But Like A Refugee--August 8, 2025

But Like A Refugee--August 8, 2025

"All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them." [Hebrews 11:13-16]

Somewhere along the way, we forgot who we were, who we still are. Somewhere along the way, the followers of Jesus forgot that we are resident aliens, non-citizens, in the places where we live.

Funny, in that narrow way that things can be both awful and "funny" at the same time, how easy it can be for Respectable Religious Folks to want to be gatekeepers and bouncers for other refugees and aliens, when the Bible itself has been telling us for two millennia now that we are people without papers here in the world. We are aliens. We are not meant to be at home under the rule of Caesars and Nebuchadnezzars. The voices of the Scriptures would have us recognize ourselves as living as foreigners dependent on the hospitality of others around us, because this is not our home. And therefore we are called to extend care to fellow literal refugees and strangers seeking safe places to live, not to turn them away or make them disappear.

Now, this kind of talk about being "strangers and foreigners" like  the letter to the Hebrews uses can be misused. This passage, which many of us will hear in worship this coming Sunday can be co-opted to sound holier-than-thou, and it often has been.  Sometimes we church folks can make it sound like we are better than others, like being a "stranger" or a "foreigner" against the backdrop of the world means everyone else is beneath us, and we're just tourists "passing through." All too often, Christians have given the impression we are members in an exclusive club and can look down on the rest of the world. It can sound like Christians are use biding their time to get to some ethereal afterlife rather than living where we are and caring about hungry people, excluded people, justice, and reconciliation now. It can sound like sentimental religious escapism, rather than a description of dedicated disciples.

But that misses the way the Scriptures really teach us exiles to live. When it was the people of Israel/Judah who had been conquered and taken into exile in Babylon, the word from the Lord was "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you," which is to say, "seek the welfare of Babylon." The message was that wherever God's people go, we are to be a presence for good, a presence of graciousness in a graceless age. The message was that God's people are to seek the benefit of others exactly because we know that this is where we live our days until that great promised homecoming.

The Jewish exiles in Babylon were called to be good neighbors, just and fair in their business dealings even with the Babylonian citizens next door, and not to resort to violence or hate because they were forced to live under the rule of a pagan egocentric nut-job like Nebuchadnezzar. They were called to be good, but not to ever fall for the official Babylonian party line about how great life was going to be in Babylon, and never to put their trust in the powers of the day. That is what kept the exiles on solid footing, and it was what kept their minds and hearts free: Babylon may have won the day when they captured Jerusalem, but they could not capture the allegiance of the people who were conquered. If your heart belongs to the homeland that is waiting and promised to you, you will not be fooled into giving it away to the powers of the day.

The New Testament borrows all of this imagery to talk about our presence in the world as the followers of Jesus. We disciples are aliens, too. We are called always to work for the good of all around us, but we are called to do it with an eye toward our promised future. And so we will live now according to the constitution of God's Reign, rather than settling for the ways of whatever places we find ourselves in. So, for example: in God's promised future, swords are beaten into plowshares and wolves and lambs lie down together--and so, in light of our promised homecoming, we are called right now, in this life, not to be people of violence but people of mercy. In the "Jesus Administration," so to speak, there is enough for all, and you know who is the greatest, not because they have to toot their own horns and say it about themselves, but because they are the ones washing feet, wiping tears, and taking the lepers and outcasts by the hand. In the Jesus administration, we know that we are refugees in the world, and so we are called to practice empathy and to do all we can to help welcome and shelter the refugees who come to our doors, our neighborhoods, and our country, not to wish them away, turn them away, or send them away. In days like these, the writer of Hebrews reminds us to see ourselves in their faces--and to care for them the same way we want others to care for us since we are refugees in the world, too. Care for other refugees in the world is part of our spiritual DNA as disciples of Jesus, because we know what it is like (at least we are supposed to) to be longing for a homeland while seeking the good of the places where we are right now.

The world will see all of that behavior, and it won't make sense to them. Nebuchadnezzar thought his greatness was measurable in his gold-embossed towers, portraits, and statues. Caesar thought he was lord of the world while a homeless baby was born to two refugees and laid in a food trough, but the baby turned out to be none other than God-in-the-flesh. The followers of Jesus are called to be people who stand out because we live now like life will be in the full Reign of God. We will keep giving ourselves to making "the city where God has sent us" better and better, but we will not let ourselves get entitled into thinking that Babylon will give us a prize for doing it. And we will not simply let ourselves look backward to some mythical time in the past--as Hebrews says, if we "had been thinking of the land they had left behind they would have had opportunity to return." For the followers of Jesus, the homeland we are seeking is not in the past--not in the 1950s, not in the 1960s, and not in the '70s, '80s, '90s, or first decade and a half of the 21st century. We aren't looking to recreate something--we are living now like we will in God's promised future, not a religious nostalgic past. That promised future is our home--right smack dab the middle of God's love.

