We Are Not the Only Ones Singing--November 21, 2025

We Are Not the Only Ones Singing--November 21, 2025

"Let the sea roar, and all that fills it,
  the world and those who dwell therein.
 Let the rivers clap their hands,
  and let the hills ring out with joy before the Lord, who comes to judge the earth.
 The Lord will judge the world with righteousness
  and the peoples with equity." (Psalm 98:7-9)

There really is a different feel to watching a game in person compared to watching it on a screen from the comfort and relative quiet of your living room.  The energy is almost electric when you are at a ballpark, stadium, or arena and you get to watch your team play.  Sitting at home to watch is certainly convenient (and you don't have to pay for parking), but it doesn't feel the same, right? There is something both humbling and exhilarating about cheering alongside hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of other people, rooting for the same players you care about, roaring at an impressive play, or celebrating a victory. It changes your perspective, doesn't it? Being there in person reminds you that you are a part of something bigger than yourself... and also that there are others who are just as excited as you are when the home team wins. 

I get that same feeling from these verses at the end of Psalm 98, which many would have heard, read, or sung in worship this past Sunday.  It's a reminder that we humans are not the only ones in awe over the goodness of God. Even if we don't realize it most of the time, all of creation--including seas, rivers, and hills--rejoices in God.  In particular, this passage from the psalms even suggests that the whole world, from the soil and rock of the mountains to the waters of the ocean, celebrates the justice, equity, and righteousness of God.  All of creation is cheering for God, celebrating in God's victory, and singing in praise to God.

The psalmist is great at imagining that with his faithful imagination: the sound of the rushing river is like the clapping of hands in thunderous applause or rhythmic percussion; the seas are roaring, too.  The hills are not merely inanimate, here in the poetic view--they are joyful about God, glad to see God setting things right.  It's like the change of perspective that happens when you walk into the stadium or the ballpark and see that you are not the only one who has been cheering for your team--you are surrounded by so many more who are all as jubilant as you are.  To read (or sing) Psalm 98 is to see that we are not alone in being swept up in praise, thanks, and awe toward God.  We have a place in the crowd, but we are not the only ones.  The trees and the flowers, the rain and the sun, the fish and the birds, all of them are part of the cheering congregation of the universe, praising God by being what God has called us each to be. It's like that beautiful line of Nikos Kazantzakis, "I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed."  All of creation, all living things, as well as, apparently, things we usually think of as inanimate, like rivers, seas, and hills, all of it is overjoyed at the goodness of God.  We humans have a particular perspective, since we can see and know and appreciate things with our unique senses, intellect, and capacities.  But we are not the only ones singing.  

For a very long time in what we have often dubbed "advanced" Western society, conventional wisdom has treated the world as merely a pile of raw materials to be consumed and exploited.  We have forgotten what the Scriptures keep saying: all of creation is in relationship with God and rejoices over God's goodness.  We are not separate from that chorus, or "above" it; we are a part of it.  Taking that seriously will change not only the way we relate to God (maybe a little humbler, maybe a little more appreciation of our connectedness), but it will also change the way we treat the world in which we live.  If you are in a choir, you don't start eyeing the tenor section to pilfer its music or plotting to take over the seats of the sopranos--they are a part of the same ensemble to which you belong, and you share a common calling to sing together.  Similarly, if you are at a stadium cheering for your team, you know it doesn't help the team at all to take the big foam finger of the fans sitting next to you so you can use it to cheer.  You are both on the same "side" wanting your team to win, after all.  Maybe listening to the psalmist here will help us to see the rest of creation as our fellow singers, and we will learn to listen to their voices alongside our own.

O God, with all creation and the whole cosmos we praise you--not just for your greatness, but for your goodness.

Why We Need New Songs--November 20, 2025

Why We Need New Songs--November 20, 2025

" Sing a new song to the Lord, who has done marvelous things,
  whose right hand and holy arm have won the victory.
  O Lord, you have made known your victory,
  you have revealed your righteousness in the sight of the nations.
  You remember your steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel;
  all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God." (Psalm 98:1-3)

If you hang around a church for very long, at some point, you will hear someone grousing about the music--especially if involves change. "Why are they printing new hymnals? What was wrong with the old ones?"  "Do they really expect us to shell out the money for buying more song books for our pews?"  "What if they get rid of my favorite hymn?"  "Why should we have to learn new songs if God is still the same as always?"  And that's before we even get to the knock-down drag-out fights that erupt over style and instrumentation: guitars or organs, screens or the printed page, "contemporary" or "traditional," praise-chorus or four-verse hymns in four-part harmony? We church folk can be an ornery bunch when it comes to having to learn a new song.

