If I Ran the Garden--March 27, 2025

If I Ran the Garden--March 27, 2025

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)

I have to confess: I would have given up on the tree.  

I don't think I would have even given it the opportunity for a fourth year of growth and a chance at last to bear fruit, much less committed to extra work for its sake.  

If I had been in charge of this tree--if I had been the gardener in Jesus' story--I would have either chopped it down, dug it up, or more likely just ignored it to let it wither and die without so much as an ounce of further effort on my part, leaving it to take its place in the long line of houseplants, flower gardens, and ornamental shrubs I have managed to kill by neglect over the years.

In short (apologies here to Dr. Seuss), if I ran the garden in Jesus' parable, I wouldn't have crossed the line into being inconvenienced simply for the sake of nursing a fruit-deficient tree into producing a few figs.  (There is probably a joke waiting to be found here about "not giving a fig," but I shall leave it for someone else to make.)  I know myself well enough to admit that I might be willing to encourage or root for someone as long as it doesn't demand too much of my time, effort, or energy, but if it's going to take a long commitment or a big investment of resources, I get stingy.  

It's easy to wish for others to find safe refuge or build a new life for their families away from war zones, but watch how quickly that abstract hypothetical sympathy and support evaporates when folks think they might be inconvenienced by refugees moving into their neighborhood or their resources being requested to help them get settled.  It's easy to say you want folks recovering from addiction to be successful in getting sober, so long as it doesn't affect your schedule, your wallet, or your routines.  It's easy to say we want to care for the environment, or educating children, or any number of worthy causes and issues, only to refuse to change the way we shop, support school levies, or waste less energy. I suspect that all of us are like this at some level, at least for some of the time.  Our caring about others--even if it's people, not fig trees--is firmly circumscribed by our resistance to being inconvenienced or put to extra trouble for them.

And as I say, this is part of the wonder of this parable for me.  Jesus offers an alternative perspective--a minority report--in this story, voiced by the gardener.  He proposes giving the so-far fruitless tree an extra year out of utter grace (the tree has definitely not "earned" an extra year of time, since it hasn't produced fruit yet), and he proposes doing extra work in order to help this tree out.  It's not only going to require both the owner and the gardener to be patient, but the gardener is now signing up for extra work, watering, putting manure on the tree, and helping it to bear fruit.  Everything about this is an inconvenience for the gardener, and yet the gardener is the one leading the charge to help this tree to produce figs.  He is willing to take the time and make the effort for this tree to produce fruit, even though it will cost him.  He is willing to cross the line from what is easy and convenient but basically an empty gesture, across into the realm of what is costly and difficult but actually offers help.  That's the difference with Jesus' kind of love.

And really, that's what still stuns me about this story of Jesus--this is a glimpse of the lengths God in Christ is willing to go to for my sake.  This is how Jesus expended himself for our sake.  This is how God bears with us, over and over again, through long seasons of fruitlessness on our part, in order to nurture us into maturity--in order for us to become what we are meant to be.

Maybe the hallmark of Christlike love is just that: it is willing to go to extra effort, be inconvenienced, or give time, resources, and effort for our sake, even when we haven't given Jesus much reason to believe we'll be a worthwhile investment.  And when we realize that this is how we have been loved, maybe we'll dare to love others the same way--with a willingness to go beyond pleasantries and convenient but empty gestures, into a patient love that goes the extra mile.

Like I say, if I were the gardener in Jesus' story, there's a good chance I would have just given up on the tree.  But Jesus isn't done with me, and he is loving me into becoming the kind of person who would give the tree the grace to become what it was meant to be... which is to say, he is also giving me the grace to become what I was meant to be, too.

Lord Jesus, lead us to love beyond what is convenient the way you have loved us with patience and grace.

The Unconventional Offer--March 26, 2025

The Unconventional Offer--March 26, 2025

"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
    and you that have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
    and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" 
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food. (Isaiah 55:1-2)

Conventional wisdom says, "If you got it at a cheap price, it can't be of good quality."

Common sense says, "If you don't make a sizeable profit, it's bad business."

The God of the Scriptures says, "I'm giving away the good stuff for free--why would you go anywhere else?"

And that, dear ones, is the difference between the logic of the market on the one hand and the economy of grace on the other.  The people lauded as great "deal-makers" and savvy entrepreneurs in our culture are only interested in making a buck, while the living God is interested in giving graciously to the empty-handed.  You can decide whose approach you want to follow, I suppose, but you can't pick both. They are pointed in opposite directions.  So choose wisely.

This passage from what we call the book of Isaiah, which many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, had to have sounded shocking to the ears that first heard it.  Come and get what is good for free?  Really?  Not just water, which might have been available from a river, spring, or well, but milk, wine, and bread?  Who would do such a thing?  Who would give away valuable commodities (surely even more valuable back in the sixth century BC when there weren't dairy departments and wine aisle in every grocery store) without maximizing a profit?  Especially if you had customers who were desperate for the essentials to feed their families, as surely many of the returned exiles who first heard these words from the prophet were. No, if you have high demand, the first Law of Economics is that increased demand leads to increased prices!  If you have something everybody needs, and times are already hard, you can get away with charging anything you want!  When you have your customer-base over a barrel, you can practically name your price!  That is literally Business 101 thinking. There are lengths you might go to for the sake of closing a deal and pleasing a customer, but you don't just give away the store. That's crossing a line.

