A Strategy of Joy--April 17, 2026

A Strategy of Joy--April 17, 2026

"In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your very selves." (1 Peter 1:6-9)

Easter people laugh.

We laugh, not because we are trying to pretend that rotten things don't happen in the world. They do. They happen to everybody, and they happen to us, who are a smaller subset within "everybody." Easter people laugh even while it is also true that we are called to weep with those who weep.

But we laugh because the resurrection of Jesus gives us the ability to disarm the powers of death and sin and cruelty. The resurrection gives us a way to see the worst that they can do, and still say back, almost tauntingly, "You do not get the last word."

Laughter, then, for the followers of Jesus, isn't a distraction, or a way of ignoring the awful things, the sadness, the injustice, the brokenness, and the violence of the world. Laughter becomes our way, or as First Peter here says it, "rejoicing" is our way, because we are in on the great cosmic eternal joke that death thought it had won over Jesus the innocent victim, but resurrection shows death that it has been duped. The powers that killed Jesus were fooled into thinking they got the last word, too. The rulers of the day were convinced that they could make an example of Jesus and silence any opposition... but the rolled-away stone shows us that they could not stop his momentum. And still today, laughter is our way of disarming and disrupting the dismal dark.

I am reminded of a remark Mel Brooks would often make in interviews, when people would ask about the repeated habit he has of making fun of Hitler and the Nazis in his movies and comedy. Whether it's the all out parody musical "Springtime for Hitler" in The Producers, or the shots he takes in History of the World, Part One, or wherever else in his movies you find it, Mel Brooks has often said that laughing at Hitler is part of what undercuts the power of his hate and cruelty all these decades later. When The Producers was being adapted from a movie into a stage show in the early 2000s, he gave an interview where he said, for example, "by using comedy, we can rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths."

In other words, without denying the atrocities of what evil can do, one kind of effective resistance is to poke fun, to laugh, to ridicule the powers that think they are in total control. By using laughter to combat the powers of the day, their insecurity is revealed, and we point to another, truer, Power--the power of abundant life, the power of resurrection, the power of the risen Jesus.  Because of Jesus' resurrection that broken open the worst that the powers of the day could do to Jesus (hanging him on a cross), we, too, can practice a strategy of joy.

First Peter calls us to that kind of response to evil, to suffering, and to the powers of cruelty and death. We will "rejoice"--which is to say, we will laugh--and get under the thin skin of the those powers, and unmask them as impostors. First Peter says that the resurrection gives us the kind of hope it takes to learn to rejoice in the midst of suffering, even of persecution, and to let that joyful laughter be part of our resistance against death, against greed, against sin, and against cruelty.

This is critical, and this is revolutionary, if you think about it. Our own gut tendency is to want to get very serious in the face of the powers that persecute. We can even think that we have to respond to the mean-spirited anger of those powers with more mean-spirited anger of our own. In the first century when First Peter was written, there was the specter of official persecution from the empire, and of unofficial persecution from local pockets of people who didn't like these Christ-followers. There were people in the administration of the empire who were trying to stamp out early Christianity, and there were others who just viewed Christ-followers with suspicion (us and our crazy way of including poor and rich, free and slave, men and women, like those old boundaries and distinctions do not hold anymore!). From the beginning, Christians have lived in cultures that were hostile in varying degrees. But First Peter's word to us is that we aren't supposed to make a fuss and insist on official protection from that hostility. Followers of Jesus are not supposed to go around complaining that it's not fair, or that we should be free from the persecution. And we are certainly not called to spend our energy trying to make things "easier" for ourselves--that just smacks of self-serving and self-interest and the impulse to stay comfortable. Instead, First Peter says, our calling in the midst of hostility is to rejoice--to laugh. Laughing provokes bullies to overplay their hand. Laughing shrugs off whatever angry threats the powers of the day will make. Laughing strips them of their power... and instead, finds joyful hope in the resurrection.

For followers of Jesus two thousand years later, we still struggle with the question of how to live in a wider culture that doesn't often line up with the things we believe Jesus is teaching us to hold dear. Much like in the first century Roman Empire, sometimes the tension is with the official powers who govern, and sometimes it is from being at odds with the general "feel" or atmosphere of culture at large. And, yeah, sometimes we run the risk of standing out from the crowd, or saying unpopular things. But First Peter calls us, like he is simply following Jesus' lead, to rejoice in the midst of being rejected by others--to laugh in the midst of it all. We don't go looking for special treatment, or for special protection, and we don't expect to get an easy time with the powers of the day. Instead, in the face of the mean-spirited bluster of the bullies of the day, the community of Jesus dares to rejoice, and we take away the power that was meant to make us afraid. And so we laugh.

