The father had been preparing for how he would respond if and when his son came home, which means he had decided long before how he would handle a reunion.  The father has forgiven him in advance.  All that remains to be done is for that forgiveness to be communicated to the son. But there was never a moment in the story where the father was waiting for the son to do something "right" first.  He has been straining his eyes looking to the distance and knew already the moment he recognized his son's silhouette or the way he walked exactly how he would respond.  He had been ready for reconciliation all along.

The other thing that suggests about the moment the father embraces his son is that this may well have been a human shield strategy on the part of the father.  Presuming for the moment that everyone in town knew the instruction from Deuteronomy about stoning an insolent child to death in order to "purge the evil" from the community, the father may well have feared that his own neighbors would take matters into their own hands and lynch the son, with or without the father's consent.  And if they had, the whole town could have insisted it was only a matter of "law and order" and that they had the fortitude to do what the father apparently didn't.  They might well have started hurling rocks at the son before he even had the chance to plead for shelter and sanctuary on his father's front doorstep. 

So the father runs out to meet his son--not merely out of overwhelming emotion, I suspect, but because he is prepared to put himself between his son and any danger.  He offers his own body in case there are any rogue neighbors with stones in their hands who think this lost son has brought shame to their whole town.  Before the son can even get a word in edgewise, the father has embraced him. That is both an expression of the forgiveness that was already given by the father, and also a move to put his own body on the line in order to protect his son.  And this, dear ones, is how you are loved.

Honestly, before we go any further in the story or miss the power of what is happening in this moment, let's pause and let it sink in.  This story of Jesus offers a glimpse of the way God's love operates, not just in the hypothetical setting of a parable, and not just in the historical setting of first-century Palestine, but here and now.  And as Jesus tells it, God's forgiveness is not something that is ever in doubt.  It is neither conditional nor contingent on our taking the first step to make amends.  God crosses the entire distance, running out to us while we are a long way off still, in order to wrap divine arms around us.  God's forgiveness is already decided on God's part. Like the father in the story, God knew what God was going to do from the moment we strayed.  The only thing yet to be done is for that forgiveness to be communicated to us who have been off in the far country over and over again.  And at the cross, God puts God's money where God's mouth is, so to speak. God wraps arms around us in Jesus, taking the hit of any stones that might have come our way.  In Jesus, God becomes the divine-human shield absorbs the blows and stones that might have otherwise come from bloodthirsty and vengeful townspeople convinced they were the deputies of righteousness.  This is how we are loved.

All this Lent, we have been looking at how God's love crosses the boundaries that we might have thought would hold it back.  Whether it was the line between Jew and Gentile, insider and outsider, or righteous and unrighteous, God was not content to stay put leaving others out.  Whether it was the boundary between respectable, restrained common sense and reckless, audacious mercy, or the line between life and death itself, we keep meeting a God who crosses all those lines in order to bring us back home, to restore our lives, and to express forgiveness to us.  Here it is, one more time, in utter fullness.  The God of the universe has already determined to forgive you; that is a done deal. God has already run out to meet you exactly where you are and says, "You are my beloved. Before you've done a thing I will offer my life to protect yours."  What else can we say in response to such love? Or maybe that's the point?  Maybe there is nothing we need to say... or do... or earn... or achieve... only to recognize that we are already forgiven, already loved, and already claimed as children in the family.

Could we dare to see God's love this way--and to see that this kind of love isn't reserved just for ME or "Me and My Group First," but everybody on our personal lists of unworthy "sinners" too?

What might that do in the day ahead?  Let's find out.

Lord God, let us see the depth of your love in all of its fullness, and let us be transformed by the gift of your already given forgiveness.

Jesus Holds Up A Mirror--April 1, 2025

Jesus Holds Up A Mirror--April 1, 2025

"Then Jesus said, ‘There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything...." (Luke 15:11-16)

What if this weren't just a fictional fable about a hypothetical father with hypothetical sons?  What if this were our story--the autobiography of the people of God--and Jesus was simply holding mirror up for our faces in it?

