A Change In Our Walk--December 5, 2025

A Change In Our Walk--December 5, 2025

"Let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:13-14)

There came a point a few years ago when my sore feet at the end of the day finally forced me to admit it: I had reached the age where in-soles in my shoes might help me get through the day better.

It was hard, I will confess, to face the facts that this body of mine was showing more wear and tear than I realized, and that my preferred shoes (Chuck Taylor high-tops, coordinated with the color of the season of the church year) do not offer nearly so much support as they offer color.  It was an unpleasant realization that on my own, my footfalls were wearing me out, and that unaided, even the way I walked, stood, and stepped was going to end up causing pain.  

So I got some insertable in-soles designed for "work," and immediately I noticed two things:  one, for starters, my feet weren't aching nearly as much at the end of the day.  And number two, the relief and the redirection brought by the in-soles literally changed the way I walked. The thin soles of the stylish but unsupportive old sneakers were leaving me flat-footed, and I was rolling my steps in a weird way... but I had grown so accustomed to it over time that I didn't even notice that I was walking funny.  And that meant, further, that the more I walked improperly, the more I wore down the shoes in the wrong spots, which exaggerated my problem and made it even worse.  Slowly but surely I had made this problem invisible to myself over the course of an ordinary day, but painfully obvious by the end of it. And the change to my shoes' in-soles changed all of that, because it literally changed the way I walk.

In this passage from Romans which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, the apostle Paul talks in curiously similar terms about the change that happens in our lives because of the presence of Christ in our lives. Jesus isn't just a fashion accessory or a brand logo we flaunt in order to look religious; his presence changes the way we walk through the world. Instead of being bent inward on our selves--seeing other people as objects to be used or seeking our own gratification for "Me and My Group First"--Jesus turns our orientation outward in love that seeks the good of the other.  Jesus, maybe not so unlike a set of good in-soles, brings a change in our walk--and for the better.

I'm not sure I realized until recently how big a deal this would have been to the first century listeners in Rome, who were used to seeing countless shrines, temples, and devotees of countless gods and goddesses, but who never would have expected that worshiping their gods was supposed to make a difference in the way they lived their lives.  So much of the religion of the Roman Empire, including the gods and goddesses of the peoples and nations it had swallowed up, was reducible down to giving the appropriate offering or sacrifice to the deity of the moment in exchange, presumably, for the favor or blessing of that deity, but with no practical impact on what you did with the rest of your day, your family, your work, or your life. You didn't find people saying, "You are a worshipper of Zeus--therefore you should be a devoted spouse and parent!" because in all the myths Zeus, the "king" of the Greek gods, was a terrible parent and a perpetually cheating husband!  You never heard people say, "I used to steal and cheat my neighbors, until I started worshipping Poseidon the sea god!"  There was almost no connection at all between the gods you worshipped and the virtues you practiced, much in the same way nobody in our culture connects your character with your favorite fast food restaurant or flavor of soft drink.  Those things just don't relate in our eyes, and in the culture of the 1st century Roman Empire, there was virtually no connection between your acts of ritual worship to the gods and goddesses and the kind of person you strove to be.  Your devotion to your gods made no difference, practically, in your walk.

But Jesus was different, as Paul told it, because following him wasn't merely a matter of muttering a few words to a statue and moving on with your day unchanged. To follow Jesus is to be shaped by Jesus, all the way down to our actions, words, and choices.  Jesus will affect the way you walk, in other words.  The instruction for Paul's readers to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ," like an article of clothing, or a pair of good walking shoes--or maybe like extra-supportive work in-soles for your Chuck Taylor high-tops--is a way of saying, "The presence of Jesus will change us; he will affect the way we live, speak, act, and love."  And of course, he's right.  Following Jesus will change our footsteps. Jesus' presence in our lives will turn our hearts outward rather than only selfishly inward. His abiding Spirit will give us courage rather than fear, and compassion rather than apathy.  His living voice will direct us to see other people as neighbors to be loved rather than enemies to be conquered, objects to be used, or competition to be defeated.