When I hear these words from Hebrews, I hear the in the voice of the late songwriter Leonard Cohen. In particular, I hear it echoing a line from his well-loved, "Anthem," comes to mind: every heart, every heart to love will come, but like a refugee." That's us. We are refugees. And because we have been found by Love, we live differently now even before we arrive in our home country. Because in a sense, everywhere Love goes, we are at home.

Lord Jesus, let us live now in light of the promised day when your grace wins and fills all in all.

Please Use Your Nails--August 7, 2025

Please Use Your Nails--August 7, 2025

And [Jesus] said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I wills aid to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night you life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." [Luke 12:15-21]

Biblically speaking, there should be an asterisk to go along with every use of the word "my" or "mine." You know, one of those little star-shaped * punctuation marks that hints there's really more to the story than what appears at first at face value. We need one of those to go along with the word "my" and "mine" while we read biblical texts, and maybe even as we think about our own lives and resources, too.

We need such a special footnote marker, because at least from the perspective of the Old and New Testaments, everything I want to call "mine" is really first and foremost God's, and at most I am only ever the temporary guardian, steward, and caretaker of things that have been entrusted to my care. The asterisk could say all that--it could be the unspoken added reminder that there is nothing that is finally, fundamentally, or purely "mine," but rather that all things, including my own body as well as my house, paychecks, talents, time, and abilities, are really God's. We need such a reminder, it seems.

We need it because we have a way, as a species, of mistakenly assuming that the possessions we acquire in this life are unconditionally and permanently ours. But they are not, and the Bible has always been clear on this (whether or not we have wanted to listen on this point is another question). Rather, the biblical writers, including Luke here giving us a teaching of Jesus that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, all start taking it as a given that all things belong to God, and that therefore holding onto "my stuff" or "my group's stuff" can never be of utmost value to us.  In other words, to be a disciple of Jesus is to commit not to becoming obsessed with "stuff" and learning to allow Jesus to pry open our clenched fists from around the possessions that are always threatening otherwise to possess us.

The foolish rich man in Jesus' story has made this mistake. He assumes that when he gets a windfall of an overly abundant harvest, that it is his to do with as he pleases. He assumes it is all meant for him, and for his own enjoyment or use, and therefore his plan to build bigger barns to store it all seems to him the height of wisdom. (He is, it turns out, wrong.) It does not even appear to enter his mind that if he has been given such a remarkably exorbitant harvest, that perhaps it has been given to him in trust, as a resource to share with others. He apparently has not given any thought at all to how he could use such abundance to feed his neighbors or help attend to present-tense needs. No, the only thought he has had is about himself, and so he misses the asterisk. He doesn't remember that the harvest he thinks of as "his" is really his* to steward, not to hoard. And he apparently doesn't even remember his own Bible lessons from childhood about the manna that was hoarded in the wilderness and which grew maggots and stank to high heaven when you stored it up.

Now, of course, Jesus' story about this man whose life comes to an abrupt end is just that--a story. No actual humans were harmed in the telling of this parable. But the point hits home for all of us. Our stuff--whether our pay from work, our possessions at home, or the investments for our futures--is not worth making the most important value in our life. It's not reliable, for one--you can't count on it to be there, and you can't count on life proceeding in the way you plan it to in order to use your stuff. Hoarding your stuff rather than using it for sharing good things all around is a misuse of what our stuff is for in the first place. It is, very simply not the right way to use what has been entrusted to us.

Let me offer an analogy. When I buy a box of nails at the hardware store, they are meant to be used. They are intended to be hammered into lumber of various kinds and sizes for different projects, and they are intended to be used. Now, it would certainly be a case of poor stewardship of my nails if I carelessly pounded them into boards without precision, bending them and breaking them rather than getting them to go in straight and true. And so, on the one hand, I want to make sure I am not wasting my nails by hitting them left-handed (I'm not a southpaw) or carelessly pounding them off center so they go in crooked. But at the same time, it is also wasting my nails to leave them in the box forever, untouched and unused, because I am so afraid of hitting them in crookedly on a project or don't want to share them with somebody else. Hoarding a vast supply of nails for some unknown possible future project while other actual projects go unfinished on the workbench is just as much a waste of nails as hitting them in crooked. They are still meant to be used rather than accumulating dust on my shelf. I don't want to waste them either way--not by misusing them, sure, but neither by not using them at all.