I raise the question because often we treat Jesus' parables as just a religious version of Aesop's fables: that they are generic stories with timeless lessons that aren't really about real people, or at least about particular people. And as long as we hear them as general rules, rather than told with you and me in mind, we can always nod our heads in agreement at Jesus' wisdom and still refuse to acknowledge that they have anything to do with us.  The greedy man who builds bigger barns and then finds out he's going to shuffle off this mortal coil before the day is out?  That's not about ME--that's about OTHER people, really and truly greedy people, so I can safely ignore it!  The one about the man laying in the roadside passed by a priest and a Levite before he gets any help from an alien enemy from Samaria?  Well, that doesn't apply to ME, since I'm not a priest or a Levite, and I've mistreated a person from Samaria before, either (because I've never met one).  See how it works? When we treat Jesus' parables as generic morality plays, we can find ways to let ourselves off the hook for taking them to heart.  They're not about US--they're always about some other people, somewhere else, or maybe just hypothetical people who don't exist at all.

Ah, but when Jesus first told this parable, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, his audience of Judeans who prided themselves on being descendants of old Jacob/Israel, son of Isaac, and grandson of Abraham himself, they saw their reflections in the opening sentence.  "There was a man with two sons" feels like a shot across the bow right from the get-go, because any Israelite worth his salt knew the story of their patriarch Jacob, who eventually became Israel, and how he was the younger of two sons who was determined to steal the family inheritance and who ran off to a far country to live with his uncle for a couple of decades, leaving behind a furious older brother Esau and a bewildered and brokenhearted father. When Jesus goes on in his own story and says that the younger brother in his parable asks dad for his share of the inheritance (forcing dad to mortgage the property, and basically sending the message, "I'd rather just have the money I would get when you die, and then I'll be on my way" to dear old dad), these details hit close to home.  Everyone in Jesus' audience heard echoes of their own national and cultural identity.  Everyone who grew up in Jewish culture in the first century knew the stories of their scheming wayward ancestor Jacob, and they knew that the family line had often fallen back into that same pattern over the generations and centuries.

The descendants of the same Jacob/Israel found themselves turning away from God and chasing after wealth and success from pagan gods and pagan empires around them.  And then after enough time, when God allowed them to be taken captive into exile in Babylon, the descendants of Jacob found themselves rather like Jesus' lost son in the story: alone in a far country, wondering whether he could ever come home, and without other help in the world.  All of that is to say, the Jewish listeners in Jesus' first audience for this parable would have heard their own story in his.  And they would have been reminded of all the times that they and their ancestors had been the wayward ones, the willful wanderers, the ungrateful children who took for granted the inheritance that was meant to be a gift, and who then found themselves in deep trouble in the world.  Everybody who heard Jesus' story would have realized he was holding up a mirror and compelling them to see their own faces in the son who went "into the far country." And it would have forced them, at least if they were honest, to see that they had all at some point or another been the ones who turned from God and got themselves lost.

That, of course, is the first step in Jesus' plan.  He's not just trying to make people feel bad about themselves or pile guilt onto their shoulders just for the sake of burdening them.  But since, as we saw yesterday, this story is prompted by self-righteous Respectable Religious people who are upset that Jesus welcomes sinners and includes sell-outs like the tax collectors to his table, the first thing Jesus needs to get them to realize is that they are not in a position to condemn the people on Jesus' guest list.  It is easy, after all, to look down on somebody if you believe that you are morally upright and without fault. Then you can trot out the old lines like, "Well, I never had this problem that THEY have..." or "Well, I did things the RIGHT way..." and condemn whoever doesn't measure up to the standard you imagine yourself to have already cleared.  But Jesus sees that kind of spiritual snobbery from a mile away.  And in a manner of speaking, he sets a trap that the Respectable Religious Crowd walk right into.  Jesus tells a story that forces them to see that they belong to a long line of lost children, wandering schemers, and sinners who get stranded far from home.  Jesus is laying the groundwork for compelling them to see that they are only different from the "tax collectors and sinners" who are at Jesus' table in the particular ways they have each gotten themselves lost and in trouble.  But they are all pitiful prodigals, whether the Pharisees and scribes listening, or the not-good-enoughs who were welcomed at Jesus table. They are all like the exiles who found themselves in the far country of Babylon, and they are all like Jacob before that--the wandering and lost son who ended up far from home, too.  Jesus is yanking the high-horse right out from under them--and from us, too.

