Refusing the Old Rules--February 21, 2025

Refusing the Old Rules--February 21, 2025

"See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all." [1 Thessalonians 5:15]

It's about refusing to play by someone else's rules--and instead, playing only by Christ's.

The mindset in this verse from Paul's first letter to the Christians in Thessalonica is some of the most potent, and most revolutionary, thinking around. When the world tries to lure us into seeing life its way, or baiting us into reacting with wrong in response to wrongs done to us, Christians from the very beginning have been taught not to return evil for evil done to us. It is a way, not of rolling over for evil, or letting evil walk all over us, but of refusing to play by evil's own rules. We have been called to defy the very undergirding system that the world accepts, in which you are supposed to hate your enemies and make their lives as miserable as possible and do as much evil to them as you can. This is our revolution--this is our different kind of victory. This is what it looks like to live as if the cross really is God's way of saving and ruling creation.  And that will undoubtedly take us outside of not only our comfort zones but also whole old way of seeing the world.

Think about how truly revolutionary this one sentence is--Christians are called, not to target other people as our enemies, but rather to subvert the whole way of thinking that accepts returning evil for evil as a way of solving our problems. We are called to bring about change, not by wiping out one set of violent crooks to replace them with a new set of violent crooks (the way so many revolutions end up doing, and becoming the very thing they were trying to bring down), but by living now as though the rightful Ruler of the universe really is in charge of things, and refusing to use violent, crooked ways to get what we want. As Walter Wink says in Jesus and Nonviolence, "Violence is not radical enough, since it generally changes only the rulers but not the rules."

So when the first followers of Jesus were taught to refuse to repay evil for evil (and consider that 1 Thessalonians could quite possibly be the first of Paul's letters and therefore the oldest and first of the New Testament writings!), they were not being told just to keep their heads down and not to rock the boat--they were being told to question the way the world was being run by the powers around them, powers which accepted repaying evil for evil as the best way to solve your problems. And by questioning that order of things, the followers of Jesus pointed to a very different kind of Kingdom altogether, with a very different kind of King. The followers of Jesus were witnesses to their King, Jesus, by using the same tactics that Jesus used to bring about his Reign, his Movement--suffering love that breaks the cycle of revenge. You can say that Jesus' death on the cross "paid" whatever debts stood against us on God's books, you could also say that the cross is the sign of God's refusal to repay evil for evil to us for our sin! Christians are only doing what Jesus taught us to do and did for us by following suit in response to the little evils committed against us.

And making the revolution even greater--Paul not only rules out returning evil for evil, he insists that we are called to do good not just for other Christians, but for all! I cannot stress enough how radical and critical that insight from the New Testament is, because we religious folks have a way of reading the Bible in ways that reinforce our comfort zones. We have an easier time with, "Be nice to folks who are already nice to you," or even "Be nice to other Christians--they're on the same team!" We are used to voices that say, "We have to look out for our own group's interest first!" But Paul insists that we are called, not only to "one another" (that is, to other disciples of Jesus, other church folk, other people "like us"), but "to all." That means here is quite possibly the earliest written piece of the New Testament commanding the followers of Jesus to deliberately seek to do good to the folks who seem the most "other"--the ones who don't sit next to you in church, who maybe don't go to any church, who may or may not believe in God, or who may or may not practice the same faith at all. Paul doesn't let us off the hook with just keeping our heads down and not retaliating if we are provoked--he insists our calling, because of Jesus' radical victory, is to actively go out and do good to people who will never stop at your front door with a pot of soup because they heard you were feeling sick, or who will never drop you a note in the mail to say that they are praying for you.

Today, then, you and I have the opportunity to be truly revolutionary--to question the system that so many people around us are still living in--by our willingness to live by Paul's words and to refuse to return evil for evil. We will do good, not only to other Christians, but as Paul says, "to all," whether they are insiders or outsiders, whether we consider them to be friends, strangers, or enemies. And in doing that, we will point to a different sort of King who governs a different sort of Kingdom. We will break the cycle of wrongs to repay wrongs that sets up a never-ending, self-feeding chain of revenge. And we will be living signs of the cross of Jesus, where no less than God in the flesh did the same for us and refused to pay evil for evil to a sinful humanity, but did good for us by giving us his own life. That is our victory.

Lord Jesus, help us to see the chances we have in this day to return good when we are shown evil, and do to it, not as a sign of defeat or apathy, but as your revolutionary way of rejecting the rules by which the world plays.

Recovering the Unsung Verses--February 20, 2025

Recovering the Unsung Verses--February 20, 2025

(Jesus said:)

"But woe to you who are rich, 

     for you have received your consolation.