Jesus' story reminds us that all of our possessions are like this as well. We can be so afraid of misusing our "stuff" that we waste it in the opposite direction--we hoard rather than share what has been entrusted to us for the sake of all. That's the underlying thing here--all of my possessions, all my paychecks, and all my other potential is all really God's, and God retains ultimate ownership of it all. If I store my wealth (money, resources, time, energy) up, whether on shelves in my workshop or piled into bigger barns, I am misusing what is really God's, and I am mistakenly valuing stuff over people. The Bible never envisions that I get the final word on the stuff I am supposed to be stewarding--I am holding it in trust for a time, to use well and use rightly, rather than to let it get rusty and dusty or bent and broken.

We have a way of forgetting that it's all really God's. We have a way of insisting that protecting (and then hoarding) "my" stuff for "me" alone to use is better than letting these things be shared and used all around, as if my possession is the end-goal, rather than blessing other all around. Today, Jesus calls us, his disciples, to abandon the foolishness of "Me and My Group First" thinking because, well, the stuff we hoard for ourselves just isn't reliable... and it certainly isn't meant to be more important than other faces.

Today, Jesus dares us not to waste our nails.  Please, use the nails God has put into your toolbox.  Use them for good.

Lord Jesus, help us in this day to value people and to use things, rather than the other way around.

More Than the Safety of Silence--August 6, 2025

 

More Than the Safety of Silence--August 6, 2025

"In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!" (Colossians 3:11)

It wasn't enough just to avoid saying bad things about "the other." What was necessary was to affirm  positively that Christ was present in them as well. The Gospel itself demanded no less.

Let me say that again: it was not enough for the authoritative voice of the apostle Paul simply to keep quiet while thinking to himself, "I'm not saying anything that is racist against Gentiles myself personally!" But rather the apostle here insists on dismantling the prejudices that were present in the early church where he saw them in other people. It was not sufficient simply to keep his head down and claim he wasn't guilty of perpetuating bigotry against people outside of his own ethnic-religious-cultural group, because staying silent when you know rottenness is happening quite often gives tacit permission for the rottenness to continue. Not speaking up to say, "This is not acceptable. This is not the way of Christ," is going to send the message that it is ok, and that it is compatible with the way of Jesus.  To be a disciple of Jesus, Paul shows us, will mean more than the safety of silence. In the face of bigotry and prejudice, discipleship will mean the risk of speaking up to affirm those rejected as "other" and seeing Christ in those who have been told they don't belong.

We certainly don't have silence here from these verses from Colossians. We don't have permission to say, "As long as I'm not making things worse, I'm in the clear and off the hook." Instead, here from the text of the New Testament itself we have a clear precedent of opposing what we would call today racism and of positively affirming the full presence of Christ in people from every background, nationality, skin color, culture, language, and way of life.

This is actually a really important point to be clear on, especially in a time when many who have been looked down on as "the other" are afraid and uncomfortable.  In a time when making waves to speak against racism or prejudice make you the target of mockery or get you labeled, pejoratively, as "woke," it is tempting to let ourselves off the hook and just keep quiet.  It is easy to tell ourselves it's enough just to avoid bigotry ourselves and just bite our tongues when others speak or act in ways that treat others as "less than," whether because of the color of their skin, the place they were born, the language they first learned, the people they love, or the way their families look. It is appealing to convince ourselves that it's enough simply to say "I'm not racist," rather than going further to actively striving to be anti-racist. 

But this verse from Colossians, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, doesn't stay in that place of tempting safety. No, we are reminded that discipleship calls us beyond comfortable quiet ("I'm not saying anything bad about anyone--isn't that enough?") to active affirmation of those who have been pushed to the margins.  It means actively and positively recognizing Christ in them, which will also mean we have to get to know, talk with, and care about the people who end up being looked down on, ignored, or told they don't belong... and discovering how they show Jesus to us. And it will mean celebrating that Christ has gathered fellow disciples who are different from you or me, and being willing to go on record affirming that they are beloved of God and called by Jesus, too, rather than just maintaining an awkward silence that we think keeps us out of criticism.  

After all, we don't hear Paul letting himself off the hook and saying, "I know that some Christians speak ill of Gentiles, but I don't, and therefore I don't have to speak up to discourage or stop it when it happens." We don't see Paul saying, "Well I have never personally told a joke about those Scythians, so this isn't really a problem." Nor do we see Paul saying, "Look, those uncircumcised Gentiles have already gotten a free pass by being allowed to believe in Jesus at all--now they're demanding I eat with them and celebrate that Christ has welcomed them even with all their non-Jewish, non-kosher practices? You can't make me do that!"

No, as these verses from Colossians illustrate, it's simply not enough--it is not the call of Christ--to be silent in the face of the demeaning of others, or the subtler ways others are left out and marginalized because they are "other." Maybe Paul himself came to learn that as he reflected on his own life, when he had been the one holding people's coats while a lynch-mob stoned the early Christian community organizer Stephen to death. On that day (see the end of Acts 7 for that story), Paul himself wasn't throwing rocks, but his silence gave consent to those who became a violent mob. He could say, honestly, "I didn't throw any rocks myself," but very clearly, Stephen was killed with Paul's approval and with his tacit direction, shown precisely in his silence while the rocks were flying and Stephen was breathing his last.