We should be aware, too, that Jesus' story will do the same to us, if we have a shred of honesty in us.  We can't hear a story about a son who bails out on the father who vulnerably lets himself be rejected and allows his wayward child to walk away without seeing that we've been the lost son before, too.  And once we see that, we will have to admit that we've lost the right to condemn somebody else for getting themselves lost, too.  Jesus is intent on holding up the mirror to our faces as well, not just his first-century listeners.  He won't let us pretend we are pious and pure while we look down on the ones who actually respond to Jesus' welcome. Jesus won't let us be obstacles keeping other people from his company because we don't think they are "worthy." He compels us to see we are lost sons and daughters, too, and the only way any of us find a spot at the dinner party of grace is when we quit thinking we have earned it by our good behavior.

How will that change the way we interact with people today?  Who might we have been trying to elbow out of Jesus' company before? Where have we been propping ourselves up and pushing others down to make ourselves feel like we've earned God's favor?  And who might Jesus be daring you to invite, rather than to shun, when we gather at Jesus' table on Sunday?

What might happen when Jesus holds up a mirror in this story so that we can see our faces in the face of the wandering son?

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to see the truth about ourselves so that we can allow your grace to do its work on us all.

Real, Not Abstract, Mercy--March 31, 2025

Real, Not Abstract, Mercy--March 31, 2025

"Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them'.” (Luke 15:1-2)

Everybody loves the idea of mercy as long as it's only talked about in the abstract. The moment we start talking about kindness for real people who we really think are undeserving, or acceptance for those we really don't want to accept, or reconciliation with the actual people we have been nursing grudges again, well, then people get fussy.

You can see it playing out in this scene, the opening verses of what we call Luke 15, which many of us heard in worship this Sunday as the introduction to the story often called the Prodigal Son.  All the Respectable Religious People--"the Pharisees and the scribes," as Luke identifies them--surely knew that the God of Israel was known for being "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love." That line, and variations on it, are woven throughout the Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms like an ancient creed.  If you asked a sampling of random Judeans on the street to describe their God, they would tell you God is "One" (as in, there's only one God) and then they would tell you that God is merciful.  It was the sort of thing that kids memorized from their earliest years and that septuagenarian grandparents recited by heart every morning with their daily prayers.  Everybody knew that God was "merciful" in first century Judaism; that was the party line.

And as long as it didn't have to get fleshed out any further than that, there was no controversy.  As long as everyone could broadly affirm "Yes, in a broad sense, God is hypothetically merciful and kind," that could be the end of it.  But once you start asking, "Well, to whom is God's mercy available?  To whom does God show kindness, forgiveness, and grace?"  you're setting the stage for a fight.  Because as a general rule, we human beings (especially we religious human beings) tend to start from the assumption that we ourselves are pretty decent people without severe sins or excessive red marks on our permanent record.  We tend to assume that whatever mercy is out there is--of course!--available to us.  It's those OTHER people you gotta watch out for.  It's THOSE PEOPLE who are just not quite as good as us, not quite as worthy, not really proper candidates for forgiveness.  We tend to think of our sins and trespasses as minor infractions--peccadillos, really--like returning our library books late, or occasionally being stingy with the tip at lunch if we are short on cash and don't want to break a larger bill.  But OTHER people?  Well, they are a different story.  And we all have our personalized lists of people who are just beyond the reach of mercy, folks who are across the boundary that separates OUR nice, manageable, even respectable, sins, from THEIR abominable ones, which disqualify "those people" from acceptability.  The trouble is, Jesus just does not care about the lists we make or lines we draw, and he will not leave mercy inside the rigid constraints we would try to cage it in.