But here is God, calling to a bunch of needy refugees from Babylon looking to start over in their ancestral homeland, throwing out the economics textbook and crossing the line from "good customer service" to "recklessly generous giving." Why would God just give away good things to people who are hungry and thirsty and want to feed their families?  Well, because it turns out that God has always cared about people more than profits, and because God isn't interested in a relationship with us on the terms of vendor-to-customer, but parent-to-child, Lover-to-Beloved, Redeemer-to-Redeemed.  God crosses the line and breaks the boundary from good business sense into gracious blessing, because that's just who God is.  And it turns out that God has just never been all that interested in asking, "What's in it for me?" or "Why would I do a sucker-thing like helping someone without getting something in return?" God has only ever been interested in loving us, not profiting off of us.  

Of course, part of the tragedy that Isaiah 55 alludes to here is that so often we human beings choose foolishly and go chasing after the snake-oil salesmen and price-gouging peddlers who try to profit off of our habit of seeking the things that don't satisfy.  God keeps giving away good, cool, clean, refreshing water right from the spring, and we keep buying giant-sized fluorescent-colored Big Gulps in unnatural flavors that have no meaning or referent in the real world (What is "Baja blast" or "Purple Thunder"?).  God keeps offering genuine love, and we keep settling for counterfeits that are measured in social media "likes" and "follows."  God keeps offering authentic justice as our way of life, and we keep chasing after a vision of "Me and My Group First" instead.  God keeps calling us into real community, and we keep separating ourselves into exclusive little clubs, gated developments, and cliques.  In other words, God keeps offering us the good stuff for free, and we human beings keep insisting on paying more for shoddy knock-offs.  And that is a downright shame.

Maybe today is a day to hear God's unconventional offer with new ears, and finally to be done with the ways we have chased mirages and wasted our money on things that didn't satisfy.  Maybe today is a day to be done with the kind of obsessions with profits and deals that cannot recognize the gift of grace staring us right in the face.  Maybe today is a day in which, when we hear God's invitation, "Come to the waters," we drop what we are doing and come with empty hands to receive.

And maybe we can tell a neighbor along the way about the Recklessly Generous God who is giving it all away.

Lord God, teach us to stop spending our lives on the things that don't satisfy, and instead to receive the good things you give freely.

Jesus Calls Baloney--March 25, 2025

Jesus Calls Baloney--March 25, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them--do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." (Luke 13:4-5

Jesus has a way of preventing people from punching down.  You know what I mean?

Jesus often will intervene in a situation when someone who is already in a vulnerable situation or marginalized position is getting ganged up on or picked on by others who have more power, clout, or status.  He steps in to stop the bullies and to silence the ones who use their situation to look down on others (or hold them down).  

It's the scene with the lynch-mob and the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus shuts them all down with the proposal that the one who is without sin gets to throw the first stone... until they all walk away.  Or it's the time when the disciples assume that a person born blind is being punished by God (or that his parents are being punished) by the blindness, and Jesus tells them that their thinking is all wrong.  Or when the Respectable Religious people grumble that Jesus is at the much-hated tax collector Zacchaeus' house, Jesus silences them all by insisting that Zacchaeus, too, is a child of God worthy of redemption.  That's just Jesus' thing: he's always putting himself in the middle of the bullies and their targets, and he makes it clear that God has no part in kicking people when they are down. And I have to tell you--this is one of the things I have come to love most about Jesus--even though it also makes me uncomfortable at the same time, because I am so often a coward who isn't brave enough to speak up like he does.  Jesus never joins the side of the bullies; he always speaks up for the ones who are belittled.

This is one of those times, even if it's hard at first to see what's being said here.  Let's unpack this verse that continues along in the reading that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  Yesterday we looked at the case of some Galileans whom the Roman governor Pilate had executed without trial or due process while they were in the act of worshiping in the Temple, and Jesus insisted that this terrible thing wasn't a sign that they were worse sinners or being singled out by God for wrath.  Now as the scene continues, Jesus goes further and offers another example--this time without the complicating factor of the empire.  He pulls an example from the headlines of the day--apparently a tower had fallen in the city of Jerusalem, and eighteen people were killed in the accident.  Now, the conventional wisdom of the day would have said, "Well, when an accident like this happens, this must have been God's punishment for the ones who were killed."  The unspoken assumption of a lot of folks in the world is still basically the same: when a bad thing happens in your life, it's a sign of God's disapproval.  So now not only are you hurting, but you've got a truck-load of guilt piled on top, too, pinning you underneath.  Talk about adding insult to injury!

That's basically what Jesus is dealing with in this conversation: the people who have come to Jesus in this story picture a world in which suffering is translatable to sin.  Therefore, in their view, the people who were killed by the collapse of a tower are not victims to be mourned, but evildoers to be scorned.  They see God taking sides against those eighteen who died beneath the rubble, and presumably they would say the same about whatever other natural disaster might happen tomorrow, or whatever accident might happen next week. This perspective sees everyone who suffers, from rain on your wedding day to the terminal cancer diagnosis, as recipients of divine retribution, and therefore, not worthy of our compassion or empathy, but only our condemnation.