Woe to you who are full now, 

     for you will be hungry. 

Woe to you who are laughing now, 

     for you will mourn and weep. 

Woe to you when all speak well of you, 

     for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets." (Luke 6:24-26)

Everybody loves the Christmas song, "O Holy Night," but rarely does anybody sing the third verse in concert or out caroling.  That's a shame, really, because it's absolutely beautiful and some of the most powerful poetry in the song.  Many folks don't even know that there's more than one verse, but the third in particular complicates the song.  That's because it's in the third verse of "O Holy Night" that the song itself takes a stand against the practice of slavery, and over the years a lot of choir conductors have just decided that feels less "Christmas-y."  Everybody likes to sing about the stars "brightly shining" and the "thrill of hope," because those are positive images.  But the third verse leaves behind the Nativity story imagery (the Magi and the manger at least are in the second verse) and comes out with a clear position on the issue of slavery, declaring, "Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease."  There's not a Fa-la-la to be found, just the firm rejection of human bondage.  And even if folks today are solidly anti-slavery (and I would hope they are), a lot of folks don't want to "go there" in their yuletide concerts, or to have a positive, cheery season tinged with the bleak mention of slavery.  I have a feeling that more than a few critics or music directors have said, "Oh, that's too negative, let's just stick to the positive first verse and close out with We Wish You A Merry Christmas."

The song, of course, takes its stand for a reason.  The text, originally written in 1847 (and in French, it turns out) was written in an era when slavery was a thriving institution--not to mention wreaking havoc over countless African American people who were enslaved in this country at the time.  From the perspective of the author and translator, the connection is indeed obvious--the Christ-child has come to set people free from oppression, and that would include an end to enslavement.  The positive claim (that Jesus' birth is a "holy night") cannot be separated from the negative claim (that Jesus' reign is opposed to slavery), because it is a part of what makes Jesus who he is.  Jesus is worthy of praise, adulation, and worship, at least in part because he has come to set people free as he brings about the Reign of God.  So, despite the fact that it throws a monkey-wrench into our sentimentality at Christmas time, the third verse is really an indispensable part of the song. You can't sing, "Fall on your knees" at Jesus if you don't also sing, "Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother," without losing something essential about why Jesus is worthy of our bending our knees and offering our praise.

Well, I mention all of this because I think there is an important parallel with the words of Jesus that are sometimes known as Luke's version of the Beatitudes.  And just like the conscience-pricking but necessary third verse of "O Holy Night" that folks sometimes want to leave out or skip past, Jesus speaks words that many folks want to ignore or mute because they make us squirm.  We love the announcement of blessing, but nobody wants to hear the second half, the inverse statements of "woe." It's heartening to hear Jesus say, "Blessed are you who are poor," and even more comforting to hear blessing for the hungry and the weeping.  But folks start getting uncomfortable, or even downright irritable, when Jesus goes on to say, "Woe to you who are rich," along with the full bellies and smiling faces of the self-satisfied.  So we skip over the part that makes us uncomfortable, rather than wrestle with what Jesus has to tell us.  As long as we only ever talk about being blessed, we never have to feel bad about ourselves... right?

The only trouble is that Jesus, rather like the original minds behind "O Holy Night," doesn't seem ready to let us slice up his words in order to edit out the parts that sound too "negative." Jesus insists that the YES of blessing for the ones typically regarded as "losers" cannot be separated from a parallel NO for the mindset of those who label themselves "winners" at the top of a human pyramid.  And again, much like the Christmas song, it's because there is a through-line between the "positive" and the "negative" parts.  They are two sides of the same coin.  It is because Jesus is the sort of Lord who breaks chains and ends enslavement that we acclaim him as redeemer and savior.  And just the same, it is because we believe Jesus when he says that God particularly cares for the human beings who suffer (whether in grief, hunger, or need) that we also are called to turn away from any way of life that is oriented just toward getting "more" for ourselves, at the expense of others.  And Jesus' statements of "woe" on the rich and well-fed are just that--criticisms of what happens when we orient our lives on getting more money, more stuff, more food, or more of whatever else we hoard, rather than on the value of the other human beings around us.  We are missing the point of the gospel if our lives are bent on the pursuit of "more," according to Jesus.  He is just willing to be honest about that, even if we would rather he not say that part out loud.