So, let's dare to ask it: why should we have to learn new songs--especially if God is the same as always? Can't we just stick with the songs we already know? Can't we just listen to the psalms that are already in our Bibles?

Well, that's just it.  Sometimes the psalms that are already in the Bible are the very voices telling us, quite literally, to "sing a new song."  These words from Psalm 98, which many would have heard or sung in worship this past Sunday, are a case in point.  Here we have a song from the Bible telling us, "Don't let these be the last words to be sung!  Keep coming up with new songs!  Keep bringing new praises!  Keep writing lyrics--sing a new song to the Lord!"

Why would we need a new song? Or beyond that, why will we keep needing new songs for the rest of our lives and into eternity?  To hear the words of Psalm 98 tell it, there's a two-fold reason: for one, God keeps doing marvelous things, which are just begging to be sung about for their sheer awesomeness... and for a second, so that more and more people will come to know both the greatness and the goodness of God.  We sing new songs, in other words, because God keeps doing things that need to sung about, and because the world keeps needing to hear about who God is.  So it's not that God changes and we have to keep reworking our lyrics to keep up with the latest version of the divine, like installing software updates for your phone or laptop.  It's that God's constant, faithful, steadfast love keeps acting through history, and we want the world to know, hear, and see it.  The whole idea, the psalmist says, is that God's righteousness--God's fundamental goodness--will be revealed among "the nations."  That is to say, the Gentiles.  Yeah--THOSE people.

I can't help but hear that as a boundary-pushing sort of welcome and invitation to outsiders.  That's a big deal.  The psalmist doesn't say, "We have to keep our God a secret because God is our private personal possession and nobody else can find out about God's steadfast love or those foreigners will want some, too, and there won't be enough to go around!" Rather, the poet says, "We had better keep writing and singing new songs about God's faithfulness, so that everyone will want to hear about it--especially all the nations beyond our borders!"  The Scriptures themselves--here in the words of this psalm--are directing our attention beyond the bounds of these set words keep looking outward at the new things God keeps doing in the world and the people we haven't met yet who are waiting to hear about the goodness of God!  The Bible itself keeps pointing us beyond its own pages to see the God to whom it witnesses and offers psalms of praise, acting and moving in marvelous and new ways.  That's why we are called to "sing a new song"--the Bible itself is calling us to do just that.

But, just to be clear here, if we do keep writing and singing new songs to God, it will change us.  Our perspective will shift, such that we will start to keep our eyes open to recognize how God is moving in the world.  We will no longer picture God as a relic of the past--the hero of past legends who has since retired and hung up the ol' divine spurs--but rather we will see God still doing marvelous things and wonders we had not expected.  And when that happens to our vision, we might just find that we are spurred to be a part of what God is up to as well, rather than just sitting on our hands telling stories wistfully about the "good old days." That might change our lives in ways we cannot even fathom yet.

So, I suppose, take this as a word of warning: if we dare to follow the Scriptures' lead and "sing a new song" of God's wondrous love and marvelous goodness, we will not only be pointed outward to reach out to people we had never thought about before, but we will likely be pulled to join in the work God is doing in the world around us.

Where will the next new song lead us?

Lord God, we praise you for your new movements in the world and your marvelous love--strengthen our voices to join in the new song of your goodness.

Even in the Fire--November 19, 2025

Even in the Fire--November 19, 2025

"See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings." (Malachi 4:1-2a)

I know these words can sound scary and threatening, at least the first half of them.  But these very same words--even the ominous imagery of a fire that consumes the stubble--are also good news, too.  We would do well to sit with them for a bit and let them speak hope to us, rather than rushing off to the more pleasant poetry about the sun rising "with healing in its wings."  Even in the fire, there is good news.

So bear with me for a moment as we muster up our courage to jump back into these harsh-sounding words from the last book in our Old Testament, which many of us heard in worship back on Sunday.  

