When We Were Enemies--October 18, 2024

When We Were Enemies--October 18, 2024

"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. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath.  For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." [Romans 5:6-10]

Let me be honest with you. Sometimes people ask me why I make such a big deal about loving our enemies as Christians.  

It is, for an awful lot of folks, one of the harder teachings of Jesus to accept and certainly one of the hardest to actually practice.  So, why do I keep rubbing it the faces of people around me (after all, I have a "Love your enemies" stole I often wear on Sundays, and frequently wear a lapel button with the same message on my suit jacket), when it would be an easier sell for potential new church members or on-the-fence seekers if my first message were something less, I don't know, explicitly countercultural and subversive?  (I recall, for example, sitting in a church gathering of some sort years ago where parents and their teenage children were around the table, and I had causally made some remark about inviting not just friends to church, but strangers or enemies.  In response, one of the young people there immediately turned to ask his mom, "Why would anybody do anything like that for their enemies?" to which the mother immediately answered in all sincerity, "Oh, well, you've got to keep tabs on your enemies and keep them close enough so you can get them before they get you!" It was as if both the child and the parent were completely unaware of the teachings of Jesus we have been looking at in these recent days, even though it is at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount.)  So, knowing how unpalatable this notion is even to lifelong churchgoers, why keep coming back to it?  

Here's the truth: it's my only hope.

Now, when I say that, I don't mean that I believe if I don't love my enemies perfectly enough I will get kicked out of God's good graces and won't go to heaven when I die. My hope doesn't rest on how proficiently I maintain love for my enemies, but rather on the gospel's claim that God has loved me when I was the enemy of God--and, frankly, when my hard heart and stubborn sin makes me act in opposition to God even now.  In other words, the good news of the gospel has everything to do with enemy-love, because it is first and foremost God who loves enemies and rescues us even when we are dead-set turned away from God.  The gospel itself is about enemy-love; it's not just a difficult moral teaching we tack on for expert-level Christians, but rather it's the currency of the whole economy of grace... because it is God who has loved us first even "while we were enemies" and saved us through Christ.

The Gospel depends on a God who doesn't just love us when we are already turned toward God or who tolerates us when we are basically pointed in the right direction, but who loves us and is willing to take action to save us even at our worst... even when we are turned away from God... even when we oppose God.

That's precisely Paul's point here in this critical moment in his letter to the Romans.  He grounds our salvation, not in our willingness as humans, as Christians, or as good little disciples, to be God's friends, but rather in God's choice to love us and reconcile with us precisely when we have been estranged and at odds with God.  This goes even further than what we read earlier this week from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.  When Jesus says, as he does in Matthew's version, that God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous," it could sound like God only passively lets good things happen to stinkers because they also happen to the well-behaved.  It could sound like Jesus is saying, "God is already sending sunshine on the perfect peaches, and it's just too much of a hassle to prevent the sun from going to the crooks and cheaters, so God just lets it shine on everyone."  Or it could sound like there is some basic "free version" of God's love that doesn't cover very much or only applies to the weather, but that the "full version" of God's love operates by different rules for paying subscribers for salvation.  But no, Paul insists that God's reckless, enemy-embracing love doesn't only apply to sunshine and rain for your fields, but is actually the heart of our whole salvation history, because Jesus gave his life, not just for people you might label as "friends" of God or "followers" of God, but in fact for us when we were "enemies" of God.  The cross, Paul insists, wasn't just for the "godly," or the "strong," or the "virtuous," but precisely for the "ungodly," the "weak," and for "sinners."  That's the nature of God's love, not just for low-stakes things like sun and rain, but for the cross and the empty tomb.

My only hope, in other words, is that God is committed to loving God's enemies (myself included!) to the point of saving them and reconciling with them from God's side, even before I've "turned to God" or "gotten my act together," or even "prayed the sinner's prayer" or "accepted Jesus into my heart."  God's love did not need to wait for me to take the first step, or for me to at least show a little promise before rescuing me and a whole world full of us.