However many years later after Stephen's death this letter was written, the same lesson hangs in the air: saying your hands are clean because you didn't personally throw any rocks is a lie. And when it comes to the racial, ethnic, and economic divisions that beset both the early church and today's church, the same is true: it is not enough for Christians simply to look away while other people demean and degrade others because of their skin color, background, language, gender, or nationality. Followers of Jesus are called to speak up and insist positively on the abiding presence of Christ in all, and to speak against attitudes, actions and policies that perpetuate that racism, bigotry, and discrimination.

It's not that early Christians forgot their backgrounds or pretended they weren't there. Gentile Christians continued to "be Gentile"--it's not something you can "repent" of. They continued to eat Gentile foods and wear their hair and clothing in Gentile ways. The Jewish Christians continued to worship in the Temple and many kept kosher and circumcised their sons. When the voice in Colossians says the old categories aren't there anymore, he doesn't mean to pretend everybody thought or acted the same--he meant we were no longer allowed to pit one way over the other as supreme while the others were all inferior. It was about stopping any one group from misusing power over against another, and about including people as they were. That's radical--and it's here in the New Testament itself.

For a lot of us who find ourselves, simply by the color of our skin and the position in society were born into, in positions of privilege, it can be really tempting to tell ourselves, "As long as I don't personally say mean things about people whose skin color is darker or whose language is different from mine, that's all anybody can ask of me." It's tempting to say, "Hey, I'm not flying a Confederate flag myself, so I can't be asked to risk losing friendships when someone else flies it or puts it on their vehicle!" But the Bible here itself calls us out and says, "Yes, you can be asked to do those things. You can--and you are. In fact, God insists on that and of more from you. Christ himself calls you to affirm his holy and good presence in those who have been treated as inferior or less-than for generations, and you are called to be a part of the change." The New Testament itself calls us beyond letting ourselves off the hook by claiming, "I don't say racist things (out loud), so I'm not the problem," to see our silence as permission for racism to continue wherever it festers. And the Scriptures themselves call us beyond that silent complicity to actively dismantle the power of racism wherever it is--including in the church itself.

That's hard. I know. It means being honest about things we want to ignore or sweep under the rug. It means being able to recognize that people who are "nice" a lot of the time can also still be capable of perpetuating rotten beliefs and mindsets, which become even more rotten practices and systems. It means loving folks enough to honor what is good and noble in them and also to call out the prejudices in one another when we see them. It means letting other people see our own blind-spots and helping them to excise the cancer of bigotry from ourselves, when we didn't want to admit it was there. It means acknowledging when in our lives we might not have been throwing stones, but we were quietly holding coats and letting the rocks fly with our tacit permission.

And it means we dare to believe the Good News that these verses from Colossians proclaims: in all of us, with whatever background, whatever language, culture, nationality, or ethnicity we have come to Christ, Christ is here, present in all of us. Let us dare to live like it is true.

Lord Jesus, give us the grace to see your presence not only in those who are like us, but also those who are different and those we have too often treated as less-than. Give us, too, the courage to see our failures, our complicity in the past, and the opportunities to start in new ways to honor all people as made in your image.

Honest to God--August 5, 2025

Honest to God--August 5, 2025

"Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. (Colossians 3:9-10)

Let's be honest. We live in a culture that has an increasingly difficult time telling the truth--or even believing that "the truth" is worth the effort to hold onto. We live in the era of spin doctors who take the "bad news" and try to find a way to make it sound like "good news."  We live in a time in which, if you don't like the numbers in the latest report, you fire the person who published them rather than acknowledging that your expenses are way over budget or your revenue isn't what you hoped for, so that you can make course corrections.   We live in a society in which it is possible, when you don't like where the facts lead, simply to find different "alternative facts" that will suit the conclusion you would rather come to. The Scriptures are under no illusions that the world is full of that kind of lying; but we who are disciples of Jesus are called to something different. We are called to be truth-tellers... and to be willing to listen to the truth from one another, as well.

The letter to the Colossians makes no bones about it. This passage, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, puts it succinctly:  "Do not lie to each other."  Presumably, Christians are not to lie to folks outside the church, either.  But there is something vital about knowing we can rely on each other to tell the truth as disciples in community.  It is important to know that I can count on you to be honest with me, and for you to know that I will be truthful with you as well.  That allows you to believe me when the message I have for you is unbelievable (including the gospel itself, which sounds too good to be true to our ears).  It allows you to know that bad news or a difficult message isn't merely a matter of someone trying to hurt your feelings, and reminds you that you can't just ignore a fact you don't like simply because you don't like it.  And it allows me to believe you whether your message for me is what I wanted to hear or not.  When I can trust you, I know you will keep your promises; when you can trust me, you know I will do my utmost to keep my word to you as well.  That's the only way community can function. We can only be supportive of each other in love and face challenges together when we can be honest about what those challenges are and reliable when we say we will show up to face them.