And to all of that, Jesus definitively calls "Baloney!"

"Do you think those victims who died when the tower fell were worse offenders than everyone else in the city?" he asks sardonically.  "No, I tell you!" That's not how it works--the accident that took their lives was not God's laser-guided precision judgment on them, and for that matter, those who weren't affected by the accident don't get to say that they are perfect and pure in God's sight, either.  Jesus is dismantling the mindset that pictures God heaping on insult to add to injury when people suffer.  He is rejecting the worldview that allows those in positions of strength and stability to punch down at the people they see struggling beneath them.  And he is tearing down any theology that says, "When you suffer in life, it is a sign of God's wrath against you." 

The implication, of course, is that God--<gasp!>--just might choose to stand with the victims, the sufferers, and the sorrowful.  Jesus wants us to see God, less as the Cosmic Referee handing out lightning bolts like penalties, and more as the empathic Comforter of Those Who Grieve, the Lifter of Those Bowed Down, and the Vindicator of Those Who Have Been Stepped On.  God is not absent from the victims of tragedy in the world; Jesus insists God is particularly present for them.

And in a sense, this is only the logical continuation of the perspective of the Beatitudes.  If Jesus can announce, "Blessed are the poor, the hungry, and those who mourn," without blushing or crossing his fingers, it is because Jesus sincerely believes that suffering is not evidence of God singling you out for your egregious sin.  Jesus tells us that's simply not how it works, and thereby opens us up to the possibility that God is present especially for those who suffer, not merely rewarding good behavior with convenient parking spaces and sunny weather.  Jesus, in other words, shows us a God who crosses the line to stand with those who are troubled, those who are victimized, and those who endure tragedy, rather than a distant deity perched up on the cloud tops doling out disasters left and right.  This is how God's love works.

Taking Jesus seriously will probably overturn a lot of what we took for granted about how God operates in the world, especially if we have ever been the ones explaining some natural disaster as God's judgment on "those people" (the way Respectable Religious talking heads so often do when there is an earthquake or a hurricane).  It is always tempting to view someone else's tragedy as a punishment from God, because the mere fact that you didn't have to deal with a fire, or a tornado, or a tsunami can make you feel like you are better than those who did.  Jesus puts a stop to all of that.  He just outright calls baloney on that whole program of bad theology, in order that we might come to recognize God crossing lines and choosing to side with the sufferers rather than the ones who are punching down.

Maybe we could stand to actually listen to Jesus, even if it calls us to a new kind of bravery or forces us to re-think what we thought we knew about God, and to see the presence of God among all who are hurting on this day. What might that do to the way we spend our time, our energy, and our love today?

Lord God, help us to see you where you are among those who hurt, and to let go of our old assumptions about your ways in the world.

For the Disappeared--March 24, 2025

For the Disappeared--March 24, 2025

"At that time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, 'Do you think because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did."  (Luke 13:1-3)

Sometimes there is no greater anxiety than the possibility that we might have been wrong... and sometimes there is no greater grace than the realization that we were.

The anxiety keeps us from staring down our potential wrong-ness, but the grace is the reason it is worth facing it.

This is one of those times.

In this scene from Luke's Gospel, which many of us heard in worship this Sunday, a group of people come to Jesus with a bit of news... and a preconceived interpretation of its meaning.  They have come looking for Jesus not only to indulge in this juicy gossip with them, but then of course also to affirm and reinforce their understanding of what it means.  And spoiler alert: Jesus will have to tell them that they are wrong--and it turns out it is deeply good news that they are.

These folks bring the report that there were some people from Galilee whom the Roman governor Pontius Pilate had killed while they were in the act of public worship offering sacrifices, presumably in the Jerusalem Temple.  This is what the euphemistic phrase about their "blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices" gets at.  Contemporary historians don't know much about this particular event, and ancient historians like Josephus don't give us any more to go on, but the situation seems obvious enough.  Here are folks from Galilee who had come down to Jerusalem, one might guess at the time of an annual religious festival/holiday, and the Roman governor decides they are suspicious troublemakers and has his soldiers execute them in cold blood right there as they were offering their own sacrifices.  

Complicating the scene is that the territory of Galilee, where these victims were from, wasn't Pontius Pilate's jurisdiction, but Jerusalem, where these extrajudicial killings took place, was. It is clear from the handful of details the crowd has that these people had no trial (if they had been convicted in a trial or tribunal, they wouldn't have been released to go offer sacrifices after all). Rather, Pilate merely deemed them a threat, and then on the authority of the empire, he decided to have his soldiers (who functioned as military-police) execute these Galileans.  Ancient historians of the time tell us that some people saw Galileans as especially "seditious" (that's Josephus' word for it back in the first century), and so it would have been easy for Pilate to just make a decree that these particular Galileans were troublemakers and threatened Roman order, so they had to be gotten rid of without anything that we might call due process. Pretty horrifying stuff, right?  But, by the same token, this is pretty much the standard operating procedure for authoritarian regimes throughout history: execution without trial, the "disappearing" of those deemed enemies of the state, and the expedited killing of the usual suspects before anybody asks too many questions.  