We may not realize how much our daily walk in life has been slowly getting worse--the same way I didn't realize how much a worn-down pair of shoes was contributing to pain at the end of my work day and crooked steps in the meantime.  When we keep Jesus at a distance or treat him as just a bit of outward decoration, we don't let him shape our steps or re-form our daily walk.  But when, as Paul says, we "put on the Lord Jesus Christ," something begins to change in us. We may sometimes slide back into our old, crooked patterns or slouch back into the malformed footfalls that we were used to, but Jesus keeps working on us, both to relieve the places we have been hurting, and to point us in his direction.

Maybe that's really what it is to be the church: we are the people who are collectively learning to let Jesus change the way we walk and to reshape our footfalls.  We don't always get it right. We sometimes clumsily step all over each other.  And sometimes we still get worn down in all the wrong places.  But he is persistent, this Jesus of ours.  And he keeps training our steps to walk rightly--to walk in ways that look like love, and to leave behind us tracks that invite others into the goodness of God.

How might Jesus shape our steps... today?

Lord Jesus, clothes us in yourself and dress us in your goodness, from head to toe.

Trust the Alarm Clock--December 4, 2025

Trust the Alarm Clock--December 4, 2025

"Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near." [Romans 13:11-12a]

These days, when the alarm clock starts buzzing at our house, it is an act of faith to believe that it's really morning. The light on the display says it's 5:00am or 6:00am, but the absence of light outside the window makes it look identical to midnight. And from time to time, I will confess, I almost have to talk myself into accepting the fact that it's time to get out of bed. After all, to my eyes, it looks like the dead of night, and to my perfectly comfortable arms and legs, staying in bed seems like the ideal plan.

My guess is that you have been there, too, before. I suspect you are more disciplined than I am and can will yourself out of bed even on a very dark morning with less self-persuasion, but you probably know what it's like to have to tell yourself it really is morning even when it's still dark outside. And you probably have had to remind yourself that you do need to get up and face the day.

But for that one moment, the decision to put your feet on the floor and begin the day flies in the face of the outside evidence. Choosing to arise, do your morning workout routine, take your shower, get dressed, and step into the day is, at least in that moment, a sort of defiant hope that a sunrise really is coming. Waking up and getting out of bed is an act of faith in spite of the external circumstances outside your window and your own internal impulse to stay as comfortable as possible for as long as possible.

While I don't know what time the apostle Paul would have set his personal alarm clock for, I do get the sense he's thinking along the same lines for us as the followers of Jesus. Except it's not just the start of another workday that he wants us to wake up for--it's the dawning of God's new day and the coming of Christ. Paul sees--and wants us, his readers, to see as well--everything in our present life illuminated by the hope of Jesus' coming in glory and the fullness of God's Reign. For Paul, the coming of Christ is as sure and certain as the arrival of the sunrise. And just as the world looks completely different once the dawn has come, he knows that all creation is in for a transformation at the coming of Christ's Reign of justice and mercy. For now, of course, the world looks like it's stuck at midnight, weighed down with gloom outside and the tempting impulse to just pull the covers over our heads and go back to sleep. But Paul is convinced that it is worth it, right here and now, to begin to live in light of the promised future for which we are keeping watch. It is worth it, even if the rest of the world thinks we look utterly foolish for doing so.

Of course, in Paul's day, it would have been laughable to suggest that the Roman Empire wouldn't last forever and that some new rightful figure would arise on the world scene. It was even more preposterous to say that the one they were waiting for was actually the same one the Empire had crucified. Even still today, it sounds like nonsense to many to suggest that there is another way of living, rather than the Everyone-For-Themselves, Dog-Eat-Dog, Shoot-First-And-Ask-Questions-Later kind of "logic" that passes for conventional wisdom these days. Paul doesn't deny that all of that crookedness, violence, and greed is how an awful lot of the world operates right now--he just dares us to live out of step with it, by starting to live in light of the new way that is beginning through Jesus. The apostle dares us to be ahead of the curve: to start now while it still looks like midnight outside to wake up now in anticipation of the dawn the world can't see yet. In spite of the evidence (it looks like the dead of night), we live now in the kind of self-giving love, enemy-reconciling peace, and open-handed generosity that will be the order of the day in God's new creation. And we do it even if the world thinks we look like "losers" or "weaklings" for doing it.