Now, at one level, we could say that every community needs truthfulness to function, whether it is specifically Christian or not.  A family needs to be truthful among its members, regardless of their faith. A business and its employees need to be honest among the staff and with their customers if they want to function, no matter their religious affiliation. And citizens of a country need to be able to trust their governments and elected leaders if the nation is going to survive, even though they may hail from many different religious traditions or have no particular faith at all.  All of these different social groups and communities require a certain basic level of truth-telling, or they will collapse. But the writer of Colossians makes an even stronger case for the Christian community; we are called to be truth-tellers to one another in particular because of the character of the God we have met in Jesus Christ.

As our verses for today note, our vocation to be truth-tellers arises from our "new self" which we have put on in Christ, and which is being renewed in the likeness of the one who created our "new self," which is to say, God.  So the writer of Colossians isn't just wagging a scolding finger at us and saying, "Don't lie, because it's against the rules," or "If you don't tell the truth, you're going to hell."  Rather, the apostle is saying, "We don't lie to each other, because lying was always a regrettable fashion choice that came along with the old selves we used to wear like a bad leisure suit.  But now, you've put on a brand new self--you are clothed with Christ--and now truth-telling is the way we present ourselves to the world, because we are being made more and more to look like and be like the Master Tailor who made these new selves for us to wear." In other words, we are called to be truthful people, even in a world bent on deception, because God is truthful.  It's not about whether the people bloviating from podiums are honest with us (they often won't be), or whether the voices on social media are giving us facts or conspiracy theories (it's frequently the latter). We don't get to say, "Well THOSE people are lying to get people on their side, so WE can do it, too!" We are called to be truth-tellers because we follow Jesus, who is the Truth.  

And that's the other thing we need to acknowledge as we head out into this day: the world around us will not suddenly or automatically decide to stop lying, no matter what we do or say.  We don't tell the truth only if it is a popular thing to do, and we don't insist on integrity only when it's trending on social media.  We are sent out into the world, Jesus says in the gospel, like "sheep into the midst of wolves" and are called to be "innocent as doves" while being as "wise as serpents" (Matthew 10:16).  That means we won't be naive when the world around us is still parading around in the tired old clothes of gaudy deception and dazzling lies; we know to expect as much, and yet we are called to be voices who can say out loud when the emperor is wearing no clothes.  Our presence in the world will be a surprising one, indeed a refreshing one--we'll be known as the people who can tell the truth, both when it puts us in a positive light and when it means owning up to our failures.  We will known as people who don't have an angle to push, an agenda to ram through, or a product to sell--we'll simply be honest, because that's what we've come to see in the character of God through Jesus.  Because Jesus is both reliable (trustworthy) and honest (truthful) we will be shaped more and more in his likeness, no matter whether the world thinks it is savvy or smart or makes us "look good."  And because we know our belonging to Jesus is grounded in his unconditional love rather than how many red pen marks are on our permanent records, we don't have to be afraid of owning our mistakes honestly, confessing our sins openly, and speaking the gospel's good news to one and all freely.  That's what the world most deeply needs from us, even if the world doesn't know it because it's still fooled by its own lies: our capacity to be truthtellers and trustworthy people like Jesus.  

That might just be the way someone else is led to place their trust in Jesus, who is the Truth--by discovering in the lives of us, his disciples, people who are brave enough to be honest in a world full of lies.  May it be so among us.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to be truth-tellers and trustworthy people in this day, so that others might come to see you, truly, through us.

Who We Look Up To--August 4, 2025

Who We Look Up To--August 4, 2025

"So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things--anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth." (Colossians 3:1-8) 

So... what kind of stuff is "above"? 

If we are being advised not to focus on what is "earthly," but rather to focus on what is "above," because, as Colossians puts it, that's "where Christ is," we should probably get clear on which things go in which pile... because it's not really what we might think at first. What direction are disciples supposed to look?  Where are we supposed to focus if we are followers of Jesus?

To get the obvious ones out of the way, it's not merely a matter of altitude. We are not being told to avoid thinking about soil, or grass, or cars and trucks in favor of clouds, rainbows, and hot air balloons. That should go without saying, but to be honest, sometimes religious folks have added confusion there by depicting the afterlife as a bunch of people sitting on clouds or describing God as living "up" in heaven.

