Taking Jesus Seriously--January 17, 2025

Taking Jesus Seriously--January 17, 2025

(Jesus said to his disciples:) "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." [Luke 12:32-34]

"The thing is, Jesus, I like my stuff."

That's the long and the short of it, really. I like my stuff. I like my clothes. I like having a car. I like my collection of books. I like my computer. I like my favorite coffee mug, and I like having a bag of my favorite dark roast coffee handy to make more at the end of the day. I like these things... and therefore, I will confess, I will do an awful lot to go out of my way to ignore, blunt, divert, or shrug off Jesus' words here.  Maybe the question for me (and all of us) to ask is whether I prefer the comfort of my familiar possessions more than I love Jesus, because listening to Jesus might well lead me beyond those creature comforts.

It's funny (or maybe I mean, it's sad) how my attachment to my "stuff" leads me to willfully deflect Jesus' words or even to convince myself he isn't speaking to me. It's like somehow I use my piles of belongings (and all the storage space they require, in closets, in the basement, in the garage, and so on...) to block Jesus' words from my field of vision like an eclipse, so I don't even know they are there. I can't hear him speaking... because I have turned up the volume on my Amazon Echo smart speaker to drown out the sound of his voice.

I confess to you--I have heard many a sermon, read many a book, and been in plenty of Bible study discussion groups over the years in which the claim was made, "Jesus may have told that one rich young ruler to sell his possessions and give to the poor, but he never made that a universal statement. It was just this one time, to that one guy... and therefore he is not speaking to us now." And for a while in my life of faith, that resolved the question. "Jesus doesn't talk about giving up possessions as a general practice for his followers," I had been taught, and therefore, any time I read him saying something that sounded like that, I should assume, "This must be a message for someone else." I had even convinced myself until recently rereading these words of Jesus in today's verses that all those sermons and books were correct--that Jesus had only once ever told one person to go sell his possessions, and that it was never a broad directive of Jesus for his followers.

And then my eyes fell on Luke 12 again... and I realized that I had been missing these words staring me right in the face, but which I had been unwilling to see, or had chosen to forget.

Because here it is, right in black and white on the page: Jesus is talking to a whole group of followers, (part of a block of teaching addressed to "his disciples" at the start of the passage, starting in 12:22), and these words are found on Jesus' lips: "Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven..." And now I have nowhere to run: Jesus isn't just saying it to "one rich person on one random occasion," but he is saying it broadly, without asterisks, without fine print, and without qualifying it or putting conditions on it, as part of his way of life for "his disciples." If I am going to make a fuss about how important it is to take Jesus seriously, or for people to read their Bibles more, I am going to have to come to grips with this directive of Jesus to get rid of stuff in my life, so that I am free to use my energy, time, and resources for what matters to God.

We church folk, we Respectable Religious Crowd, we can be real stinkers when it comes to Jesus and his authority. You'll hear lots of people saying (often they are shouting) or posting memes on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere that cry out, "What our country really needs is more people reading the Bible!" And believe me, I am all for reading the Bible. But it is funny (again, I think I really mean sad here) to me how curiously selective we can be when it comes to beating the "Read the Bible more!" drum. It's funny to me how we can cherry pick this issue or that issue and insist with fiery indignation (whether it is righteous indignation or not I will not venture a guess) that "People just need to listen to what the Bible clearly says on this!" and be absolutely sure we know exactly what Jesus thought on our modern questions and issues, and yet when we find Jesus saying something simply, directly, and clearly like "Sell your possessions and give the proceeds to the poor," we all of a sudden become all thumbs and start hemming and hawing about how uncertain and unclear Jesus' teaching is, and whether it really applies to us or is "just for another time and another group of people." We are stinkers, and that's the truth. We already have a set agenda we want to get Jesus to endorse, and we will be happy to quote him in support when we can find a Bible verse we can shoehorn into supporting our preferences. But when Jesus says something that threatens to get between me and my stuff... all of a sudden, we decide he's being metaphorical, or he's talking to someone else.

