The Kind of Life We're Called Into--February 11, 2026

The Kind of Life We're Called Into--February 11, 2026

"'Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?' Look, you serve your own interests on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast, only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?" [Isaiah 58:3-7]

Maybe it's the church nerd in me, but I really do think that an awful lot of the rottenness around us comes from our inability to really think through what we believe about God. I don't mean to be a theology snob, but honestly, it seems like we human beings can be just utter jerks to each other while we are equally certain we've got the divine stamp of approval on our jerkiness, all because we haven't really thought through the things we say we believe about God.

And, boy oh boy, does this passage from the book of Isaiah have that on display in spades here. These words, which many of us heard this past Sunday as our first reading, are one of those times when God speaks directly to the Respectable Religious Crowd and lovingly smacks them upside the head to get their attention with a message. The people are intent on getting God's attention--they want help in rebuilding after the exile, they want prosperity for their businesses and their nation, they want security from their enemies, and they want to know they have divine favor in all their pursuits.

And so they do what Respectable Religion always does: they put on a show... for God. They pull out all the stops and play all the greatest hits: a ritual fast, signs of humbling themselves, covering themselves in ashes and rough sackcloth, and they bow down low as they cry to the heavens. They put on a whole National Day of Prayer and Fasting, convinced that's what will get God's attention. And when they don't get the response they were hoping for, the Respectable Religious Crowd lobs up another petition to God: "How come you're not noticing us? Why don't you see us doing all these things to get you attention, God?"

Well, right there is Bad Theology Move Number One--of course, God sees it all. It's just that God isn't impressed with any of that theatricality. God knows and sees everything--but not just their performed piety. God also sees the way these same folks who insist they are devoutly dedicated to godliness also ignore the needs of their neighbors, fight with each other, and take advantage of the most vulnerable in their community. God sees all of that, too, and God is more upset with the ways the people are mistreating each other to make a buck, ignoring each other because helping would be inconvenient, and fighting with each other because meanness is easy.

That brings us to Bad Theology Move Number Two: it's not that God doesn't see us when we are trying to get God's attention, but rather that God DOES see everything, including all the things we thought nobody noticed or paid attention to... and including the times we aren't putting on a religious performance. The people have sort of accepted that there's some kind divide between "sacred" things that God is supposed to care about [you know, prayers and rituals and fasting and the like], and then "secular" things that are outside of God's purview [things like business and everyday life and the Dow Jones Industrial Average]. And that just ain't so. God sees it all, and you can't buy God off over here on one side with well-produced religious pageantry while you're cheating your neighbors or letting them starve without so much as recognizing they're even there over on the other side. This should be obvious, but sometimes we human beings just don't think it through... and we end up trying to get God's attention with religion while we're also trying to get the same God to look the other way when it comes to our cruelty and indifference to the people around us.

Underneath all of this nonsense with a pious veneer is another vital truth that the people in Isaiah 58 had forgotten--or ignored--and that we are easily tempted to forget, too. We don't have to "do" anything to get God's attention--EVER. That's just not how it works. Trying to get God's attention through public displays of religiosity is like thinking you have to buy access to the air you are already breathing, or trying to bribe your parents into loving you, when they already do. There's NO way to "make" God pay attention to you, because there's no NEED--God is already completely aware and totally attentive to all of us, all the time.

And once we're clear on that, then we can finally get around to a final corrective God offers here to the bad theology of the Respectable Religious Folks: since God doesn't need us to "do" anything to get the attention of the divine, what WILL we do with our time, energy, and effort? To borrow the old question of the late Gerhard Forde, "What will you do--now that you don't HAVE to 'do' anything?"