And compounding that, an awful lot of the last 2,000 years of Christian history has involved people saying, "Don't make too much of a fuss about the terrible things that happen in this world and in this life, and don't try to make things any better, because one day we'll all just be enjoying the afterlife up in heaven in the sweet by and by." That led to a pattern of telling enslaved people, for example, just to accept their lot as slaves in the American South, despite the fact that they'd been ripped from their families and treated as property, and all the while the master-approved (White) preachers would tell them just to accept being enslaved and instead to think about having a nice time in heaven one day. It led loud religious voices in Germany in the 1930s to persuade the people in their pews just to look the other way as yellow stars were starting to appear on people's clothing... and then as those people started to disappear. And in so many cases, the official response from the church was, "We aren't supposed to get involved in these earthly situations--we're doing what the Bible says and only thinking about 'the things that are above'." That was a rather convenient way of reading the Bible, since it let Christians off the hook for speaking up on behalf of others who were endangered or pushed to the margins. 

Maybe we need to actually listen to what Colossians has to say, though, rather than assuming for ourselves that we know what counts as "the things that are above" versus the "what is earthly." Because the writer hasn't left us to guess--he's given us a whole list. We just don't often take the time to keep reading. If we keep going in Colossians 3, even though many English Bibles make it the start of a new paragraph, we see that the writer keeps on describing what "earthly" things and mindsets he has in mind (this is also a time to note that the verse numbers, chapters, paragraphs, and punctuations are not original to the New Testament text, but have all been added centuries later by scholars, translators, and students of the Bible trying to get at the intent of the originals, which would have all been written in all capital letters with no breaks for sentences, paragraphs, or verses). 

And in the following sentence, the writer says, "Put to death, therefore, whatever is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)." And then about a sentence later, he rattles off "anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language" along with lying as things we are supposed to leave behind like a set of old dirty clothes, so that we can put on the new life in Christ. 

Well, if that's the situation, then all this business about "what is above, where Christ is" and "what is earthly" doesn't teach us to ignore the present life or the present world--not at all! Just the opposite, rather--Colossians is very much interested in what we do and how we engage people in this life. The idea seems to be that there are two ways of living in the world--one that is focused on getting as much for yourself as you can, even if you have to resort to lying, deception, malice, and manipulation to get it, and the other that is modeled on Christ's way of life, which seeks the good of all with kindness and generosity. The "earthly" mindset treats everybody else as objects simply here for our gratification (so really this business about fornication and impurity are like greed in a sense--they are both about treating others as objects and amassing as much for ourselves as possible). And the Christ-like mindset (what Colossians calls "the things above") is centered on the good of all, just like Christ was willing to lay down his own self-interest and valued others enough to treat them with honesty, integrity, compassion, and love.  In other words, the question is whether we will live as disciples of Christ, orienting our lives on the priorities of Jesus, or whether we will follow the lead of those voices that turn us inward in self-absorption.

The "earthly" mindset says that the ends justify the means, so you can be as crooked, deceptive, and manipulative as you have to be in order to get people to do what you want or give you what you want. And the Christ-like mindset says, NO--because other people matter as much as I matter, I don't have permission to deceive, trick, lie, cover up, scheme, swindle, or trick other people, and I don't have permission to just use them for my own purposes. The creed of the "earthly" mindset is "Me-and-My-Group First!", and the alternative motto of the disciples of Jesus is, "Love like Christ: everybody, everywhere." 

Nowhere does this voice from Scripture say we should just ignore the rottenness around us in this present life and instead distract ourselves with thoughts of floating of puffy clouds after death. Rather, it's about how we live this life now, in light of Christ's resurrection. And maybe that's the key here. If Jesus is still dead and in his grave, well, there's no particular reason to give his voice any more weight or authority than any other dead teacher from the dustbin of history. But if Jesus is alive and risen, then maybe (definitely!) he really knows what he is talking about, and the point of life is not merely to acquire and accumulate more stuff, more pleasure, or more conquests before our final breath! If Jesus is alive, then maybe he really can be trusted to tell us that the "Me-and-My-Group-First!" attitude is a distortion of what we were made for. 

So today, instead of hearing "set your mind on things above" and thinking it lets us off the hook from the hard work of living with integrity in a world of greed and avarice, or gives us permission to ignore when terrible things are being done around us so we can just think about angels on clouds, let's actually listen to the voice of Scripture. And the message there is clear: the choice is whether we will wallow in the kind of self-interest that says "Me-and-My-Group First!" or dare to practice the kind of Christ-like discipleship that says, "I will be good to all, because that is how the risen Christ has shown love to me already."   Maybe this whole conversation about setting our mind on the things that are "above" is really a way of asking, "What--or who--will you look up to?"  Will you aspire to the self-serving mindset that uses people and loves things, or will we look up to Christ Jesus for our way of life? Colossians says that we have already died to that first option--we just have a habit of limping along like zombies in that old way of thinking. What if we dared to believe that it is true--we don't have to keep going back to the old rottenness. What if we trusted that Christ has raised us from the dead-end of treating other people as objects, and instead let him teach us how to live fully in love for all? 