And maybe we need to stop and sit with that reality for a minute: if Paul is right on this (and again, I am banking my salvation on the trust that he is) and God's saving love in Jesus rescued us while we were enemies opposed to God, then whatever the cross is about, it's not about changing God's mind about us.  Let me say that again: whatever the cross means, Paul seems to insist here that it is NOT a matter of persuading an angry God on the verge of zapping us with hellfire into a change of attitude so as to love us instead.  God's saving love wasn't waiting for us to improve our behavior, and God didn't need to make Jesus suffer a certain amount in order to be able to stomach the sight of us.  (I feel the need to say this because, to be completely transparent here, sometimes you do hear Respectable Religious Voices whose theology sounds like Jesus had to die on the cross in order to make a change in God's mind, from vengeful rage to amazing grace.  And even though they intend to stress the goodness of God's love at the end of that transaction, it ends up sounding like God is emotionally unstable like an abusive parent and needs Jesus to step in to take a beating in order to keep us from bearing a violent outburst.)  And again, if we take Paul seriously here, there was never a moment in time when God's mind had to be changed about us, since even at our absolute worst and most diametrically opposed to God, God already loved us and was redeeming us in Christ through the cross.

So when I say that enemy-love is my only hope, it's because I realize that even in the moments when I am turned away from God, God isn't turned away from me--and God hasn't been turned away from any of us. Our call to love our enemies is simply what it looks like to take seriously that God has loved us all when we were enemies of God, all the way to a cross.  Even when humanity's expression of that animosity toward God crucified Jesus, God's anointed, God loved us and exhausted our hatred and violence.  

That's the hope on which our faith hangs.  That's the kind of love that not only changes the world, but saved it at the cross.

What will our day look like in light of that kind of love?

Lord Jesus, ground us in your unfailing love for us, even at our worst, so that we can love others as they are, too.

Divinely Imbalanced--October 17, 2024

Divinely Imbalanced--October 17, 2024

"But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." [Luke 6:35-36]

No disrespect intended here, but the Beatles were wrong.

The Fab Four's last album, Abbey Road, famously concludes with a song called, simply, "The End." The two minute song spends about a minute and a half of guitar solos from Paul, John, and George, before a single couplet provides the song's only lyrics: "And in the end, the love you take... is equal to the love you make."

I'm sure they thought it was singularly profound poetry. (And, to be fair, it is a pretty awesome set of guitar solos leading up to that lyric, which is at least a couple notches up from "She loves you--yeah, yeah, yeah" for what it's worth.)

But if you take that line at face value, the last meaningful message the Beatles imparted boiled down to, "There is a strict equality between how much love you give out and how much is given back to you." The worldview of "The End," if taken seriously, insists that you never get more love than you put into the system. It sounds like a Newtonian moral universe, where every action, good or bad, as an equal and opposite reaction. Do good, and get the exact same amount of goodness sent back your way (eventually). And presumably also, don't do very much good, and you'll see the same meager goodness bouncing back into your life.

All of which to say, there is no room for grace in such a universe. The notion that you get back in this life what you give out in this life may just sound like the law of karma, but as the lead singer of another famous band from Across the Pond puts it, "Grace... she travels outside of karma" (See "Grace," by U2, from the album "All That You Can't Leave Behind").

And when it comes to asking what Jesus has to say on the subject, Jesus lands firmly on the side of grace. Jesus insists that the universe is not--even morally speaking--a closed system of equal and opposite actions and reactions. Jesus insists that by the economy of grace, God loves people who don't love God back, and the people of God will be known for their willingness to love with that kind of unconditional disregard for whether they "take" as much as they "make."  There is an inescapably divine imbalance to the scales when it comes to God's kind of love--it is a love that gives itself away regardless of our loving God back or not.

In the end, for Jesus, this turns out to be the defining way we reflect God's character, and show ourselves, like Jesus, to be sons and daughters of God. As we saw yesterday in the preceding verses from Luke's Gospel, we love not just those who have loved us first, but the people who have been rotten to us. We do good, not just for those who can return the favor, but for people who will either never know what we have done for them or for people who actively dislike us. We give, not just to people who will pay us back, but to people who have no means of paying the debt back, or people who will not even express appreciation for the gift. We keep promises, not just to the people who keep their commitments to us, but even to the people who let us down, flake out on us, forget their promises, or don't mean what they say. And the reason we do these things, Jesus says, is because that's how God operates in the world--and God is raising us like children in a household to live in a certain way.

Jesus makes no bones about just how starkly asymmetrical and blessedly mismatched God's kind of love really is. God, according to Jesus, "is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." That is a bold rejection of the "You only get as much love as you give" equation-based system that the Beatles sing about. And Jesus says that is the very core of God's being.  In other words, it is not a bug in the system of God's way of running the universe: it's a feature--in fact, the defining feature of God's sort of love.