We should probably stop for a moment, too, to note that the word that gets translated "Woe" here in today's verses (which continue the passage we've been reading all week since worship this past Sunday) isn't so much a statement of curse or condemnation, as it is one of pity. It's got the feel of "I feel sorry for the ones who..." or in an earlier generation's language, "Alas for..." (or perhaps like Mr. T used to say, "I pity the fool who...").  In other words, these "woes" aren't Jesus saying, "If you make such and such an amount of money in your annual salary, God hates you and you are doomed for hell," so much as he's saying, "What a shame it is to spend your life on piling up money! What a waste of your life is it trying to make yourself smiley and happy all the time rather than sharing the sufferings of others in compassion!"  Jesus will tell a story later on in Luke's gospel about a man who piles up his wealth into bigger barns (rather than sharing his windfall with his neighbors), only to find out that his life will end that night and all of his hoarded treasures will be scattered anyway.  It's the same sort of statement here in these "woes"--Jesus is trying to warn us that it's a waste of our lives to accumulate more stuff, more wealth, or more things we think will make us happy.  And yeah, that may not be comfortable for us to hear (since we live in a culture driven by the impulse to make more money and possess more stuff), but it's the necessary corollary to confessing as Lord the one who seeks out the lost and lifts up the lowly.

If we are learning to see the world through Jesus' eyes enough to recognize God's blessing and care for the empty-handed, the broken-hearted, and the losers, then Jesus will also compel us to see that we are wasting our lives if we are bent on making ourselves "winners." We don't get one without acknowledging the other.

Today, let's be brave enough to recover the unsung verses, so to speak--let's allow Jesus to say both the things that are easy to hear and the ones that trouble us, in order that we can spend our lives on what really matters.  And let us be brave enough to listen when he speaks.

Lord Jesus, speak and make us to listen. 

Rejected for the Right Reasons--February 19, 2025

Rejected for the Right Reasons--February 19, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets." (Luke 6:22-23)

Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit priest and author, once said it like this: “The poor show us who we are and the prophets tell us who we could be, so we hide the poor and kill the prophets.”  Well, yesterday we heard Jesus announcing God's blessing on the poor, and now today as we continue this passage from Luke that many of us heard this past Sunday, Jesus calls us to walk in the same path of rejection that got the prophets regularly into trouble all throughout the history of ancient Israel.  And it's not a popular place to be, by any measure.

The connection Jesus makes here to the prophets who came before is important, because Jesus' point about being blessed isn't to say it's automatically virtuous to be disliked.  It's not a default positive if people can't stand to be around you--that may just mean you are jerk.  As the old line of James Finley goes, "It may be true that every prophet is a pain in the neck, but it is not true that every pain in the neck is a prophet. There is no more firmly entrenched expression of the false self than the self-proclaimed prophet."  In other words, if people don't like being around us, that doesn't necessarily mean we are being excluded for the sake of righteousness or persecuted for our faith--it may just mean we are unpleasant to be around.  The goal is not to be unpopular for the sake of unpopularity, nor to be left out because we are rude, selfish, or terrible conversationalists.  The calling, rather, is for us to be alternative voices of God's Reign in the world like the prophets were, and to do it even when that calling is costly.

That's important to be clear about, because I've heard more than my share of loud, angry, and boorish folks who are also Respectable Religious People who like to wave the banner of being "persecuted for their faith" when in fact they have just alienated everyone around them because they are mean, obnoxious, and unpleasant.  Jesus isn't looking to give gold stars to people for their crudeness, and he doesn't give us permission to cast ourselves as martyrs when in reality we have just put people off because we've been acting like a horse's rear end.  The calling is to be willing to risk our status, our reputation, and our comfortable social positions for the sake of being the kind of voices the prophets were, who did have a way of upsetting the CEOs, the folks in the palace, and the ones running the show in the Respectable Religion Department.   We might be called to be rejected, but Jesus insists that means being rejected for the right reasons.

The prophets were holy troublemakers, who questioned whether it really was a good thing when the ancient Israelite stock markets were booming, but the poor found it harder and harder to get by.  They questioned whether it was really a righteous thing for the kings to put more and more trust in their military might, rather than to spend their energy on establishing justice and letting God defend them.  They questioned whether it was better to make bigger profits by working through the times set for sabbath rest rather than to have a culture that obsessed less about money and enjoyed more of their time.  And they questioned whether God really wanted all their sacrifices, rituals, and public shows of piety if the people weren't going to treat each other fairly, look out for the most vulnerable, and show mercy to the people with their backs against the wall.  As you might imagine all of that made them some powerful enemies within the economic sectors, the political centers, the religious institutions, and the military-industrial complex of ancient Israel and Judah.  Because they got all those Big Deals upset, the prophets were regularly run out of town, officially censured, cursed and insulted, and often (the legends said) put to death, whether by state execution or lynch-mob.  In other words, it was their consistent willingness to risk everything for the sake of speaking God's vision of how things were meant to be that got the prophets kicked out of high society, booed out of the country clubs, and escorted out of the halls of power.  And on that count, Jesus calls us to be like the prophets.  The calling is to be willing to bear rejection and exclusion for the sake of our witness to the Reign of God, not because we are mean-spirited, rude, or unpleasant people.