The first thing I think we need to get clear on in this passage is how to make sense of this fire and oven business.  We are used to hearing fire used as an image of punishment, like in the scenes of Dante's Inferno from the Divine Comedy, where sinners are tormented in flames out of some notion that God needs to inflict a certain amount of pain on people in order for justice to be done.  And yeah, if that's what the prophet Malachi were envisioning, I'd be tempted to close up my Bible and go home.  But that's a matter of us projecting our own baggage onto the Bible.  The way Malachi uses the image of a fire in an oven isn't about punishing or inflicting pain. It's about saying that evil and rottenness will not get the last word.

In Malachi's day, that was a needed word of hope.  For people whose parents had lived through the exile in Babylon, it sure seemed like the empires of the day always won.  They knew the stories of how their mothers' and fathers' generation had seen the arrogant Babylonians mock the people of Judah, destroy their Temple, and kill their neighbors.  Then, when the Babylonians were replaced by the Medes and the Persians, they saw more of the same: arrogance, cruelty, and crookedness from the new conquerors.  Malachi might not have known it, but there were more of the same on the horizon, too--the Greeks and the Romans would follow, and they would also have their own peculiar violence and domination.  And as Malachi watched the returned exiles try to start their lives over back in Judea and find some version of a "new normal," he is troubled at the signs that the same patterns of greed, crookedness, and corruption will spread to his own neighbors.  And in times like that, it can feel like the crooks and the bullies will always win.  It looks like nothing will ever thwart them, and that evil will win the day.  Honestly, if all you, your parents, and your grandparents had ever seen was one round after another of villainy and brutality, it would be terribly easy to give up hope of things ever getting better. And it would be very tempting to give up on doing good yourself.

But Malachi is given this assurance from God--no, even though it looks like the tyrants and the terrors will last forever, they won't.  They think they are immovable and eternal, but their empires will crumble in time, and they will end up in the dustbin of history  It's in this context that Malachi warns that "all the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble." It's not about God needing to torture people in flames as though God is a celestial sadist; it's about God saying that the "Big Deals" and bullies will not get the last word, and all the empires of history who think they are the be-all-end-all will be reduced to ash.  It's a shocking and countercultural word of hope, especially for people who feel like, as Evey says in V for Vendetta, "Every time I've seen the world change, it has been for the worse."  Malachi says in response, "No.  That's now how it will always be."  There will come a point when things are put right, and those who have been stepping on others for so long will be like the chaff used for kindling in the oven.  The prophet knows that from the perspective of the present moment, it looks like the meanest, the loudest, and the most arrogant will never be thwarted.  But from the vantage point of heaven--from the edge of the eternal, so to speak--cruelty, greed, and pride eventually consume themselves like the proverbial snake eating its own tail.  God insists that there will be relief for those who are suffering, and the bullies will at last be put in their place.

In many ways, these words from Malachi are an appropriate prelude for the song of Mary we'll be hearing in just a few weeks, who sings in what we call the Magnificat about God accomplishing exactly what Malachi was talking about.  Mary says that God "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts" and "brought down the powerful from their thrones," while having "lifted up the lowly" and "filled the hungry with good things" (see Luke 1:46-55).  Mary dares to say that her baby, still growing in the womb, is the means by which God will at last stop the bullies in their tracks and put the world right again.  But in a way, her song only makes sense as the answer to the promise that Malachi raises here.  For people who have lived all their lives seeing schemers get away with their scams and pompous blowhards never being taken down a few pegs, Malachi speaks the promise, "It won't always be this way.  Evil doesn't always get the last word.  God is still committed to restoring everything that is broken, and to thwarting those who cause harm."  

If you have ever ached for suffering to be stopped and for those who are hurting others to be restrained, then you can hear Malachi's message as good news.  It will not always be this way.  The rottenness of the present moment will not last forever.  Some days, that's the most we get to keep us going--but that's enough.  Sometimes, all we can cling to is the hope that God is not asleep, aloof, or indifferent to the pain of the world, and that God will not let evil get the last word.  We still have to make it through the trouble of the present moment, but we do it from a different perspective.   We face it with the confidence that we are not alone in this struggle, and God is longing for things to be put right, too.  We may not get to see in our lifetimes how accomplishes that restoration--even Malachi didn't get to see the coming of Jesus, whom we Christians are convinced is the key to God's kind of victory against evil. But we do face this day without despair, even in the fire, because we believe that God is not giving up on making the broken whole again.

Maybe that's all we can pray today, but that will have to be enough.

O God, heal what hurts in the world; hold back all those forces that cause harm; and give us the strength to keep going through the troubles of this present moment.