In fact, it's significant that Luke has the line, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful," in the very same speech where Matthew's version of the parallel passage says, "Be perfect, just as your Father is perfect." That suggests that God's kind of perfection, God's kind of "holiness," isn't about running squeamishly from sin and sinners so as to avoid being "tainted" by them, but in fact, just the opposite--running out with open arms to give love away to people who won't return the favor, won't say thank you, and are actively being "wicked." That's what we are called to, and that's the way we are called to be "perfect," too--not in the sense of "without any blemishes or mess-ups on our permanent record," but in the sense of "so completely moved by unconditional love that even enemies, jerks, and stinkers receive it, too."

This is the revolutionary posture of the followers of Jesus, and this is, ultimately, the way we are called to reflect Christ and to embody his love into the world. Jesus says that we will most clearly reflect Christ when we love recklessly, without concern for getting the same love shown back to us, and running the risk that it might go unappreciated, unrecognized, or even met with hostility. The world doesn't need more people wearing gaudy cross necklaces or putting fish stickers on their cars to bring "religion" into the public sphere. Jesus isn't looking for his followers to forcefully "take back their country for God" or control the levers of political power in order to punish their supposed "enemies." Rather, he is calling us to love the way God loves, which is to say, to love our enemies and to do good even to those we might label "the ungrateful and the wicked."  

The world around us is fueled by a bloodthirsty need to get even, to get revenge, to get "payback," and frighteningly with even more frequency, to "get them before they get us." That impulse is grounded in a view of the world that is stripped of grace, a world of terrible symmetry, in which you attack the ones you view as enemies, you do good only to people who are "like you" enough to pay you back some time, and in which love is always some kind of transaction for your own self-interest.

It is against this backdrop that Jesus says, "God loves those who are directly opposed to God, and God is kind to people who have made themselves God's enemies." And it is because of who God is that we are called to reflect the same kind of divinely imbalanced, gloriously asymmetrical love into the world--love for those who hate us, kindness toward those you think will take advantage of it, good toward those who have let you down or treated you like you don't matter.

And all of that is because, for us as followers of Jesus, in the end, the love of God is greater than any of what God "gets" back from us. God is ok with that. God is willing to run an entire universe on an economy of grace.

Lord Jesus, let us reflect you today in the ways we do good to those even whom we find it most difficult to love--and let us glimpse the presence of God there.

The Dismantling of Deal-Making--October 16, 2024

The Dismantling of Deal-Making--October 16, 2024

[Jesus said:] "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again." [Luke 6:32-34]

To a culture built on turning everything into a tit-for-tat transaction, grace is a subversive notion.

To a mindset that sees all of life in terms of quid-pro-quo deal-making, extravagant love (like Jesus') is scandalous... even dangerous.

To the worldview that is only interested in asking, "What do I get out of this?", Jesus is Public Enemy Number One, because he has come to dismantle that whole way of thinking, and replacing it with a life lived in unconditional love.

And it is downright radical.

This is another one of those times where Jesus exposes just how much we human beings have tried to baptize our own selfishness and call it common sense.  Here in this passage from the heart of Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount (or, "on the Plain," if you will), Jesus takes aim at what most people just call "conventional wisdom."  It goes something like this: "You only help the people who have already helped you (in order to pay them back and get even), or people who can do something for you in return."  It says, "The only reasonable recipients of your love or good-will are the people who already love you and do good for you."  And it takes for granted that it is foolish, ridiculous, and maybe even immoral to help people when you won't "get" anything back in exchange.  If that isn't what passes for typical "business savvy" and "common sense," I'll eat my hat.

And yet, Jesus' kind of love utterly undermines all of that thinking.  He is deliberating attempting to subvert that entire mindset and to replace it with a view of the world centered in God's unconditional love.  Jesus is not here to teach us how to make better "deals" for ourselves that will get us most return in exchange for the least amount of effort expended on our part.  He has not come to help us be "successful" in our careers, businesses, or transactions in the sense of getting more from others, or training us to pass up bad deals where we won't make a profit. He has come, instead, to de-program us from thinking that life is primarily about "getting" stuff, and to free us for "the life that really is life" (to borrow a phrase from First Timothy), that is, a life oriented around self-giving love.  To listen to Jesus at all is to let him dismantle our old obsession with deal-making and "What-do-I-get-out-of-it?" thinking, and to let him retrain our hearts and minds in light of his kind of love without conditions, without limits, and without the need for reciprocity.  This is his revolution.