As we face this day, that's vital to consider. Jesus isn't recruiting people to be abrasive or to sow discord just for the sake of putting more spite in the world.  He is calling us to be willing to leave our comfort zones, risk our losing friendships, and bear other people's rudeness and rejection aimed at us, for the sake of living and speaking his way of life.  Others may choose to be hateful to us, but we will not hate them in return.  Others may exclude us, but we will not lock the door or burn the bridge from our side.  Others may choose to be immature, rude, spiteful, and mean-spirited toward us, but we will not return in kind.  Like the apostle Paul would tell the whole congregation in Rome, we are not to "be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." That, too, is at the heart of how Jesus calls us to be like the prophets.

It might not require something as bold and daring as a throne-room showdown with the king like Isaiah or Jeremiah might have had, and it might not require getting kicked out of the official government-endorsed sanctuary like Amos, but it might mean we speak up in small ways. It might mean that when someone else around you says something hateful or bigoted that you and I speak up and say that it's not OK.  It might mean that when you notice somebody else being silenced or interrupted, you call attention to it so that they can have their input heard and their place at the table respected.  It might mean that we risk being unpopular rather than keeping our heads down and not saying anything when others start acting like bullies.  And yeah, it might even mean that when someone you know starts making reckless or baseless claims on their social media that you take them aside one on one and ask them where they got their information from or to cite their sources.  We aren't being commissioned to be pedantic or condescending in the name of the Lord, just to be voices, even small ones, that amplify God's melody over the rest of the noise around us. And we might do that in any number of ways, even on a day like today.

If we think our mission is to be offensive and off-putting, we've missed the point.  But if we understand our calling to witness to God's Reign as we've come to see it in Jesus, even when that riles up the people in centers of power, wealth, and influence, well, then we might just be blessed.

Indeed we are, Jesus says.  Indeed we are.

Lord Jesus, give us both the courage and the clarity to risk our reputations and comfort for the sake of being your messengers in this time and place.

Which Way Is Up--February 18, 2025

Which Way Is Up--February 18, 2025

"Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:
'Blessed are you who are poor,

     for yours is the kingdom of God.

 Blessed are you who are hungry now,

     for you will be filled.

 Blessed are you who weep now,

     for you will laugh....'" (Luke 6:20-21)

To listen to Jesus is a little bit like having vertigo. We might have thought we knew which way was up and how the world was ordered, until he comes along and reorients us until we discover that what we thought was upside-down was really right-side-up.  And that will always make us a little bit uncomfortable--as well as making us look and sound odd to the rest of the world that hasn't been shaken up by Jesus yet.

But let's be clear here, as we take a look at these words from Luke's Gospel that many of us heard in worship on Sunday: Jesus has in mind nothing short of turning our old vision of the world on its head and then telling us that we had been pointed in the wrong direction all this time.  He isn't offering helpful life-principles to "get ahead" and live "our best life now," at least not in the usual ways we describe those things. No, here, as he describes God's priorities, Jesus subverts all that "conventional wisdom" has been telling us about the good life and replaces it with his own vision.  That's bound to cause a little motion sickness of the soul.

The real issue is that somehow we've gotten our bearings so convoluted and backward in the first place that what Jesus says will sound backward and wrong-headed to our ears.  But from Jesus' perspective, he isn't saying anything new or outlandish--he is simply putting things right that we have had out of sorts all along. 

And to be sure, there are lots of loud voices (many of them obnoxiously so) who would have us believe that the REAL "good life" is all about accumulating MORE--more wealth, more food, more stuff, more technology, and more experiences (or substances) that will stimulate more good feelings. There are plenty of folks whose whole sales-pitch is built around claims of making us ever wealthier, or more secure, or more successful, who never for a moment even question whether those goals align with the kind of life Jesus has in mind. They cannot fathom that anyone could possibly say--as Jesus does without blushing--that God's blessing is on the empty-handed and God's favor is for the broken-hearted.

