Seeing Clearly--February 20, 2026

Seeing Clearly--February 20, 2026

"We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see--we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything." [2 Corinthians 6:8b-10]

I'm going to warn you now: following Jesus is going to mess with your head (if you didn't know that already). Belonging to the people of Jesus has a way of taking your old assumptions about how the world works--what we usually call "conventional wisdom"--and turns it upside down. Any one of us might think themselves crazy to wrap their brains around that new Christ-shaped perspective, except that we share it together, and we remind ourselves that we haven't lost our minds. But still, it can be hard as a follower of Jesus to see our old ways of understanding the world getting turned inside out, and our former assumptions about how God works evaporate like morning fog. In the end, though, Jesus helps us to see clearly--even if it means our old familiar illusions are finally gone.

One of the particular ways that following Jesus messes with our old thinking is the way we read God's presence in the world. Respectable Religion teaches us a simplistic plotline: when good things happen to you, it must mean God favors you, and when bad things happen to you, it must mean that God is punishing you. "The man who is saved from the oncoming truck must be endorsed by heaven, but the woman who went into cardiac arrest across town and couldn't be resuscitated must not have been important enough for God to help." Or, "The people in Country A whose stock markets are at all-time highs must be divinely blessed, but the people in Country B who are starving through war and famine must be under divine judgment." It's an alluring and easy way to make sense of the world--the only problem is that it's not at all the way Jesus teaches us to see the world.

After all, we confess that the One who really is "chosen by God"--Jesus himself--was strung up by an angry mob of religious leaders who handed him over to the empire for execution on a Roman death stake. Nobody stops the flogging from happening. Nobody prevents the crucifixion of the Messiah. Nobody swoops in at the last minute to save Jesus from having to die. He dies. The resurrection doesn't erase that death; it only tells us that he was God's chosen even though he was utterly scorned and despised all the way to death without an escape hatch.

For that matter, Jesus himself is constantly undoing our bad theology that assumes good fortune translates to divine approval and that bad fortune is a sign of God's rejection. Jesus himself rules out any claim that being safe and comfortable is proof of God's favor or that suffering is evidence of divine disfavor. The Crucified One himself refutes that sloppy thinking. He tells his disciples that the man born blind isn't being punished, even though that's what they assumed (John 9). He tells his disciples that if they are faithful, they'll be persecuted, and that if all speak well of them, they should be more worried (Luke 6). He announces that the really "blessed" are the hungry, the poor, the grieving, and the ones denied justice, while he calls out "woe" over the well-fed and well-heeled with their saccharin smiles. And he insists repeatedly that if you want to be first, you'll need to put yourself in last place, and that if you lose your life you'll find it. All of that just completely pulls down the old thinking of Respectable Religion down to the ground.

And then, if that weren't enough, the first generation of Christians found the same in their own lives. The apostle Paul--someone clearly chosen by Jesus himself for his work--found that in his own life and ministry, he was regularly regarded as a loser, a failure, a recipient of God's punishment, and a glutton for suffering. But Paul doesn't see those as evidence that God is mad at him; he sees them as signs he is walking the path of Jesus. By the time Paul writes to the Corinthians in these verses above, which many of us heard this past Ash Wednesday, the apostle has learned that sunshine and safety are not signs of God's approval, and that suffering and sorrow are not proof of God's disapproval. He has learned that the old theology of Respectable Religion was all a sham. Sometimes the true prophets get run out of town or have stones thrown at them (this happens a lot actually). And sometimes the worst villains get away smiling and smirking. The cross of Jesus makes all of our oversimplification of God into a cosmic vending machine of prizes and punishments unravel. And instead we see that God can bless and care for us in our sufferings... that God's love for us may not always translate to the world's definition of success... and that sometimes crooks lick their lips in triumph while sometimes the righteous are written off as failures. Paul didn't just hear stories or teachings of Jesus to learn that--he saw it in his own life as well. "We are treated as impostors, and yet are true.. as punished, and yet not killed... as poor, yet making many rich." Paul had learned that the old assumptions of a moral universe of karmic clockwork, doling out divine protection for the "chosen" and heaven-sent suffering for the "rejected," were all bunk. God's ways can't be reduced to a formula like that, especially not when the Anointed and Chosen One, Jesus, goes all the way to a cross rather than getting whisked away from the custody of the centurions or the crowd shouting, "Crucify him!" Paul can no longer bear bad theology like that--because of Jesus.