And he is intent on setting us loose on the world as people who love others freely, without concern for "what I get out of the deal."  If we are honest, that will lead us to make some waves and ruffle some feathers in the midst of a culture that has been taught to think only in terms of its own self-gratification.  We live in a time when demagogues often teach us to ask, "Why should we come to the aid of such-and-such group of people if they aren't doing something in return for us?"  We live in a culture where you are called a "sucker" if you give time, energy, money, or effort to helping others but they have no way of paying you back or returning the favor.  We live in a society in which crowds cheer at the notion that "We have to look out for our own interests first!" and that conceives of "greatness" in terms of getting more than you have to pay out.  And into the midst of that kind of society, Jesus sends us out provocatively to do the opposite--doing good for those who cannot pay us back, and showing love to those who do not love us in return already.  Jesus has to know that will make us look like troublemakers who are upsetting the established order.  Do we realize the same?

I guess I think that's what is sticking with me on this particular reading of these verses from Luke.  If we take seriously Jesus' kind of love, we will stick out like sore thumbs.  We will be notorious, not just for a vague and harmless "niceness" or for being generically "polite," but for the ways we are committed to doing good for others without going through the calculus of "Here's what we'll GET out of it!"  We will get a reputation for being the people who help bring relief after hurricanes and floods without worrying about whether we get "credit" for it, and we'll stay to help rebuild long after the news crews and cameras have moved onto the next headline.  We will come to be known for interrupting the smooth flow of "business-as-usual" because we will be the ones asking, "How can we be of service to others?" rather than, "What will we profit?" We will be known, in other words, as people whose love is not contingent upon a return on our investment, but who love the way Jesus does--recklessly and unconditionally.

Imagine what will happen if we actually take Jesus' kind of love to heart and then teach it to our children to be their way of life as well.  Imagine a whole generation of business majors in college who are no longer satisfied to ask merely, "What makes us the biggest profits in the third-quarter?" but "How does our work actually make people's lives better, and how could we prioritize serving people rather than maximizing our profit margins?"  Imagine a generation of high school graduates who aren't simply thinking of what career will make them rich the fastest or grant them internet celebrity status, but who ask, "How can I contribute best to the deep need of the world and neighbors around me?"  And what would happen if a wave of young people no longer believe they are "losers" for giving their lives to help other people, but see their highest calling in terms of doing good for people who can't do a thing in return?

It is a revolutionary notion, maybe.  But it is glorious, too, isn't it, to imagine that we do not have to play the old, sad games of "tit-for-tat" and quid-pro-quo, but are finally free to do good in the world without turning it into a transaction or a deal!  That's the life Jesus has pulled us into.  And make no mistake about it--we are already drawn into it.  His love for us has grabbed hold of us and pulled us into his kind of life, and that means his kind of love for others.  There is no version of authentic Christianity available where we get to sing, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me" and then turns toward our neighbor and says, "I can't be expected to do good for you unless there's something in it for me--what am I, a sucker?" Jesus' kind of love is contagious that way. His love for us becomes our love for the world, and Jesus' kind of love is decidedly, unabashedly, unconditional.

So let this be, for us at least, the obituary and headstone of transactional thinking: here lies the old, terrible "conventional wisdom" kind of deal-making that shackled us and held us prisoner in its grasp for too long.  That old way of seeing the world is dead to us, and we to it.  Instead, after the dismantling of the need to "get something out of it" from everybody and everything else, we are at last free to step into the motion of Jesus' kind of love.

Let's just see where it takes us today...

Lord Jesus, free us again today from the constrictive old patterns of conditional, deal-making love, and free us to love like you, without regard for what we get in exchange.

Scandalous--October 15, 2024

Scandalous--October 15, 2024

"Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them'." [Luke 15:1-2]

Nothing upsets the self-deputized Guardians of Respectable Religion more than someone who dares to suggest God's love is wider and more reckless than they would approve of.

And therefore nothing upsets a group of first century Respectable Religious Leaders like these Pharisees and scribes more than Jesus--noted rabbi who claims to speak for God--deliberately opening his table and his arms to the publicly known "sinners" and the sellout tax collectors without conditions or condemnation.  But that's Jesus for you: he's always willing to take a hit to his reputation and to make enemies scandalizing the scowling scribes for the sake of loving the unloved.