So God speaks through the prophet to answer that question. Since you can't [and don't need to] get God's attention with all your holy hoopla, what things DOES God actually care about? Well, how about taking that food you weren't eating [since you were fasting, right?] and giving it to your neighbor so they can eat? How about, since you're going around dressed in all that pious-looking [and itchy] sackcloth, what if you gave some of your extra clothes to the neighbor whose closet is bare? How about, if you're so interested in shouting up to the skies with a loud voice, you use that voice to speak up for the neighbors who are being taken advantage of at work? How about, instead of bowing your head down on the ground to look devout, you unclenched your fists and quit threatening each other? In other words, when you don't have to put on a production to draw attention to your supposed piety, maybe you could actually listen to the kinds of things God cares about and realign your focus on those? Once you've thought through your theology and realize that you didn't need to do anything "religious" to get God's attention, you're amazingly free to spend your strength on the things that actually matter to God--and it turns out that looks like love. God never needed a National Day of Prayer and Fasting or a pious pageant of horn-tooting self-denial, but God's heart has always been centered on love for the most vulnerable without fanfare or applause.  God doesn't want a spectacle with fireworks and fanfare--only genuine love for the needs of others.  That's the kind of life we have been called into.  God was never looking for a show.

Today, then, what if we were done with all the things we tell ourselves will show our devotion to God, and instead just practiced love that looks like God's love--care for the hungry ones, the ones without housing, and the ones being taken advantage of? What if we were finally done with religiously-dressed boastfulness, and instead trusted that we already have God's eye and God's ear? What if we were less interested in putting on a public show of Respectable Religion, and more committed to choices that simply made life better for the people around us, whether or not anybody else notices?  And what if that were what God has been calling us to be a part of all along?

Once we get our theology straightened out, we really do get clarity for what's worth spending our energy on, what matters to God, and what kind of life we are called into. So if we are a little bit more on track with our thinking, now let's get our actions in line, too.

Lord God, remind us who you are and where your heart is, so that we can spend our energy and time in ways that reflect your love.

 

A Certain Kind of Difference--February 10, 2026

A Certain Kind of Difference--February 10, 2026

[Jesus said:]“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:14-16)

It's not about power, and it's not about putting ourselves in charge. It's about giving ourselves away with such compelling love that the world around us catches a glimpse of the light of God's goodness.

Let's be clear about that from the outset here. Over the centuries, plenty of folks have latched onto Jesus' words calling us "the light of the world" and took it to mean that only Christians should be in charge of things, or that only Christians should wield political power or make decisions, or that Christians--by sheer virtue of believing in Jesus--are less susceptible to temptation and therefore inherently immune from abusing positions of authority and power.  That's a lot of meaning to cram into a single phrase, "you are the light of the world," and it certainly doesn't seem to be what Jesus had in mind.  Similarly, you can't just call yourself or your group "the city on the hill" and take it as carte blanche permission to do whatever you want.  The temptation is very powerful for us to take these words of Jesus and let them inflate our egos into thinking that Jesus is saying we (Christians) are better than everybody else and should therefore be in charge of everybody else.

But that's not really how Jesus' imagery works.  From Jesus' vantage point, light serves a purpose other than itself.  Light, like from the flame of an oil lamp, is what makes it possible to see enough in a dark room to find the thing you were looking for, or to do the household chore.  A source of light will stand out to our eyes, but typically the point is to illuminate the rest of the room, or the region, or the whole world (if we are talking about the sun, for example) so that everything else can be what it is meant to be.  The sun's light makes it possible for plants to grow and therefore for animals and humans to live.  The light in your kitchen allows you to cook dinner without cutting your thumb because you couldn't see where your hand was in relation to the knife.  The light in your workplace allows you to do your work.  Light doesn't function as a form of domination--it gives itself away for the sake of other things and people, so that all of us can thrive.  I have to believe that Jesus has something like that in mind when he looks at a hillside of people who have come to hear him and says, "You are the light of the world."  He's not deputizing us to take over the world--he is sending us out spend ourselves in love, like God does, in order to serve and bless people other than ourselves.