So, with all of that loaded into this headline, Jesus can tell that the people who have come to him asking for his "take" already have made up their minds.  He knows--since this is the conventional wisdom of the day--that these Galileans must have had it coming.  Sure, they had no trial to prove their guilt or innocence, and sure a notoriously brutal and authoritarian regime had just made these Galileans disappear by killing them without a day in court to defend themselves, but if such a terrible thing had happened, they must have deserved it... right?  Underneath that assumption is likely the belief that these Galileans must have been guilty because the powers of the day said they were.  If the Roman governor said they were dangerous brigands, seditious conspirators, or domestic terrorists, they must have been, right? If Rome said you were a criminal or an enemy, you must be!  And of course, an awful lot of us human beings in an awful lot of human history all just nod our heads to that thinking.  "If they weren't criminals, they wouldn't have been arrested!" Right?  It seems just so obvious we don't even think to question it.  The authorities have to stop the "bad guys," and if they apprehend someone and execute them or otherwise make them disappear, well, the ones who disappeared must have been "bad guys" too.  And that must mean they deserved their punishment, and God must have given divine approval, too.  That's just how things are... we are told.

This is exactly the thing Jesus says "no" to, and this is precisely the bad theology he has come to dismantle.  Jesus doesn't accept the unspoken assumption of the folks who have come to him with the news about these killings.  He calls it out.  "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?" he asks, before providing his own loud and clear, "No!"  That's not how it works!  This action by Pilate does not come with God's endorsement, and the killing of these Galileans is not proof of their guilt or their dangerousness.  It only means that Pilate saw them as a threat to his version of "law and order," but that has nothing to do with what God's kind of justice said about them.  Jesus starts pulling at the thread that had been holding together an entire mindset that said, "When terrible things happen, it must be with God's tacit approval, and therefore these Galileans must really have been dangerous troublemakers or violent brigands."  Jesus forces us to question that whole way of seeing the world, and in particular, he compels us to question whether someone really is a dangerous threat just because the powers of the day say they are.

History, of course, is sadly replete with examples of times when people were labeled dangerous, subversive, or "enemies of the state" and therefore the powers of the day decreed they could round folks up without trial or charge, detain them in camps, or make them disappear altogether.  And even worse, there have been too many times when people claiming to speak for God have nodded their heads in complicit approval as it happened.  Jesus throws a monkey-wrench into all of it.  But we can't pretend that the internment of the Japanese in the United States during World War II wasn't cut out of the same cloth as what Pilate did, or the enforcement of the Fugitive Slaw Law that criminalized both those who escaped slavery and any who helped them get to freedom, even if they were in states where slavery was illegal.  The Third Reich did the same to anybody it labeled "degenerate" or "undesirable," and the brutal regimes of El Salvador during Bishop Oscar Romero's life or the totalitarianism of Stalin, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge did it during their regimes as well.  The terrifying thing is just how easily people go along with the decree that someone is dangerous and therefore expendable, just on the say so of someone with a podium and an official seal.  And all too easily, we as people of faith just nod our heads in the implicit agreement that "if they weren't guilty, they wouldn't have been arrested."

How quickly we forget that those very same words were spoken of Jesus, too.  "If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you," the Respectable Religious Leaders say to Pontius Pilate in John's telling of the trial of Jesus.  Jesus, too, knows what it is like to be branded a troublemaker and gotten rid of, not because he was found guilty of something, but because too often the Powers of the Day are only interested in what is expedient, efficient, and helps tighten their grip on control.  Jesus is willing, when the time comes, to stare down that kind of false conviction and terrible brutality, but he makes it clear that this is not of God.  When he responds to the reports about the Galileans killed by Pilate, he forces us to see that not every action taken by an empire or regime is automatically just, much less endorsed by God.   He forces us to see that those Galileans killed by Pilate were not being punished by God but were victims of a truly wicked empire that didn't care about doing justice but justified itself in wiping out anyone it saw as a threat.  And in doing that Jesus also enables us to see that even those who have been branded as "expendable" by the empire of the day are not ignorable in God's sight.  God weeps when such atrocities are committed.  God says "No" to that kind of brutality.  And God says that even if the powers of the day have labeled someone as an "enemy," that does not mean they have earned God's wrath to zap them or wipe them out.  As Jesus insists repeatedly, even those who are truly enemies of God are met with God's grace rather than lightning bolts out of the blue.

All too often in our history, we have just assumed that the ones labeled by the authorities as dangerous threats were deserving of divine wrath, rather than questioning whether they have been victims of aggressive empires and authoritarians.  Jesus forces us to see those who have been vilified as perhaps the victims rather than the perpetrators of wickedness, and he forces us to see that God's care and concern cross the boundaries set up by the likes of Pontius Pilate to separate those "dangerous threats" from the rest of us.  If we are going to take Jesus seriously, it will mean re-examining an awful lot of what we assumed was true about the world, and about which voices we should listen to as authoritative in our lives.  But it will be worth it, as scary as it might be to admit how wrong we have been, because when Jesus shows us the truth, he also shows us a love that includes those who have been "disappeared" from history by one regime or another.  Jesus insists that they are not forgotten by God, and we cannot forget about them, either.  Jesus insists that God's love reaches even to include those who vanished while we looked the other way because the powers of the day had deemed them a threat. And as difficult as it is to face our failure to speak up for the likes of those folks, like the Galileans in this story, it is deeply good to know that God is not fooled, and God does not condemn them even when the empire does.