We show our true colors pretty quickly, we Respectable Religious people: we don't really want to learn or to hear what "the Bible clearly says," in most cases--we want someone to confirm for us that that Bible says what we already want it to say, and when someone (say, even Jesus) says something counter to that preconceived picture, we fight it tooth and nail. There's a powerful quote of Kierkegaard's along these lines, that goes (in part) like this:

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything else except pledging yourself to act accordingly. ‘My God,’ you will say, ‘if I do that, my whole life will be ruined.’ Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

But here we are today, coming face to face with words from Jesus that we can't run from any longer. Jesus really does dare his followers not to be possessed by their possessions, and that will lead us out of our comfort zones as people ensconced in affluence. Jesus really does say it would be better to sell our stuff and give the money away to those who have nothing--not so that they can have our discarded dregs, but so that they can eat. And on top of that, Jesus also doesn't seem to have any qualifications about the inherent "worthiness" of the people who receive your and my alms--the word "alms," after all, comes from the Greek word for "mercy," (and the same word that Christians in many traditions sing out week by week in the liturgy when they sing out, "Kyrie eleison--Lord, have mercy!" as our own prayer), and mercy is not dependent on worthiness or earning.  As Dorothy Day put it so well, "The Gospel takes away our right forever to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor."

Jesus seems to think that our possessions get a stranglehold on us, and that I would be freer myself if I wasn't tied down to keeping track of all my belongings... and buying a large enough home or storage shed or rental storage place to house it all... and paying for special extended warranties on it all... and getting all the accessories... and always having the latest upgrades... and then having to take regular time from my weekly routine to dust and vacuum and clean around all my stuff. Possessions aren't inherently evil--but they certainly do take up a colossal chunk of my available time and resources, not just to buy, but to maintain, to insure, to polish, and to store. And before I know it, I am drowning in piles of things and stacks of bills to go with the things, dying of affluenza and calling it all the American Dream. And maybe Jesus knows, too, that anything that commands such a large chunk of my life's attention, time, resources, that isn't a living thing... is an idol. And idols are terribly possessive gods--they keep on taking more and more of what's around until they have it all. So maybe being freed from some of my possessions might be easier on my knees, when I don't have to worship at their altar any longer, and maybe I'll be able to breathe easier, too, when I don't feel like I'm drowning in "stuff" that requires more and more and more space and time and money for their upkeep.

The underlying truth in all of what Jesus says here in today's verses is that he really does believe that the living God is trustworthy to provide for our needs, and that exorbitant hoarding beyond what we need is not good for us, but turns out to be stifling and suffocating. Jesus knows--and challenges us to trust him on this--that more is not always better; sometimes it is just more.  If that leads us to do some uncomfortable inventorying of our lives, then so be it.

So the question on this day is simply this: will we trust Jesus enough to take him up on his dare, and to part with... at least something? Will we dare to look honestly at the piles we have each amassed, and to see where there are things that are not making us more fully alive, but which might actually be choking us out? Nobody will check--I cannot go to your house and audit the contents of your closet. But maybe might we, dare we, could we find things in our lives that are dead weight, get rid of them, and give the money (either what we make from selling, or just what we don't have to pay any more for managing and upkeep) to someone who has greater need that we do? Could we dare it, and see what happens?

After all, Jesus says, all the treasures we hold onto in this world are bound for the trash can eventually. Maybe we could start taking out some of the trash now.

Lord Jesus, we will admit that we sometimes do everything in our power to avoid listening to you. But in this moment we dare to listen, and we ask your help to accept your challenge to let go of the possessions we have allowed to possess us.

Somewhere Over the Guardrails--Devotion for January 16, 2025

Somewhere Over the Guardrails--January 16, 2025

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; 

 and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; 

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, 

and the flame shall not consume you." (Isaiah 43:2)

As beautiful as these words are, I have a hunch that a lot of us don't quite know what to make of them.

After all, if I hear someone tell me they'll be with me as I'm wading through rivers, something in me wants to raise my hand and ask, "Wait--why would I be in the middle of a river in the first place?"  And if someone, even someone I deeply trust, tells me that they'll keep me safe when I'm walking through fire, my gut instinct is to say, "Hold on--who said anything about fire?"  Even if those assurances come from God, I've got to admit that I am more used to thinking that it's God's job to keep me out of the water and away from the fires altogether, rather than picturing God going with me through both.

All of that is to say, I think for a lot of us--and I'll confess, often for me as well--we tend to assume that faith is about getting God to keep things safely the same for us, rather than leading us somewhere new or pulling us to take a risk somewhere over the guardrails or beyond the rainbow.  We tend to approach prayer as a means of trying to get things in our lives "back to normal" when they are out of their usual order, more than we seek to have God make us faithful or daring.  We tend to see God as a way of getting back to our comfort zones, rather than being drawn out of them because God is leading us somewhere.