Lord Jesus, since you have raised us with you, teach us how to put away the old way of life, and to walk like you do, in love for all.

On Not Being Experts--August 1, 2025

On Not Being Experts--August 1, 2025

[Jesus said to his disciples:] “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:9-13)

To be a disciple of Jesus is to learn to live with perpetually empty hands. We are never the permanent experts, drilling the correct theological answers into the minds of others so that they can get into heaven, and neither are we in the position of perpetual givers who look down condescendingly on the needy as we dole out crumbs, overstock, and merchandise we didn't want anymore.  All too often in the name of religion, we like to cast ourselves as the ones with all the answers or the ones with all the resources, and that people can come to us (so long as we're feeling charitable) for what they need in this life or the next.  That becomes a great way for us to stroke our egos and cast ourselves as the heroes, the masters, and the authorities--but it is not really the way Jesus sees us.  We are disciples, after all.  

Disciples learn from a teacher in open admission of all that they still do not know; they live in the tension of questions, rather than prepackaged one-size-fits-all answers.  Disciples receive from their teacher, their rabbi, and at best they share with others what has been shown to them.  Or like the old line goes, they are "beggars telling other beggars where to find bread."  In particular, Jesus teaches us as his disciples to be constantly in the posture of open-handed receiving and open-minded seeking, rather than walking through the world with fists tightly clenched around our "right" answers, "righteous" status, or the resources we think are ours to control, distributing to those we think are "worthy."  Jesus compels us to see ourselves as perpetually dependent on the God who gives what we need: guidance, grace, and daily bread.  Whatever good we find in our hands has been a gift, and such gifts are meant to be shared.

For an awful lot of the past twenty centuries, I think a good many church folks (and certainly a great many of our churchy institutions) have been uncomfortable with that and tried to cast ourselves as the answer-giving Big Experts or the resource-distributing Big Donors. And no wonder--that kind of role lets us be in charge, deciding who is acceptable... and who is not, or who merits our assistance... and who wouldn't be grateful enough to receive it. Casting ourselves as the ones with the good stuff and everyone else as the poor slobs dependent on our charity as a way of puffing up our self-worth and letting us feel like we are in control. Jesus, however, takes some of the air out of our over-inflated egos by reminding us we are forever the ones asking, seeking, and knocking. Whatever good we have to share with the world, whether the good news of the gospel or the resources to feed and clothe our neighbors, first came from the God who gives. If we took that seriously, perhaps the world might hear what we have to say rather than dismissing us as arrogant jerks or aspiring colonizers (and to be honest, we've given them plenty of reasons to see us as both of those over the centuries).

Something else happens to us when we see ourselves as disciples rather than self-described experts who have "graduated" beyond being students. We keep listening. We keep looking.  We keep learning. When you think you have "mastered" a subject, you don't believe there is anyone else worth listening to, anyone else's perspective that can inform yours, or anything else to be gleaned.  You'll miss out on the insight you didn't even know you were missing, or the wonder over some unexpected new discovery.  When you tell yourself you are the "expert," you picture the Important Information as a complete (and contained) set of facts that you already know, like learning the finite list of state capitals, U.S. presidents, or elements on the periodic table.  But when you see yourself as a constant student, your eyes will always be open, searching for something new; your ears will be open to wisdom you did not already possess; and your hands will be open to receive gifts of grace because you are not too proud to think you have it all already.

Before we head out into the world telling ourselves that we Christians are the sole experts on God's truth and divinely-approved distributors of God's grace, Jesus adjusts our vision so that we see ourselves for what we really are--disciples who keep asking questions, who continue seeking for guidance, who knock as guests receiving welcome rather than keeping others out as self-appointed gatekeepers. That makes all the difference in the world. Now, go and see what there is to be learned, received, and shared out there.

Lord Jesus, keep us mindful that we are your disciples, always learning, rather than masters who think they know it all.

The Practice of Prayer--July 31, 2025

The Practice of Prayer--July 31, 2025

And [Jesus] said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs." (Luke 11:5-8)

You already know the old joke, I'd bet:  "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" Practice, practice, practice.  

That tired punch-line makes a point, though. For anybody to get better at playing their instrument of choice, from piano to piccolo, you need more than just a single look at the sheet music.  Sure, some folks have a natural talent for sight-reading--they can look at notes on a page which they've never seen before and hammer out a pretty decent rendition of whatever the music is.  But even those with such innate talent will tell you that you get better at playing this particular piece of music the more you practice it.  That's because music is more than simply getting 100% of the notes played as written on the page--music involves interpretation, the shaping of the passage with louds and softs, with pauses and rushes, and with almost imperceptible nuances of expression that make a melody come alive.  You only come to see those and feel where they need to be brought out by spending time with the music.  