And honestly, it's still hard for us to let go of the old reductionistic thinking. Some part of us wants to be able to identify who is God's favored because they got rescued by the lifeguard (and therefore must have special purpose) and who must be unimportant in God's eyes because they drowned. But Jesus and Paul both remind us that's not how God works, and if anything, God is especially present with the broken, with the hurting, and with the ones who have lost it all. It takes a lifetime to learn to see things rightly again, after all the haze of bad theology burns off with the sunrise.  If we have been drawn to Jesus, and he went through the way of suffering, then we should not be surprised if we are led on the same path.

But we do it together. Paul keeps saying "we" about these experiences of finding God in the midst of suffering and defeat--he knows he's not alone as he finds Jesus there in the places of loss and hardship. And because we face those struggles together, we can keep reminding each other of the unexpected, unconventional wisdom of a God whose victory comes through the magnificent defeat of a cross, and who brings life through death rather than a saved-in-the-nick-of-time close call.

That's what allows us to offer comfort to one another when we are sitting in an ICU waiting room, wondering if we just didn't pray hard enough that our loved one ended up there ("That's not how this works!" we can remind each other). That's what allows us to pick our feet up and start again when it seems like the cheaters and the crooks have won the day again ("It doesn't mean that they're blessed and we're cursed!" we can say). That's what allows us still to recognize God's presence with us even when the chemo isn't working, even when the loved one falls off the wagon and hits the bottle again, even when the company says your job is being "relocated" without out in it. Because we know that God's love isn't the same as getting the lucky break or avoiding the deer in the highway, we can trust that God's presence for good in our lives will be enough--even if it feels like we're losing.

I don't know when you'll need that reminder, or where it will show up in your life's journey, but you will. And on the day you do, know: we face it together, and God, we trust, will be there, too--even if it takes our eyes and hearts a bit to recognize God's presence there.

Lord Jesus, help us to see you and your presence in all things and all circumstances, and to face whatever challenges are ahead today together.

Today Is the Day--February 19, 2026

Today Is the Day--February 19, 2026

"As we work together with him, we entreat you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
 'At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
  and on a day of salvation I have helped you.'
Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation!" (2 Corinthians 6:1-2)

We aren't merely waiting for the afterlife. Salvation begins now.

Yes, yes, of course, the Christian hope includes life beyond the grip of death. Yes, absolutely, the story of Jesus' death and resurrection means that I don't have to be afraid of the grave getting the last word over my life or yours.  But to hear the New Testament tell it, we aren't only waiting for our faith to mean something after our hearts stop. We are living in God's saving love right now.  It has already begun, and you and I are already drawn into it.

Letting that sink in is really important, so I'm grateful to have the chance to take a closer look at these words which many of us heard in worship on Ash Wednesday, continuing the train of thought we began with yesterday.  Once again, we have Paul writing to Christians in the city of Corinth, and the immediately preceding sentences reminded us that "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them" and then pleading, "Be reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:19-20). So Paul has just finished saying, "God has already reconciled with you through Christ--from God's side of the equation, that's a done deal and an accomplished fact.  I'm just asking you to live right now like what God says is true, really is true." In other words, the Christian message is not a sales pitch that if you do X, Y, and Z then you have a reservation at the Celestial Country Club when you die, but rather that God has already reconciled with us through Christ, and the only question is whether we will dare to believe it is true and be what God says we already are.

And if that's true (and again, Paul seems to think it is--let's trust him on this one), then the point of today's verses makes total sense: salvation isn't only a future reality for the ones who have locked in the offer for after death by praying the right prayer, believing the right facts, or behaving the right ways.  Salvation begins NOW, and it means a whole new way of life RIGHT NOW because we don't have to live like we are estranged and alienated from God any longer.  We aren't.