And yet, the promise here in Isaiah 43, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, is not, "Don't be afraid, because I'll let you stay home instead of ever having to cross the river," nor is it, "Keep those prayers coming and I'll just guarantee there will never be a fire to walk through." Rather, the promise is that God will indeed lead us through the waters and through the flames--and God will be with us there.  That's really the way the whole arc of the Scriptures goes: it's the story of God calling people into wilderness places (like Abraham, or the newly liberated Israelites, or the exiled people of Judah at last coming home, as Isaiah 43 depicts here), and of God calling people to precarious new missions, from Moses raised up to lead his people out of slavery in the face of Pharaoh's tyranny to prophets like Amos sent to be holy troublemakers, to Daniel in the Lion's den, resisting an arrogant empire.  In other words, the constant thread of the Bible is of a God who leads us through dangerous, risky, and uncomfortable places, rather than a deity who just piles blankets on us and lulls us back to sleep.

These words from Isaiah 43 only mean something to people who are being led like that.  The reason that God promises to be with them through the rivers and the flames is that as these words were spoken, the people were hundreds of miles away from their ancestral lands in exile, and God was daring them to imagine a journey home.  But the hitch for those exiled people was that a whole generation grew up in Babylon and had only ever known life there--it was the "devil they knew" rather than the fearful and unknown notion of going to a place that was "home" but somehow new to them.  Trusting God meant being willing to leave behind the comfortably familiar to go into another wilderness journey.  And indeed, there were literal rivers to be negotiated and the memory of smoldering ruins back in Judea to be dealt with.  The prophet had to persuade people that it was worth packing up the lives they had settled for under the boot of the Babylonians and going where God was leading, and that meant also preparing them for a new (and frankly scary) way of life along the way.  His job was to convince them, as Octavia Butler once put it in her novel Parable of the Talents, that "in order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix must first burn."  Rather than tell people God's job was to keep things the way they were, predictable and pat, the prophet said that God was leading them beyond what they knew and outside of what was comfortable.  Only then would it mean something to say that God would be there with them in the flames.

In our own lives today, I wonder if we need voices like Isaiah 43 again (or, actually, if we just need to listen to these ancient words on their own terms!) to remind us that the life of faith isn't about keeping us comfortable, but about going where God leads us, even when that is through the waters and through the fires.  I wonder if we have told ourselves that Christianity is basically a scheme for keeping things familiar and comfortable in our lives, when the Scriptures themselves say the opposite.  Could we hear the prophets again tell us, "God is doing something new, for all the world--and it will be worth it, but getting there will sometimes feel like swimming across a river or walking across a fire. And God will bring us through..."?  Could we let these ancient words help us see our journey with God not as a predictable round-trip outing to the shopping mall and back, but an adventure to somewhere we have never been, and yet which turns out to be home?

Lord God, lead us where you will, and make us brave rather than merely comfortable.

 

Beyond the Familiar--January 15, 2025

Beyond the Familiar--January 15, 2025

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise." (Isaiah 43:18-21)

There is a word in German for which there is no good English equivalent. And it has been echoing in my ears lately, pulling me forward. It is teaching me about the nature of our faith, and about how faith in the real and living God always leads us beyond what is familiar and into something new.  It's a word that reminds me what God has in store is ultimately good (although sometimes that goodness for all doesn't fit our timetables or our wish-list expectations), but also ultimately beyond our comfort zones.

It's the term "Fernweh," and it could be roughly translated as "far-sickness," as in the opposite of "homesickness" (for which the Germans also have a word, "Heimweh"). It is, I suppose, a sort of longing, something like wanderlust, to go to a new, perhaps unknown, destination. Or, as I like to phrase it, it is a homesickness for a place you have never been.

And the more time I spend in the Scriptures, the more I think that is the orientation of the whole story of God and creation, from Genesis to Revelation (and beyond that, to Maps!). The whole arc of the Bible traces a forward-moving line to a new destination that is somehow home--somehow the right place, even if it is a place the people of God have never been.  "Fernweh" is like the pull of gravity that slingshots a satellite out of local orbit and off to some new trajectory in the solar system.  And for us, faith is very much like the pull of God beyond our established ways of thinking and domesticated daily routines into discipleship as an adventure.

It is the movement from Ur of the Chaldeans, where Old Man Abram had grown up, toward the new and "promised" land that God showed. It was the migration after that to the temporary refuge of Goshen during the famine that brought Abraham's great-grandchildren to the outskirts of Egypt. It was the promise of a journey out of slavery into the unknown wilderness and at last to a homecoming in the land the Israelites had waited for. And it was the journey both into exile for a time, and then, for a new generation that had never known it, the return of the exiles' children and grandchildren back to a land their parents and grandparents had called home, but which was new to them.