This is what makes Jesus' so revolutionary.  Honestly, there were plenty of would-be messiahs in the first-century who were promising wealth, power, and status to their followers--those were a dime a dozen.  They promised their recruits greatness and the arrival of a golden age of prosperity, happiness, and excess, if they would just join their armed resistance again the Romans and help them replace the old empire with a new one. Jesus doesn't do any of that, because he knows better that the ache deep inside of us is not for more money, or more power, or even for more of the things that cause the momentary happiness of endorphins in our brains.  Jesus instead points us toward a different set of values, where we care most about those who have been treated as least, where we lift up those who have been bowed down and stepped on, and where we make sure to feed those whose plates and pantries are empty.  Jesus says that these are the priority for God, and that all of our chasing after the endless quest for "more" (even when we mislabel it as "the pursuit of happiness") is fundamentally upside-down.  The things that make for the good life look a lot more like love, compassion, empathy, and a sharing of our good things with others, and a lot less like the opposite values of greed, avarice, and self-interest.

If it seems like we are being asked to choose between two different competing visions of reality, that's because we are.  We cannot chase after the things the world's loudmouths tell us we are supposed to want (no matter how "great" they promise they will be, or how rich they swear they can make us) and also at the same time seek the things Jesus tells us are worth our effort.  We cannot make enough profit in the stock market to buy the Kingdom of God, and we gain no advantage if we have food spoiling on our shelves while others starve to death.  If we want the life that Jesus offers, it will mean learning to reorient our lives, our values, and our choices--away from what the world told us was worth having, and toward the well-being of the people God is particularly concerned about, namely, those who suffer.  The ultimate question for us is whose reality we will accept as, well, real.  Who gets to tell us which way is up--the conventional wisdom that says the real "winners" are the rich, the full bellies, and the blissfully ignorant; or Jesus, who announces God's blessing on the poor, the hungry, and the weeping?  

Will we let Jesus turn us the 180 degrees it will take to see his vision and make it our own?  Will we allow Jesus to briefly give us spiritual vertigo--and then cure us of the same as he puts us right side up at last?  Will we allow Jesus to show us, no matter how accustomed we are to the old orientation, which way really is up?

Lord Jesus, turn us right side up to align these hearts with your compassion for those who weigh heavily on your own heart.

The People Jesus Draws--February 17, 2025

The People Jesus Draws--February 17, 2025

"[Jesus] came down with [the disciples] and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them." (Luke 6:17-19)

Jesus doesn't ask people where they've come from when they seek out his help; he just helps them.  He doesn't screen out the people whose troubles, sickness, disease, or uncleanness would complicate his life or potentially taint his personal holiness; he allows them all to have access to him, even to touch him.  In fact, Jesus seems to think this is precisely what he has come into the world for in the first place.

This introductory scene that sets up the Sermon on the Plain, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, presents a surprising mix of people audaciously coming to Jesus.  In case you haven't memorized your ancient Palestinian geography, Luke gives us a curious mix of both Jewish and Gentile regions who are drawn to Jesus.  The first grouping shouldn't surprise us--Jesus, after all, is Jewish, and so it's understandable that people from his own background, ethnicity, and religion would seek out this new teacher both to hear his message and because of the stories they had heard of his wondrous powers.  But beyond "all Judea" and "Jerusalem," Luke says that people from the whole coastal region of "Tyre and Sidon" were coming to Jesus--and those are much further cities, which were historically Gentile (they are both in modern day Lebanon, for what that's worth).  

In other words, Luke presents us with a Jesus who is not only well-known to his own people, but who had apparently developed a reputation among foreigners for being not only powerful, but approachable.  The people who journeyed to see Jesus crossed the border to seek him in the hope that he would receive them, rather than turning them away.  And apparently, Jesus did not disappoint. He welcomed foreigners and kinspeople alike, the sick and the well, even when their touch would have made Jesus himself unclean.

Those are the kinds of hurdles that would have seemed insurmountable to other religious teachers of the day.  Jesus was certainly running a risk letting this mix of people, Judean and Gentile, neighbors and foreigners, demon-possessed and deeply devout, all come to him, from whatever places or countries they had first come, and letting them come right up to him.  Luke seems quite clear that Jesus didn't have a screening process or vet which people had "qualified" for his assistance, and he certainly didn't insist on only helping his own "in-group" members first. They streamed in from across boundaries and borders in ways that certainly would have raised the eyebrows of other Respectable Religious Leaders.  And I can only imagine that Jesus' own disciples, who have apparently been brought along for this ride, are feeling way out of their comfort zones seeing this all happen.  Jesus hadn't mentioned anything about ruffling quite so many feathers when he first called them to follow him, and I have a feeling that there were times that Simon Peter, James, John, and the rest of the twelve found themselves squirming in their seats as Jesus broke taboos, disregarded rules about uncleanness, and welcomed foreigners without consulting them first.  But that's what happens when we get drawn in by Jesus--he has a way of bringing along a surprisingly diverse mix of people without asking our permission.  