That's what I want us to notice here in this scene from Luke's gospel, which is the set-up for a series of parables Jesus tells about the reclaiming of lost things (a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son).  It's that Jesus knows full well how scandalous it is for him as a public spokesperson for God to accept the people viewed as egregious sinners at his table and into his life, without insisting on some kind of moral improvement or changes of lifestyle first at least!  And yet he is fully prepared to take the heat and absorb the criticism from these religious critics rather than throw the so-called sinners under the bus or all of a sudden turn them away.

That had to have been an option for Jesus, you know.  Once he started getting heat from the Spiritual So-and-Sos for loving people without strings, it surely must have been tempting for Jesus to change course, institute a policy of no longer being associated with the riff-raff, and start preaching hellfire aimed at the people it was fashionable to condemn.  Or, if Jesus had been already in the habit of demanding sufficient life-change or shows of repentance first as a condition for receiving his acceptance, this would have been the time for Jesus to vindicate himself and say back to the Pharisees and scribes, "Don't you worry--I'm not letting THOSE people at MY table until they get their acts together and start measuring up to higher standards!"  This would have been the time to say, "Oh, I didn't realize that I gave the impression of being too soft on sinners, crooks, and screw-ups, so I'm going to take a hard line from now on in order to do a better job of public relations with the pious crowds!"  Any of those strategies would have helped Jesus to save face and maintain his respectability with the rest of Religious Leaders.  Jesus, notably, does none of these.

Why do you suppose that is?  Why doesn't he backpedal or flip-flop about unconditional love for the outcast crowd?  Why doesn't he sweep his reputation for welcoming sinners under the rug or spin-doctor this situation to make himself look like he's going to get "tough" on sin and start turning away anybody who doesn't look sufficiently sorrowful and sad?  I don't think it's that Jesus hasn't thought of it.  I don't think it's that he's not intelligent enough.  I think it's that Jesus isn't ashamed of the people he has welcomed.  He is not embarrassed to love the people others regard as unworthy of love.  He is not afraid of becoming notorious for accepting the unacceptable and loving the unlovely.  All of this is to say that Jesus, as always, knows exactly what he is doing and whom he is provoking when he publicly shares fellowship with the crooks and the commandment-breakers.  He is just more interested in making sure the "sinners" know they are loved before anything else than in losing points or credibility in the eyes of the self-righteous.

Jesus' love, then, isn't sloppy, but it scandalous. It is, without question, audacious.  It isn't that Jesus doesn't care about how we treat people, but that he cares most that the people who have been told too many times before that they are unacceptable hear a different word and receive genuine love without strings.  That means Jesus' kind of love is always courageous--willing to be called a sinner himself, willing to have the Pharisees walk away from him shaking their heads and looking for a new rabbit to listen to, and willing to risk looking weak or foolish for the sake of unconditional love.

If we want to be people who are filled with Jesus' kind of love, we should be prepared, then, for him to lead us to a scandalous welcome of the people shunned by the Respectable Religious Crowd.  We should be prepared to be told that such love is "too much," "too big," "too wide," or "too reckless."  And we should be prepared, like Jesus, to face down the temptation to backpedal into a lesser, watered-down kind of grace, and to say "No" to that cop-out.  We should be prepared, in other words, to be known, like Jesus, for welcoming sinners and loving the unlovely.  

What a reputation to get.  May we be known as people who love, as Jesus does, scandalously.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to love as unconditionally and audaciously as you do.

Because Jesus Loves Him--October 14, 2024

Because Jesus Loves Him--October 14, 2024

"As [Jesus] was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, 'Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.' He said to him, 'Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.' Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, 'You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.' When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions." [Mark 10:17-22]

Jesus loved him.

At every moment of this story, even though Jesus knew he was going to be passed over like chopped liver by this well-heeled would-be disciple, Jesus loved him. In fact, he never stopped loving him. I dare say Jesus still loves him right now.

It's a detail that we often skip over in this story, but Mark seems intent on slowing things down in this conversation enough to add his editorial description that Jesus, "looking at him, loved him" before daring him to pawn his possessions and give the money to the poor. Mark wants us to know that Jesus doesn't say this as an impossible test, as though he's trying to get the other man to fail or give up. Jesus isn't trying to blow him off or discourage him, nor is he trying to punish the man who has come to him. Jesus isn't insisting on payment for access to God, or demanding some kind of quid pro quo to earn your way into eternal life or the Heaven Club. Jesus isn't trying to make the man sad or upset or miserable--it is, rather, that Jesus knows what makes life really worth living. In other words, Jesus doesn't tell the man to sell his possessions in spite of the fact that Jesus loves him; it is precisely because Jesus loves him.

