Letting God Disarm Us--December 2, 2025

Letting God Disarm Us--December 2, 2025

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction

  and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

 He shall judge between the nations

  and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

 they shall beat their swords into plowshares

  and their spears into pruning hooks;

 nation shall not lift up sword against nation;

  neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:3b-4)

In all honesty, I am not sure we really want this vision to come true.

I am not at all convinced that we really desire not to teach our children to learn war any longer. Just the opposite, rather--I fear that the voices around us, the voices we have all agreed to nod along with as "common sense" and "conventional wisdom," would rather teach our children to continue in the ways of violence, hatred, and self-interest.

We do not want our children to cease learning war anymore--we simply want them to learn it better than the children in the next group over. And then we would like permission to baptize that bloodthirsty mentality so that we can somehow call it "God's will."

Ultimately, this is the problem: not that the living God does not offer a bold enough hope; not that we have tried the way of God's peaceable Reign and found that it just wasn't as good as it was billed to be; not that the Scriptures are unclear about what sort of a future into which God calls us. But rather, that we know perfectly well that the living God is going to pulls us out of our narrow self-interest, and we don't want that to happen--no, not when we could get an edge or an advantage over someone else and "win" against them, instead. To borrow a line from G. K. Chesterton, it's not that the peaceable way of Jesus has been tried and found wanting--it's that it's been found difficult and not tried.

And this, I have come to believe, is the heart of the matter. It is not that Jesus or the prophets are vague, ambiguous, or unclear about how God intends human beings to relate to one another. It's not that we are unclear how God feels about us killing each other, or inventing and stockpiling new and different ways to kill each other more and more efficiently. It's not that the Scriptures are hard to understand when it comes to whether or not to endorse a "Me-and-My-Group-First" way of thinking and acting. The Scriptures are painfully clear. The prophets like Isaiah here, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, or its parallel passage from Micah 4, speak with terrible simplicity and directness. The problem is not that we can't figure out what the Spirit-filled dreamers, poets, and activists that we call the prophets were trying to say to us. The problem is that we know--and we do not like what they have to say. We are not ready to stop teaching our children the ways of war. That much is clear, because we are not ready yet to stop teaching our children to see themselves as of greater importance than someone else's children.

There's the rub: deep down, we have built a way of life, we humans--in every country, in every hemisphere, in every culture, so nobody gets off smelling like a rose here--we have built a way of life that depends on the assumption that my life is of greater importance and worth than yours... that my livelihood is more important to protect than your own life... that my comfort is more important to safeguard than your subsistence... and that my feeling of security is more important than someone else's ability to live. We have built our ways of life on all agreeing that each of us is going to be as damned self-interested (and I mean that profanity--it is damnable) as we please and committed to self-preservation as possible, and we are all OK with it as long as we all agree that those are the rules we are going to play by.

And once we have all agreed to that, then everything is simply a matter of strategizing how get better advantages for myself to outmaneuver you and everybody else. So... if I determine that having more swords and spears (or whatever--pick your weapons) will help me look out for Me-And-My-Group-First, well, then, it's my "right" to get more, have more, threaten to use more, and develop more and better swords and spears than you have, so that I can "win." Isn't it?

And as long as I agree that you can also acquire as many ways to kill me as possible, we all will pretend that's a sensible "common-sense" way to live our lives. We did that on a global scale, if you'll recall, for three or four decades in the late 20th century, and we called it mutually assured destruction. Whether it's nuclear missiles during the Cold War, swords and spears in 8th century BC Palestine, or the modern armaments of today, regardless of what weapons we are using, the deeper problem is that we have all collectively agreed that it's OK for each of us to guard for our own feeling of security at the cost of someone else's life--that it's OK for me to weigh the value of me and my comfort more highly than another human being made indelibly in the image of God. Once I've told myself that I and my interests take priority over anybody else's, I've already given in to learning the way of war--and to making it my way of life. The root of our problem is our bent love of self over against everyone else around me, and then the problem is made increasingly worse by technological leaps in our ability to destroy each other in the name of "keeping myself secure."