In that sense, the imagery of light is actually pretty similar to the word-picture we looked at yesterday (and also this past Sunday) of salt.  The way salt "works" is to give itself away in preserving something else, flavoring something else, or melting something else.  It isn't there for its own interests or advantage--just the opposite. The salt gives itself away in order improve or help the stuff you sprinkle it onto.  And that's the common thread with being the light, too.  To be a light in a dark place is certainly to stand out, but not for our own benefit, glory, or self-interest.  We're to make a difference and to be different--but it's a certain kind of different, you could say.

Maybe it's like this: I'll bet you have noticed how the world looks especially lovely in that "golden hour" light of early morning just around sunrise and just approaching sunset.  It's the same sun, of course, but as the sun's light is nearing the horizon, its light is bent differently through the atmosphere and it really does change the coloring of the sun's light to our eyes.  Things really do look more "golden" in the golden hour, because the warmer hues are being brought out.  And that golden hour coloring certainly looks more beautiful to our eyes than the sickly green-gray tint of old-fashioned fluorescent lights.  Well, let me suggest this: to be a light for the world in Jesus' sense isn't just to be bright and intimidating or gaudy and obnoxious, but to have the particular color of God's character.  We aren't gigantic roadside billboard lights or flashing neon signs meant to attract eyeballs to ourselves, but we are meant to be means through which the particular color of God's light is spread all around.  We aren't supposed to dominate the landscape by being so blindingly bright that nobody can see anything else, but we are supposed to let everything be colored in the hue and character of God's goodness, like the "golden hour" light falling on the faces and places around us.  The world will be different because of our presence in it, but in a way that brings out its beauty and blessedness.  And once we see that as our role in the world, we no longer have to fuss with being "in power" or "dominating" anybody or anything else around us.  We can see our role of being a light as a way of casting everything in the glow of God's kind of love, rather than the severe shine of office fluorescent bulbs or the ego-centric allure of a neon sign.  Like Madeleine L'Engle put it, "We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it."  That's it.  That's precisely it.

In the Sermon on the Mount, you don't hear Jesus saying, "Once you guys seize the reins of power and take control of government and culture, THEN you'll be able to be a powerful enough light to fix the world." He says we already ARE the light the world needs, because we have been given already the presence of God who shines through us--without needing to be "in charge" or "in power" to do that. We will stand out and be a distinctive presence in the world, to be sure, but not as bullies or blowhards.  The certain kind of difference we bring is the character of God's love that will refract through us into the world.

Lord Jesus, let your light shine in us that the whole world will be illuminated with your own beauty and love.

What We Are Here For--February 9, 2026

What We Are Here For--February 9, 2026

[Jesus said:] "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot." [Matthew 5:13]

Salt may not get a lot of good press in medical news these days, but if we dare to think in Jesus' terms for a moment, we may get a better understanding of how to love like he does by thinking in salty terms, of all things.

Okay, I know that most of us today in America don't have a problem with getting too little salt--if anything, we have too much sodium in our diets, and our doctors or our spouses shoot us glaring looks about how much salt we do get. So it can be hard, then, for us to hear Jesus talk about salt in a good way, or to try and understand what he is saying about salt, and what it means for us.

And I get it, too, that there are really only so many things you can do with salt--at least that us ordinary people would need on a day-to-day basis. Salt tastes good, and salt can preserve foods from spoiling--and in a day before refrigerators, that is a pretty handy thing. That's really about it--you eat it, and you can preserve other things to eat later with it.

But in both cases, the salt isn't there for its own sake, but for the sake of something else. Salt is a sacrificial seasoning, you could say--you use it for the improvement or preservation of something other than itself. You don't eat spoonfuls of salt by itself. You put it on some other food to season it, and you use it to preserve something else--your meat or fish or whatever. But in both cases, the goodness and the usefulness of the salt is only found when it is put to use for something else. Salt isn't much use just by itself or for itself. In fact, it's really most effective in small doses spread out through the whole of something else. This, really, is why your doctor or your spouse grimaces at you about getting too much salt in your diet. We all need a certain amount of the stuff, but too much and it starts to do more damage than good. Same with the preservative effects--put a certain amount of salt with your cuts of meat, and you can preserve food, which in turn helps preserve life when someone who is hungry can eat without having to invent the refrigerator and alternating current electrical outlets, first. But too much salt actually destroys life--salting the ground, after all, was a devastating tactic the Romans used to punish conquered enemies, as a way of ensuring that nothing would ever grow there again.