Maybe that's the news we really aren't prepared to hear yet: God isn't angry at you.  God doesn't hate you.  God doesn't hold out a conditional, transactional deal that says, "I'll like you and let you into my good graces after you die, but only if you'll complete the following list," but rather speaks an unconditional declaration, "I have reconciled you already from my side."  And if that declaration really is unconditional because it is from God's side and based on God's action in Christ already, then yes indeed, salvation IS a present-tense reality I am swimming in already, not just a possible future destination dependent on my ability to hold up my end of a deal.

And if indeed, salvation really is a NOW thing, then I don't have to stay stuck in the dead-end routines of selfishness, bitterness, cruelty, apathy, and greed that have been killing me slowly while they've been telling me I'm living "the good life." I don't have to be forever entangled in the familiar fear of "the other," the well-worn ruts of prejudice, or the self-destructive habits I have gotten used to.  Those things are part of what I am freed FROM, and that freedom is available now.  I'm the dunderhead who keeps running back into bondage and held captive by those powers and needing to be pulled out of them again and again.  But from God's side, the estrangement is over.  Now, as Paul says, is the acceptable time.  Now is the day of salvation.

What will it look like in the new day to take that seriously?  How might we live, here and now, as people experiencing the present-tense day of salvation, as well as the hope of the future?

Lord Jesus, allow us to live as your saved people in this day you have given us.

The Lengths God Has Gone To--February 18, 2026

The Lengths God Has Gone To--February 18, 2026

"We entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:20b-21)

A good way of knowing if you are getting close to the real mystery of Christ is when our words start to fall apart.  If we find that, as we try to describe what God has done for us, the news is so good that it boggles our minds or breaks apart the constraints of language, we might well be on the right track.  Any god whose plans or ways you can exhaustively describe in human terms has got to be a fiction of our own creation.  But a God who does impossibly good things and whose love explodes our old categories?  That sounds like the real McCoy.

And that, dear ones, is exactly what we have been given in the story of Jesus, especially as these verses from what we call Second Corinthians put it.  These words are traditionally spoken on Ash Wednesday, as we begin the season of Lent, which calls us back to the cross of Jesus and the road that leads to it.  And for as many years as I have heard these words over the course of my four-and-a-half decades of life so far, I find they still render me speechless and awestruck for what they say about the lengths God has gone to for us.

At the heart of these few sentences is an idea that pushes language to the breaking point.  The apostle Paul says that "God made the one who knew no sin to be sin" for our sake.  The "one" being referenced, of course, is Christ.  And the claim here is that at the cross, the Sinless One took on our sin wholly and completely--so as to "be sin" himself. And like I say, it is at this point that even the most precise and well-chosen of our words seem to fall apart.  What would it mean that the Sinless One became sin?  How could a God who is entirely holy and without sin absorb it into God's own being?  That sounds, to borrow a scientific analogy, like matter touching antimatter--which should make them both annihilate each other--and somehow instead producing a perfectly baked apple pie.  It sounds like God, the Immortal Source of Life, being swallowed up by death in order to break it from the inside out (which, of course, is precisely another thing we say about Jesus at the cross).  It's like saying that the Perfectly Healthy One took the disease out of our bodies and infected himself with it in order to destroy the sickness and make us whole.  It's like God in Christ chooses to become godforsaken--cut off from God--in order to restore us to relationship with God (and, yes, once again, that is also a thing the New Testament says about Jesus at the cross).  

Do you notice how each of those descriptions sounds impossible? Do you hear the tension of the paradox?   How could a God who is holy and perfect be willing, not merely to be "near" to sinners, but to absorb ALL of our sin into God's own being?  How could a God who is deathless then die on a cross?  How could the One who is filled with the very fullness of God then choose to empty himself all the way to death?  These notions stretch our minds beyond our ability to contain, or even grasp, them.  And yet, this is precisely what the apostle wants us to understand about what God has done in Jesus.  The Sinless Savior becomes sin for our sake, "so that we might become the righteousness of God."  These are the lengths God has gone to, because in Jesus, we get nothing less than the very fullness of God.