Well, there it is--that's the bottom line here. The conventional wisdom is that we should all be "free" to be as self-centered and self-interested as we want to be, or can get away with being, and from there, it's every man for himself to shore up whatever things we can in order to look out for me-and-my-group first. And all of that makes perfect and total sense once we have started from the assumption that my life is of greater value than yours. Once we accept that premise, then we also have to accept the corollary that, well, hey, some people are expendable... collateral damage... or must be sacrificed for the sake of MY comfort, MY feeling of safety, MY way of life, or MY superiority. In fact, once I've bought the lie that MY life is of greater value than YOURS, it is a just a matter of simple math that my interests have to be protected at the expense of yours.

That's why I say that sometimes it just seems that we don't want to give up teaching our children the ways of war--whether on the grand scale of nuclear missiles and drone strikes, or the collective agreement just to get used to mass shootings as part of our way of life, or the small-scale daily choices we make to grab more for ourselves and edge someone else out. We are deeply invested in the ways of war, the myth of redemptive violence, the lie that more swords and spears can make us "safe" from danger, and the logic of me-and-my-group-first. We are entangled in them, so deep down, we are threatened when prophets start painting pictures of being disarmed and having our weapons turned into plowshares and pruning hooks. We are so enmeshed in defining our "success" in terms of having more ways to threatening our neighbors--er, enemies--that we are troubled by Isaiah's vision of turning weapons into farming tools.

Let's just be honest here: Isaiah and the other prophets can talk all they want, and for the sake of looking pious we will nod and say our "Amen" when their words are spoken in church, but deep down our problem is that these self-absorbed hearts of ours don't want to have to listen to them. We are afraid to stop learning the ways of war, and we are afraid letting God disarm us.

But here is grace for us on this day. Despite our "children's warring madness" as the old hymn puts it, God refuses to give up on speaking this vision to us. God refuses to accept our self-destructive self-centeredness as the last word. And just at the point where we are all collectively willing to accept that death and violence are "just how it is," just at the point where we are all getting oddly comfortable with tuning out our attention from news reports about boats in the ocean being blown up without giving anybody a trial, or the grinding war in Ukraine, or the terrible violence in our own country, God keeps saying, "There is coming a day--and you can dare to step into it now--when swords are beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks." The living God keeps saying, "There is a life of peace and wholeness, a life beyond being ruled by fear, on the other side of swords and spears and missiles and rifles. There is a way to live with one another the way I intended all along." The same living God keeps interrupting our war lessons to our children and saying, "You do not have to see yourself as more important than everyone else on my green earth. And you do not have to be threatened or afraid that I love your neighbor as much as I love you. You do not have to feel insecure that they can have their own life under their own vines and fig trees while you have yours. You do not need to be ruled by fear any longer."

If we are honest, there is much inside us that doesn't want to listen to such words from the prophets, because we cannot imagine how a world that isn't driven by such violence and fear would work. But here is good news on this day: God doesn't stop speaking what we need to hear.

There is a good life beyond our bloodthirsty self-centeredness, beyond our swords and spears and everything else. And God invites us on this day to be a part of letting it begin among us now.

Lord God, pull us into your future, beyond our self-centered indifference.

This Wide Welcome--December 1, 2025

This Wide Welcome--December 1, 2025

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
  In days to come
  the mountain of the Lord’s house
 shall be established as the highest of the mountains
  and shall be raised above the hills;
 all the nations shall stream to it.
  Many peoples shall come and say,
 “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
  to the house of the God of Jacob,
 that he may teach us his ways
  and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isaiah 2:1-3a)

It's scandalous--isn't it?--and yet it's completely right.  

It would have been shocking to the first ears to hear these words, and yet somehow they are also exactly what we are aching for.

This passage, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, would have been simultaneously mind-blowing and soul-comforting when the prophet Isaiah first spoke these words.  Isaiah envisions God gathering peoples from every land and nation, crossing boundaries and borders, all to be welcomed into the very heart of Judah.  There are no quotas, no check-points, and no turning people away because they come from a poor country or a nation that is in distress.  And God draws them into an unlikely cohort to learn the ways of God's justice, mercy, and goodness.