This seems to be the point Jesus is making about us--his followers, who dare to live the Kingdom life--that we are meant to be a salt-like presence in the world, for the sake of the world. We are here for good, but not for our own good. We are here to be a blessed presence, scattered and sprinkled throughout society, to season, to enhance, and to preserve. But that only works if we are willing to give ourselves away in the process. And it only works if we realize that we are meant to stand out for a reason, not just to make noise. That's what we are here for.

Salt has its distinctive, even pungent, flavor, but when you put it in food, its purpose is to enhance the other flavors and seasonings in the meal. You never hear anyone say (at least in a positive sense), "Mmm... you can really taste the salt!" That is a sign you'll be getting a glare from the doctor about your sodium level. But when it is rightly put in the food, salt lets the other flavors be what they are supposed to be. It helps and aids the other flavors, but doesn't draw attention to itself when it is used in the right proportions.

Same with the preservative use--Jesus never pictures his followers dominating the world with such a heavy presence that we stifle life, but that we are used in a preservative way. We cannot create or manufacture life--that remains only God's to do--but we can support, nurture, protect, and preserve life among us. And that's the kind of life we are called to. Again, it may well be behind the scenes, and we may not call attention to ourselves, but our purpose is to be a blessed presence for the sake of others. And that is enough, Jesus says. People might not be able to put their finger on what is going on--they might not always know that you are going the extra mile because of your love for Jesus, or they might not realize that you put in extra time and energy because of the joy God has given you. But you and I have the opportunity to be that kind of blessed presence, without worrying about getting proper credit for it.

That's what makes salt such a picture of the kind of love we meet in Jesus: it doesn't need to draw attention to itself, but is there for sake of whatever it is placed in the midst of. It gives itself away for the sake of enhancing the whole, without dominating or overpowering. That's the way Jesus' love works. And that's the kind of love we are sent to embody for the world--to give it a foretaste of what the Reign of God is really like.

On the other hand, if we lose that sense of being here for the sake of others, maybe we have lost our reason for being Jesus' followers altogether. After all, as Jesus says, if salt loses its saltiness, it's not good for anything other than traction under your feet. If we lose either our distinctiveness--our way of sticking out and being willing to look like holy fools because we are seeking to be like Jesus--or our willingness to give ourselves away, the way salt is meant for enhancing or preserving something else, what's the point of gathering together in Jesus' name? We know, all too well and too sadly, that it is an easy trap for Christians and congregations to fall into--to become only narrowly focused on preserving themselves: on how to "keep the church alive," or how to just make ends meet, or how to make themselves financially prosperous. There are a lot of loud voices, too, angling for Christians to take charge, to get special treatment or recognition, or to occupy positions of power, all of which sounds a lot more like a lethal dose of sodium than a light touch of salt to enhance the soup. And when that happens, we have lost our purpose, our reason for being, our Jesus-given identity as a people meant to enhance and preserve others so that we can be a picture, a living parable, of what God has done for us in Christ.

We are meant to be ripples, reverberations, and echoes of the kind of salty, self-sacrifice of Jesus that gives life to us and to the world. That's what this is all about. Today, be an echo of mercy. Today, be a behind-the-scenes reverberation of grace. Today, be salt--Jesus says it's what we are already.  That is, after all, what we are here for.

Lord Jesus, let us be today what you have called us to be and said we are in the first place--a blessed, distinctive, and preserving presence for the sake of the world, so that people will see in us what you have done for the world, too.