Jesus makes the notion of mercy real, not hypothetical.  And he does that by giving his mercy and welcome to actual people with real issues and human faces--and then inviting them to dinner with him.  Jesus doesn't treat sinners like he is quarantining pitiful patients with an incurable and contagious disease--he doesn't keep antiseptic distance or put up barriers to prevent being "tainted" by their iniquity. And neither does Jesus put up pre-conditions of "life change" or prerequisite rituals of repentance before he shares a table with "THOSE PEOPLE." He eats with them--and in the ancient Near Eastern context, table fellowship implies acceptance and friendship between those who break bread together--without insisting that tax collectors quit their jobs and without demanding that the "sinners" get clean and give six months' worth of good behavior before he'll put the kettle on or set the table.

This, I think, is really what upsets the Respectable Religious crew in this story.  See, it's not just that Jesus refuses to condemn or zap the sinners around him.  It's that he actively welcomes them as they are without requiring they clean themselves up, turn over a new leaf, or change their ways first.  To be sure, we might say, being in Jesus' company will change us in profound ways--he will remake us in the image of his likeness and his love, the more we are around him.  But the horse and the cart have to be in the right order.  Jesus doesn't insist on "sinners" stopping being "sinners" before they come to him, like he's got an acute sin allergy and will break out in hives if he's around crooks and gamblers.  It's the other way around: Jesus draws people to himself as they are, declaring them his companions at the table and extending them his friendship, and that has a way of transforming us.  And of course, since Jesus keeps claiming that he is bringing with him the very Reign of God, he's saying that none other than God welcomes the "tax collectors and sinners" as they are.  And for those who wanted to keep mercy as an abstract concept for hypothetical people, that's just a bridge too far.

Jesus, of course, is well aware of their objections, their worries, and their perception that he is too "soft on sin," or even "encouraging abominable behavior" with his welcome.  He just doesn't let it stop him from setting a wide table and crossing the boundaries between "righteous" and "unrighteous" folks for his guest list.

Maybe today that's enough for us to hold onto and let simmer in our souls.  We have probably sung a song or two about how "amazing" God's grace is and how "wide" God's mercy is, but we have probably also kept ourselves from having to picture faces when we do.  Today it might be worth asking ourselves, "Who have I been assuming is outside the line and beyond the reach of God's mercy--and what does Jesus really think about those faces?"  It might be worth asking, "Where have I been saying the right words about God's love and kindness without having to take seriously just how wide a welcome that means?"  And it might be worth it--even if it makes us squirm to do it--to ask who we would have a hard time imagining at the dinner party with Jesus, and what we will do when it turns out that Jesus has already set a place for them?

Lord Jesus, enable us to see the real faces of the real people whom you love, and remembering it includes us as well, even in our stingiest and most hard-hearted moments.

The Way God Thinks--March 28, 2025

The Way God Thinks--March 28, 2025

"See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.  Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts that your thoughts."  (Isaiah 55:6-9)

It's never about God just pulling rank.  It's always about God's supreme mercy.

I don't think I ever realized that this is the underlying point of this passage from Isaiah 55, until reflecting on it this week after hearing it in worship this past Sunday.  The final verses to this section include more familiar words about how God's thoughts are "higher" than ours, and how God's ways are beyond our ways. And I've heard those lines plenty of times in my life.  Usually I hear them trotted out to mean that God is smarter than we are, or that things that seem terrible and awful in life must really be good, because they must be part of God's plan and how God's ways are just beyond our own.  Often I hear these verse interpreted to mean something like, "If the world seems unfair or unjust or you don't understand why terrible and cruel things happen in it, well, it's only because you don't see how it's all really necessary and God's ways are just inscrutable, so suck it up, because God is just smart and we are just dumb humans."  And okay, sure, God must certainly be "smarter" than we are.  Sure, God's way of knowing must be infinitely beyond the crude and limited way we walking meat-sacks barely have a grasp on reality.  Sure, we are all playing checkers and God is playing three-dimensional chess from Star Trek.  But is that all that's going on here in Isaiah?