Maybe today we will find the courage to speak up, to look around at those who are on the verge of disappearing, and to echo Jesus' "No" that refuses to bless their disappearance if it happens.

Lord Jesus, make us courageous enough to love even those we are afraid to speak up for, even against the likes of Pontius Pilate or the powers of the day.

Love Without Shame--March 21, 2025

Love Without Shame--March 21, 2025

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us." [Romans 5:6-8]

God is not Miss Hannigan, and we are not Little Orphan Annie.

In case it's been a while since you last saw the musical (whether on stage, or the 1982 version with Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, or 2014's version with Cameron Diaz in an updated version of the story and character), the story of Annie begins with the optimistic title character and a gaggle of other girls living their hard-knock life in a run-down orphanage (the 2014 version with Quvenzhane Wallis as Annie makes it an overcrowded foster home), under the "care" (or apathy) of the mean-spirited and bitter Miss Hannigan.

In any version of the story, while Miss Hannigan does technically provide food (which is barely edible) and shelter (which is hardly adequate) for the girls, she is absolutely ruthless when it comes to rubbing in how "grateful" they should all be that she has taken them in at all. Miss Hannigan goes out of her way to make Annie and the other girls know they are a drag on her life, that they are wretched and unwanted, and that they are unworthy of the attention and resources she gives them.

There is no love, in other words, for Annie and her friends--only the shame and guilt that they aren't worthy of the good things she does for them (which aren't very good). Miss Hannigan is bitter, conniving, and self-interested, and only looks for ways to get labor or money from the girls in her care.

And, again, just to be clear--this is NOT how God loves us.

I need to say that because the notion that Paul touches on here in Romans can either be used to speak a beautiful grace, or mis-used to sound like God only grudgingly saves humanity, like we are a burden God never wanted and can't stand. When Paul says that Christ died for us when we were "ungodly" and "sinners," the point isn't to beat us up or exploit us, a la Miss Hannigan. The movie character lays it on thick that Annie and her friends are unworthy, because she wants to lay guilt and shame on them so they won't ask for any better treatment. If she can convince them that they don't deserve genuine love, they won't speak up when they don't get it. And in this world, if someone has publicly scolds you to act more "grateful" or to say "thank you" more, it is often a reminder of just how insecure and petty they are, not how ungrateful you actually are.  In any case, that's NOT how Paul intends for us to hear his description of God's love. Just the opposite, actually--Paul wants us to know just how precious we are to God, that Christ died for us even when we didn't bring other perks or payback to the table.

Sometimes, to be very honest, we Christians pile on the self-deprecation because we think it is the same thing as holiness. Sometimes we give the impression that wallowing in talk about being a "wretch" or a "worm" is the truest mark of piety, and that if you don't talk that way about yourself, it is a sign of sinful pride. But Paul's intention here in Romans 5 isn't to focus on us or our rottenness, so much as it underscore the unconditional love of God. The difference is important.

It is the difference between me telling my children, "You're lucky I put up with you, because nobody else in the world would," and saying to them, "I love you already, just as you are, on the days when you are kind and sweet and on the days when you are ornery and crabby, no matter what."

And that's the vital message Paul is trying to get across. God's love reaches out to us--in fact, was swallowed up in death for us--even when we (still!) turn our backs on God in stubborn, crabby, orneriness. That is good news to be celebrated, shared, and shouted from the rooftops. God's love for us in Christ is not reserved only for the polite and well-mannered ones or the ones who are easy to love, but for all of us at our worst.  And that love does not carry with it the requirement that you have to beat yourself up with melodramatic self-loathing in the name of spirituality first before those words of grace can be spoken.

So, let's say it, loud and clear right now for whomever needs to hear it:

You are beloved, just as you are.

Whatever you bring to the picture, you are beloved--and you are beloved by a God who sees you fully and loves the real you, not anybody else's cardboard cut-out of you.

You are so precious to God that there is no price God would not pay to be with you.

And you are loved so completely and deeply that there is nothing you can do (or not do) to make God stop loving you.

And God is not so petty or insecure as to say to us, "I don't recall you saying Thank You to me lately, so I'm taking back my care and provision for you." Even as unpolished, unvarnished sinners, God's love reaches to you. Already.

That's what the cross is about. A love that came with no strings or conditions, without a whiff of resentment or bitterness from God's part, and without any shame or guilt for us to wallow in first. A love that poured itself out without requiring first that we become "more lovable," because we were already beloved. A love that moves beyond boundaries.

That's the news worth telling someone. In fact, you can bet your bottom dollar there's someone you know who needs to hear it.

Lord Jesus, let us simply hear your promise that we are beloved, and let it sink in without our need to add layers of guilt or resentment onto it. Let your love sink in deep.

The Point of Everything--March 20, 2025

The Point of Everything--March 20, 2025

Then [the LORD] said to Abram, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates..." [Genesis 15:7-18]

Sometimes, the only thing there is to do is listen. And sometimes that itself is Love's gift of grace.

Like this story here from Genesis, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. This is the story of God making a one-sided deal with Abraham... and how all Abraham (still going by his earlier name, Abram, here) can do is listen, as God makes all the promises, and gives the farm away to the old childless man.