Today, laugh. Laugh full and deep. Because you and I are in on the biggest punch-line in the history of the universe. We are Easter people.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to be joyful in this day, confident that you will not let despair get the last word.

All Grace, Baby--April 16, 2026

All Grace, Baby--April 16, 2026

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:3-5)

There is something beautiful--and honest--about the expression in English for how new lives come into the world.  Typically, we say that the new mother "gives birth" to her child, and it's that first half, the verb "give," that strikes me as I hear it in these words from First Peter that many of us heard back on Sunday in worship.  Giving, by definition, isn't something that requires earning--otherwise, it's not a gift.  To say that our mothers "gave birth" to us is a reminder that we did not earn or achieve our own existence, but could only receive our own lives as a gift. And to say as First Peter does that God, like a mother, has "given us a new birth" makes it clear that our lives in Christ are also wholly gifts of grace, not our accomplishments.

Framing things that way is a big deal, because it compels us to be honest about how we get into relationship with God, who does the action to bring us into that relationship, and what kind of assurance that gives us as well.  After all, most every other kind of relationship in our lives is conditional and at risk of being broken by our messing up.  If I'm an employee for a company, my employer will only keep me around as long as I'm earning my keep and doing enough to keep the first quarter profits up.  If I'm a member of a club, I belong only insofar as I pay my dues, and I can only get in if I'm deemed good enough or meet the criteria for membership.  If I want to make the team, I have to make it through try-outs to prove my ability and keep in good enough condition, scoring enough points and winning enough games, to hold my place on the roster.  But when a mother births a child, there's nothing the child can do to earn it.  And when you are brought into a family, whether through birth or adoption, your belonging is not dependent on worthiness, accomplishments, or even promises of what you WILL do when you grow up. It's all grace, baby, from beginning to end.

All of this makes the Christian story different from all the offers of "self-help" and the old narrative of "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" that are so prevalent in our culture.  The Gospel insists that our standing before God has never been up for debate, and it's never been the result of our earning, achieving, or even initiating.  God gives us the new birth into Christ--that is, God is the subject of the verb, and we are the object of the verb.  God does the birthing.  God does the giving.  God is the One to thank--not ourselves, our resumes, or our natural talent and charisma.  If our mortal lives are all the result of our mothers having sweated and suffered in labor for us, then our lives in Christ are also wholly God's labor, and we find ourselves as recipients of that gift.

So much of what passes for Respectable Religion in our culture is hung up on what WE have to DO in order to "get saved."  Sometimes it's framed as a matter of keeping the rules well enough, racking up enough good deeds on your permanent record, giving to the church, serving on mission teams, winning other souls, or believing the correct facts about God.  Sometimes it's described as a matter of taking the first step, praying the right prayer, asking Jesus into your heart (adequately, of course), having the proper spiritual experience, or joining a church.  But whatever the list of requirements that folks offer in the name of Respectable Religion, it misses the point--the Scriptures keep insisting that this is God's gift to us, God's action for us, and God's initiative moving toward us. Like a mother who gives her children their own lives before they've done a thing and hands them both their own existence and a relationship with her, God has done the labor and "given us new birth" into Christ, not only for this life but into resurrection life beyond death. All of it is a gift, and the most we can do with a gift is to receive it with grateful (empty) hands, allowing the gift to deepen our relationship with the Giver.

That's the Christian life--not a set of theological transactions in order to acquire a spot in heaven, not a self-help scheme for us to earn our way into God's approval, and not a tenuous, conditional deal that could fall apart at a moment's notice at the whim of a capricious would-be deal-maker, but a gift. And it's been a gift all along, from before we were even aware of its having been given, right up even though this very moment, like a mother giving birth to her child.

Yep.  It's all grace, baby.  It's all grace.

Lord God, we give you thanks, because that's all we can do, for having birthed us into new life in Christ as a gift.  Let our lives grow into the relationship you have already begun with us.

Un-Transactional Grace--April 15, 2026

Un-Transactional Grace--April 15, 2026

"But Thomas [who was called the Twin], one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord.' But he said to them, 'Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe'." A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!" (John 20:24-28)

It's not our faith that makes God's forgiveness possible, but the other way around. It's because God chooses to set aside our failures with grace that we are able to believe. If we weren't clear about that already, Thomas' story here shows it to us for sure.

Here in this scene from the same story many of us heard this past Sunday, we get our heads on straight by the way Jesus initiates things with Thomas. He doesn't chastise Thomas for not believing well enough, strongly enough, or correctly enough; rather, Jesus meets him at his place of honest skepticism and lets faith grow from there. Jesus starts by assuring Thomas that he's not holding his past doubts ["Unless I see the nail marks for myself I won't believe!"] against him, but instead has come to enable Thomas to trust that Jesus is indeed alive and risen.