This is where we start the journey of Lent: with what God has done for us, the depth of God's relentless love for us, and the unfailing persistence of God's grace to us.  Let's not get the cart before the horse by focusing on whether we are supposed to give up chocolate or say extra prayers.  The practices of discipleship always have to come as the second step in the dance that began already with grace pulling us out onto the dance floor, as the response to the lengths God has already gone for us.

So today, for whatever things you may choose to do in this season to be drawn more deeply and closely to Jesus, let's start where the Scripture begin: with the news that God has already gone to infinite lengths and impossible efforts to reconcile with us, and that is an already accomplished fact.  Jesus has already absorbed the poison of sin from his side and given us his gift of life, so that is not ours to try to achieve, earn, or win.  

What Comes Next--February 17, 2026

What Comes Next--February 17, 2026

"We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, 'This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.' We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.  So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." (2 Peter 1:16-19)

Let me ask you a magic question.  When you go to see a magic act and the performers on stage show you an ordinary object--say a black top hat, a rabbit, or a deck of cards--why do you suppose they go to great lengths to prove to the audience that these are real, solid objects?  Why have an audience member come up and inspect the cards?  Why hold up the rabbit and have us witness its wriggling nose or twitching ears?  Why tap the top of the hat with a knock of the hand, demonstrating its solidness?

Well, it's so that we know these things are what the magician says they are before putting them through whatever transformation the trick will bring to them.  We have to know that the deck of cards isn't entirely made up of the eight of clubs so that we'll be amazed when he predicts that it was our card. We need to know that the rabbit isn't a plush toy that could be squished or flattened to fit in a pocket. We need to know that the hat is genuine rather than a chute into a secret compartment in the magician's cabinet.  If we don't see convincingly that these objects are really what they appear to be, it will be meaningless when the performer makes the rabbit disappear, selects your card from the deck, or pulls a full-size umbrella from the hat.  We need to know they are genuine what they are presented to be because of what comes next.

I think something like that is going on here in this passage from what we call Second Peter, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  It is, I'll confess, an unusual passage, because it's really the one place outside of the gospels that makes any reference to the story of Jesus being "transfigured" on the mountaintop, when his appearance changed and radiated light, Moses and Elijah appeared as celebrity cameo endorsements of Jesus' identity and mission, and then to cap it all off, the very voice of God repeated the claim that Jesus is God's "Beloved Son."  It's uncommon to have references to these kinds of moments from Jesus' life mentioned in letters and epistles, for starters.  And beyond that, this is just such an unusual event. It's not a miracle of healing or feeding that has a clear "purpose" or goal.  It's not something we can verify with archaeological evidence, although the writer of Second Peter wants us to be certain that he is telling the truth and not just rehashing "cleverly devised myths."  And since the whole event has a surreal, almost dream-like quality to it that is over too soon, we might be left wondering why the Bible even tells us this story.  Why do we need to hear that Jesus was declared to be God's Son? Why tell us that somehow the long-deceased figures of Moses and Elijah were there on the summit without explaining to us how it happened, how they got there, or even just how anybody knew it was them (nametags, maybe?)? Why was this memory of the early followers of Jesus important enough to include in a letter for later Christians who didn't live through it when it happened?

Here's my hunch: I think this is Second Peter's way of telling us who Jesus REALLY is, so that we'll understand why it's a big deal that this same Jesus has gone to a cross for us, really did rise, and really will come in glory.  The One who laid down his life on an ugly Roman execution stake really was the presence of God in a human life--and that God really was willing to go all the way to death for us.  Jesus wasn't only one of countless victims of imperial violence. He wasn't merely a figure from a fable or a hero in a myth.  He wasn't an apparition or a vision or a noble idea.  Jesus was both as fully human as you can be and as fully divine as it gets--and that God was willing to go to a cross for us.  There is no illusion.  There is no trick.  The rabbit isn't just a stuffed toy and the deck of cards isn't a decoy.  Jesus really is the Son of God, and Second Peter wants us to know it for sure so that we'll understand the stakes of the rest of his story.  In Jesus, God is willing to be swallowed up by death. In Jesus, no less than God is willing to be declared a "loser," a "weakling," and a "dangerous criminal."  In Jesus, none other than God has been calling us to love our enemies, return good in the place of evil, and wash feet rather than insist on being served.  Second Peter wants to be clear what Jesus says, God says.  What Jesus does, God does.  The people whom Jesus hangs out with are the folks God chooses to hang out with.  And the boundaries that Jesus is willing to cross for the sake of other are--you guessed it--the boundaries that God has chosen to cross. 