It would have been startling enough for Isaiah's listeners in Judah to hear that there was coming a day when people from all the surrounding nations would come into their own land, not as a threatening invasion of foreign armies, but as welcome immigrants and eager students who are seeking to learn God's ways.  But Isaiah goes further than that.  He insists that all these people will come streaming in to the very center of Judah, in its capital, and beyond that, to the very Temple of God, to "the house of the God of Jacob."  That was revolutionary!  The Temple was supposed to be holiest place among the holy people of God!  In the inner courts of the Temple were chambers that only the high priest could enter, and only on certain days of the year, at that!  For many in ancient Israel and Judah, the exclusivity of the Temple was part of that holiness--it was the space where no impurities, no corruption, and no foreign gods were allowed.  By extension, many assumed that also meant no foreign people were allowed in, because they would come with their pagan cultures and heathen ways and would infect the "good" and "godly" Respectable Religious people of Israel and Judah.  

For many in Isaiah's time, the default setting for their piety was fear of outsiders--that the pure and holy things and people needed to be kept away from "the other," so as to avoid "contaminating" the good people and the sacred objects.  But Isaiah flips the script and imagines God deliberately gathering those "outsiders" precisely for the purpose of welcoming them into the very holiest place to be taught by none other than The Holy One of Israel.  The picture of God's promised future, in other words, is not of God whittling away the less desirable or the unacceptable ones until a pure group of spiritually elite people are left, like when you are cutting an onion and throw away the outer layer. Rather, the image is of God bringing people inward, gathering outsiders into a new kind of community whose worthiness doesn't depend on where they came from, and whose acceptability is authorized because God says they are accepted. When Isaiah envisions countless crowds of people coming from across every border on student visas to learn the ways of God, he isn't afraid or threatened--he is hopeful. If there are limits, caps, or criteria of worthiness for who can come in, the prophet Isaiah doesn't know about them.  This wide welcome is God's doing, he says.

I find myself grateful this year that Advent begins with this kind of an image, because even if it sounded outrageous to the first ears who heard Isaiah's words, this is really our deepest hope.  We long for this world that is fragmented and divided to be put back together again.  We wait for the fault lines between groups, nations, cultures, and peoples to be repaired.  We hope for this fractured humanity, which is all we've ever known, to be healed and reconciled.  And for us who have been outsiders--we who come from Gentile background ourselves--our reason for belonging is that God has chosen to do exactly what Isaiah announced.  God has brought us into the new community of God's people, regardless of where we had come from or what our stories had been, and God has declared that we belong in Christ.  That belonging was never on the basis of our goodness or our sameness to other people. It has always been because it is God's good pleasure to create a people from every background, language, and culture.  It has always been God's design to make of us a found family--defined not by DNA and shared biology, but by God's mercy.

I'm reminded of the insight of theologian David N. Field, who wrote, with our own day in mind, "Migrants remind the church that it is the eschatological people of God which transcends, critiques, and subverts the dominant values of society by including the strangers, the excluded, the exploited, and the oppressed. The church should be a community whose identity is defined by its preferential option for strangers, migrants, and all whom the dominant society excludes, scapegoats, oppresses, and exploits--racism, white supremacy, and Christian nationalism are incompatible with this community."  I think he and the prophet Isaiah are on the same wavelength, even though they are separated by some twenty-seven centuries.  Both Field and the biblical prophet are saying that God is creating a deliberately different kind of community, one which brings in people from every place and language, especially those who are looked down on or pushed aside, and that our calling as the people of God is not to be ashamed of that surprising mix of people, but to call attention to it.  The diversity of peoples who have come to belong in Christ is how you know this isn't just another human club or society of the likeminded!  The differences in where we have come from are part of how you can tell something divine is going on here!

Isaiah is teaching us what to hope for in this ancient vision of his--and it's not for a future in which "our group" is kept hermetically sealed off from "those people." Isaiah is teaching us to hope for a day when doors and gates are flung wide open so that all people can be welcomed into the presence of God.  He is teaching us that God will really accomplish what, deep down, we have truly been aching for: a place for all of us to belong, no matter our backgrounds, stories, or differences.  Isaiah's message is scandalous at first blush, because it flies in the face of our gut impulse to fear "the other" and turn them away in the name of godliness and good order. But it is also exactly what we need to hear, because it reminds us that God will indeed heal the divisions that artificially separate us and gather us into God's own presence at the last.  And if that's where human history is headed, it is worth being oriented toward that kind of future now.