This is important for us to understand, because honestly, a lot of times we Respectable Religious Folk get it backwards. Sometimes we make the Christian faith sound like a transaction between us and God, where our belief is the currency that we trade in, like ticket and Chuck E. Cheese, for prizes of grace. Believe well enough, or firmly enough, we say, and then your sins are forgiven. And we end up packaging it in the slogan, cribbed sloppily from the sixteenth-century reformers, that says, "We're saved by faith."

But of course, the Reformers like Luther, Calvin, and the rest didn't mean to say that our believing the correct facts about God earns God's forgiveness. After all, forgiveness, like all forms of grace, cannot be earned--that's part of the definition. And second, those voices of the Reformation understood, too, that even our faith itself is a gift we receive from God in Christ, not something we present to God as our accomplishment in exchange for prizes from under the glass ticket counter. Faith doesn't start as our bright ideas about God, for which we win a reward, but as the new creation made possible by God's coming to us first without holding our doubts or disbelief against us. In other words, God doesn't wait until we believe correctly enough to forgive our sins or skepticism; rather, it's God's coming to us while we're struggling that enables us to believe and trust God. That's what makes the Christian story good news rather than a deal we transact with God.

And it's that willingness of God to come to us without preconditions or grudges, that leads Jesus to appear for Thomas' sake a week after that first resurrection day. A Savior who kept score and held our failures against us would have left a note under the door to the upper room that said, "When Tommy gets his act together and can recite the catechism or at least the creed, then I'll make another appearance." A Savior whose forgiveness was contingent on proficient faith would have given a theology exam for Thomas to take before letting him know he was in the club. But that's just not how God's kind of love works--it doesn't withhold acceptance until we've proven our worth, but announces that we are already accepted even before we can believe it's true... in order that we can come to believe. Getting that straight is a matter of putting the horse before the cart, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Today, a lot of the folks we'll cross paths with have gotten it in their heads that God's waiting on them to believe well enough or hard enough before telling them they have enough faith points to win the big box labeled "Salvation" up on the top shelf of prizes. And that not only sucks us into the vortex of constantly fearing our faith is never good enough, but it also just doesn't align with the way the risen Jesus shows up for Thomas while he still can't bring himself to believe the resurrection. Today's a day for us to be clear that it's God's grace that makes our faith possible, not our faith that wins us a clean slate from the Almighty. Today's a day for us to tell someone else who needs to hear it that there is no ticket counter... and there never has been.

Lord Jesus, meet us where we are, and let your grace call forth faith from us to follow you where you lead us.

You Are What You Breathe--April 14, 2026

You Are What You Breathe--April 14, 2026

"When [Jesus] had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained'." [John 20:22-23]

Breath is a curious thing.

Right now, there is a breath of air in my lungs (whoops, there it went; now there's another). That air is not just contained within the space that my body occupies, but in a very real sense, that air is me. The oxygen in the air I just breathed actually becomes a part of me, coursing through the blood in my body, and fueling every cell that makes up the human called "me." The breath I take in comes to be a part of my body, which is to say, at least in part, that if it is true that you are what you eat, then it is also true that I am what I breathe.

And then, of course, the reverse is true with every breath out. When you and I exhale, we give back carbon dioxide, which had been accumulating throughout the cells of our bodies, and we expel that out into the world. What used to be a part of us is now "out there," joining up with the invisible ocean of air in which we are all swimming all the time. And some of the air I have just breathed out, the person next to me will breathe in, while my lungs take in air that they have just breathed out as well.

Breath is funny that way--it is, in a sense, just about as personal and intimate as you can get--and yet, it can be shared (and is being shared all the time) with the rest of the world all the time. (This is not even mentioning the exchange between plants and animals, in which the carbon dioxide I exhale is taken in by the trees and grass around me, and they give me oxygen I need.) So in a real sense, it is possible for breath that was a part of me just a moment ago to fill your lungs and become a part of you--at least if we were in the same room breathing the same air, or when a first responder does rescue breathing.

There's a sense of that closeness, that intimacy, there when Jesus "breathes" on his disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit in this passage from the story many of us heard in worship this past Sunday. It echoes the early scenes from Genesis when God takes the lifeless lump of clay from the ground and brings humanity to life by breathing into the dust of the earth, as the Spirit of God broods over creation at the beginning (see Genesis 1 and 2). You can hear the Spirit-breath-wind connection, too, even in the word "spirit," which comes from the same root ("spir-") as "inspire," (to be "breathed-into," as by divine presence), "expire" (to breathe out one's last breath), and even "conspiracy" (literally "breathing together"). The Greek of the New Testament carries a similar connection between the Spirit and the wind or air, with the word for "spirit", pneuma, related to the word for wind/air, and carried over in English into words like "pneumatic" or "pneumonia."