It reframes our whole understanding of the Christian faith, and our entire life, really, to see things this way. It means that our way of life--what we sometimes call "Christian ethics"--isn't so much about controlling bad behavior in order to avoid punishment in the afterlife, but more about beginning to live now in the kinds of right relationships we look forward to in the new creation. When Christ comes, we believe that there will be no more greed, violence, and hatred--so we begin to practice living now without those vices, like people who know to leave behind their pajamas and put on clothes for the day ahead. It's less about fearing punishment and more about stepping into God's promised future.

What if we changed that piece of our thinking today? What if each day now was begun with the question, "How will we live and act in the fullness of God's reign when Christ comes?" and then we started to step in that direction? What if we no longer worried about how we look to the rest of the world, but rather saw ourselves trying to live ahead of the curve? What if we believed Paul's alarm clock voice telling us the night is far gone, even we can't see the dawn yet when we look out the window?

That's the challenge for this day. It's time to put our feet on the floor, to trust the alarm clock... and to rise to greet the new day.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage and strength to live in light of your coming reign, even when that makes us seem out of step with the violence and greed of the world around.

The Light We Travel By--December 3, 2025

The Light We Travel By--December 3, 2025

 O house of Jacob,
  come, let us walk
 in the light of the Lord! (Isaiah 2:5)

Maybe you know the old joke. There's a drunk guy standing outside a little ways down the block from a local bar underneath a streetlight, and he starts crouching down and looking around at the ground frantically, like he's searching for something.  After a long enough time, an observer passing by asks him what he's doing, and the drunk says, "I'm looking for my keys; they must have fallen out of my pocket."  The passerby asks, "Do you know for sure that they fell out over here?"  And the drunk says, "No, they fell out of my pocket down the block back by the bar, but it's too dark to see them over there.  The light is much here under the streetlight."  Insert rimshot on the drums.

Okay, it's a pathetic joke, but there is something oddly real about the conundrum.  What if you're in the dark, trying to find your way without stumbling, and the light you would need to illuminate the ground beneath your feet is fixed and far away?  We are used to carrying little portable lights with us wherever we go nowadays, at least with our phones that have built-in flash lights.  But even before smartphones, we have all lived at a point in history where inventions like flashlights have been around, and before that, there were lanterns, and I suppose before that people had oil lamps and candles.  We invented these things, even going back to distant ancestors who made their bonfires portable by turning them into travel-size torches they could carry with them, so that we could carry the light with us.  Without those kinds of light sources, whether ancient or modern, we would be left in the pitiable spot of the guy from the joke, looking beneath the streetlight for lost keys even though he knows they are somewhere further back down the block, because the light is fixed in one place.

Maybe that's worth keeping in mind as we consider these words, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, about walking "in the light of the Lord."  What, precisely, does the prophet Isaiah have in mind with that image?  What's the point of this particular metaphor, and what would it mean to walk "in the light of the Lord," practically speaking? And is this kind of light set in place like a streetlight, or is it portable?  Does the light of God require us to come to it, or does the light of God go with us?

Ah, that's the question, isn't it?  Maybe the whole Christian faith really hangs on that question: is ours a faith that depends on us going out of the dark and into some central illuminated place in order to have access to "the light of the Lord," or does God's light come to find us where we are, no matter how chilly the December wind or how dark and starless the clouded sky above us might be? Does God require us to go somewhere else to be where the light is, or does the light come to us, and then go with us?

It seems to me that the witness of the Scriptures over and over is the latter: ours is a God who doesn't wait to be discovered up in some sunny celestial spot for us, but comes to us in "this benighted sphere" as the old hymn puts it, and brings the light to where we are.  This God of ours comes to us as we are, even when are intoxicated, inebriated, and looking for our lost keys in the wrong place, and then accompanies us all the way home.  The Light of God goes with us, in other words.

In a way, that's really what the good news of the Incarnation--the coming of God in human flesh in Jesus--is all about.  The Gospel's declaration is not that God has set up a streetlight in the universe, and if you can grope your way in the dark to reach it, you can bask in its radiance there.  Rather, the Good News is that God has come to meet us precisely where we are, befuddled and benighted, and shares both our own humanity and our journey as the Light we travel by.

Whatever else this season brings, and whatever other things have been piled onto your calendar and to-do list, don't forget that promise.  God isn't waiting for you to come to the light first; God brings the light to where we are, and accompanies us all the way home.

O God, our Light, meet us where we are today, as we are, and be the lamp for our feet.

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.