That certainly makes an impact on what we do with Jesus, especially when he challenges us.  Second Peter doesn't really give us the option of saying, "Well, I like the idea of eternal life, but I just don't think Jesus is right when he identifies money as an idol."  We can't say, "I'm all for Jesus, but I don't like his insistence on feeding hungry people without checking their backgrounds or welcoming foreigners as though they were him."  We don't get to say, "That heaven stuff is fine, but I don't want to follow someone who dies for his enemies rather than killing them." The New Testament does not give us that option, because it insists that Jesus is none other than God in the flesh.  We need to hear the voice assure us that Jesus is God's Beloved Son so that we will remember when Jesus goes to the cross that it is God who takes the nails.  We need the message on the mountain in order to understand what comes next.

Jesus' call to us to follow him--on his particular way of life--is authoritative because of who he is.  I can pick and choose which TV streaming services I pay for, which authors I read, and which talking heads in the news will get my attention.  And when I don't like something they say, I can just change the channel, choose another that suits my liking, and keep control.  But if Jesus really is--as 2 Peter and the rest of the New Testament insist--then I can't be a consumer at a salad bar taking only what I like.  I am called to follow in the way of Jesus because of who he is.  And at the same time, because Jesus is the fullness of God in a human life, it means that God hasn't chosen to stay off at a distance from a world full of pain and suffering, but to enter into it, all the way to death.  I need to know that, so I need those reminders beforehand to show me who Jesus is.

Maybe we all do.  What would change in your life if we took seriously that Jesus really is the Beloved Son of God?  What if it happened... today?

Lord Jesus, remind us of who you are so that we will be conscious of your love and compelled to follow you, for whatever comes next.

Where Jesus Goes--February 16, 2026

Where Jesus Goes--February 16, 2026

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.  And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” [Matthew 17:1-9]

Even Jesus doesn't intend for the extraordinary experiences to last forever--if you want to be where Jesus is, you've got to leave behind the spiritual "high" point and go with him in the lowly places.  The call is for us to go where Jesus goes--not to get off at the bus stop on the mountain's summit before it heads down into the valley.

That much is absolutely clear from the story we retell each year at this time, and which many of us just heard this past Sunday, before beginning the forty-day journey to the cross that we call Lent. And yet, it is also painfully clear just how much we seem to want to ignore the point of this story, and find ourselves wanting to make the mountaintop moments last forever... or to think that they are endpoints, rather than chances to catch our breath.

This, of course, is what Simon Peter has in mind when he blurts out his idea of building little sheds for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah to stay in--he wants to keep this amazing experience going, and he wants to stay there. Now, before ragging on Ol' Pete, we should be honest and say that we ourselves often want to hold onto those positive spiritual experiences in our lives--those times when it feels like something mystical or even supernatural is happening--and to make them last forever. Maybe it's a powerful experience you had in worship or prayer sometime; maybe it was a dream you had where it felt like God spoke to you. Maybe it was a moment when a song brought you to tears, or you were surrounded by the beauty of creation in the woods or at the ocean and you just couldn't contain the sense of awe and wonder there. Your list of times like that will be different from mine or anybody else's, but chances are, you've had some experience in your life where it felt like you were somehow closer to the divine.