And all of those journeys toward a new place that was somehow home point ahead toward God's vision of a whole new creation where both God and humanity will unpack their things once again, and then at last be home in a place we have never been. The whole Bible points us forward, rather than backward, to a new thing, a new place, a new reality--which is also always beyond the familiar and past our comfort zones. Maybe the whole life of faith is learning to let God kindle in each of us a homesickness for a place we have never been, but which is somehow still home. And then all along this life's journey, that Fernweh of faith leads us to be unsatisfied with the world as it is, so that we keep striving to make our lives here and now reflect the Reign of God toward which we are pulled--as Jesus taught us to pray for that Reign to come "on earth as it is in heaven."

We need regular reminders of that pull to a reality in our future, because otherwise, we are constantly tempted to make idols of the past--a past which is somehow always rosier in our memories than it actually was in lived experience. You see it everywhere, the sentimental nostalgia for "the way things used to be," which we selectively remember, or only ever saw partially in the first place. Everybody has their own (mostly imaginary) picture of that time in the past when things were "great"--and of course, we rarely stop to seriously inquire whether it was really great for everybody, or if it came at a price for somebody we have chosen not to remember. And then we become suckers for anybody who promises us a taste of those "good old days"--whether it was ten years ago, twenty-five years ago, fifty years ago, or further back. (For a case study in being disillusioned about the imaginary "golden ages" when things were really so great, so watch the 2011 Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris, about a man who magically can go back to his ideal time period in his ideal city, only to discover that the people there are longing for a time further back, and that those people are wistful for an even earlier time as well--no one is ever satisfied, and everyone is convinced things were better "back then.")

The prophets were regularly the ones that got called upon to step up with a bit of honesty about how things in whatever golden age of Israel's past weren't really so golden. And they were also the ones God raised up to offer a new vision of something God was about to do that was genuinely good. "Do not remember the former things," says the voice of Isaiah 43, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth--do you not perceive it?" It is the voice of faithful Fernweh--a pull toward a new creation and a new kind of community, one which does not exist yet and which perhaps never has, but which God is bringing into being.

It is rather like that beautiful, haunting line of Langston Hughes: "Oh, let America be America again--the land that never has been yet--and yet must be, the land where every man is free...." Hughes saw that we have never quite lived up to the vision sketched out in our foundational documents as a nation, but he was convinced we were being pulled toward that future. That's how the prophetic voice of Isaiah 43 speaks, too. For the people of God, the direction to look is not backward to some idealized version of the past when everything was "great" (which was never really so great after all), but beyond the familiar and past our comfort zones, toward the vision of a future where justice and peace and really at home. Or, as a song of Billy Joel's put it into my ears in childhood, "You know the good old days weren't always good--and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems."

If even the Piano Man can see that the direction to look is forward, rather than backward, maybe we should listen. Perhaps we need the prophets again to speak, and for us to listen to their old announcement of a new destination. Perhaps we need to be shaken out of our idol of nostalgia for a selectively-edited "great" time of the past to instead allow God to turn our attention forward. Then instead of spending our energy, our time, and our resources trying to get "back" to some time we cannot reach any longer, we will let God lead us toward the new thing God is doing. And perhaps we will dare to let God kindle a little faithful Fernweh, so that we can let go of the resentments that build up in us when it turns out we simply can't make things be like we remember them being once upon a time, and instead, to begin to live now in light of that future day when lambs and wolves lie down in peace, when weapons are beaten into plowshares, when death is vanquished, when tears are wiped away, and when God is all in all, as the Scriptures describe it.

Perhaps, if we are straining forward to glimpse that future reality that is somehow home, we will begin to be more fully alive even now, even if it feels something like a life... on the edge.

Lord God, make us forever dissatisfied with all that is not yet your new creation, so that we will press on forward toward the fullness of your Reign, rather than looking backward hazily to what we cannot get back to. Lead us to that reality for which you have made us, in which we will all be home at last.

Clowns, Jokers, Sinners, and Jesus--January 14, 2025

Clowns, Jokers, Sinners, and Jesus--January 14, 2025

"[John the Baptizer] went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.... Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dover. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased'." (Luke 3:3, 21-22)

Call it the Gospel according to Stealers Wheel. You probably know their song with the catchy refrain (forgive me if it gets in your head now):  "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right--here I am, stuck in the middle with you."  Well, in an important sense, the New Testament writers tell us, the way of Jesus takes him much in the same direction--right into the midst of the clowns and jokers, the sinners and sell-outs, the outsiders and outcasts. And in their midst Jesus takes his stand in solidarity, even from the waters of baptism.