So there inside this locked room on the first Easter evening, Jesus breathes out some of himself and gives himself to the disciples. He communicates the Spirit to them. That hopefully reminds us that for whatever Christians think they mean by "the Holy Spirit," we are talking about a reality connected to Jesus. We are not talking about an abstract impersonal Force, a la Star Wars. We are not talking about a different deity with a different personality or different rules of engagement. To be filled with the Spirit of God is to be filled, in a sense, with the same breath that was in Jesus and now resides in us--indeed, like air molecules, the Spirit even becomes a part of us.

That means that for whatever the Spirit does in our lives, it will bear a certain similarity to the character of Jesus himself. The way that Jesus provocatively crossed barriers to share a table with the people written off as just "tax collectors and sinners" became the way the Spirit of Jesus led the early church to cross barriers out beyond Judeans like themselves, to Samaritans (the scandal!), to Gentiles of all languages, cultures, and religious backgrounds. The way Jesus taught and practiced radical forgiveness became the same way the Spirit of Jesus gave the huddled band in the upper room the authority to announce forgiveness of sins. The way Jesus healed people regardless of how much it upset the Respectable Religious Crowd and unnerved the powers of the day became the same way that the Spirit of Jesus inspired the apostles to heal people even when it got them into trouble with those same religious and political so-and-sos. See a pattern here?

What the walking, talking Jesus did in 30AD Palestine was connected with that the Spirit-led followers of Jesus did--because the Spirit we are talking about is, after all, the Spirit of Jesus! There's no bait-and-switch. The early church was not given license, like a restaurant franchise, to take the cross-shaped corporate logo of Jesus-Corp for brand recognition and then take their mission in whatever new direction they wanted. No, the Holy Spirit who indwells the people called church is the Spirit of the same Jesus--so at our most faithful, we will continue loving, acting, speaking, and reaching outward in the same ways Jesus did.

This is really important to be clear on, because it is the presence of the Spirit that makes us more than simply a Jesus-Appreciation-Club or a Ancient-Palestine-Historical-Society. We don't just gather on Sundays to recite our favorite past acts of what-Jesus-once-did-but-is-no-longer-in-the-business-of-doing, but rather the Spirit of the same Christ Jesus is let loose among us, so that we will continue to do what Jesus did: pushing across boundaries in love, practicing radical mercy even to our enemies, working for healing for all people, regardless of whether it scandalizes the Respectable Religious Crowd. That's what the church is always to be about--not just because that's what Jesus was about in the first century, but because it is still what the Spirit of Jesus leads us to do and to be in the twenty-first century.

See? It's like breath. Jesus breathes (the Spirit/wind/breath/pneuma) onto his followers, and now the same vision and mission and love and passion that animated Jesus become a part of us. And ever since, in a long chain of followers, the same Spirit has been breathed from one generation to another, all the while still being the Spirit of Jesus, who leads us in his particular direction.

Our job as Christians is not to try and forcibly copy what the historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, did in his setting--or else we would all be wearing tunics and sandals, speaking Aramaic, and trying to get a modern person to crucify us. It's not that we have to slavishly duplicate what Jesus did two thousand years ago. It's that the Spirit of this same Jesus has been breathed into us, so that the Spirit fills our very being like oxygen in our bloodstream, and so that the living presence of this same Jesus will lead us to work and act and love and dare in ways that look like Jesus, and sound like Jesus, but played in a new key, so to speak.

You are what you breathe, it turns out--and Jesus has breathed the Spirit into you. Where will the Spirit lead you today? How will someone see Christ in you?

Lord Jesus, let your Spirit animate us today, and then send us where you will...

The Relentless Gift of Peace--April 13, 2026

The Relentless Gift of Peace--April 13, 2026

"When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Judeans, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' After he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you'." (John 20:19-21)

You know the scene--it's been played out in some form or another in a hundred variations on TV and movies. The spacecraft ominously hovers over the ground, while tense music plays in the background. The army has cordoned off the landing zone, and representatives of Earth's leaders [or just of the country where the ship lands] stand at the ready, flanked by soldiers and s to greet whoever--or whatever--disembarks from the flying saucer. Then, often with a hiss of steam or smoke, and a flash of lights, the strange silhouettes of alien visitors emerge, and then proceed down a landing ramp onto the ground.

And in the span of time between the arrival of the alien craft and the moment of first contact, the question just hangs there in the air: why have they come? Are they here to conquer? To exterminate? To broker an alliance? To use us as guinea pigs or collect us as specimens? Could they be reliable if they say they have come with good will? And then, classically, the alien delegates say [sometimes sincerely, and sometimes with ulterior motives], "We come in peace."