Lord God, draw us along with all peoples into your presence, and teach us your ways.

Within Jesus' Reach--November 28, 2025

Within Jesus' Reach--November 28, 2025

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding [Jesus] and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43)

He has nothing to offer or bargain with.  He has no status, influence, or leverage.  And while he freely admits he has committed some crime that has led to his death sentence, there's no actual evidence of him saying he is sorry, showing "repentance," or turning over a new leaf.  He doesn't pray the "sinner's prayer" or recite the Creed to establish he has adequately orthodox faith.  We don't even know his name. He is simply a desperate man, praying for an impossible hope: "Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom."  And Jesus promises him everything.

How about that.

For this final devotion in our year spent with "Life on the Edge," that's a good place to land.  The beginning and the end of our faith is our confidence in a God who not only choose to meet us in the pain and suffering of death with us, but who promises life beyond the grip of the grave as a free gift with no conditions, strings, or prerequisite accomplishments to earn it.  This is how Jesus reigns; this is the sort of king he is.

History has been marked with plenty of powerbrokers, presidents, and potentates who were willing to grant favors for those who promised a little something in return, or who weaponized the machinery of government against those who wouldn't fall in line.  But Jesus' kingship is different. He promises Paradise to the random stranger crucified beside him without requiring proof of life-change, a show of proper remorse, or devotion in return.  It's all grace. It always has been.

On the days when it feels like we have nothing but empty hands... on the days when our best attempts have crumbled to ash... on the days when we can't outrun the memories of our mess-ups, failures, and worst moments, we are still within Jesus' reach. Jesus' outstretched arms are open for us as well, the same as they were for this unnamed and condemned criminal, bleeding to death beside Jesus on crosses outside Jerusalem on another Friday long ago. There has never been anything we had to do, say, or know to earn our acceptance into his mercy; it has always been the reach of his grace that has mattered.  And if he can promise Paradise to the criminal on the cross with nothing more than a pleading, "Remember me," then he can give us the same assurance with whatever baggage we bring to this day.

Wherever you are right now in your life, whatever troubles are weighing you down, and whatever heartaches are pulling at you, you... and I, and the thief at Jesus' side, and a whole world full of us, too... are still within Jesus' reach.  His promise is for you, as a free gift. And there is no amount of messing it up, getting it wrong, or letting him down that will negate or nullify Jesus' promise.  The most we can do is trust the promise has been made to us.  

Today, as our wider culture gorges on "Black Friday" consumption with sales and purchases and the relentless need for "more," we have enough--exactly, perfectly, and completely enough.  We have been given the promise of life beyond the grip of death, even when all we bring to Jesus are empty hands.  He will remember us--not only that, he will walk through this day with us and promises to bring us to be with him in resurrection life. That promise is enough to get us through whatever else this day brings... and whatever tomorrows we get until we see him face to face.

Lord Jesus, remember us in your kingdom according to your powerful grace.

No Bulletproof Glass--November 27, 2025

No Bulletproof Glass--November 27, 2025

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” (Luke 23:33-38)

We have been taught to look for important people behind bulletproof glass or bodyguards. Conventional wisdom says they need to be protected, not only to a greater degree than other people's lives, but even with other people's lives.  Jesus, once again, turns the tables on conventional wisdom from the cross.

We heard these words, many of us, back this past Sunday in worship as part of the blessedly counterintuitive Gospel reading for "Christ the King" Sunday.  That's actually one of the things I love about the way the Revised Common Lectionary frames this final Sunday of the church's year.  On a day when we might expect "ra-ra" triumphalism or picture Jesus as some Celestial Conqueror zapping his enemies, because he's, you know, "king," we are brought instead to the story of Jesus' crucifixion at the hands of the powers of the day, who have decided to execute this itinerant rabbi because they deem him an enemy of the state and a threat to their power.  That by itself turns the usual ways we think of "important people" on its head.  Jesus has no bulletproof glass or security bunker to stay out of danger.