When we read these verses about God's ways and thoughts being above our own in their actual context, it's not at all about forcing us to accept the apparently cruelty or injustice of life as "just part of God's plan" that we can't understand.  It's not at all about telling us we should unquestioningly accept the violence, rottenness, or trauma of the world without a protest, because God supposedly "must have willed it to be so." The voice in Isaiah 55 doesn't have the need to cudgel us into grinning acceptance of terrible things in the name of God being "higher" than we are.  And it is most definitely NOT a matter of God just pulling rank to say, "I'm above you, so don't question anything."

Instead, when we take the time to hear these verses about God's ways being beyond our own in their original setting, we see that they come as the conclusion of a passage about God's unexpected mercy and welcome of outsiders, mess-ups, and crooked hearts.  It starts, as we read, with the announcement that outsiders (the "Gentile" nations, outside the borders of Israel or Judah, and beyond the boundaries of good Torah-trained worshippers of Israel's God) will be drawn to the people of Israel and Judah.  They will come, wanting to live the covenant way of life that is grounded in justice and mercy.  They will want to learn to share their bread the way God's Word had commanded the people of Israel to do.  They will come, seeking refuge, belonging, and a place within the covenant people of Israel.  And when all these immigrants come, the prophet says, it will be because God has drawn them: "because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel."  

That notion would have been mind-blowing for the first hearers of these words, who had certainly grown up hearing that God was their unique possession, and that they alone were the people God cared about.  They had heard voices insisting them (in the name of God, no less) that God wanted them to be separate from every other people group, and that every other people group on earth was beneath them... and here comes the prophet saying, "Nope--God is going to draw those other people in, and God wants you to make space for as many of them as come to your doors."  That wasn't what anybody expected.

But the prophet of Isaiah 55 is just getting started.  He adds that God is inviting "the wicked" and the "unrighteous" to come to God and to leave behind their old crooked ways and find forgiveness.  Instead of God saying, "I've had enough of you sinners, so here comes a lightning bolt of wrath to wipe you off the face of the earth!" God says, "Hey, all crooks and rotten stinkers!  Calling all wicked no-goodniks!  You can leave all your crookedness behind and come to me instead!  I'm offering mercy, a new beginning, and forgiveness.  Just quit those old dead-end ways you've been pursuing--they'll never fulfill you or satisfy you.  I'll give you what you need."  God's invitation is specifically to sinners, mess-ups, evildoers, and villains--all of them can find grace and a new beginning, and all free of charge, God says. And again, that all would have been shocking to the ears of the Respectable Religious People in the audience when Isaiah 55 was first spoken.  To people who pictured God as merely personified karma, doling out punishments for "bad guys" and giving out gold stars for "good guys," this would have been scandalous... reckless... absurd!

In other words, it would have been beyond the typical human way of thinking.  As in, "just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts, and my ways higher than your ways."  See it now?

It's only after God has scandalously declared a new policy of welcome to foreigners and mercy to criminals that God breaks into that bit about "my ways are higher than your ways."  God isn't just bragging about being God while belittling us mere humans just in order to stroke the divine ego.  God is saying, "The reason you all find my mercy so preposterous is that you are all still stuck thinking in your narrow and self-centered little patterns.  I operate by a different vision: grace."  That's what this passage has been about all along.

Hopefully, this close reading of these verses will remind us of the importance of reading the Bible in context, rather than clipping out a couple of verses that sound good.  That's probably a good practice for our reading of Scripture no matter what.  But beyond that, the particular message of this whole passage is worth taking to heart.  When Isaiah 55 says that God's ways are beyond our ways, it's not trying to say that God is so enigmatic or obscure that we can never figure anything out about how God operates or what matters to God.  No, really, it's the opposite: it's a clear declaration of how God's ways are beyond ours, namely, through mercy.  

And to hear Isaiah 55 tell it, if there ever comes a time that we think mercy for mess-ups sounds foolish or welcome to foreigners sounds reckless, it's a sign we've stopped thinking in God's kind of thought patterns and have settled into our old, shriveled, and selfish habits again. And God calls us out of those mindsets, to step into the expansiveness of grace that makes room for all of us, outcasts and sinners, losers and fools, alike.