There's something of that same tension for the frightened band of Jesus' disciples on that first Easter evening, isn't there? They are already afraid of what the outside powers might do to them if they were found out. The disciples had seen the horror of what the brutal Roman army, the ruthless religious police, and the bloodthirsty lynch mob could do when they laid hands on Jesus. And so, of course, they were afraid of going out of doors and being caught themselves--they could end up on crosses just as easily. But beyond that fear is a deeper, more ominous anxiety, because they have heard the rumors by Sunday evening that Jesus is alive again. They just don't know what to expect from a resurrected Jesus.

After all, the disciples all remember how they had left things with Jesus, in the last moments they were all together. While a handful of the women in Jesus' circle stayed with him at the cross, Jesus' hand-picked group of twelve had all abandoned him, despite insisting that they would all face death before denying him. Some had just slipped away into the night out of fear when the police and the mob came for him in the garden, and some [ahem, Peter, the "rock" of the church] outright denied even knowing him. They had literally left Jesus hanging, and many of them had either implicitly or explicitly said they had nothing to do with Jesus--and then he died. So now that there are rumblings that the tomb was empty and Jesus is on the loose, there's got to be some of that sci-fi alien visitor movie vibe in the room when Jesus just appears out of nowhere, through locked doors, to find them. Why has he come? What does he want from them? Is he angry for their betrayal and abandonment? Has he come for revenge?

With all of that in mind, it makes perfect sense then that Jesus' first words to these fearful disciples is to say, "Peace be with you." It's not just a throwaway greeting. It's not a scornful, "Where WERE you guys when I needed you?" There's no scolding, "Didn't you believe me when I said I would rise from the dead?" And there is no hint at all of, "You thought you could hide from ME, did you? Well, I've come to settle a score..." Rather, Jesus says, reliably and emphatically, "I come in peace."

The risen Jesus' first impulse when coming face to face with the whole group of his gathered disciples is to assure them that he's not holding their past failures against them--and he never did. Jesus does not weaponize the past, but lets it go. In other words, resurrection and release from guilt go hand in hand. And together, both make it possible for fearful disciples to be restored into community with Jesus and with one another. Jesus doesn't rise from the dead in order to get revenge on his faithless disciples (or his murderers, for that matter), but rather announces that he has come to give them peace.

And almost as if to make sure they didn't miss it or dismiss it as a perfunctory greeting, Jesus says it again: "Peace be with you." The repetition is important: it is how Jesus demonstrates that his gift of peace is relentless--it is continuously given even when we have rejected him and turned away. Jesus makes it clear that not even the disciples' fearful abandonment of him when things were at their darkest will exclude them now from his community, his new life, or his peace. And if even that can't get you kicked out of Christ's grace, I can't imagine what any of us can do or say (or fail to do or say) that could exceed the limits of his reconciling presence. All of this is to say that the resurrection of Jesus is what assures us that God's love in Christ will not let go of us and will not hold our past against us. God's kind of love just doesn't hold onto our mess-ups that way, and the risen Jesus brings no resentments inside that locked room on Easter evening.

Taking that seriously in our lives will set us free, too. It means there need be no fear that Jesus has come to zap us like an invading space alien in a movie. There is no plot twist that he's really out to get us, and there are no shoes waiting to drop. Jesus has left our past failures behind, and he's not bringing them up any longer. Instead, he comes in peace.

For so many people around us, all they've heard from Respectable Religious people is to be afraid that God is going to zap them for all their past, present, and future wrongs, unless the adequately go through whatever steps or jump through whatever hoops they have in mind when they talk about "repentance." Did you pray the right prayer, did you do enough to show God you are serious about changing your ways? Did you mean the apology sincerely enough? Did you believe hard enough in Jesus? Jesus' disciples in the locked room do none of those things, and Jesus doesn't even wait around to be invited into the room, or into their hearts. He comes in and announces peace and forgiveness first, knowing that's the first step to getting them to unlock the door and head out into the world with the same message.

So for you and me today, our calling is much the same--to dare to trust what Jesus says to us, and then to help other people to know what Jesus makes clear from the first words out of his mouth: he comes in peace.  

And he relentlessly gives that same peace to us still--even now.

Lord Jesus, enable us to trust your promise of peace and forgiveness, so that we can pass it along to everyone around us, too.

Hope for Deceased Jerks (Like Me)--April 10, 2026

Hope for Deceased Jerks (Like Me)--April 10, 2026

"So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." (Romans 6:11-14)

Some days it feels like none of us have left junior high school. Some days it seems like we have chosen not to grow up and move beyond the meanness of those adolescent days. And that is a real shame... because we were freed, long ago, to walk out the door and leave those old insecure, immature ways behind. We could... if we dared to believe we really are free from the childish game-playing of middle school.