So sure, Peter wants to make this amazing experience on the mountain with Jesus last. Of course he doesn't want to go back down the slope into the messiness of the world. And of course he feels closer to experiencing God there beside the heroes of ancient Israel Moses and Elijah, where there isn't any laundry to be folded or work to be done, no irritating neighbors or intimidating Romans around. Of course it feels like you have clarity when the very voice of God is speaking and calling your attention to what is important: "This is My Son. Listen to him." All of that is so much simpler and clearer than everyday life, where there are bills to pay, children to care for, and the ambiguity and clutter of regular life. So it's perfectly understandable to want to stay up at that spiritual "high" point where there are no responsibilities, routines, or people with needs to attend to--only the majesty of the mountain and the feeling like you are somehow closer to God, or at least that God's presence is clearer to you. But it is exactly because the rest of life isn't up there on the mountain that we can't stay there--Jesus leads us back down and outward to be the presence of love everywhere else.

Surely if anyone has a right to get to stay there on the mountain forever, it's Jesus; and surely if he thought it was a good idea to stay at that impromptu camp meeting for all eternity, he would have told Peter, "Great--you get the sawhorses for building the sheds, and I'll make some fresh lumber appear." But Jesus knows that the point of his coming into the world is not to pull pious people OUT of the world and sequester them up on a summit for never-ending praise songs and mystical experiences, but rather to immerse fully IN the world in all of its brokenness, frustrations, and heartaches. That's why he summons his followers back down the mountain rather than taking Peter up on his offer to build a tent city up there for Moses, Elijah, and himself.

I can remember when I was in junior and senior high school and our church youth group would go to regional gatherings of other youth groups; I've even had my share of times as an adult speaking at those. And I know that they can be powerful, emotional, and moving spiritual experiences for people--they can be times when God seems closer to us, or when our faith is especially vibrant. Maybe it's seeing so many other people in the same place all singing the same songs, or sharing the same feeling in the room. Maybe it's just being removed from the usual responsibilities and ordinariness of daily life. But at some point, you grow up into seeing that the time "away from normal" at a gathering, retreat, conference, or whatever else you call it is never meant to be an end in itself. It's meant at best to equip us with clarity to head back into the messy places, the heartbroken places, among people who are struggling to see God in their midst. In other words, you learn that the Jesus way of life doesn't pull people "out" of where they're at to go somewhere else to meet God, but comes "in" to every place that feels godforsaken to embody the presence of God's love there.

If we are learning to love like Jesus--and I hope that much of our journey together is clear--then it will mean following him down and out. It will mean being willing to leave behind the moments of spiritual and emotional "highs"--whether they are planned or purely spontaneous--to go where Jesus leads us in the lowly places... because that's where he's always eventually headed. Our older brother in the faith Martin Luther used to say that when we look for God in the mountaintop places full of glory, we're likely falling for an illusion, but rather in Jesus we come to see God in all the un-glorious, unlikely, and disreputable places that a respectable deity wouldn't go... even to a cross. Maybe we need the mountaintop experiences from time to time to get our bearings, but like a dolphin or a whale coming up for air just long enough to go back into the depths for where our actual lives are lived.

Today, the invitation is for us to head where Jesus directs us--not up and out of the world and its problems in a never-ending church service where even Moses and Elijah are guest speakers--but back down into a messy and needy world. And there, among those who hurt, whose hearts are heavy, and who feel godforsaken, we discover that Jesus is already there waiting for us. Let's go.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to trust you as you lead us back down the mountain and into the world.

Tired of the Same Old Game--February 13, 2026

Tired of the Same Old Game--February 13, 2026

"When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the testimony of God to you with superior speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God." (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

So many of the groups, clubs, teams, organizations, and associations out there require the need to impress somebody else, either to get in... or to stay in.  You pledge at a fraternity or sorority and then have to prove your dedication by going through all the stunts and harassment inflicted on would-be members.  You apply for the new job by putting your best accomplishments on paper--and learning how to make yourself look more desirable as a candidate.  You make the team by scoring higher, running faster, or shooting better than the one next to you in line. And every candidate for public office certainly seems to feel the need to puff up their resumes and inflate their record in order to get a few more votes in the hopes of winning.  You don't get to belong in many groups these days without getting practice in selling yourself and promoting yourself as a "winner."