This is the scandal of the Gospel, which is also what makes it Good News: when the powers of the day call for Jesus' execution for seditious words and actions (talking about an alternative "kingdom" that is coming will always sound like a threat to the current regime), Jesus responds to them not with his own calls for violent retribution or revenge, but a request for mercy.  Even though the Empire thinks is in control, Jesus in fact is the one who remains calm and collected, praying, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." 

That turns our usual expectations upside-down, doesn't it? While we are used saying that the kings, the emperors, the presidents, and the prime ministers should be kept safe and out of harm's way, even to the point of Secret Service agents who would take a bullet for the "important person, Jesus turns the tables on that mindset.  He not only goes into trouble--all the way to death--but even there on a cross, seeks to protect others, including those who are responsible for putting him to death. While we are used to a culture in which powerful figures publicly wish for harm and defeat for their opponents, Jesus actively prays for forgiveness for those who are in the act of killing him.  It is a completely different understanding of power from what we are used to--and that's what makes Jesus so compelling.

When Christians say that Christ is "king," it is not in the sense of just replacing one self-absorbed tyrant with another one who happens to have a halo.  We mean that Jesus' way of being king completely undermines those old understandings of power.  Jesus never says, "I'm king, so my life is more important than yours," but rather, even to his dying breath says, "I'm king, so I will lay down my life for the sake of yours," even to people who have made themselves his enemies. That kind of servant-leadership will always upset the established empires of the day, because they cannot understand a use of power that doesn't seek its own interest.  Jesus' way will always seem subversive--and, yes, the powers of the day might even think it is seditious--precisely because it calls into question every king, kingdom, and regime that operates by "Me and My Group's Interests First" thinking.  This is the One to whom we pledge our allegiance--because he has even sought forgiveness for us when we were the ones with the hammer in our hands, complicit in Jesus' death.

There are a lot of things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, to be sure, no matter what else you have going on in your life or what else is going on in the world.  But today is a day to remember, too, alongside the abundance of food and the gift of shelter from the cold, the way Jesus, our King, turns kingship upside-down.  Even at our worst, Jesus is at his best.  And even when we would expect the one in power to be shielded from danger, Jesus keeps putting himself in harm's way for our sake and uses his authority to seek our forgiveness.

Lord Jesus, we give you thanks for your different way of being king.  Let your surprising reign transform all of our lives.

Nothing Held Back--November 26, 2025

Nothing Held Back--November 26, 2025

"[Christ] is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." [Colossians 1:18-20]

It was God who went to a cross, got buried in a borrowed grave, broke open the powers of hell, and came out the other side alive. It is none other and no less than God who wears the nail-scars like trophies of triumph now.

This is a pretty big deal, if you think about it. And it's why the early church fought very hard and wrestled for a very long time to make sure they were clear on what they believed about Jesus, the one in whom "all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell," as we heard from this passage this past Sunday in worship.  And the conclusion of all that debating, arguing, writing, sweating, and praying, was the conclusion that in Christ Jesus, we don't simply have a divine press secretary, a heavenly placeholder, or a celestial vice-president of human affairs: we have none other than "the fullness of God" embodied in the particular human body of a homeless rabbi from the backwater of the empire.

Other splinter groups, both in the early centuries and still today, got squirmy with the idea of a God who comes that close. They would be willing to say that Jesus is God's first and best creation, or that Jesus is empowered to speak for God, or that Jesus is the earthly messiah who had been promised by the prophets--but passages like this one insisted that wasn't enough. It's not enough to say that God wanted to reconcile with humanity and so sent a very, very good diplomat to broker a peace treaty or negotiate a deal on God's behalf. It's not enough to say that God appointed Jesus to be the divine representative, law-giver, religious teacher, spiritual coach, or heavenly proxy. The scandalous thing about the New Testament is its insistence, over and over again, that you lose something vital to the Christian faith if we don't recognize God's own face in the crucified Christ, and see God having taken on death in the risen body of Jesus.