What If It Costs Us?--November 18, 2025

What If It Costs Us?--November 18, 2025

[Jesus said:] "You will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” (Luke 21:16-19)

These words of Jesus were never merely hypothetical.  And the risks of following Jesus didn't end with the Roman Empire.  The question put to us by this passage from Luke's Gospel, which many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, is the same question Jesus asks of us today: Will you still share in my way of life if it costs you everything?

And in all honesty, I'm not sure many of us have really wrestled with that question as though it were a real possibility.  In the United States, at least, a good many folks tend to equate Christianity with being a model citizen--you could never be looked down on, hated, or disowned for being a Respectable Religious, person, right?  We tend to assume that physical injury, imprisonment, or even death were only dangers of the era of the Roman Coliseum, when they fed Christians to lions for sport or the Emperor blamed Christians for the fire that burned parts of Rome.  Or we make persecution seem far off and exotic--something that only happens in distant countries with official policies of atheism or communism.

But that's not the way Jesus talks here.  You don't get the impression that there's an expiration date for his warning, or fine print with an asterisk that says, "Danger only lasts until the end of 1st century AD" or "Residents of North America exempt from risk."  Jesus seems to be preparing any of us, and potentially all of us, to meet with the hostility of the world because we are committed not only to naming the name of Jesus but walking the way of Jesus.  We should at least be honest, too, that over the centuries, Christians have been jailed, tortured, or put to death not only for confessing the name of Jesus, but for taking the kind of stands that came with such a confession.

In the book of Acts, for example, when the Christian community was just beginning, the trouble we often got into came with charges like "disturbing the peace" or "inciting riots" even when we were not being violent, but rather absorbing the blows of others in the crowds who were being violent.  Or sometimes we were accused of threatening the local economy--there's a curious scene in Acts where Christians get into trouble because their teaching threatens the business of local silversmiths who make idols of the goddess Artemis.  At other times, we were accused of being subversive and treasonous because we wouldn't burn incense in honor of the Emperor or confess "Caesar is Lord." Nobody charged those first disciples with "being Christian"--rather, they found other charges to bring against us that grew out of our commitment to Christ.

Or, in a much more recent century, you likely know the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was a Lutheran pastor in German in the 1920s and 1930s, and eventually (but too late, he would admit) resisted the rise of the Third Reich.  His most famous words begin, "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists; and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist...." and then continue on about his hesitancy to speak up for the trade unionists or the Jews, because he was neither of those.  Finally, he writes, "Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."  Niemoller regrets that he should have spoken up for others who were being mistreated, arrested, and made to disappear, and he sees in hindsight that he should have done so precisely because of his faith in Christ.  That is to say, his lament is not, "They came for me eventually because I am a Christian," but rather, "Because I am a Christian, I should have been speaking out for the well-being of others, even those who do not share my faith as a Christian."  The way of Jesus--the eternal perspective that Jesus gives to our vision--should have prompted him to speak up.  But he did not. 

Part of the horror of Martin Niemoller's witness is that he lived in a nation that proudly claimed to be "Christian," and maybe that is part of what made it so difficult even for pastors like him to realize that his own Christian faith should have led him to care for those who were being grabbed off the street and loaded into vehicles, never to be seen again. It is hard to come to the conclusion that just because you live in a society that publicly names the name of Jesus, it does not mean that such a society is in tune with the character of way of Jesus.  It is sadly quite possible that a community or a country can talk the right religious talk but negate its words by actions that run counter to the character of Christ. Looking back, Neimoller had become aware that his faith in Jesus should have led him to advocate for others, but he did not make that connection until it was too late.  Of course, the hope of his well-known quotation is that we might learn from his example and not wait until it is too late.  We who have memorized the "First they came for..." poem are meant to let those words challenge us not to miss the times when our faith in Jesus leads us to speak up, to show up, or to act up for the sake of others who are being harmed, harassed, or dehumanized. These are not hypotheticals. These are questions for this day.