Add to that the way social media practically demands that we all project a polished version of ourselves for others to see... and possibly envy.  We post about the foods we have made (especially the success stories), the fancy restaurants we have gone to, the retouched photos of our best looks, and the achievements of our families, all creating the impression of a "greatest-hits-only" version of our lives, rather than the real mix of beautiful and broken, manageable and messy, fantastic and failure that we really experience. And again, it's not that there's a lone master villain out there making us do all this--it's just how the platform of social media works. We are constantly being pressured to present ourselves, both in real life and on screens, as "winners" rather than "losers."  That's how we know we will be acceptable to other people... at least that's what we tell ourselves.

And then there is the beautifully strange witness of the New Testament church, which made a point of not being like all those other kinds of groups, associations, and tribes.  These words from First Corinthians, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, give us another glimpse of how the apostle Paul put that strangeness into practice.  He's writing to this fractured congregation in Corinth, after having been their founding pastor and the one who had first shared the good news of Jesus with many of them, and he's reminding them that they don't have to go through the old routine of one-upping each other.  They don't have to brag about their superiority over one another, nor do they need to try and pretend their are superior to the people around them in the world where they live and work.  They don't have to project some fake version of themselves that makes them look like unmitigated successes, and they don't have to try to "wow" anybody.  The community of Jesus is different.  For people who are tired of that same old game, that is good news.

Here's why the community of Jesus--the church--is different (or at least why it is supposed to be different).  For one, Jesus himself.  Not only did Jesus not create a community built on impressing or posturing, but he himself knew what it was like to be looked down on as an utter failure and a loser.  He went from assembling a circle of anybodies and nobodies (including some pretty strongly despised folks like tax collectors, foreigners, and people with contagious and stigmatized diseases) to dying a shameful death on the kind of cross that was reserved for the most despicable and contemptible criminals.  The world's "Big Deals" looked at the track record of Jesus and said, "He's a criminal and a loser who surrounded himself with other losers--and that makes him an even bigger loser in our eyes!"  The apostle Paul looks at the same evidence and says, "This is how you know God is the One orchestrating it all."

Paul reminds the Christians in Corinth that when he first came to them, he didn't try to impress them with big bloviating talk or pompous self-aggrandizement from a podium.  He didn't try to rebrand Jesus as a "tough and strong winner" rather than a crucified criminal in order to make him more appealing.  "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified," Paul says.  And on top of that, Paul himself didn't try to impress his listeners to sell them on the gospel, but by just being his own vulnerable self. "I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling."  This was not the Homecoming Queen and Starting Quarterback inviting the elite and popular kids to join their social clique--this was an unimpressive out-of-town nobody telling people about a homeless rabbi who had been eliminated by the empire. In other words, it wasn't a message that sounded like a sales-pitch for success; it sounded like a God who was so committed to gathering the ones labeled "nobodies" that God was willing to be one of those "nobodies" as well in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  That kind of God made room for people who didn't have it all together.  That kind of God didn't weed out the undesirables.  That kind of God didn't need to brag--and therefore, neither do we.

This is one of the things that makes the Christian community so countercultural, honestly.  We are so accustomed to self-important figures boasting about their supposed "greatness" and thinking that's the way to market the gospel, too: "Try Jesus, and he'll make you great!" or "Believe in Jesus, and you, too, can be successful like him!"  All of that completely misses the point to Paul.  He's not interested in turning the church into one more exclusive club where elites compete to earn a limited number of spots or have to constantly one-up each other in order to keep their place.  For Paul, his own coming to Corinth in weakness and smallness was not a random happening or a flaw in his strategy--it was a way of showing the people in Corinth that Jesus' kind of community really is different. And then when he told them about Jesus as the One who went to a cross, he made it clear that the Gospel wasn't just more of the same old game.  If the center of our story was someone dismissed by the Big Deals as a loser and a failure, then there is room for us when that's how we have been labeled, too.  If the One whom we confess as Lord created a community of "anybodies" and "nobodies," then we don't have to waste our energy projecting the image that we're "Somebodies" who are more important than the next person. That's the kind of new and beautiful community into which we have been called.