And the difference is in the lengths God to which will go in order to rescue us. If you need to be picked up at the airport, and I tell you I'm too busy, but I'll ask another mutual acquaintance to go meet you, I'm kind of telling you that I think my other business is more important than you are. Maybe it's the hassle, or the need to have to go out of my way all the way to the airport, or maybe the roads are dangerous (if it's wintertime) and I just don't want to risk it myself. But whatever the reason, I'm sending the message that I'd rather do my other work, or keep myself safe, rather than go to the trouble of picking you up at the airport. But if you need a ride and, despite everything else on my to-do list, I come myself to get you, well then, it's clear, there are no lengths I won't go to. It's clear that you must be pretty important to me.

Well, if the Christian story is simply that God appointed the assistant to the regional manager to come rescue humanity while God minded the store, that tells you what God really values most. But if Jesus really is the fullness of God in a human life, well, that means that God doesn't hold any chips back, but goes all in for you and for me. It says that God wasn't more afraid of death than God was in love with you. It says that God was willing to be permanently scarred for our sake, rather than to be without us--and, to hear Colossians tell it, that "us" includes all things in creation--in the risen body of Jesus of Nazareth.

I have to tell you, in all honesty--that's why I keep on in this faith of ours, instead of giving up or looking for another religion. That's why I dare to believe it is good news that Jesus is risen: not simply the idea of someone coming back to life after death (which happens in the stories of a lot of other religions, too), but that the One who went through death and hell and resurrection is none other than the fullness of God in the flesh. The Greeks and Romans and Vikings all had plenty of mythological gods and goddesses and demigods and heroes who had brushes with death and then came to life. The ancient near East was full of them, too, from Mithras to Persephone to a long list of dying and rising sun gods. Resurrection stories were a dime a dozen in the ancient world. And to be honest there are lots of things that are frustrations and heartaches about the institution we call Church today, too--we get fussy over things Jesus didn't seem to care about, and we overlook the things Jesus said were essential; we get cranky when we don't get our way or feel inconvenienced; and we can end up divided over the things that were meant to unify us. There are lots of reasons one could cite for giving up on the ungainly hippopotamus that is the church (as T.S. Eliot called it once), and still find another religious story that involved an afterlife.

The thing that keeps pulling me back to this story, this Gospel, and to this messy and frustrating community called Church, is the news that none other than God entered into the mess all the way down to death--a real, human death--and raises that scarred, tortured body into life again, forever marking God's own being with the wounds. If the Christian message were just that God sent Jesus to fix things, but that God in God's own being didn't go through that death and resurrection, I wouldn't be able to be a Christian. It just isn't worth it if God says at some point, "I love you, but there's a length I won't go to for you, and in those instances, I send a substitute." But if the one we call Christ really is the "image of the invisible God," then there are no lengths God will not go to, and there are no boundaries or limits to the reach of God's love. And that, of course, is why the writer of Colossians can say that in the risen Christ, God has reconciled with "all things." No limits. Nothing held back. God goes all in.

Look, I don't mean to disrespect the sects and spin-off groups (I don't think I need to name names here) that talk about Jesus but can't bring themselves to confess with Colossians here that in Christ we have the fullness of God in a human life, but as I look at the mess of this world, the only hope I can see is if God really says there are no limits to how far God will go, how deep into our pain God will dive, or how much God will endure to reconcile with all things. If there are limits we are all doomed, because we are sure to push the boundaries and cross them one day or another.

But if we can dare to trust the vision of Colossians, then God really has put all the chips on the table, as it were, and has risked it all... for all of us. And that is news that will let me work up the nerve to put my feet on the floor another day. That is hope enough, even on days when the shadow of death is lurking painfully close.

Lord God, let us dare to believe it is true, that you have completely taken on our life and our death in Christ, and that there are no limits to the power or reach of your love.