I'll confess, for my own part, at least, that I was a part of a lot of rottenness in my seventh and eighth-grade years. (Probably in a lot of ways, I still am. But God is working on me, and I am, in some ways, less of a jerk today than I was in that earlier era of my life.) I could be vicious--using well-honed sarcasm to rip someone else apart. Joining with other kids to find some weak spot in another kid and to keep making fun of them for it, in the hopes that the crowd would go after them instead of me. We were like sharks at a feeding frenzy--once there was blood in the water, you just did whatever you could not to be the one eaten by the others. So if some kid had the wrong kind of shoes, or their clothes weren't name brand, or if they liked a kind of music that wasn't popular, or if they wore their hair the wrong way, or if you could make everyone else think they were clumsy or slow or ugly, you would fixate on that and make sure to perpetuate any running jokes about them that you could. And you did it because you figured that if everyone was targeting some other kid, you would get through the day without being ridiculed or mocked or branded as a loser.

No, wait. I can't say "you." I mean "me." I did those things. You may have, too, but I can't hide from the ways I was a part of that kind of cruelty, that kind of meanness, toward other kids, back in junior high school. I did those things. I said those things. I used my smarts to pick apart other kids... in the hopes that I wouldn't get shredded to pieces myself. I need to own all that.

And this is the thing I need to be clear about. I was, by all accounts, "one of the good ones." Seventh and eighth-grade Steve was on the honor roll, in lots of clubs, went to church, and was student council president. I was in so many ways the poster boy for being a good, upstanding and exemplary student. But at the very same time, it was like there was this unspoken code that we all had to be merciless to other kids at the same time, no matter what other things made you look "good" to the adults, because none of us wanted to become the next target of the crowd. It was like we could be nice and pleasant outside of school, but the moment we walked into the building, a whole new set of rules came into play, and we had no choice but to play it--either be cruel and mean-spirited to others to make them the easy target rather than yourself, or find yourself on the menu. And in spite of all the other ways I was a good little boy in junior high school, I was also, without a doubt, so insecure in a lot of ways about myself that I was ruthless toward other kids I thought I could make into targets to keep myself out of the crosshairs.

I was both caught in a system I did not design that brought out the worst in me, and at the very same time, I participated in that system and accepted its terms because it was easier to go along and just try not to come out the loser than to be strong enough not to play.

Thank God junior high doesn't last forever. And thank God that at some point I stopped caring what other people thought enough that I realized I didn't have to keep playing those asinine games that made me into a real jerk. Thank God that at some point I began to see in myself the things I was so quick (and merciless) to make fun of in others, hoping to keep the attention off of my own shortcomings. Thank God that old version of me could be outgrown and left behind.

I want to suggest that something like this is the human condition. The Bible's word for it is "sin." But we have a way of flattening that complex word into sounding just like a list of forbidden activities or swear-words you're not allowed to say. But sin is more than just a list of bad actions. It is so much worse, so much more insidious. Sin is systemic. Sin is cancerous. Sin gets its tendrils into each of us, and all around us until every part of us is infected, even in ways we don't directly choose or realize. It's an awful lot like being in junior high school. You get to seventh grade (at least that's when the break in school years was for me), and you step into the system that was there already--a system of kids attacking kids, cool ones picking on the uncool, and a whole bunch in between trying to do anything they can not to become the next target. And even though nobody I knew in junior high school wanted to be that way toward others, somehow it was like we all just stepped into the systems, the routines, the patterns, that were handed to us, and we just kept all that mean-spirited rottenness going, because we could not imagine things being any different.

Sin is like that. We come into this world, and we willingly give ourselves into the system we are presented with. Even though the game is terrible, and even though it petrifies us to come out as "losers" in that game, we play along. It plays on our worst fears, our worst insecurities, and it draws out our meanness to one another, our selfishness, our cutthroat dog-eat-dog side, and it teaches us to do whatever it takes not to be on the bottom. And so we all willingly give ourselves over to that order of things, and we look for someone else to keep down, someone else to hate, someone else to make into our scapegoat, someone else we can make into the evil "them."

The thing of it is, we can be, to the outside observer, perfectly nice and friendly in lots of ways at the same time. We can know how to put on a professional smile, to speak politely and kindly in certain circumstances (you know, like when someone important is watching), but then continue to nurture the rottenness inside as long as we think we're not letting it show. That's the really insidious thing about sin--most of the time, it doesn't present itself as cartoonishly obvious black-hat-wearing villainy. Sin has a way of making itself look respectable, and it does a fantastic job of persuading us that when we are selfish... or cruel... or indifferent... or hateful... or greedy... that we are just doing what we have to do in order to survive in the world. Sin's greatest trick is making us unable to recognize how it works us like puppets, so that we can all tell ourselves, "I'm a good person! I'm not selfish... or hateful... or greedy... or bigoted... or apathetic... or racist... or crooked!" And as long as we fool ourselves into accepting that lie, we will never see how terribly tangled we are in a system that is killing us.