Maybe even the era of 1930s Germany seems too far and remote for us.  Maybe even that era seems too much "a long time ago in a land far, far away." But then we are hit with the witness, just last week, of seven or more pastors and other faith leaders who were thrown to the ground, zip-tied, and arrested in Chicago for praying and speaking up against the mistreatment of those who have been detained recently in immigration raids in their area.  These pastors, from a range of denominations including Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Baptists, as well as other people of other faiths, went to pray, to speak, and to witness, just last Friday--and they still have the bruises on their bodies from being there.  They were trying, as well as they knew how, to take seriously both the words of Martin Niemoller, and the challenge of Jesus in these words from Luke's Gospel.  They were trying their best not to make the same mistake Niemoller came to regret--of failing to speak up until it was too late.  And like the stories of the first Christians in the book of Acts, they knew that the charges against them would make them sound like they were dangerous subversives or violent criminals; they would be accused of being "violent rioters" or "disturbing the peace," just like in the first century church.  All of this is to say that the question of following Jesus even when it costs us our reputations, our families, or our physical safety is not a moot point in the 21st century.  There are fellow disciples of Jesus whose faith is leading them to pay those prices right now.  It is worth us taking time on our own to ask what we will do if we are led to speak up in similar ways for those who are most in danger right now.  It is worth our asking what counsel Pastor Niemoller would give you and me in our place and time today.

If our faith in Jesus is more than a brand-name we wear for status, we will have to take seriously Jesus' warning that following him will cost us--perhaps the support of our family, maybe our reputations as upstanding respectable citizens, and possibly even our bodies. The news of the last week reminds us it is still true, not far from where we live. Will we let that faith lead us to speak up and show up for others who are suffering, or will we find ourselves looking back too late, wishing that we had only been brave enough earlier?  Or maybe, beneath those questions is a deeper one: do we dare to believe, as Jesus promises here in today's verses, that even when we suffer because of following Jesus, that he will preserve our lives and help us to endure?

May God give us the courage and strength to dare such a witness, and not find ourselves one day looking back wishing we had been brave.

Lord Jesus, give us the confidence to go where you lead us, to speak what you give us to speak, and to risk our well-being in ways that flow from your character and love for all.

Before You Give Up--November 17, 2025

Before You Give Up--November 17, 2025

[Jesus said:] "...they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your mind not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to contradict." (Luke 21:12-15)

I am tired of the constant deluge of meanness around. No, not just tired--I am wearied by it. I am wearied, some days almost to the point of exhaustion, just of the dissonant chorus of voices that runs, non-stop, like a grating hum in the background all the time, selling a vision of a way of life that runs counter to the way of Jesus.

It is a constant angry babbling, and it is punctuated by bursts of hatred, of self-centeredness, of endless avarice, and of arrogant bragging.

It is the noise of the unending news cycle, reminding me how to keep track of the days by where the latest mass shooting was in our own country, how long wars have been grinding on in far-away places, and how many people have been unable to feed their families.

It is the din of pundits and politicians on the radio and TV, tying themselves up in knots as they bend over backwards to say the opposite of the thing they said yesterday, and telling us to forget that we ever heard anything different.

It is the dull roar of angry voices demonizing whatever group of people they see as "the other," and casting "those people" as the enemy.

It is the unnerving shouting of TV preachers and Respectable Religious folks posturing for attention and clamoring for positions of prestige and influence, but sounding less and less like the message of Jesus of Nazareth the more they talk.

I don't know about you, but that constant racket of noise in the background of life sometimes feels overwhelming, and I am just about exhausted by it. I am no longer surprised by it, but it still wearies me. And sometimes it is just so tempting to turn it all off and look away--to ignore the news reports of body counts, or to just give caring about the shouting-matches between the talking heads with a nihilistic shrug to say, "It doesn't matter who wins today's argument anyway, because they'll be back at it again tomorrow." It is tempting, too, to feel like our only options in response to all that noise are either to shout even more loudly and angrily, or to give into apathy and say nothing.

Sometimes, we can even feel like the question forming on our lips is a defeated, "In the face of all this, what's the point of even trying?" And maybe we struggle to come up with a solid answer to that unspoken question.

And yet, over against that daily babel sound, there is this whisper of a voice that says to us--to you and to me--"You are my witnesses in the midst of this. I will give you words. I am here with you now." It is the voice of Jesus, who has promised to give us wisdom to share when it feels like the world around us has lost its mind, and an authentic word to speak when it feels like the world around us has sold its soul.