The Music Is Still Playing--November 25, 2025

 

The Music Is Still Playing--November 25, 2025

"[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:15-17)

If you want to make music, you need more than notes on a page.  Even great composers, once they have finished the written score of their great symphonies or operas, don't really have music--not until you, or somebody else, or an orchestra of somebodies, start pulling bows across strings, playing keys on a piano, or blowing air into trumpets, flutes, and clarinets.  And all of those actions take sustained effort.  They require the continued labor of exertion, breath, and motion.  Without those, the music stops, even if the whole score is printed on the page.  In other words, if you want to have music--at least live music, you need more than just a creative mind who first comes up with the melodies and harmonies in the beginning.  You need the ongoing commitment of actual musicians who make the music happen in real time. So long as the band keeps playing, the music continues; when they stop for intermission, the music does, too.

I mention this because I've found it a helpful reminder about our own existence and our ongoing dependence on God--in particular the God we have come to know in Christ Jesus.  We depend on God for our existence, not simply in the sense that God created the universe a long, long time ago and we are a part of that universe, but in the sense that God continues to sustain the universe's existence at every moment.  That is to say, our lives are like music--they need not only the original creative act of writing the notes on paper, but the ongoing action of producing the sounds.  God continues to keep the universe going, at every point of our existence, like a flute player choosing to continue to blow air over the mouthpiece, like a cellist committing to pulling the bow across the string to make a sound, or like a pianist hammering out chords and arpeggios, which would all go silent if the fingers stopped moving.  The letter to the Colossians says the same thing about the entire cosmos, as many of us heard this past Sunday when these verses were read.  In Christ, the writer says, "all things hold together."  That is to say, it is an ongoing action and choice on God's part that the world keeps existing.  If God no longer committed to keeping the world going, it would cease to exist just as surely as the aria ceases when the soprano closes her mouth and stops singing.

We Christians don't only believe that God "invented" the universe in the sense of coming up with the idea or first writing a melody down.  We believe that this God in Christ keeps the music going, so to speak, by continuing to sustain the universe at every moment.  Unlike, say, a painting by Van Gogh or a sculpture by Rodin, which are still very much on display long after their creating artists have shuffled off this mortal coil, the universe is like live music: it continues to exist only insofar as God the Musician continues to pluck, breathe, and play the notes.  At every instant of our lives--both our best and most holy moments as well as our cruelest and crudest--God has graciously continued to keep the universe in existence and keep our lives going.

Now, if the letter to the Colossians is right about this (and I would insist it is), consider what that means about you, about me, about every other person who has ever lived or will ever live, as well as about every rock, tree, sea slug, stinkbug, squirrel, and giant squid. God has brought all of it into existence and has continued to sustain all of it.  God has continued to keep you and me in existence even at our worst moments and even when we have been turned completely away from God in utter rejection and rebellion.  God has continued to keep this whole world continuing, all the way down to you and me, even in the times we most ferociously turn our backs on God and actively break God's heart. A lesser deity would snap us out of existence for the sake of sheer spite (or relief).  A lesser god would decide to stop playing the music if there were sour notes.  If you or I were in God's place, I suspect we would have given up on the whole world long ago.  But God chooses at every moment--or perhaps we should say, from outside of the concept of linear time, God has forever chosen--to keep the universe going and to sustain our existence, apart from whether we have deserved it, whether we have prayed piously enough, whether we have followed the rules adequately, or whether we have believed the correct facts about God.  God's love in Christ holds all things together, even when we are actively trying to splinter things apart or rebel against that love.

That really does change the way we view our lives, or the world at large, doesn't it?  It can be tempting to assume that there are some people God doesn't really love, some places that are godforsaken, or some creatures that don't have any value or purpose.  But their sheer existence is evidence, Colossians says, that they are beloved of God--beloved enough for God to keep holding in being like a trumpet player sustaining a long note.  The existence of the world, even when we don't like some of the parts or people within the world, is itself the evidence that God loves the lot of us.  In other words, we can't say, "Well, God doesn't really care about So-and-So, but they already exist and God just doesn't interfere with the world anymore now that it's going on its own." Rather, even the people we think are least lovable, even the ones who we might think contribute the least to the value of the world, and even the people who are turned completely away from God are still beloved by God such that God actively wills to sustain them and the world in which they live.  The fact that the music is still playing is evidence that God continues to love this melody enough to keep breathing out the notes.  And there is no one--not a one--whom you will ever meet, who is not so beloved.

Let that truth sink in and change the way you see the world today... and let's see what happens.