In other words, for a musician, practice comes to be about more than "getting the notes right." There comes a point when it is about the experience of letting the music come to life--where you almost have an unspoken conversation with the composer, even if the hand that first wrote the music has been dead for centuries.  You get these "Aha!" moments where you see what clever or beautiful moves the composer made--inverting a melody here, suggesting a counterpoint there, weaving in a theme from back in the first movement, and such--and sometimes those only occur to you after your fiftieth time playing through the score.  That is to say, sometimes, your understanding of what you are playing really only emerges after you have spent a certain amount of time immersed in the music, such that the composer seems to be in the room with you and you realize what he or she was expressing when the piece was first written.

I want to suggest that prayer is not that different for us as disciples of Jesus.  We are not looking for a simple formula of "right words" to be recited once like a magic spell or incantation.  We often mistakenly think that, of course. As we've been looking all week at the passage many of us heard this past Sunday in worship where Jesus' first disciples asked him to teach them "how to pray," we'll recall how often we treat Jesus' words like a recipe.  And hopefully we've seen already that Jesus doesn't see praying as the rote repetition of approved words. Jesus doesn't answer by giving us a printed page with fixed words and say, "Just sight read this."  Jesus has been inviting us to let our wants become aligned with God's wants, and to let God's vision shape our own.  Now here as Jesus continues, it becomes clear (if it weren't already) that prayer is an ongoing practice, not a one-and-done declaration.

This story Jesus offers in today's verses gets at that very point.  It's a sort of thought experiment about how a single one-time request from a friend in a desperate moment at night might not be adequate to get a response, but a persistent knocking on the door will eventually get through.  His point isn't to say that God is like your sleeping neighbor who wants to be left alone, but rather to say that prayer isn't about sight-reading the "right words" after a single quick glance at a printed page, but rather an ongoing practice that brings us into communion and connection with God.  Keep at it, Jesus says.  Keep praying.  Keep speaking.  Keep pouring out your heart.  Keep asking for God to shape and reorient your will.  Keep getting to know who this God is in the course of the interactions, and just see how greater depth emerges in your connection with God--maybe not on the first attempt, but developing slowly over the course of daily seeking, daily asking, daily listening, and daily silence before God.  This is what Jesus has in mind--that prayer become so much of a matter of friendship with God that we are in constant conversation.  And when that happens, then there will of course be times where the conversation is just the daily check-in of life stuff, and sometimes it will include the urgent request after everyone is in bed.  Prayer, then, is not about finding which "magic words" will compel God to grant our wishes, but about cultivating a relationship with God in which we bring the ordinary and the emergent, and in which God shapes us as much as we bring our desires to God.  And the only way that kind of relationship develops is through the investment of time and attention.  "How do you get better at prayer?" we might ask--and the answer might be just like in the joke: "Practice, practice, practice."

That notion of "practicing" prayer isn't about performance, however.  It's about making a regular discipline of praying, with the awareness that something develops in us as we spend more time and attention on it.  We have way of hearing the disciples' request, "Teach us how to pray," as merely about getting the correct words, but Jesus has continued giving his answer, well past the final phrases of what we call "The Lord's Prayer."  Today's verses about persistence are also part of his response about "how to pray."  That is, when we ask Jesus for how to pray, we should be prepared that he won't just give us words to recite but a rhythm to step into. His answer includes the direction, "Persistently." It includes the invitation, "Keep at this, and you'll be changed."  It includes the notion that we are pulled into a dance that keeps moving.

Seeing ourselves as disciples of Jesus has a way of changing our perspective on a lot of things, really.  We no longer look at praying like we are customers placing orders, but as children drawn into relationship with a parent who loves us.  As disciples at prayer, we no longer see ourselves as in control, like we are the ones calling the shots with God, but rather as learners at Jesus' feet, as aspiring musicians practicing with our instruments and letting the genius of the Composer become clear to us the more time we spend letting the music soak into us and train our muscle memory.  Jesus teaches us that prayer is not the answer to the question, "How do I make God give me what I want?" but rather, "How can I be more fully attuned to playing my part in the music God is making?"  When we see it that way, it makes perfect sense that Jesus' response to "Teach us how to pray" includes the direction, "Keep at this."  We pray as an ongoing practice, not because we have to wear God down, but maybe more because that is how a friendship is built up--in time, attention, daily check-in, and honest conversation.  We keep praying because in that investment of time and, yes, of practice, the richness of the music and the personality of the Composer is brought to our attention.

How should we pray today? Like the old joke says--with practice, practice, practice.

We come to you again today, God, asking for you to shape our vision, to open our hearts, and to give us what we need.  We ask it again, not because we think we have to wear you down, but in the honest admission that you may need to keep working on us through prayer to wear down our defenses.