Now, in fairness, we should note here that something seems to have been exceptional about this man's situation. Jesus doesn't that demand everyone who comes to him must sell all their possessions. That's not a prerequisite of Mary and Martha, for example, who kept on entertaining Jesus in the home that they very much still possessed. And Jesus doesn't make Zacchaeus sell all of his possessions when ol' Zach spontaneously offered to give half.

But--and we just can't get away from this--Jesus does, for some reason, think it is vital that this particular man sell his possessions, give the proceeds away to the poor, and then follow. Jesus readily acknowledges that this isn't something he has demanded of everyone, and yet Jesus also shows no indication that he is willing to negotiate on this one. He doesn't demand something that is physically impossible--there is no requirement of performing a miracle, walking on water, or curing leprosy. In that sense, Jesus' call to the rich man is entirely ordinary.

And yet, you can just imagine the protests on his lips as he goes away, head down, bitterly muttering. You can voice his sadness and anger toward Jesus, because chances are they are forming in your mind like they form in mine when I read this story and see myself in this man's place. We know how this pouting protest goes. "Oh, really, Jesus? So you think I can't follow you well enough if I don't get rid of my belongings? So, what--you just expect all of us to be like monks and live without? So you don't think people can really love God if they also own a house or a decent farm? So I can't have my stuff and also follow you? I should just empty my whole life so I can wander around aimlessly with you, is that it? And otherwise, I'm not, what, dedicated enough for you? Do you really think so little of me, Jesus? Because I did, after all, come here to you and ask to follow you...." Those words have been yours and mine plenty of times, I imagine. That's how you know Jesus has poked at a tender spot.

But remember, Jesus loves this man. He cares about him deeply. He loved him before the rich man proudly announced how well he had kept the commandments (in his own recollection), as well as afterward. He loved him before the challenge to sell his possessions, and he loved him, too, even when the rich man went moping away. Jesus wasn't trying to end things with this would-be follower. In fact, it is precisely because Jesus loved him that he directed the man to let go of all the other stuff that was getting in the way between him and a life fully centered on God.

See, the problem isn't whether it is "sinful" to have money, or a house, or a family, or a new car, or a trip to Europe planned, or fun plans for the weekend. That misses the point. It's not about whether it is breaks a commandment to be in a certain tax bracket or have a membership to the country club. It's a question of whether any of those things--big or small--are getting between us and God. From Jesus' vantage point, the rich man has to choose what gets the first allegiance in his life--going where God leads, or holding onto his stuff. The rich man was just hoping he wouldn't have to ever pick between the two, and that's part of why he gets into such a huff when Jesus calls his bluff and makes him actually choose. He was sure that Jesus wouldn't say it was "sinful" or "against the rules" to have all the comfortable trappings of life that he had, and so he couldn't possibly imagine seriously being asked to give all that up. But as so often is the case in life, it's not that we are deciding between something obviously evil and something obviously good; rather, we are usually left having to decide whether to pick between what is okay and what is genuinely good. And Jesus just forces us to realize that at some point we can't have it all--we have to decide whether we would rather have the not-technically-sinful-but-still-lesser-thing, or whether we would rather be free to love God with our whole selves.

It was never that owning a house or a field or a brand-new chariot was a wicked thing by itself. It's that, quite honestly, we have only so much attention, love, and self to give in this life. And the time and effort I devote to maintaining my house, field, chariot, and so on is time I am not free to go where Jesus would lead me. I cannot maintain the necessary empty space in my life to be free to follow Jesus if I have filled my life with stuff and filled my calendar with appointments for maintaining my stuff. So while Jesus doesn't say in the abstract that "No one can ever own any possessions if they want to follow me," he knows that for this particular man, those possessions will always get in the way of holding the empty space in his life that would free him to follow Jesus.

For others of us, it's not our possessions that possess us but our social lives... or our achievements at work... or our reputations... or our political preferences... or the legacy we leave behind and how we are remembered. So Jesus may not come up to me and demand I sell my car, but he might insist that I have to give up my technology... or my plans for the weekend... or my insecure need to be liked... or any of a number of other things. Or he might ask you to let go of your need to have the cookie-cutter life with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence... or whatever other thing in your life that is sucking the oxygen out of the room and keeping you from being able to help the others God sends across your path... or the set of political commitments you have been holding onto like a family heirloom without ever stopping to ask if they fit with the Jesus way of life.