This is the story of how Abram brings nothing but doubt, and God brings gift after gift, grace upon grace, and offers it up to Abram as a promise with no strings, conditions, or expiration date. It begins here with Abram asking God, "Okay, so back in Genesis 12 you promised me a new homeland, and descendants, and blessing... and so far all I've got is a camel-load of bupkis. How do I know that you're gonna keep your promise, God? How do I know that when you talk big, you will actually deliver?" (You get the sense that Abram had recently been watching the news and seen some elected official deliver a bloviating speech full of empty slogans and finger-pointing with no action right before this conversation with God, perhaps.)

Well, despite the fact that I imagine most of us are too shy to talk to the Almighty with such... chutzpah, let's say... God takes Abram's question seriously and deals with it. "Okay, Abram, you want to know how you can trust that the promise will come true? Let's make a deal..." God instructs Abram to get the traditional, customary components for cutting a deal back in the ancient near East--animals that are to be cut in half in a covenant-making ceremony.

While our symbolic actions for making deals official are a bit less bloody here in the 21st century (we use signatures and dates, and perhaps a notary's official seal if we are being extra official) than they were in Abram's time, the idea is the same: there are certain accepted practices, symbolic gestures, and actions that come to be the accepted procedure for making contracts and covenants. In the ancient world, the process was something like this: two parties (let's call them, oh, say, Party A and Party B) would get an appointed assortment of animals and ritually slaughter them, and then lay the pieces out in two piles over against each other, and then BOTH parties would walk between the pieces, and each one was supposed to say out loud what their part of the deal was going to be... and at the same time, you were to invoke your god or gods, and effectively call down a conditional curse on either party if one side or the other did not live up to their end of the bargain, as if to say, "May my gods do to me what we just did to these animals if I don't live up to my end of this deal." So, if, for example, I made a treaty with you and your city-state to offer you 20 sheaves of wheat in exchange for your protection from the roaming barbarians, or if I promised you could marry my daughter in exchange for a sum of gold coins as a dowry, we would cut a covenant this way. And both Party A and Party B would pass between the pieces, each of them saying out loud what they were going to do for their end of the deal, and each of them calling on their deities to cut them down like these animals pieces if they flaked out or reneged on their part of the deal. Sort of a grown-up, very literal version of "cross my heart, hope to die..."

What's critical here in the set up for this weird conversation with Abram and God is that God proposes this covenant ceremony as a way of assuring Abram that what is about to be promised will come true. It appears God presumes Abram will already understand what God has in mind with these animal pieces. Abram expects, then, that God is about to speak something, and then that Abram himself is going to have to put some skin in the game, so to speak. Abram will have to do something for his part, offer some commitment, give some concessions, or at least speak some kind of allegiance, devotion, or agreement to good behavior there... right?

Ah, but this is one of those times where all there is to do is listen. And where that fact is evidence of mercy.

God, the text says, makes a "deep sleep" fall upon Abram, something that allows the future patriarch to see what is happening and to hear the voice of God, but not to get up and move, or even speak, for his own part. And that's when God starts talking... and Abram just listens.

God speaks a promise as the Party A of this covenant: land, descendants, and blessing for Abram, albeit through a bumpy ride and a couple of detours in Egypt and the wilderness. But all in all, quite a showcase of divine abundance. God says it out loud, while Abram listens, and then God appears as a torch and smoking pot and passes between the animal carcasses. This is one of those moments that would have been shockingly clear to Abram, and to the first tellers and hearers of this story, because basically the Almighty has just invoked a curse on the divine self: "May I be torn apart like these animal pieces if I do not live up to my side of this deal." My goodness--what can it possibly mean that the Source and Ground of all Being threatens self-destruction as a consequence of breaking faith on a covenant? God vows to be torn apart if unfaithful to this contract--talk about a signing statement!

And Abram? He just listens. Still.

This is the wonder of the story. God still has ol' Abe in a trance--he can watch the flaming torch. He can hear the divine voice. In other words, he can listen. But he does not speak. He does not act. He does not shake his head yes or give his permission. He does not offer anything back, and there's not even a bit of fine print about promising to be a good boy from now on. Abram just listens, as God makes all the promises.

That means for this contract, for this covenant, the living God puts it all on the line... and gets nothing back in return. The living God makes a promise--a unilateral, one-sided agreement, that does not depend on Abram. Not on his future good behavior or past rule-keeping. Not on gold stars outnumbering red marks on his permanent record. It is simply a one-sided promise, a deal in which there is no "tit-for-tat" or quid pro quo, but rather all unconditional grace on God's part and only listening on Abram's part.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

There are people in this world who are convinced that the only good "deals" out there are the ones in which I get X in exchange for giving you Y, and that those deals are only "great" if I value the X that I get more than the Y that I am giving up. And similarly, such supposed "experts" on "making great deals" will try and convince you that only people who think in such terms are the Great Deal-Makers of the world.

And then there is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob... the God of Miriam and Sarah and Ruth, too. And here, this God makes an entirely one-sided, unconditional, giving-away-the-farm-for-free covenant... for nothin'. God does all the promising, and that means God does all the oath-making and curse-invoking. Abram? He listens. That's all. He gets to witness God say, "This promise does not depend on what you bring to the table, Abe--this is all me and what I will do for you."