Lord God, allow us to see our own existence--and that of the whole world--as signs of your faithful and sustaining love.

What Sort of King?--November 24, 2025

What Sort of King?--November 24, 2025

"May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, so that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:11-14)

The right question to ask is, "What sort of king reigns in the kingdom where I belong?"  Different kinds of rulers have different ways of ruling, after all.  So, to what sort of king, and what sort of kingdom, do we give our allegiance?

There's this moment of levity in one of the Marvel Avengers movies where a group of the heroes seek the help of T'Challa, also known as the hero Black Panther, who is king of the fictional Afro-futurist nation of Wakanda.  And as the visiting Avengers get off of their jet to meet him, Bruce Banner (the Hulk) turns and asks a fellow hero (Rhodey), "Are we supposed to bow?" Rhodey implies the answer is yes, because, after all, T'Challa is a king.  So Banner bows, only to have the king himself stop him and say, simply, "We don't do that here." In other words, this isn't that sort of kingdom, and I am not that sort of king. And with that, off the heroes go to plan their defense of the world from a hostile alien threat.

It is a sort of throwaway moment as a joke, but the theology of it is poking at me. It's a moment that reminds me how often we import baggage from our assumptions about how rulers, kingdoms, and power works--and those may have very little to do with the way God actually reigns, or the kind of king Jesus actually turns out to be.  We are used to stories of self-absorbed kings surrounded in gaudy gold-plated opulence who boast about their own greatness, and we might assume that Jesus is just one more insecure narcissist with a crown like them.  But the New Testament says differently: Jesus is a different kind of king, and "We don't do that here" in Jesus' kingdom.  Jesus reigns with the basin and the towel for washing feet, with the bread and fish for feeding the hungry, and with the thorns and cross of self-giving love.  The kind of king we have means we belong to a different kind of kingdom.

That's important to remember as we reflect on these words from Colossians, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship for Christ the King Sunday.  The writer of Colossians says that God "has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."  There is the sense that Jesus' kind of kingdom works differently from the ways of the world's kingdoms, powers, and empires.  There is the sense, in other words, that in response to a great many of the assumptions we bring, Jesus will say to us, graciously but firmly, "We don't do that here."

For one, the writer to the Colossians says that we have forgiveness of sins.  In the reign of Jesus, we don't endlessly keep track of who has wronged us and how we intend to get back at them; neither do we have to worry that God is still keeping tally of our mess-ups and failures until some future date when we'll get zapped.  We don't do that here.  For another thing, in the reign of Jesus, greatness isn't measured by putting yourself above other people or lording your position over them, but rather in serving.  In the reign of Jesus, we commit to showing love even to our enemies, because that is how God has loved us first--even while we were enemies of God.  In the reign of Jesus, we don't need to hoard our stuff, because we trust that God will provide for our needs, and so we can share so that others can have their daily bread as well.  We don't need to bully, belittle, or intimidate other people, because that's not how Jesus does things in his kingdom.  We have already been transferred from whatever other protocols and systems we had been stuck in, and we are now free to live under Jesus' gracious and gentle rule where justice and mercy are at home.

All of this puts an end the old insistence that we have to act the way everybody else does because "It's just how the world works." Others will insist that getting even is just the nature of things, or that you've got to step on other people in order to get ahead, because that's just "how things get done." But we can respond differently--we don't have to be obligated to do things the way "everybody else does it," because we have been transferred into a different kingdom.  And in Jesus' community, simply, "We don't do that here."  We don't have to go elsewhere, like up to heaven, or inside your local church sanctuary, or to go find a "Christian nation" (because that's not how Jesus operates).  Rather, right here, right where we are, we can begin already to live following Jesus' way, seeing the world from Jesus' perspective.  We can live right now, in this place and this time, from the vantage point of God--from the edge of eternity.

How might your day or your week change when you start to see things from the perspective of Jesus?  What old habits can we be done with?  What new possibilities might be opened up?   How will we interact with other people given the way Jesus treats them?  Let's see where those questions take us today.

Lord Jesus, free us from the baggage of the old powers and orders we have lived under, so that we can live fully and freely in your reign.