I am reminded by these words of Jesus from late in the Gospel of Luke, words many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, that Jesus' promise to be among us now is not merely a sentimental thing, or a warm and fuzzy feeling. Jesus promises to be with us right here and now because he knows we'll need it. We'll need it to keep our sanity in times that feel deeply troubled, and we'll need it to speak a different message--what the book of Hebrews calls "a better word"--than the angry and anxious and fearful cacophony around us. Jesus' promises to be with us to give us words, because he has appointed us to be witnesses to another way--his way.

Jesus reminds his followers, even in the late days of his earthly ministry, that he is commissioning us to be a sort of counter-cultural witness. We will be the minority report that can both tell the emperor when he is wearing no clothes and also can speak of the amazing grace of God that clothes us in the righteousness of Christ. We will be the voices who say a firm but loving "No!" to the transactional thinking of the world's powerful, in which everything is reducible to "I do X for you, and you do Y for me in return," and who speak instead about God's economy of grace. We will be ones who risk being rejected, who risk being called "losers," who risk getting lumped in and thrown to the ground with whatever group is being cast as "the other." This is what Jesus calls his followers to do and to be--in other words, we are called to be an alternative to the endless noise in the background from all those other sources.

And to do that, Jesus has promised to be with us--in order that he can whisper to us a different message than the yelling and posturing on our screens and speakers. Honestly, we need nothing less than his presence, because without him, we will just fall back into the same fearful and selfish shouting of everybody else. We are good at that by nature. But Jesus enables us to be an alternative.

Today, we are given a calling--we do not have permission simply to stick our heads in the sand, nor do we have authorization to answer immature and petty yelling with more of the same. We are called to speak the good news that there is an alternative to the wearying flood of the world's messages, and we are called to listen for Jesus (rather than our own inventions of what we would like Jesus to have said) to know what the alternative is.

Before you give up, just pause. Just hold on for a moment. Don't throw the radio or tv or your smart phone against a wall when the voices that drive you crazy are at it again. Listen, but over their noise, listen for the whisper of Jesus who, like the Creator in the beginning, speaks a word that makes new worlds come into existence. Listen for Jesus, who will give us a wisdom to answer the noise of this moment.

And dare trust that he will speak.

Speak, Lord Jesus, your wisdom to answer the nonsense of the day and times in which we live, and give us the grace to be your witnesses and your counter-cultural option for the world which you yet love. Touch our ears to hear you whisper.

A God Who Doesn't Need Defending--November 14, 2025

A God Who Doesn't Need Defending--November 14, 2025

"I call upon you, O God, for you will answer me;
    incline your ear to me; hear my words.
 Wondrously show your steadfast love,

    O savior of those who seek refuge

    from their adversaries at your right hand.

 Guard me as the apple of the eye;

     hide me in the shadow of your wings,

 from the wicked who despoil me,

    my deadly enemies who surround me." (Psalm 17:6-9)

God never needs our protection; we are the ones who constantly need God's.

Maybe that seems obvious--I would hope so, honestly.  But truth be told, sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks get the orientation of our faith all backwards and convince ourselves it's up to us to "defend" or "protect" or "fight" for God somehow, when in actuality that suggests a pretty weak deity. A god who has to be defended by devotees isn't worth worshiping, and a religion that needs people in positions of power in order to "save" it in some sort of culture war is hardly worth giving your life to.  The living God turns the tables on that perspective, by instead always being our refuge and never needing to hide behind us for shelter.

Again, I would hope that this much is already pretty clear, just from a cursory surface-level reading of the Scriptures.  That old cliche is right on the money: you defend God like you defend a lion--you just get out of the way.  And that certainly seems to be the picture here in these verses from Psalm 17, which many would have heard read this past Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary.  The invitation throughout the Scriptures, and especially in prayers like this one from the psalms, is always for us to find shelter in the strength of God, and for us to rest in God as our refuge.  It is never the case that God needs our firepower, fury, or ferocity to keep God safe from outside threats.

And yet, I've got to admit, for just about as long as I can remember, and I expect for longer before that, too, there's always been a chorus out there somewhere of religious voices, tv and radio preachers, and parachurch pundits, who always seem to be afraid of God being defeated by enemies or of Christianity being overwhelmed by external boogeymen.  In my lifetime alone, we have lived through the fears (which they have often helped to stoke) of "-isms" like Communism and Marxism, of quasi-spiritual movements like "New Age" or whatever the latest trend was, and of academic entities like universities, modern science, and philosophy. I've heard accusations aimed at institutions like the United Nations, public schools, and local libraries. We have lived through sermons that were both fiery and fearful labeling everyone from foreign nations, opposition political parties, or even other branches of the Christian faith all as dangerous enemies of God.  And over and over again, I know I at least have heard lots of loud and anxious voices trying to rile up church folks to "save Christianity," to "fight for God," or to "defend the Gospel," quite often by prodding us to push for more political power, elect a particular party or candidate, or leverage our influence in order to fend off whatever the Threat Du Jour happened to be.  I suspect you have heard them too. 