Some might call that a poorly negotiated deal... but the Bible calls it grace. The Bible calls it God's telltale modus operandi. The Bible calls it an unconditional, unilateral covenant. And it is the beginning of the story of the whole "salvation history" of the world, as it were. With this covenant, the story of the universe takes a sharp turn toward restoration and renewal, as God picks a childless old man and says, "I'll change the world with you and the son you don't have yet."

"Why would God be satisfied with such a deal?" some might ask, with the unspoken assumption that God should have renegotiated to get something better out of the deal than... nothing. But that is to misunderstand the whole point--of everything. The "point," you could say, of life, the universe, and everything, the goal toward which all of creation is aimed... is, well, love. And love, as a later apostle will tell us (at every wedding ceremony you will ever go to) that "love does not insist on getting its own way." Love, which is our shorthand for the self-giving impulse that God has woven into the fabric of creation itself, that kind of boundary-crossing love is the point of everything. God operates on the basis of, and with the logic of, love, which is to say, God isn't concerned with "getting" something in return for goodness--only, rather, the well-being of the beloved (that's us--a whole planet full of us!). So God is perfectly willing to do things and make deals and speak promises that look like nonsense to all the world's bone-headed small-minded short-sighted "experts" who can only see as far as what a deal with get for them, because God is more interested in our good than in impressing people who wrongly think themselves to be experts at making deals.

That's the long and the short of it, really: the whole story of the Scriptures, from Genesis through "Amen, come Lord Jesus!", is the story of a lopsided deal that had no negotiations or back-and-forth of demands and concessions, but only the unilateral promise of God, "I will give you these things--I swear by myself to do it, and I will be torn to pieces before I break my promise." The whole story of the Bible is the story of what unfolds from a promise that would make the experts blush because God doesn't "get" anything for God's side of the deal.

And, of course, the followers of Jesus are convinced that God didn't change tactics after that encounter with Abram and the animal pieces. We tell a story--in fact, we tell it every week in the places where I worship on Sundays--about how that same God took on human flesh, and then took bread and broke it open, and poured out a cup of wine, and told his closest friends something like, "This is me. I am about to be torn open in a new act of divine deal-making. Your job... is to listen. Your role is to receive what I give you. Your task is to receive, now hear closely as I make a new covenant with you." And then Jesus cut a new covenant with the universe--except that by the time Jesus was around, animal pieces had fallen out of fashion for deal-making, and instead, Jesus invokes the curse of self-destruction from a Roman execution stake. The cross is God's way of doubling down on one-sided deals. Rather than saying, "I should have used my leverage to squeeze Abraham for some more concessions for my side... I'll use the cross to get a better deal for myself now!" the Maker of the universe says, "Here once again, I'll do it all... without getting anything in return for myself or my 'side' of the deal. It is finished."

And us? We just listen. We listen still.

These are the upside-down values of the people of God and the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. We celebrate a deal that God cut without getting a single perk or payoff. We dare to practice such self-giving, unconditional generosity ourselves. And we teach both our children and new disciples that sometimes the greatest deal of all is the one the experts all laugh at because it looks like you get nothing in return. That, after all, is the way God saved the world. 

Our job... is to listen.

Lord God, let us be shaped by your wonderfully strange kind of logic, so that we no longer angle or posture ourselves to get more for ourselves, but simply give ourselves away with the same unconditional love by which you rule and redeem creation.

On Not Becoming Soul Raisins--March 19, 2025

On Not Becoming Soul Raisins--March 19, 2025

"He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself." (Philippians 3:21)

At some point, this body of mine is going to wear out.  It's not the most fun subject to think about, and it's not the most sparkling banter for making small talk, but it's the truth.  This body of mine--and yours, too--has a shelf life, and they will only last so long, even if we do everything right.  To be a human is basically to be a walking meat sack; we are made up of muscle, sinew, bone, and an assortment of organs, and all of them will eventually get to a point where they fail us some way or another.  

That's nothing to be embarrassed about or to pretend isn't so. It is simply a part of "life as we know it," to borrow the old line from Star Trek.  I don't know about you, but already at only four and half decades of life on this planet there are greyer hairs (and as my children remind me, fewer of them) on my head then in my high school days.  My eyes strain sometimes to read tiny print, and I find that there are aches and pains that don't go away as quickly as I remember in earlier chapters of my life.  All around me--and even within me--are signs that the miles on the ol' odometer are racking up on this body, which is both something I have and also something I am.  We can each do our best to eat well, get enough sleep, take time for exercise, and avoid harmful things, but each of us in more or less the same situation as human beings: our bodies last for a season, and eventually they wear down.  It is a difficult truth to face because it is so humbling, knowing that each of us will come to rely on other people to help us doing the things we used to be able to do alone, and none of us will be able to avoid having some part of our bodies give out at some point. That's part of the price of the ticket.

Of course, none of this so far needs any Bible verses as proof.  Our own aging selves are the evidence that our bodies are finite and fragile.  And in a sense, that means that our vitality--the energy of life itself--is a limited commodity.  We may have seemingly inexhaustible energy in our youth, pulling all-nighters in college or filling our days jam-packed with activities, but over time it becomes clear to each of us that we have limitations to our time, strength, endurance, and spark. At some point each of us decides that we don't have the ability to volunteer for fifty things, but maybe we can handle three or four manageably.  And all of that raises the question of scarcity.