On Walking With God--Feb. 6, 2026

On Walking With God--February 6, 2026

"He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)

There doesn't need to be drama between us and God. If we find there is drama in that relationship, you can be sure that we're the ones who have added it.

This is one of the things I love about this well-known verse from Micah, a verse many of us heard this past Sunday in worship as part of our first reading. Micah cuts through our melodrama and calls our bluff when we are getting all worked up about what God wants, and he just says, "It's never been complicated, and God is not trying to make things difficult." God isn't looking for us to prove our worthiness or achieve our way into some saintly status. God has never been holding auditions or try-outs--God has only ever called us to share the road as we walk together.

What's hard for us, of course, is that so often we want to make a big production out of our faith and make it a quest... a burden... a crusade. That allows us to see ourselves as heroic, rather than as humble, and quite frankly, our egos need to be stroked. If we can tell ourselves that we've endured fierce persecution, or sacrificed life and limb in the name of God, or left some monumental legacy to the impact we've made for our faith, then we can tell ourselves we've "earned" a place in heaven. But to hear that God has simply called us to walk in God's own ways of justice and mercy, well, we can't pretend we're "heroes" when we are doing that. We have to see ourselves as children being invited on a walk with a parent, as recipients of grace.

I think of that story in the book of Kings about the Syrian general Naaman who goes to see the prophet Elisha looking for a dramatic and spectacular show of power to heal his leprosy, only to be told to go wash in the Jordan River seven times. And at first, he gets mad that Elisha won't come out and wave his hands over him to make him well, until a servant points out to him that if he had been told to do some big and daring quest to be healed, he would have done it--so why not do this small and easy thing? And of course, that's just it--some part of Naaman wants to have to "do" something big to be healed. His ego needs a "quest" or an epic battle or a perilous journey or something like the Twelve Labors of Hercules to let him believe he's earning the help he is seeking. He wants to be able to boast, if to nobody else other than himself, that he's "won" the favor of God. In the end, what it takes for Naaman to be healed is for him to let go of that need to be heroic, and instead to let a humble dip in an unimpressive river be the means of his healing.

Micah seems to be telling the same to the people in his day, and in ours. To be drawn into relationship with God is to be pulled into love, and love doesn't need to perform for the beloved--love just seeks to walk together. There's no need for putting on a show; God just calls us to share the path. It's like the difference between all those overly dramatic love songs, proudly insisting that the singer would climb the highest mountain or swim the deepest ocean for the beloved, and what actual love looks like--that is more likely to actually just want to wash the dishes together or fold the laundry side by side. God has never needed us to "prove" our devotion or commitment with some hero's quest; God has simply invited us to walk along the same way.

Today, then, part of learning both how to love God, and to let ourselves be loved by God, is to learn to let go of that need for dramatic shows of piety, and instead to see the ordinary as the place we relate to God, and grace as the currency of that relationship. God was never looking for us to prove ourselves; God has only been calling us to walk together. Realizing that means we are finally free to abandon our pretense, our posturing, and our boasting, so that we can just enjoy the walk.

O God, enable us to walk humbly with you today, and always.

Called Just As We Are--February 5, 2026

Called Just As We Are--February 5, 2026

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God." [1 Corinthians 1:26-29]

You and I are evidence of the table-turning ways of God.

Wow. You. Real, actual you. And real, actual me. God's call to us--not just people in Bible times, or halo-encircled saints from stained-glass windows, or famous heroes from history, but us in all of our ordinariness and our diversity--shows the world how God operates. And God's ways are always to take the foolish and the frail and the forgotten in order to let some of the hot air out of the puffed-up, the proud, the pompous, and the powerful. Paul says that the very fact that we have come to faith in Jesus is evidence to the world of God's upside-down ways.