This is a detail of the story of Jesus' baptism that I think we often overlook, perhaps because most of us church folks think of baptism as a perfectly pious, Respectable Religious thing to do. These days, having your child baptized, or being baptized yourself, can carry a whiff of "virtue signaling" to it. That is, it's the kind of action that sends the message to other people, "We are devout, good, God-fearing people! Look--we are doing the ritual that demonstrates our devotion!"  It is worth noting, as the Gospel-writers do, that was the precisely the opposite of what it meant to be baptized in the first century.  When John plunged you into the river waters out in the wilderness, the message you were sending was, basically, "I'm a sinner.  I'm owning it. And I'm trying to start over."  

The people who went out to be baptized by John in the Jordan were admitting their status as mess-ups and stinkers. Luke our narrator points out that John made no bones about what he thought he was offering there at the waters: if you went to him, it was for "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."  This was less like a proud moment to announce in the newspaper and more like getting up in the circle of chairs at an AA meeting to say, "Hi, my name is... and I'm a sinner." And, as it turns out, there were lots of people living in Judea around then who apparently knew that this was just what they needed: the chance to begin again and to be freed from the baggage of their sins.  So the fact that John the Baptizer had big crowds of people coming out to be baptized isn't so much a surprise.  The real conundrum for Christians is, What is Jesus doing out there, too?

Classically, Christians have affirmed that Jesus is the one person in the history of the universe who shouldn't have been there getting baptized as an act "of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" because he is the one person who didn't have sins for which to repent!  Surely Jesus was aware of what John was offering at the waters, so didn't Jesus know that if he got in line alongside "all the people" who were also being baptized, he would be lumped in with them and reckoned one more sinner in the middle of a bunch of other sinners?

Of course he did, Luke would seem to say.  That's the whole point.

Jesus chooses to stand in utter solidarity with a world full of us sinners, to the point that he doesn't need to keep any of the other clowns and jokers at arm's length.  Jesus doesn't blush at being lumped in with the mess-ups or hold his nose when he's in line with trespassers at the river's edge.  Jesus chooses, from at least this moment onward to be stuck, as it were, in the middle with all of us. Jesus' way of living out his identity as the Son of God (with whom God is apparently "well pleased," knowing full well what Jesus is doing, mind you!) is to get himself counted among the sinners who are all lined up at the water for the expressed purpose of publicly declaring that they are sinners. Jesus' way of fulfilling the will of God is to go out beyond the bounds of what looks respectable or what presents itself as pious to be identified with the whole sinful mass of us--the ungrateful and the promiscuous, the cheats and the sell-outs, the crooked and the dishonest, the clowns to the left and the jokers on the right. Jesus is here, letting himself be counted among all of us.

As we explore this season what it means to let our faith as Christians lead us beyond our comfort zones, we can't get away from this foundational story that begins Jesus' public ministry.  Jesus doesn't see his mission primarily in terms of staying safely inside the walls of Respectable Religious Institutions (and, honestly, when he does to go to those sorts of places, like his hometown synagogue or the Temple in Jerusalem, he often makes a good bit of trouble for himself there). Rather you see him hanging out with the ones who got labeled "sinners," not for the purpose of looking down on them or scolding them, but standing in line beside them as one of them, without worrying about some outside observer "getting the wrong impression" and without a fear of being seen as "soft on sin." These things don't register as meaningful concerns to Jesus, apparently, as he comes up out of the water where everyone else has gone to publicly declare themselves sinners.  This is how Jesus embodies the Reign of God: looking at the whole lot of us misfits and messes and saying, "I'm with them." If that's how Jesus lives out the way of God, where might we be sent today?  To whom will we be directed, not to scold or wag our fingers, but simply to say, "I'm with you"?

Maybe the way we will show people the face of God is not by sticking our noses up in the air and keeping our distance from the transgressors and trespassers, but right in line beside all of them--you know, the clowns, the jokers, the sinners... and Jesus.

Lord Jesus, lead us beyond what we're used to and help us to love the people around us, regardless of whether they have been reckoned as good or bad, sinners and saints together.

No Walking It Back-January 13, 2025

No Walking It Back-January 13, 2025

"Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit." (Acts 8:14-17)

Don't you just hate it when a public figure, elected official, or politician walks back their earlier claims?  Doesn't it just feel slimy and cowardly? You know how it goes: someone makes a big promise or a bold new policy (often when they are running for office), and then when it turns out that's not going to be feasible, they have someone else get up behind a podium like a press secretary or spin doctor and give a statement to try and make it all go away.  Sometimes the poor spokesperson will have to outright lie and make us believe that Mr. So-and-So "never really said" whatever it was we all heard him say.  Sometimes they'll find some weaselly way of twisting their original meaning. And sometimes they'll just play a good old-fashioned game of "But what about when the guys on the other side of the political aisle did the same thing?"  But if you and I are paying attention, we'll see through all those smokescreens.  We know when someone is trying to walk back a claim that they didn't have the authority or power to make in the first place. We've seen it too many times.