I can't guess what Jesus will say to you when he starts the sentence, "You lack one thing..." But my suspicion is that it isn't always something obviously wicked or sinful--it might just be the thing that is keeping you from being fully available to God because it is the one thing you don't want to let go of. And when Jesus says that to you, as he keeps saying it to me day by day, it's not because he is trying to punish us or test us or because he hates us or wants us to be miserable. It is because Jesus knows the things that are keeping us from being completely given over to God, and he knows that often what keeps us from being fully immersed in God are not obvious evils but simply lesser goods that we give our allegiance to rather than to God.

It is because Jesus loves the rich man that he insists he must sell his possessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow. It is because Jesus loves me that he keeps calling me to surrender what I keep giving my allegiance to. And it is because Jesus loves you, too, that he just might call you to let go of things that seem perfectly innocuous but are keeping us from being able to give ourselves fully to God. Your list might be different than mine--that's how it is. But the love of Jesus is the same to each of us. Like Frederick Buechner says, "Christ's love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy." That might mean letting go of things we thought made us "happy" for a minute for the sake of having the One who gives us "joy" forever. But that letting go isn't a punishment meted out or a price waiting to be paid--it is what allows us to be completely given over to the Love of Christ who will not let us go.

Remember, dear ones--beginning to end, Jesus loves us. And he still loves the mopey and bitter rich man, too.

Lord Jesus, root out the things that keep us from you, and let us see that digging as your work of love in us.

Doing Likewise--October 11, 2024

Doing Likewise--October 11, 2024

[Jesus asked the expert in the law:] "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." [Luke 10:36-37]

It's one thing for this to be a thought-experiment; it's another thing entirely to have to live out the conclusions.

It's one thing to be asked to speculate on hypotheticals about who, for the sake of argument, qualifies as "my neighbor;" it is harder to be dared to put those correct answers from our heads into practice with our hands.

It's one thing to identify the outsider from Jesus' story (the Samaritan) as the one character who truly understood the commandment to "Love your neighbor" despite the failures of the Respectable Religious Professionals who passed by the beaten man at the roadside. But it is altogether life-changing to follow Jesus' instruction when the story is finished: "Go and do likewise" with the real people in our lives whom we are sent to love.

And yet, of course, that's the whole point of this.  Jesus isn't interested in writing a systematic theology or writing an essay about the nature of love or human relationships. He is interested in forming us into people who love the way he loves, as broadly and deeply as he loves.  And therefore, Jesus is interested in changing our way of seeing the world and the people in it, so that we will show mercy for strangers, practice compassion for outsiders, and be brave enough to risk ourselves for people who can never pay us back.  You know, the same way Jesus has done for us.

In fact, I think we often miss just what a big deal it is for Jesus to tell this story the way he does precisely because of his own personal experience.  The parable we call "the Good Samaritan" (which again, would have sounded like a laughable contradiction and a preposterous oxymoron to his Judean audience) comes just a chapter after Luke gives us a story where Jesus is rejected by a town full of Samaritan people.  In Luke 9:51-56, Jesus intends to pass through a Samaritan village--which would make him the outsider and the foreigner on their turf--but they reject him.  And in response, two of Jesus' inner circle of disciples, James and John, ask Jesus, "Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" Jesus, of course, rebukes them for so completely missing the point and just goes on his way.  In other words, Jesus knows what it is like to have been the outsider seeking hospitality and to be rejected--by people in this very same ethnic group that everybody else in his culture hated and looked down own.  And yet not only does he refuse to answer their rejection with hatred from his side, but he also still makes a Samaritan the unexpected hero of his story.  Jesus has already put his money where his mouth is and crossed barriers to respond with love to people outside his little group.  So when he tells the expert in the law that "loving your neighbor" includes people across those imaginary lines we have drawn, he is only calling him to do what Jesus has done first.  This talk of loving across the barriers we impose on each other isn't just fanciful theorizing or wishful thinking for Jesus; he has done it himself before he calls us to do likewise.

So, now some twenty centuries later, the question turns to us: what will we do in light of Jesus' story?  How will we move from learning about biblical texts to living them, and who might Jesus be sending across our path today?  How will we respond when there really is someone broken down by the side of the road (and we are oh-so-busy with Very Important Things To Do)? How will you engage with the person whose politics are different from your own but who needs your help--or whose help you need, even if you didn't want to admit it?  How will we reframe the ways we think of people mentioned in passing on the news, when it is easy to reduce them to faceless crowds of "those people" rather than neighbors beloved of God?  How will we move from hearing and reflecting on this story about loving our neighbors... to going and doing likewise?