And what hits my ears, every time I hear one of those voices talking about how Christianity needs help from people in power in order for it to be "saved" or how we need people to "fight for God," is how weak and empty those sentiments make God out to be.  I am left with the impression of a god that is a needy pet or a fragile piece of porcelain--in other words, an idol.  The real and living God does not need our help in fighting off enemies--after all, ours is the God who simultaneously protects us in the face of those we feel are enemies while also calling us to love those same enemies.  But at no point is God dependent on our help or our power.

When we are clear on that, we can pray with the poet here in the psalm: we can truly and confidently ask for shelter in the "shadow of God's wings" like we are baby chicks held within Mama Hen's downy presence.   We can ask--and believe that we can rely on God when we do--for God to be our refuge, as well as for God to be the refuge of all who have been forced to flee from their former homes and places of safety.  We can count on God to guard us like the ramparts of a fortress that absorb the incoming fire of the enemy's arrows.  After all, that is exactly what the cross is all about, isn't it?  There at the cross, God in Christ chooses to absorb every last attack, to take the hit for us, to bear the blows and beatings, all the way to death, in order to provide refuge for a world full of people desperate for protection?  The Crucified Christ doesn't call out for his followers to rally together to protect him or to defend him from the hostile forces of the Romans or the angry mob. He doesn't summon his disciples to form an army to keep him safe. Just the opposite--in the Passion stories, Jesus is the One putting his own body between the danger and his disciples.  He is the One telling the soldiers and temple police, "I am the one you are looking for, so let these men go." Jesus is the One who offers protection for his beloved; he does not need them to keep him out of danger or pain.  That's the One in whom we put our trust.

All of that gives us to reasons to breathe out in relief and peace: for one, it means it's not up to us to have to defend Christianity, protect God, or some other such culture war nonsense.  And second, it means we really can rely on this God--who doesn't need defending--to be our guard, our refuge, and our shelter, because the living God never needs our protection in the first place.

O God, be our shelter, and free us from the illusion of thinking we ever had to defend you.

Spotting the Fool's Gold--November 13, 2025

Spotting the Fool's Gold--November 13, 2025

"Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction.  He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-5)

At some point, I bet you learned about pyrite.

Maybe it was your eighth-grade geology class, or chemistry in high school.  Maybe you were one of those kids who had a rock collection or who got a science lab kit for Christmas one year.  Maybe you spotted some of the stuff out in the real world somewhere and thought you had struck it rich--only to discover that in actuality, you had fallen for fool's gold.

That's the more common name for pyrite, the mineral also known as iron sulfide. The presence of sulfur (yep, literal brimstone) makes it shine with a yellowish metallic luster, and plenty of people over the ages have been duped by its appearance into believing they have real gold, when in truth they have a much less valuable rock.  If your only criteria are, "Is it shiny and yellow?" you are setting yourself up to be disappointed.  There is a reason that Shakespeare gave us the line, "All that glitters is not gold."  The Bard knew in his day what is still true today: it is easy to fall for counterfeits and to be fooled by fakes.  And it requires a sharper, keener kind of vision to be able to know whether you are looking at the genuine article or a ginned up fraud.

Believe it or not, the early church wrestled with a similar concern when it came to the coming of Christ.  As we saw in yesterday's devotion, reflecting on a passage which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, there was some worry among the church in Thessalonica that maybe they had missed Christ's coming in glory.  And the response in this letter was, "You didn't miss him!  Don't let anybody make you worry that you missed out on Christ's coming or the Day of the Lord--you won't be able to miss them!"  Well, that must have been something of a sigh of relief for that congregation... but there's more to be said.  The apostle continues, warning that they do still need to keep their eyes open for counterfeits, frauds, and fakers who will try and convince the world that they are the Real McCoy, but are in fact pretenders.