That's why I find it so refreshing to read this short scene from Acts that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. It's a story of the early church taking a bold step to include outsiders and outcasts, and then when the leaders of the church were asked to weigh in on the situation, they don't back down or weasel out from that bold position, even when it would have surely been controversial. It's a story of the central figures of the first generation of Christians saying, "Yes, God really is including THOSE PEOPLE, and we are not ashamed to stand by them." After decades of watching public figures talk a big talk, only to water down their grand statements later on, it is a hopeful thing to see that the earliest church was willing to be led outside of its comfort zone and stay there, even when it brought public scrutiny and controversy.

Let me back up for a moment.  In this short scene, we get the summary that a group of people in Samaria had come to faith in Jesus and been baptized (you can see that story in the beginning of Acts 8, as Philip goes to Samaria and brings the Good News of Jesus there).  That move by itself was a big deal, because of course, Samaria was where Samaritans lived, and there was a notorious hostility between Judeans and Samaritans.  They looked at each other with scorn and derision, and most Judeans would have excluded Samaritans from sharing the same table with them, because they were outside the bounds of the "right" ethnicity, culture, and religion. But along came Philip, who had been recruited to help the food delivery ministries of the early church in Jerusalem, and he just decided to share the Gospel with these folks in Samarian--and what do you know, but they wanted to follow Jesus, too!

This was a big deal. It was a watershed moment for the church to decide whether God's Good News included these outsiders (who were hated by a lot of the in-group members, mind you), and Philip didn't so much as bat an eyelash at the situation. Well, that meant that the leaders of the community back in Jerusalem were going to be asked if they also endorsed this potentially scandalous inclusion of the Samaritans.  This would have been the chance for leaders like Peter and John to put the brakes on the situation. They could have said, "Since the inclusion of Samaritans is highly controversial, we will form a committee to study this possibility," or "What Philip did was not authorized, and he has been put on administrative leave while we investigate who he told about Jesus." Instead, they doubled-down on the audacity of the Good News and endorsed the belonging of these Samaritan Christians, laying their hands on them and affirming that they belonged. Nobody walks back anything.  Nobody gets thrown under the bus.

Even the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at this point of the story is meant to signify that God, too, was backing this decision to include Samaritans in the community of Jesus.  Once Peter and John--original disciples of Jesus--show up and pray for these new believers, the Spirit is unleashed in some obvious way on these new believers, and the conclusion is clear: not only do the human leaders of the church welcome these outsiders, but so does God. It is one of a whole series of moments in the book of Acts where the church crosses a boundary to include people previously deemed "unacceptable," and the Holy Spirit affirms that welcome.

In this season of the church year--often called Epiphanytide or the beginning of Ordinary Time--this year we are going to be looking at how the Good News of Jesus leads us to the edge of our comfort zones.  And this moment from the book of Acts is a powerful example.  When the first Christians dared to include outsiders and enemies into the community of Jesus, both the human leaders (apostles like Peter and John) and the guidance of the Holy Spirit affirmed that daring welcome, knowing full well that it would be controversial to some and downright scandalous to others. It would have seemed "safer" to distance the church's policy from that bold welcome, or to quietly put out some ambiguous press release that didn't really address the question. But they didn't.  The apostles--those who knew and followed Jesus from the beginning--saw the direction the Spirit was leading, and they moved outward as the Spirit affirmed the welcome of outsiders and those previously seen as unfit to belong.

The question to ask, then, on this day is simply: Where will the Spirit lead us today?  And when we see the pull of the Spirit pointing us to welcome people beyond our comfort zones, will we turn back to where we think it is "safe," or will we run headlong like Peter and John to affirm that God is allowed to include people we didn't think could belong? Will we dare to let the Spirit speak in all boldness without thinking we need to walk it back or water it down?

Let's find out...

Lord Jesus, keep us open to see the welcome you extend beyond the lines we have drawn, and make us ready to follow the promptings of your Spirit.

Finding Another Way--January 10, 2025

Finding Another Way--January 10, 2025

"And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road." (Matthew 2:12)

And just like that, the Magi ride off into the sunset (well, sunrise, I suppose, since they would have been heading back eastward) on their way home, and we never hear from them again.

I used to think that this abrupt ending was unsatisfying, because we never find out what happened to them on their return trip.  But the more I sit with this verse, the more I think that this farewell to the Magi gives us all we need for the moment, because Matthew tells us they realized they didn't have to follow Herod's directions.  They were free, because they found another way, one that didn't resort to the way of Herod's cruelty and violence. The story of the Magi tells us that it is possible not to get sucked into the sway of tyrants and bullies.  We do not have to participate in their tactics, their goals, or their agendas.  We can find another way.