The next move is ours...

Lord Jesus, transform us by your love and then empower us to follow in your footsteps.

Love Beyond Our Prejudices--October 10, 2024

Love Beyond Our Prejudices--October 10, 2024

[Jesus continues his story about a man who fell into the hands of robbers...] "But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.'" [Luke 10:33-35]

What does it do to you to receive help from someone you swore was your enemy? 

What goes on inside your heart when someone who belongs to a group you've been told all your life is unacceptable turns out to save your life?

What happens to your old prejudices when someone you've been taught to hate from your earliest memories onward turns out to be the hero of the story?

This is the subversive work that Jesus does with the twist in his story: he makes a hero out of the one everybody in his audience would have been predisposed to avoid.  What's one of THOSE PEOPLE --you know, a Samaritan!--doing in Judea? The moment Jesus mentions one of those residents from across the border in Samaria, the eyebrows among his listeners furrow and their fists clench.  Not one of THEM! How did he get into "their" territory? How long has he been here, and what's his business? Why doesn't he go back to where he came from?  You can just feel the teeth clenching and the blood pressure rising at the mere mention of this foreigner.  And then--in the greatest of gospel punch-lines--when Jesus has this foreigner save the day while the Respectable Religious Leaders had walked on by, he blows apart old bigotries and makes room for spacious and neighborly love.

Part of the scandal of Jesus' kind of love is that in its sway, enemies become friends, outsiders become insiders, and strangers become welcome guests.  We even come to discover that the people we only wanted to look down on just might turn out to be the ones who save the day.  Would we dare to accept help, Jesus compels us to imagine, from one of "those people" we didn't think should even be on our turf in the first place?  Jesus compels us to see ourselves as the man lying at the roadside half-dead and to ask if we would rather keep our old bigotries and fear of "the other" or let the stranger from across the border help us if we were in need. 

It's funny how the place you find yourself in the story has a way of changing how you feel about asking for or receiving help.  If we imagine ourselves always as the ones being asked to come to the aid of others, we have a way of getting pretty stingy and judgmental: "Why do we have to always help THEM?" "Shouldn't I put me and my group's interests first?"  "Why was this guy at the side of the road in this neighborhood in the first place?"  That sort of thing.  But if we let Jesus nudge our faithful imaginations to feel what it's like to be the man left for dead by the priest and the Levite, we're going to have to deal with our pet prejudices real quick when a Samaritan (you know, one of those people whose accent is funny, whose dress and culture are different, whose religion is wrong, and who aren't "our kind of people") comes to the edge of the road to offer a hand.  Jesus pushes us to ask the question, "Would I let the Samaritan help me if I was in the ditch?" which is to say, "Would I let myself be loved by someone I didn't think was worthy of my love?"  

And once we stare that question down, maybe our old prejudices start to melt... and crack... and crumble.  Maybe we realize that the people we thought unworthy of our love are not only truly worthy of love but in fact sent by God to show love to us that we didn't want to admit we needed!  And maybe in this moment of the story we can see that Jesus' design all along in this story was never to delineate a simple rule or a mathematical algorithm to calculate who "counts" as a neighbor that I therefore must offer X amount of help to if I want to stay in good standing with God.  Rather, Jesus' intention has always been to demolish that kind of transactional thinking and instead to see every other person in my life as both someone to whom I might show love as a neighbor, and someone through whom God might show love for me.  

It really does change everything when we stop seeing the world as full of threats and enemies to be thwarted and instead to see it as full of neighbors brought into our lives by God both for us to love and to be loved by as well.  But once we do, we need to be prepared--that change of perspective will put us out of step with a world that is used to fear-mongering and defaults to distrusting anyone it labels as "other." Jesus' kind of love requires courage of us: the courage to see possible enemies and outsiders as faces to be loved, the courage to let someone offer help and love to us when we didn't want to accept it, and the courage to risk ourselves for the sake of someone who may never be able to pay us back. 

Fair warning, dear ones: if we have let Jesus' storytelling do its work on us this far, we will be changed forever by his kind of love.  And there's no going back.

Lord Jesus, let us be transformed by the way your love crosses borders, reaches across barriers, and stretches our vision.