In particular, these verses describe a figure referred to as "the lawless one," who "opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God."  Now, on the one hand, that sounds like some pretty exceptional idolatry, the sort of thing that would stand out in unique ways.  But really, over the centuries prior to the New Testament era, there had been a whole host of empires, kings, and regimes that put themselves in the place of God or demanded worship as divine.  In ancient Israel's own history, there were the Assyrians and Babylonians who had conquered the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah and whose kings claimed divine status and demanded worship of their own likenesses in statue form. Then there were the Greeks, including a particularly nasty ruler named Antiochus IV, who called himself "Epiphanes," which meant something like "the god made manifest" and who set up a shrine to the Greek god Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple, on which he sacrificed a pig (an unclean animal by the Torah's commandments, making this an especially egregious act).  And by the time of the Roman Empire, you had Caesar Augustus calling himself both divine and "savior" and the beginnings of a tradition of emperors demanding worship and incense to be burned as an act of devotion in their honor.  In other words, by the time the letter we call Second Thessalonians was written, there had already been a long line of rulers and demagogues who put themselves in the place of God (or gods) and claiming to be divine.  This notion was old hat.

So when the writer of 2 Thessalonians warns of a "lawless one" doing this same thing, I don't think it's meant like some esoteric Nostradamus-type prediction of a single specific person who is fated to come on the scene as some wholly new and original malevolent force.  I think it is a warning that this same pattern, in which evil tries to pass itself off as good like a cheap knock-off, will keep repeating itself until Christ's coming, and the Christian community needs to be prepared to spot a fake whenever it appears and to call it out as a fraud when that happens.  In other words, we are called to be able to tell the difference between the real precious metal and the fool's gold of pyrite, and not to fall for the frauds.

This is important for us to be clear about, for starters, because sometimes Christians have gotten particularly hung up on identifying a singularly diabolical figure, sometimes given the title "Antichrist," to be on the lookout for, as though there's only one dangerous counterfeit out there. Sometimes that line of thought has led Christians to focus so exclusively on an expected super-wicked evil figure that we fail to speak up against ordinary evils or dismiss lesser frauds as unimportant just because they're not "The Big Bad," so to speak. You end up with church folk debating whether the antichrist is Hitler or Stalin, or whether to look for a charismatic but insidious leader in Europe or in Asia or in America, rather than being able to speak up against any and all instances where popular leaders invite people to worship them unquestioningly. We forget that the one place in the Bible that uses the word "antichrist" (the letter we call First John) actually refers to "many antichrists" who had "already come" by the time it was written (see 1 John 2:18) in the first century!  

In other words, the New Testament isn't trying to narrow our focus to just a singular evil leader on the world stage (even though an awful lot of religious fiction has made it seem like that's all we need to worry about), but rather to keep our eyes open to recognize the pyrite pretenders who want to put themselves in the place of God wherever they might turn up.  The Scriptures are teaching us to spot the counterfeits so we don't fall for them, whether they come wearing Caesar's diadem marching in an imperial parade or a suit and tie shouting from a podium, and so that we continue to give our allegiance solely to our true Lord, the One whose throne is a cross and whose crown is made of thorns.

Taking these verses from Second Thessalonians seriously, then, will mean that we are prepared to call "Baloney!" on any figure, from political leaders to cultural icons to tycoons of business and technology, who calls for our unquestioned devotion or casts themselves as savior.  It's not just that we are supposed to be on the lookout for one bad actor who will turn out to be "The Antichrist," but rather than we be courageous enough to speak up against any powerful voices that run counter to the way of Christ--the way of enemy-love, the way of mercy and justice, the way of lifting up the lowly, the way of serving and self-giving love, and the way of the cross.  Any voice--past, present, or future--who tries to get us to shout "Me and My Group First" or to value money and power over love of neighbor is speaking contrary to the way of Jesus; that is to say, such voices are anti-Christ. We are called to recognize them as counterfeits that might be shiny, but are not genuine gold.

The best way, of course, to get better at recognizing a fake is to become more familiar with the genuine article.  You learn how to recognize fool's gold by knowing how it is different from real gold, just like bankers learn to spot counterfeit bills by knowing what real money is supposed to look like.  So we are called to get to know Jesus more deeply, then, in order that we will know how to spot the frauds from a mile away and we will know not to listen to them when they try to get our attention.  Today, how can we be listening more closely to the voice of Jesus so that we will know its sound and cadence over the din of all the others?

Lord Jesus, help us to recognize your way and your voice today.