This season we have been exploring how Jesus leads us beyond our comfort zones, and it's worth noting that sometimes that's not a matter of us going somewhere else, but rather of welcoming others in all of their differences to where we are. Sometimes you can be pulled outside of your own comfort zones without ever moving your feet.  That certainly would have happened with Jesus' disciples who found their teacher widely welcoming not only Judeans and Galileans like them, but Gentile foreigners from outside their turf, including people with severe sickness and even demons. Jesus reserves the right to do the same with us.  We should be prepared to have Jesus stretch us by means of the other people he welcomes in our midst, even if we don't move.  We should be prepared, too, for the very real possibility (likelihood?) that Jesus will send people across our path who stretch us beyond our comfort zones in all sorts of ways--where they are from, how they vote, what language they speak, or what their families look like--and that he will call us to show them love, welcome, help, and even healing.  We should be ready for newcomers who are brave enough to show up in worship on Sundays, perhaps, but also to welcome the faces in line at the grocery store or post office, the people new to the neighborhood or school district, and wherever else we find them.  And if it feels like we are a little anxious, nervous, or squeamish at the diverse mix of people who are drawn to Jesus, well, it's worth knowing that we likely in the company of the first disciples on that count.  Jesus helped his first disciples to grow and stretch as they watched him welcome, heal, and help others, without condition and without discrimination.  It's almost like that was his plan all along--not only to help strangers in need, but also to shape his inner circle of followers and widen the scope of their love.

I wonder whom Jesus will send across our way today--and how he might stretch us in the process.

Lord Jesus, make of us what you will as you welcome people far and wide into your healing presence.

An Impossible Hope--February 14, 2025

An Impossible Hope--February 14, 2025

[The LORD told Isaiah:] "Even if a tenth part remain in it,
     it will be burned again,

like a terebinth or an oak

    whose stump remains standing

    when it is felled.

The holy seed is its stump." (Isaiah 6:13)

Isn't just that like God?  Just when we have gotten used to despair and told ourselves to give up, God upsets our apple carts of desperation and pulls a new beginning out of nowhere.  That is to say, if God is indeed going to pull us out of our comfort zones (as God does seem perfectly willing to do), then we should be ready, when we have gotten acclimated to despondency, for God to surprise us with a new reason to hope.  

It's never merely cheap optimism or a spin-doctor's PR spin on bad news, and it rarely means we get a detour to avoid the difficult things of life.  With our God it is always about coming through the valley of the shadow of death into the sunlight on the other side, rather than avoiding the ravine altogether. But God does seem to reserve the right to pull an impossible hope out of nowhere like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Just when we think that death is the last word on the subject and the grave is sealed tight, God speaks a word of resurrection and starts rolling away stones.

This verse from Isaiah is one of those moments, too.  We've been walking through Isaiah's call story this week through our devotions, and we've seen how God has been pulling him out of his comfort zones throughout the encounter.  First, we saw how he was utterly petrified just having the vision of seeing God in the temple. Then he was commissioned to be God's spokesperson, not merely a passive audience member watching God from a safe distance.  And yesterday, hardest of all, we heard God warn Isaiah that his mission would largely involve speaking to people who would not listen to him, and that the result would be a whole nation devastated by exile and the invading Babylonians.  That certainly was not the sort of thing any of us would exactly be "comfortable" with at first, and so part of what God had to do was to help it sink in for Isaiah just how hard and seemingly futile his job would be.  Like building up a callus on your hands from repeated labor, Isaiah would have to develop a thick skin for his prophetic call, since God was deliberately sending him to a hostile audience.  And I can only imagine that for Isaiah that came at the risk of being constantly on the verge of depression and loneliness.  It must have been terribly isolating to be Isaiah and feel like you were the only one paying attention to the collision course your society was on, and it must have felt like he was doomed to watch his nation careening toward destruction while his people amused themselves to death.

It would have been hard enough to convince anybody in Isaiah's time that disaster was on its way--after all, the stock markets were healthy, business was booming, and the Babylonians weren't on anybody's radar yet.  Other world powers and international rivals would come and go before the worst of what Isaiah warned about actually happened to Judah.  And yet, even if he did manage to persuade some outlier to listen to him, and to take seriously that the nation was headed for trouble, it would have been nearly impossible to convince them that there might yet be hope, on the other side of exile, after all of the chaos and turmoil Isaiah warned about.  But that's where today's verse ends--just a glimmer of impossible hope that comes on the other side of destruction.  It emerges like a seed growing out of the dead stump where a tree used to be.