The Magi haven't come to that realization by their own intellect or reasoning; it takes a message from God in a dream to get through to them.  But of course, that's often how things go for us in our own lives, too.  It is so easy to be swept up in what everyone else says "This is just how the world is," or "You have to do things the way the world does them" that we never question, "Wait--why does it have to be this way?"  Sometimes it takes a message out of the blue to wake us from our passive slumbers and to remind us we don't have to be complicit, that we don't have to go along with the powers of the day--not even when they lie to us and tell us we have no choice. God gives that wake-up call to the Magi (literally) to awaken them to the truth that they do not have to comply with Herod.  They can find another way. 

Of course, part of the problem for the Magi up to this point of the story is that they didn't realize that they had been bamboozled by the "great" king, and he was only using them as a means to get to the baby he sees as a threat.  These supposedly "wise" men couldn't see that they were being manipulated, just as the scribes and priests had been duped into working for Herod and supporting his paranoid campaign against the rumored infant Messiah.  God's message in the dream lets them know that they don't have to obey Herod, and that they are in fact free simply to walk away.  In a very real sense, God instigates a direct action of civil disobedience on the part of the Magi and frees them from being strong-armed into the "But I was just following orders!" mindset. Perhaps it had never dawned on them that they were being played for fools, or perhaps they didn't realize they could defy the local king--but God makes sure they see both truths and sends them in a new direction.

I want to sit with this important concluding turn in the Epiphany story because all too often in the history of Christianity, Respectable Religious Folks have not had the same insight.  All too often, we have allowed ourselves to be cajoled into complicity with evil or peer-pressured into supporting cruelty, injustice, or violence, without coming to the realization that we do not have to go along with what the Powers of the Day tell us.  From crusaders and conquistadors with crosses emblazoned on their shields, told they had to kill and dominate others in faraway lands for "the sake of the gospel," to Christians who dutifully (they thought) supported slavery, protected the slave trade, or profited from its continuance, to the mass of people swept up in regimes like the Third Reich, church-going Christians have committed atrocities ordered by the Herods of their day because they believed they had to obey.  Perhaps we have forgotten stories like this one from the Gospel of Matthew, where God's action is the catalyst for the Magi to find another way home, one different from the path Herod wanted them to take. Perhaps we need to be reminded and awakened.

There are going to be times in our lives when the prevailing powers would have us believe we have no choice but to be cruel... or to be greedy... or to turn others away when they are in need. They will tell us we can't speak out again endless war because war is "just how the world works," or that we cannot speak up for those whose homes are reduced to rubble after a drone or missile attack. They will tell us that "Me and My Group First!" is just the way of the world and there's no use fighting it and no way of changing it.  They will tell us we had better just fall in line and do as they say, and then everything else will go so much more smoothly.  They offer us the excuse of saying later, "I was just following orders!" in exchange for not ever questioning them. When it happens, it's worth remembering the lesson of the Magi, who discover that they do not owe Herod their allegiance and they do not have to give him their support.  

When the voices from the palace tell us we have no option but to support their agendas, no matter how rotten they are, the story of the Magi gives us the freedom to say "No" to Herod's way so that we can say "yes" to finding another, better path to follow.

Lord God, lead us on your way and give us the wisdom and courage to distinguish it from the other competing ways and voices around us.

 

As We Are Able--January 9, 2025

As We Are Able--January 9, 2025

"On entering the house, the Magi saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh." (Matthew 2:11)

This story gets more and more mysterious the further you go. And while it's true that we have all likely heart and sung this story every year of our lives each Christmas-tide, the more time I spend with it, the more questions I have.

For one, I'm wondering how much meaning these well-traveled wizards saw in the gifts they brought. We Christians have done quite a job coming up with all sorts of symbolic meanings of each of the gifts (for example, that the gold symbolized Jesus' royalty, that the incense symbolized Christ's priesthood, and that the myrrh was a prediction of his death), but we really can't know if those are our inventions or the Magi themselves intended something like that. They may have just thought they were bringing valuable (and easily transportable) things to honor foreign royalty. They may have been bringing things native to their home countries, or things they thought a king of Israel would like. They may have had nothing more than a gut sense that somehow these were "right."