Once you realize that there is only so much energy that anyone's body can expend, it is really easy to become stingy with sharing any of it.  It becomes really tempting to say to ourselves, "You can't afford to volunteer your time to help strangers--you only have so much to go around!"  It starts to sound very rational to tell ourselves, "Don't spend your energy on doing things for people who won't immediately be able to pay you back, because you've got to conserve the limited amount of strength you have and use it for yourself!" It becomes very persuasive to convince ourselves that because our bodies only have so much vitality in them, we need to hoard it rather than share it.  And from there, we convince ourselves to turn our whole mindset inward on our own self-absorbed interests, our own benefit, and putting "Me and My Group First!"  If that isn't conventional wisdom, I'll eat my hat.

But there is a hidden cost to that kind of approach to life.  When we become focused solely on how to maintain our grip on MY limited energy, MY finite time, and MY meager strength, it's like something inside our spirit starts to shrivel up--our souls become like old, hardened raisins.  Our older brother in the faith Martin Luther used to talk about "sin" in similar terms--that at its core, sin is when the human self becomes bent or curved in on itself, like an in-grown toenail in our hearts (okay, that part isn't from Luther, but the notion of sin is supposed to be repulsive, not merely a minor annoyance).  And that's just the thing: it is very easy--damnably easy, to be honest--to tell ourselves we are only being rational, reasonable, and logical as we withdraw from concern for others around us, all with the logical justification that we are creatures with limited amounts of energy and time to give, and we can't go around sharing it with others because it's going to run out someday!  And all the while, that scarcity-driven fear cuts us off from others, and we don't realize how we are actually less and less alive because we are severing our connections to neighbors, community, and the world that God loves. (Not to go all Marvel Cinematic Universe on us, but like the late Chadwick Boseman said as King T'Challa in the Black Panther movie, "In times of crisis, the wise build bridges while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one tribe.")  In other words, when we surrender to the fear of losing ourselves because our time, energy, and passion are scarce resources, we end up actually dying inside in a different way. 

There is, however, an alternative. And I think this is what the apostle Paul has in mind as he writes to the Philippians.  In today's verse, following on the one we looked at yesterday from the passage many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, Paul honestly admits that these bodies of ours are fragile and fleeting.  Our physical selves have limitations and a lifespan, and Paul knows it.  Our "body of humiliation" or "humble bodies" (depending on how you translate his turn of phrase) only gets so many miles before the tread is all worn down on the tires.  But Paul's conclusion about this reality isn't simply to conclude that we need to be selfish and stingy with ourselves because we only have so much vitality to give.  He doesn't say, "Therefore, don't waste time caring about your neighbors near and far, because you've got to look out for Number One first!" Rather, Paul turns our hope to the crucified and risen Jesus, the One who is able to "transform" these dusty selves to they will "be conformed to the body of his glory."  The resurrection of Jesus tells us that we don't need to deny or run away from our human finitude, but rather we can spend ourselves in love because we know that ultimately ours is the God who raises the dead and will make us and all things new.  We don't have to hoard our limited energy, but we can freely share it, as we also we be filled up by others around us who will share themselves with us as well. And we can do all this, risking that we will give ourselves away fully, because the God in whose hands we are placed is the God who raises the dead, fills the empty, and brings us to new life.

Look, I'm not saying that any of us should reckless use up all of our time and energy all at once so that we get burned out.  But I do think it is a terrible shame if we become so fearful of giving up our limited energy or attention that we allow it to harden our hearts so that we never give ourselves away.  A wise mentor from my past used to talk about the different between "burning out" and "burning up." He would say that if you spend your energy too fast and too "hot" all at once the wick goes out while you still had candle-wax or oil left to use, but if you pace yourself, you can get to the point of giving yourself away completely and fully, spending your whole self, energy, love, and time, by the end of your life with nothing held back that could have been given.  The first one is burning out, and it is indeed a shame when it happens.  The second is what he called burning up, which is exactly what you want a candle to do--to offer all that is has over the course of its existence.  For us who are resurrection people, we do not have to be afraid or stingy about giving ourselves away--about the "burning up" way of life--because we trust that the One in whom we have placed our trust is able to transform these finite bodies that do indeed have limits into new creations in resurrection.  I don't have to hold back my time, ability, love, energy, or passion from others in the futile attempt to prolong my life or stretch out my supply, but rather I can see my whole life as the well-paced offering over all my years of giving it all away in hope that God will breathe new life into my dusty self in an act of new creation. 

Because of Jesus, we do not have to be stingy with our strength.

Because of God's resurrection power, we do not have to try to preserve our power for our own sake or span of life.

Because the One in whom we place our trust is both the Crucified and Risen One, we can allow our love to flow beyond the narrow confines of "Me and My Group First" or our own self-centered interests, because our lives are not determined by how fiercely we hoarded our physical stamina.

Today, let's dare to give ourselves away, knowing that there is no way to avoid the mortal limits of these present bodies of ours, but also knowing that we will have used our lives well if we have shined with all the light we had to give in our days... and that the God who raised Jesus has promised to make us new as well.

Lord Jesus, keep us from stinginess with our lives to offer all that we have to you in trust.