You could say it's God's calling-card--this divine habit of taking the ones looked down on by the strong, the powerful, and the elite and calling them to belong in God's Reign. Like the old Zorro stories where the masked vigilante hero leaves behind the letter "Z" slashed into the scenery to "sign his work," or like the two robbers in the movie Home Alone who always leave the water running in the faucets of the houses they break into, so that people will know they've been hit by "The Wet Bandits," God has left a calling card, a way of working in the world, by deliberately NOT calling only the so-called best and brightest, but intentionally calling anybody and everybody "beloved". That's you and me. We, just in the very fact of our belovedness without riches or political power or social influence, we are how God deflates the arrogant and turns the usual order of things upside down. We are the way that God shames the strong and shows the world's "winners" that they are not nearly so special as they like to tell people they are. We are the evidence that none of their accumulating, blustering, fist-shaking, or intimidating really had any sway in the big scheme of things--because here we are, ordinary and unassuming, and Christ has called us--chosen us!--to belong to his movement.

Think of it--it's really quite a beautiful design on God's part, how God both lifts up the people who have been told they are nobodies and silences those who have puffed themselves up as "somebodies." God does it by picking... us. And God calls us without auditions, without being impressed by our skills, our charm, our net worth, or our job titles. God calls us and loves us in all of our wonderful ordinariness, as a way of telling the Big Deals of the world that they aren't such big deals after all. And that turns out to be part of how God is changing the world--by creating a totally new kind of community, in which we no longer fuss over who has more money or who wields more influence. God is creating a fellowship of the ordinary, the lowly, and the struggling, so that we will understand that our belonging has everything to do with grace and nothing to do with our raw talent or even our greatest achievements.

It's a bold--and I dare say risky--plan on God's part. Risky, not because God can't do amazing things through ordinary people without having an elite team of the smartest, strongest, richest, and most successful people... but because we still keep missing the point of how God operates and we Christians keep falling into the same old thinking that being a Big Deal is important. We do it institutionally as "The Church" when we play games like, "Whose Congregation Is Bigger?" or when religious-sounding hucksters on TV sell the message that "God wants you to be rich." We do it when pastors give up on their call to be Elijahs to the Ahabs of the day because they (we) would rather have a seat at the table of power rather than risk being called "irrelevant." We do it, each and every one of us, when we try and puff ourselves up to make ourselves feel better, or more significant, than our neighbor down the street. Day by day, followers of Jesus miss the point of the fact that we have been called, just as we are, in all of our ordinariness--and that this is God's choice. We fail to see that this is part of God's surprising way of redeeming and restoring the world--by calling the nobodies and telling them they are beloved somebodies... by choosing the ones who have been overlooked or unseen in order to send a message to the ones who want to keep putting themselves in the center of attention. We miss the sheer surprising genius of it, and instead so often we still play by the world's rules that you have to convince people you are a "winner" or a Big Deal in order to matter... when God has actually bent over backwards to show us that we are called--and beloved--just as we are.

And yet, for all the ways we miss the point, God does not give up on working with--and through--us. That's one of the risks, you could say, of not going with only the best and the brightest and the most well-skilled and charismatic: God deliberately runs the risk that we will miss the point of what God is doing by having called us in the first place. God chooses to work through us, despite how dense we can be, even when our dense minds miss the beauty and the wonder of a God who loves and works through people who are not necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer.

We, in all of our thick-headedness, are the calling card of a God who deals in reversals. And any time you see the weak lifted above the strong, the outcasts welcomed while the elites and celebrities drop their jaws, or the last put ahead of the first, it is Christ "signing his work" like Zorro and his rapier. The turning of tables is God's signature move.

So even when I have missed the point and give in to the old thinking that says only the Big Deals, the "strong," and the "winners" matter, God doesn't "uncall" me because I don't "get it." God chooses and claims and calls a world full of us who don't "get" it on our own. And that is the wonder of grace--the God who calls us doesn't select only from the Varsity Team, the Honor Society, or the Homecoming Court. The God who calls us in Jesus doesn't get impressed with any of them. The real living God who calls you just loves... you.