All of those questions make me ask another about the receivers: did Mary and Joseph keep those gifts as precious keepsakes, or did they use them to finance their time as refugees in Egypt? Maybe they intended to keep them on a special shelf in the house when they finally got home to Nazareth, but maybe they couldn't. Once Herod starts hunting for the child and the Holy Family has to flee from Herod's jurisdiction and seek refuge across the border in Egypt, maybe they had to sell the treasures one by one just to get by--perhaps to get across a guarded checkpoint, to pay for someone to get them safely across the border, or to cover necessities when they were in a foreign country. After all, in a strange land where they had no family or friends, they would have to pay for lodging, meals, and other essentials. And there was no guarantee that anybody would hire a foreigner like Joseph, especially when he had no "high-demand skills" or rightful claim to be in Egypt other than his sheer desperation to provide for Mary and the baby.

I have to admit I tend to be conditioned by my middle-class comfort into assuming that Mary and Joseph would have wanted to keep these treasures for the sheer sentimentality of it, but it is really quite likely that they were in such need on the run that they had to sell them just to keep feeding the Christ-child and staying one step ahead of paranoid King Herod "the Great" and his police. And if it turns out that Mary and Joseph did have to sell or spend the gifts of the Magi, does that make them any less important as gifts? Or is it perhaps true that part of giving a gift means letting go of how it is used?

Maybe there is something for me to learn here from the Magi. They traveled all this way, with detours and wrong turns, the risk of danger when their path got entangled with Herod's, and lots of time spent along the way, all for what? Did they get anything out of it? Well, no, at least not in a transactional sense. They didn't come to ask favors of the newborn King of Israel, and they don't even seem to be looking to curry favor with his parents--who have no influence, power, or status to wield. Instead, the Magi come, convinced that the journey is worth it--no matter how convoluted the route becomes--and they leave their gifts for the child... and they go. That was it. They didn't even get souvenir t-shirts or take a selfie. They realize something that we only dimly perceive these days: that it is a grace to be allowed to give what you have to offer, and for it to be received.

Sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks think about God's grace only in terms of how nice it is when God gives us something we didn't earn--and that is a part of the picture. But it is also true that it is a gift of grace that God is willing to receive what we have to give. It is a gift of grace when other people allow us to offer them our time, our words, or our presence--we are not owed that in life. It is a gift of grace that we get to share moments and memories, and it is a gift of grace when someone welcomes our presence at the table, as well. Every time there is an exchange in this world--any act of giving and receiving--there is grace on both sides: grace in the giving, and grace in the willingness to let the gift be given. Like C.S. Lewis famously says about a child asking his father for money to buy the dad a birthday present, it may well be proper for the child to want to do something nice for his parent, but nobody thinks the dad is any richer for the transaction. The dad in Lewis' analogy extends grace to his child--grace to accept the gift the child wants to offer, even if he doesn't need another "World's Greatest Dad" novelty pen, and could have used the cash for something he really wanted.

It is grace to give to others, to be sure--but it is also grace when someone accepts the gifts we offer, from the "World's Greatest Mom" coffee mug to the handprint turkey feather artwork to the breakfast-in-bed with eggshells in the eggs and garlic powder on the cinnamon toast. And maybe that says something about the Magi and about us as well. It is good and fitting (right and salutary, too!) for us to want to give of ourselves back to the God who gives us life--as good and fitting as the kids who want to make breakfast in bed for their parents. And at the same time, part of God's grace to us is accepting what we have to offer, as it is and as we are, with love and a smile as well. God chooses to receive what we offer, not because God needs it, but because we need to give it. There is a line from an old prayer that says we give our thanks and our offerings back to God, "not as we ought, but as we are able," which I have come to love.  Those words remind me that when I give something to God, it is never a matter of paying God back or "settling up" with the Almighty to make us even, but rather than even when I am the giver, God is being gracious in God's willingness to receive whatever I have come to offer. And that is true whether we are talking about gold, frankincense, and myrrh, or your and my time, abilities, words, presence, or money.

So, maybe the gold stayed in Joseph's possession for years; maybe Mary kept the myrrh like she pondered the shepherds' words in her heart. Or maybe they unloaded the incense at the first pawn shop they came across over the border in Egypt so they could get some eating money. Either way, the gifts were given because the Magi felt they needed to give them, and the Christ-child received them because, well, because that is part of his grace to offer as well.

Whatever you and I have got to offer, Jesus will receive it gladly. We may not be able to control how Christ uses what we offer, but he does extend us the grace of receiving what we bring from our opened treasure chests. We do indeed give, not as we ought, but as we are able.  And the living Christ is gracious to receive it all, even though it is really all his to begin with already.

Lord Jesus, thank you for accepting what we bring, even though it was yours already in the first place. Thank you for the grace of accepting what we need to give you.