Honestly, you almost miss that there is any good news at all in this verse, because it only comes after the threat of relentless destruction first: even if a tenth is left standing, even that will be burned down again!  Imagine being Isaiah and being told to tell his people that God was going to let their whole nation be obliterated by invading empires, and that God wasn't even going to leave ten percent in place, but was going to allow the nation as a whole to be overrun.  And imagine that Isaiah knew he wasn't being sent to tell people this news in order to get them to prevent it from happening, or to put up more defenses against the enemies, or to make an alliance with some other nation in order to stop the looming threat, but rather that he was sent simply to say, "You can't fight this enemy with weapons or military might. But it's coming. The whole tree is getting chopped down and then the stump will be burned to ash." And then after all of that, imagine that God pushes the door into the future open just a crack--barely enough to see the light from the next room--and says, "But then there will be a seed in the stump."  That's what happens in this final verse here.

That kind of hope--costly, fragile, and hard to believe--is what God brings here, and also, it would seem, what God tells Isaiah to bring to the people as well.  Isaiah won't live to see it, and neither will the people he is addressing, but they may pass along the word of hope to their children, who may pass it along to their children and grandchildren, to sustain them until exile ends.  And this hope, as I say, isn't a secret plan to avoid the hard stuff or circumvent the pain of their consequences for repeatedly turning from God's ways of justice and mercy, but rather it is a lifeline to hold onto like a rope in the dark.  The hope is for a way through the disaster and out the other side, not an escape hatch to avoid it.  As we followers of Jesus might say it, there is no resurrection without a death first, and an empty tomb first requires that there has been a cross beforehand.

But even if that hope is good news for us, even hope itself can be out of our comfort zone if we had conditioned ourselves to be hopeless.  If we are finally resigned to the worst-case scenario, sometimes we almost don't want to risk believing or hoping that there could be a new beginning, because we don't want to get hurt or be disappointed again.  And yet, God doesn't leave us in despair, but keeps pulling us, tugging at our sleeves like a toddler leading us into the next room, when we had just gotten used to staying in the darkness.  Isaiah is given that bare spark of hope--a seed that will grow out of the old burnt stump--and it will have to be enough to hold on through his lifetime of ministry, through the years of being ignored, and then through his people's exile. The new sprout will not come by way of battle, monetary policy, or clever political deal-making.  It will come, like resurrection out of death, when God calls forth new possibilities from dead-ends.

It's hard for us to live in that tension, too--the tension between honest assessment of the troubles around us and the hope that will accompany us through those troubles--but that is where all of our lives are lived as people of faith.  We are held in the space of Holy Saturday, between the cross of Good Friday and the sunrise of Easter Sunday, always.  And like Isaiah, we sometimes have to speak both a difficult word about the rottenness around us, in which we are all entangled and complicit, and also hold out a hopeful word that God can bring dead stumps back into green leaf as the old tree's composted limbs give rise to an acorn growing from the old roots.  That is never easy, and it is most certainly beyond our comfort zones.  But it is what we are all called to as the Spirit-filled people of God. Like the old line says about prophets being sent to "afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted," we are sent both to be honest voices of difficult truths and authentic witnesses of life-sustaining hope that comes through the grave out into resurrection.  

That's the job.  Are we up for it?

Lord God, don't let us give up on your ability to bring life out of dead places and hope out of despair.

Courage Either Way--February 13, 2025

Courage Either Way--February 13, 2025

And [the LORD] said, "Go and say to this people:

'Keep listening, but do not comprehend;

     keep looking, but do not understand.'

Make the mind of this people dull,

     and stop their ears,

     and shut their eyes,

so that they may not look with their eyes,

     and listen with their ears,

     and comprehend with their minds,

and turn and be healed."

Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said, 

"Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,

     and houses without people,

     and the land is utterly desolate;

until the LORD sends everyone far away,

     and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land..." (Isaiah 6:9-12)

My mother used to say to me and to my brother as we were growing up that the worst possible thing she could ever tell us was, "Go ahead, do whatever you want."  

If we got to that point in the saga of parental discipline, she warned us, it meant she was done lecturing or scolding and was leaving us to our own devices... and we would have to endure the consequences of our persistent choices.  If we got to the watershed of "Do whatever you want," it meant that my mother realized anything further she tried to say to us by way of correction would only make us dig our heels in further, and so she was giving up.  And it further meant that she knew we were headed for disaster in whatever area of life it was (whether it was not studying for tests, not doing our homework on time, not telling the truth about something, not following through on our commitments, or whatever else). When she got to the point of "Do whatever you want," it also meant that if we were not willing to heed her advice, she was not going to interfere in the situation any further to stop us from feeling the brunt of whatever consequence was on the way--whether an in-house punishment, or the resulting grades on a report card, or a scowl of disappointment from a piano teacher.  She knew, in other words, that sometimes her last message to us on a subject would simply be, "You are setting yourself up for pain, and since you seem bent on not listening to me--or my words only seem to make you more stubborn in your refusal to listen--I am now going to let your own bad choices do what they will to you."