And so we end up with, well, exactly the world we are living in: a world in which we have learned to look good and righteous (and to persuade ourselves that we are), while at the same time, we participate in systems and game-playing that lead us to do rotten and cruel things, say rotten and cruel words, and think rotten and cruel thoughts, all while we are convinced we have no choice but to give into those things. In other words, it's junior high school all over again.

But... what if it didn't have to be this way?

What if I weren't doomed to keep reinforcing the system I inherited? What if I didn't have to mindlessly accept the pick-on-the-weakest game-playing that keeps leading me to attack others so I won't be made the target myself? What if I could honestly look at the ways I have participated in patterns that harm others, whether I realized I was doing it or not, in the hope that I could change?

This, dear ones, is what Paul the apostle says we have been given: we have been freed in Christ from the terrible game-playing we have been playing all this time. We don't have to keep repeating the patterns that were thrust on us. We don't have to keep giving ourselves to the habits and systems that we were told were "the only way things can be." We don't have to keep seeking to target others to make ourselves feel better. We don't have to keep running away from the uncomfortable truths about ourselves. We don't have to keep being cruel to others (or being silent when others are cruel, which is just as mean and twice as cowardly). We don't have to play any of those childish games, because we have been brought to a new life in Christ.

And in Christ, we could be done with the game-playing--except that we keep running back to it. We can be freed from caring what the crowd thinks of us... and so we no longer have to attack someone lower on the social food-chain to make them the accepted prey. We don't have to keep doing any of that. It's just that we do keep running back to those old patterns.

When we do, it's pathetic. It's like a high school graduate coming back to their old junior high to go pick on the new seventh-graders, because they never really learned to be comfortable in their own skin. And Paul's warning is much the same: we are free in Christ from having to keep living in those patterns (patterns we inherited without choosing them, but which we are complicit in because we keep perpetuating them), but when we slide back into the old ways, it's as sad and tragic as refusing to leave our junior-high selves back in adolescence. We are freed from that, Paul says, but we still live with this tempting impulse to keep running back to it.

That's why Paul finds it necessary to be so stark about things: he sees it in terms of death and resurrection. Our old selves died in Christ, so when we insist on remaining in those terrible patterns and systems of sin, it's like we're choosing to stay in the grave rather than rising up to new life. And that is a horrible shame. It's a waste of a resurrection.

You and I, Paul says, have been given a new life. Already. The old selves that were so insecure they would attack someone else in order to avoid getting attacked ourselves... those old versions of ourselves could be left behind like our eighth grade locker combination and Trapper Keepers. We could let those old things die and step into the new life we have been given. But it will mean that we finally decide we are done with the childish thinking that keeps bringing out the worst in each of us.

When you frame it that way, the choice should be obvious: why would any of us choose to stay in the old ways of death? Why would any of us choose to stay in junior high school and the immature mindset that goes along with it? And Paul's proposed answer is, quite simply, "You wouldn't! So don't keep running back to the old ways and let sin keep getting its clutches into you. You are already freed from having to play by its rules. Dare to live like that's true!"

So that's our daily struggle. It means cutting through all the ways we try to present ourselves as nice, well-behaved boys and girls to be honest about the ways we are tempted back into the old ways of greed, selfishness, prejudice, hatred, and complacency. It means being willing to reject the systems around us all the time--like they are in the air we breathe and the water we drink--in order to step into a new way of being human. It means daring to look deeper into ourselves to see how we have been complicit in a lot of rottenness, and daring to believe we do not have to continue in those ways.

That's the freedom we have been given. Ours for the taking. It is the freedom to live like we have been raised from the dead already. It is the freedom to walk out of the junior-high mentality and never darken those doors again.

Come on. Step out into the light. Take the hand of another recovering sinner like me, and let us live like we are new people already.  There is indeed hope, after all, for deceased jerks like me.  The old selves are dead, and we do not have to keep digging up the bones of our immature and insecure past versions to play the old games.  God has brought us to life again; we live as Easter people right now.

Lord Jesus, help us to see honestly the ways we have given ourselves over to our worst impulses of self-preservation, so that we can be free for you and free to love all.

Tethered to the Risen Christ--April 9, 2026

Tethered to the Risen Christ--April 9, 2026

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." (Romans 6:3-5)

Here's the bottom line: wherever Jesus goes... we go.

Through life... together. Through death... together. And into resurrection life... together.