Own it today. Know it. And know that nothing else is needed but that love, that call, that Christ.

Lord Jesus, help us to hear that you have claimed us as we are, and help us to see the ways you love us despite our drawbacks, limitations, and frailties.

Called into Foolishness--February 4, 2026

Called into Foolishness--February 4, 2026

"For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.'
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolisness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishess to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." [1 Corinthians 1:18-25]

Let me rattle off a few of the basic tenets of "common sense" that I regularly hear tossed around. There are plenty of variations, but I bet you've heard enough of these that you could sing along, too, if you like. The "pearls" of convention wisdom that we've all heard before go something like this:

"You have to look out for Number One--yourself!--in this life."

"You have to get THEM before they get YOU in this dog-eat-dog world."

"The only people who really matter are the 'winners' of life, and you can tell who the winners are, because they have more money, more influence, more power, more fans, more muscle, and more stuff."

"If you're a winner, you can do anything you want. The losers are forgettable."

If that isn't conventional wisdom, I'll eat my hat. And it is that kind of conventional wisdom that leads people to bully and intimidate others into bending to their will. It's the mindset that shows up when folks bellow and fume in inane and childish fights on social media. It's the rationale for always wanting to have a bigger stick... or sword... or rifle... or cannon... or nuclear missile, so that you can get the other guy before he gets you. We are drowning in the sea of conventional wisdom.

So it shouldn't surprise us that when God sends us a life-preserver on those billowing waves, the watching world thinks that God's way looks weak and stupid. God knows that's what the world thinks. God just doesn't care about conforming to it. And even more significant, God won't get lured into a petty shouting match with the world that thinks God's way of saving the world looks like losing. God is big enough not to need to answer every childish taunt or idiotic comment from the world, and God won't be baited into sinking to that level. (This by itself should make it clear that God's way is NOT the prevailing conventional wisdom of the world's so-called powerful and expert classes.)

Now, to hear Saint Paul tell it, that is exactly what the cross is all about--God has chosen to rescue a world full of powerless nobodies and unschooled anybodies whom the world labels "weak" and "losers," precisely by becoming one of those "weak losers" too. The cross looks like utter defeat, and it sounds like nonsense to say that the way to save anybody (much less the world) is by getting killed by your angry enemies. The world, both the sophisticated minds of the intellectual crowd, and the folks who want shows of power and greatness, sees a man getting executed and says, "That's a terrible shame--if God had wanted to mount a rescue operation, God should have consulted us for advice and muscle." The world's assumption is that the way to get things done is by having more force, more power, more guns, more missiles, or more money--possibly all of the above. It looks at the cross and figures that Rome must be the hero of the story because it killed a troublemaker who was foolish enough to let himself get called "king" without bringing an army to back him up. Jesus, the crucified one, must be the defeated opponent.

But Paul teaches us to see just the opposite. These words from First Corinthians, which many of us heard this past Sunday, make it clear. It's true that the cross of Jesus doesn't look ANYTHING like what the world calls "greatness." But that's not a design flaw on God's part--it's actually the whole point of everything! It's the world that's got it all wrong and bass-ackwards, as they say. It's the loud yellers of conventional wisdom who bark about "winning" who are really so pathetically out of touch. God's way of saving the world is decidedly NOT to play by the world's rules--those rules about winning and losing, about "greatness" and "weakness," they are at the root of the problem with us all in the first place! Of course God doesn't redeem the world at gunpoint with an army or a masked assault team in riot gear or a team of lawyers and a pile of money--that stuff has never worked to solve things. That would be like telling the drowning man that what he really needs is a lead weight tied around his ankle and a tank of water dumped over his head. God refuses to use the expected methods of "conventional wisdom" because conventional wisdom is really so often just our way of defending our own sinful selfishness. What we need--and what God does at the cross--is to rescue us from the terrible death-dealing morass of what the world calls "conventional wisdom" and "greatness."