And I've got to admit to you--in hindsight, those few times we got to the point of hearing her say, "Do whatever you want," were the most terrible sentences I ever heard come out of her mouth. And I was definitely afraid to hear those words. I have come to believe, not just from my experience in childhood but more and more from reading the Scriptures, too, that sometimes the worst thing God can do to us, as well, is simply to give us exactly what we have asked for. Sometimes the harshest form of damnation is when God says, "Fine.  Have it your way." and then to leave us to our own devices.  I shudder to think.

I mention all this because it all comes as unavoidable baggage for the newly-called prophet Isaiah, too, in the passage we have been exploring this week since many of us heard it in worship back on Sunday.  And I'll confess that this second half of the story is the part few of us ever read, and fewer of us want to spend time wading through.  We love the first part of the story, which culminates in that singable refrain, "Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night..." We love the idea of being called by God.  We love the idea even of God equipping us, transforming us, even purifying us like the seraph with the coal on Isaiah's mouth, in order that we could be used for God's purposes.  That much of the story is beloved by pastors, seminarians, and really anybody who has ever asked, "What could God be calling me for?"

The trouble is that once Isaiah responds to the call of God, he learns that his particular calling will involve bearing the burden of bad news... and in particular to people who will refuse to hear it.  Isaiah has barely uttered his famous and often-copied response to God, "Here am I; send me!" and God's response to him is, "Okay, but so that you know, I'm sending you to be the voice that people will not listen to, and in fact, the more you speak my word to them, the more they are going to dig in their heels, stop up their ears, and ignore you--which means they will be ignoring me, too."  God tells him that the people are approaching that precarious tipping point my mother used to warn us about, the point at which God would say to hard-hearted people, "Go ahead--do whatever you want. You're on your own."  And that means that Isaiah begins his ministry knowing that much of his life's work will be spent upsetting people when they do listen, and provoking them to turn away so they can refuse to listen.  That looks like--and often feels like--failure.  Isaiah is being called, and by none other than the living God, to speak a truthful word to people who have already sold out to lies, and that will mean by any other outside measure, he will seem to have failed.  He will be the voice that says, at long last, "God has been trying to get through to you, and you have kept turning away.  So I'm the one sent in the end to tell you all now that you've made your own bed and now you'll have to lie in it. Good luck with that."  Hoo-boy, talk about being led out of your comfort zones!

I know it's not fun or easy to have to read a passage like this--even less so for Isaiah to have had to live it!  But we do need to acknowledge that sometimes God calls us to be those voice-in-the-wilderness kinds of people (a turn of phrase that comes from later in the book of Isaiah), speaking up for God's ways of mercy, justice, and faithfulness, and to do it even when we fear it is futile, even when we feel like failures because no one is listening.  Sometimes we will be the voices that say the emperor is wearing no clothes, even if everyone else laughs at us for such a preposterous notion.   Sometimes we will be the ones met with angry looks, or off-the-record whispering, or ears that just don't want to listen.  And sometimes we have to be the ones who say, "The current trajectory is headed in the wrong direction.  The way things are is not OK!" And when God calls you to be one of those voices, it is definitely going to take you out of your comfort zones if you were hoping to just keep your head down and fade into the background.

By the same token, it is uncomfortable--but necessary--for us to consider the possibility that sometimes we're not the ones appointed as prophets, but we might be the ones called to listen to voices we had managed to ignore.  Sometimes God's word to you and to me is, "You're bent in on yourself in sin," and we don't want to listen. And sometimes the folks God raises up like prophets in our lives--the people who tell us the difficult but necessary truth and hold us accountable--have been trying to get through to us for a very long time.  When that happens, will we be brave enough to listen to them, or will we take the comfortable route of covering our ears so we don't have to hear something we don't like?

I suppose all of this means that no matter what, we will need the grace of courage to face the day ahead.  Whether we are being called to listen to the prophetic voices God puts in our lives, even when we'd rather cover our ears, or whether we are being called, like Isaiah, to be truth-tellers when it's not easy, we will need courage either way. Perhaps we had better face the new day asking for such bravery from the God who calls us.

Lord God, give us the courage to do what you call us to do, the wisdom to listen to your voice rather than ignoring it, and the clarity to know what you want us to hear.