It is vitally important to be clear about this, because the pop theology around us usually totally misses the boat here. A lot of the time, in fact, you'll hear people say almost the opposite. You'll hear, "Jesus rose from the dead and is alive in heaven... now, do YOU have what it takes to get there, too?" You'll hear it like there's some giant disconnect between Jesus' future and ours, like we know Jesus gets to be in heaven, but as if there's no way of knowing what lies in store for us. You'll hear them say that we had better get our act together so that we'll be acceptable one day waiting our application forms to be processed in some kind of heavenly customs and immigration office.

I distinctly remember hearing that kind of bad (but pretty common) theology as a kid from songs on the radio that dared to delve into the subject. I remember hearing that classic of the early 1960s, "Last Kiss" as sung by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers, and the recurring refrain,

"Oh where, oh where can my baby be?

The Lord took her away from me.

She's gone to heaven so I've got to be good--

So I can see my baby when I leave this world."

And I can remember thinking as a kid, "That's not how it works--you don't get to heaven by being good!" (Something of my formative childhood years steeped in Lutheranism must have stuck, it would seem.) But in all seriousness, that song is exactly how conventional wisdom generic pop theology assumes it works: when someone you love dies, you might be reasonably sure that they, in all their kindness and niceness and pleasantness, have earned themselves a spot in glory... but oh dear, we down here still enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune here in our daily live, we're all afraid that we won't make the cut and we'll be separated from the good and holy ones, and of course, from God--the true Good and Holy One. Sometimes our assumption is, "Well of course Jesus is alive and risen and now in glory with God, and good for him. But I have no way of knowing if I'll get to be where he is one day... I just don't know if I've been good enough.

And we do the same to others as well. Religious folks dangle the hope of heaven like a carrot in front of listening ears... and then comes the fine print. "Well... if you want to get to heaven, you'll have to be good enough... you'll have to show that you are a good little boy or girl... your acceptance will depend on how well you have kept the rules, succeeded at work, raised a handsome family, and lived the cookie cutter life of acceptableness." It's all the same bad theology of the "Last Kiss" song--that because Jesus has gone to heaven, we have to worry about whether we have been good enough, so that we maybe, possibly, hopefully, could get to see him one day when we "leave this world." And of course, if we are still hanging on to that "good enough" talk, we will never be able to shake it when we are filled with doubts in the night or take an honest look at ourselves in the daylight.

But this is the truly scandalous thing about the actual writers of the actual Bible: they don't talk at all about whether we have been "good enough." It just ain't so. They don't leave hanging the open question of whether you or I have been good in order to be acceptable. For writers like Paul, the question is not about me, really--it's about Jesus.

Because, as Paul sees it, the only thing that matters is being tethered to Christ. From there on out, he does the pulling, and we come along for the ride. He goes through life--we come along. He goes through death--we go through it as well. He comes out the other side in resurrection life--guess what, we are promised the same. No question of good behavior or measuring whether our righteousness points outweigh our bad behavior points.

As Paul says it, "when we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into his death." We are stuck on Jesus, grafted in like a cutting from a rosebush. We are transplanted into Christ and belong to him permanently. We can't be cut off from him--he won't stand for it. We are part of Christ's body, and he won't permit so much as a toenail to be trimmed off. We are a part of him.

The Christian faith is not, then, a spiritual version of the Cavaliers' song, "Last Kiss," and we don't need to worry in the night whether we have been good enough "so we can see our savior when we leave this world," as it were. It's not like that. Rather, the Gospel says, "You're tethered to the Risen One--he did it to you at the waters of baptism, and you belong to him. He's got a hold of you in death, and he's got a hold of you in life, and you can't shake him no matter what."

It's rather like the way a needle pulls a thread along, if you think about it. A needle's entire job is to hold onto thread... and bring the thread wherever the needle goes. That's it. The end of the string goes through the eye of the needle (placed there, of course, by a skilled and patient sew-er, who has the patient to get it through the tiny hole), and then the needle does the pulling. Wherever the needle goes, the thread goes. Up on the top side of the fabric? Yes. Down into the darkness of the underside of the fabric? Yep, there too. Back up out the other side into the light--absolutely! That's how it works. And that's not a bad way of picturing us and Christ, either. We are tethered to Jesus like a needle holds thread. The goodness or badness of the thread really doesn't matter--the needle can pull the cheapest twine off the discount rack or the most expensive spools of silk thread you can order from across the globe. What really matters is the needle doing the holding. Being connected to the needle is the whole shootin' match.

And that means the end of "Last Kiss" theology.

To be joined to Christ is to be done with worrying that he has gone somewhere else that we are uncertain of following. The resurrection is not simply good news for Jesus, while we are left wondering what will await us on the other side of death, dependent on our final test scores and application requests. We are tethered to him, and he is determined to pull us through into resurrection life. It is not about our successes or failures at test-taking, rule-keeping, or cookie-cutter-adhering. It is simply about being united to him--like a needle pulling thread.

Lord Jesus, hold us close through life, through death, and out the other side.