And it starts now.

Lord Jesus, enable us to be ourselves and to know you have accepted us as we are already--and let that be our witness to others.

The Blessed Alternative--February 12, 2026

The Blessed Alternative--February 12, 2026

"If you remove the yoke from among you,
  the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
  if you offer your food to the hungry
  and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
 then your light shall rise in the darkness
  and your gloom be like the noonday.
 The Lord will guide you continually
  and satisfy your needs in parched places
  and make your bones strong,
 and you shall be like a watered garden,
  like a spring of water
  whose waters never fail.
 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
  you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
 you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
  the restorer of streets to live in." (Isaiah 58:9b-12)

These days we are so used to finger-pointing, it is hard to imagine that there was (or could be) a time when people were not so severely polarized into factions, each blaming its opponent for society's troubles while simultaneously avoiding responsibility for its own failures.

These days we are so accustomed to the noise of demagogues barking from podiums about whoever is the most recently identified villain to blame that we forget the world doesn't actually have to be carved up into "us" and "them" categories.

These days, we are so used to thinking of hungry people as "over there somewhere else"--usually, we assume, in "bad neighborhoods" or "bad countries" and therefore, we further assume, somehow deserving of their hunger--that we forget there is no such thing as a human being God does not love, and no face who is not made in the image of God.

These days, perhaps we are so thoroughly stuck in the ruts of being fearful of strangers, hostile to those we disagree with, and indifferent to those whose struggles are different from our own that we cannot imagine life being any different.  Perhaps the misery of being distant and divided from one another feels so familiar we are afraid of leaving it behind to try something new.  Perhaps we do not have the imagination to see that it doesn't have to be this way.

On days like these, the voice of the prophet dares us to envision an alternative and calls us into a different sort of life.  These words from what we call the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, which conclude the passage that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, are one of those times when God raised up a visionary to get us to see the world differently.  He interrupts the routines of scapegoating and finger-pointing that had consumed his listeners and woke them up out of the comfortable numbness that made them apathetic to the needs of neighbors around them.  And in a sense, he is still doing the same to us as well.  The voice of Isaiah 58 stops us in our tracks and says, "Did you forget that the world doesn't have to be fractured into US and THEM?"  He says, "Have you failed to see that your neighbor is hungry, or have you failed to even see them in the first place?"  And he asks us to imagine what life would be like if we broke out of our old mix of animosity and apathy to live in God's kind of beloved community.

"You want to know what that would be like?" he asks.  "It would be like living in a watered garden.  It would be like you are rebuilding forgotten neighborhoods and repairing the broken houses.  It would be like a light shining in the darkness.  It would be the alternative we've all been waiting for."  Church folk these days love to talk about "shining our light" so that everybody else will see it (as we even looked at earlier this week in an earlier devotion).  It's worth remembering that when Isaiah 58 talks about how to be such a light, he immediately talks about feeding hungry neighbors, caring for those whose backs are against the wall, and leaving behind the tired old pass-the-buck scapegoating we were used to.  The prophet doesn't have to wag his own finger at us or threaten us with a list of rules here; rather, he offers a vision for how things could be.  He dares us to ask ourselves, "Why have we let ourselves become so comfortable with such a sad status quo that leaves us estranged from each other and constantly angry at one another?"  And then he dares us to ask a further question, as well: "What if it were different?"

What if we were different?

And what if the only thing holding us back from stepping into that different way of life was our own inability to see that were stuck in the old pattern?  What if the kind of neighborly life where we don't have to constantly spin the day's events into an attack on "THEM" were possible right now?  What if the kind of beloved community where nobody went hungry wasn't a pipe dream or wishful thinking, but a matter of choosing it in our priorities over insulated indifference? And what if the prophet has come to call us into that kind of community right now?

Good news: that is exactly what this voice is doing.  We are invited, right here and right now, to be a part of this blessed alternative.  It can begin now.

Lord God, pull us out of the miserable ruts we have been stuck in and pull us into your newness of compassion and care.