An old definition goes, "Theology is learning to think God's thoughts after him." Isaiah 55 might tell us that every time we train our minds to think, see, and act through mercy and grace, we are learning to think like God. That's at least worth a try today, isn't it?

Lord God, teach us to see the world and use our minds in ways that reflect your graciousness to outsiders and your forgiveness for sinners... like us.

If I Ran the Garden--March 27, 2025

If I Ran the Garden--March 27, 2025

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)

I have to confess: I would have given up on the tree.  

I don't think I would have even given it the opportunity for a fourth year of growth and a chance at last to bear fruit, much less committed to extra work for its sake.  

If I had been in charge of this tree--if I had been the gardener in Jesus' story--I would have either chopped it down, dug it up, or more likely just ignored it to let it wither and die without so much as an ounce of further effort on my part, leaving it to take its place in the long line of houseplants, flower gardens, and ornamental shrubs I have managed to kill by neglect over the years.

In short (apologies here to Dr. Seuss), if I ran the garden in Jesus' parable, I wouldn't have crossed the line into being inconvenienced simply for the sake of nursing a fruit-deficient tree into producing a few figs.  (There is probably a joke waiting to be found here about "not giving a fig," but I shall leave it for someone else to make.)  I know myself well enough to admit that I might be willing to encourage or root for someone as long as it doesn't demand too much of my time, effort, or energy, but if it's going to take a long commitment or a big investment of resources, I get stingy.  

It's easy to wish for others to find safe refuge or build a new life for their families away from war zones, but watch how quickly that abstract hypothetical sympathy and support evaporates when folks think they might be inconvenienced by refugees moving into their neighborhood or their resources being requested to help them get settled.  It's easy to say you want folks recovering from addiction to be successful in getting sober, so long as it doesn't affect your schedule, your wallet, or your routines.  It's easy to say we want to care for the environment, or educating children, or any number of worthy causes and issues, only to refuse to change the way we shop, support school levies, or waste less energy. I suspect that all of us are like this at some level, at least for some of the time.  Our caring about others--even if it's people, not fig trees--is firmly circumscribed by our resistance to being inconvenienced or put to extra trouble for them.

And as I say, this is part of the wonder of this parable for me.  Jesus offers an alternative perspective--a minority report--in this story, voiced by the gardener.  He proposes giving the so-far fruitless tree an extra year out of utter grace (the tree has definitely not "earned" an extra year of time, since it hasn't produced fruit yet), and he proposes doing extra work in order to help this tree out.  It's not only going to require both the owner and the gardener to be patient, but the gardener is now signing up for extra work, watering, putting manure on the tree, and helping it to bear fruit.  Everything about this is an inconvenience for the gardener, and yet the gardener is the one leading the charge to help this tree to produce figs.  He is willing to take the time and make the effort for this tree to produce fruit, even though it will cost him.  He is willing to cross the line from what is easy and convenient but basically an empty gesture, across into the realm of what is costly and difficult but actually offers help.  That's the difference with Jesus' kind of love.

And really, that's what still stuns me about this story of Jesus--this is a glimpse of the lengths God in Christ is willing to go to for my sake.  This is how Jesus expended himself for our sake.  This is how God bears with us, over and over again, through long seasons of fruitlessness on our part, in order to nurture us into maturity--in order for us to become what we are meant to be.

Maybe the hallmark of Christlike love is just that: it is willing to go to extra effort, be inconvenienced, or give time, resources, and effort for our sake, even when we haven't given Jesus much reason to believe we'll be a worthwhile investment.  And when we realize that this is how we have been loved, maybe we'll dare to love others the same way--with a willingness to go beyond pleasantries and convenient but empty gestures, into a patient love that goes the extra mile.

Like I say, if I were the gardener in Jesus' story, there's a good chance I would have just given up on the tree.  But Jesus isn't done with me, and he is loving me into becoming the kind of person who would give the tree the grace to become what it was meant to be... which is to say, he is also giving me the grace to become what I was meant to be, too.

Lord Jesus, lead us to love beyond what is convenient the way you have loved us with patience and grace.