That's what I think these days when I hear someone make a remark like, "Why would anybody risk their own comfort or well-being to protect a total stranger who was in danger?" It's what I think any time I hear someone say, "We have to put ourselves and our own interests first--that's just common sense!" It's what comes to mind when I hear parents teach their kids to 'punch the other kid before he punches you' to avoid looking weak." And it's what I need to remind myself of, too, every time I catch that same voice in my head that wants to judge the success of congregations by who has more people or more money or more followers of Facebook. All of those, from the need to have more missiles to blow up the world than your enemy, to the worry over whether your neighbor will think your kids are "weak," they are all evidence of the conventional wisdom of the world, which is the very thing we need rescuing FROM in the first place.  And we are called into something different--something better.

Of course, the way God mounts a rescue operation will look different from the world's standard operating procedures--they're the thing that's killing us in the first place. That's why it makes its own kind of perfectly upside-down sense that God's way of saving us is through death, through weakness, and through loss: because the un-ending race to "win" and look "strong" has really been killing us with a slow, terrible death.

Now, if we dare to take the message about the cross seriously, it is going to dramatically change how we see everything else--including our own lives. Paul talks about us as being "called" into this new way of life, and that brings with it a change of perspective. We are called into the foolishness of God. That will mean we care less and less about looking tough or impressing our neighbors. It will mean we no longer need to rely on having more sticks or sabers or shotguns or surface-to-air missiles to feel secure or keep us safe. It will mean we no longer have to call attention to our titles, our degrees on the wall, our professional status, our tax bracket, or our kids' varsity jackets to make us feel acceptable. In fact, we won't need to seek our own advantage anymore, because we will see that God's way of saving the world frees us from that tired old rat race once and for all.

Taking the upside-down perspective of the cross is going to mean serious revision to how we evaluate our lives, and that will take work. Maybe a lifetime of rethinking what has mattered all along. So maybe for today it is enough to begin to ask the question: what things have we accepted as "the way the world works" that are actually killing us? What things have we assumed to be true because we were told they were "common sense" but are really at the root of our pain as humans? And what might it do to the day in front of us to let the Crucified Christ turn our old picture of victory upside down?

What if we just didn't have to care anymore what the world thought "success" or "greatness" or "winning" looked like... and what if instead we could simply look to the cross for a new vision? What if we answered the call to share in God's foolishness?

Let's dare it today.

Lord Jesus, turn our old vision of the world upside down in the light of your way of saving that same world.

A Blessed Alternative--February 3, 2026

A Blessed Alternative--February 3, 2026

Jesus said to his disciples and the crowds:
 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
  Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:7-12)

Sometimes they'll say being merciful makes you look like a "loser." Or that peace is only possible through brute force. Sometimes they'll say "You won't get into trouble if you just do what you are told and comply." And sometimes they cast folks who were doing good as villains in order to take the focus off their own rottenness.  Jesus knows not to believe any of it.

And instead, Jesus offers a blessed alternative to all of that misguided thinking and misdirection.

In this second half of the Beatitudes, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, we get further illustrations from Jesus about the upside-down values of God's Reign.  And as we saw with the first section, in which Jesus announced blessing on folks likely to be looked down on (the "poor in spirit," the "mourning," the "meek," and the ones who have been denied justice and are therefore hungry to see things put right), once again Jesus reveals a set of priorities at odds with conventional wisdom.  In both the first century and the twenty-first, all of those folks are typically viewed as pitiable or pathetic, not blessed with divine favor.  Now here, Jesus again uplifts values that the Roman Empire (and all of its copycats ever since) would have dismissed as nonsense.  

Being merciful, for one, means refusing to use your power or leverage over somebody else but rather showing compassion to help them--even when they can't pay you back in return.  The Big Deals of history would say, "No! When you've got 'em over a barrel, that's the time to squeeze them for all they're worth and press your advantage!"  But mercy says, "This is someone loved by God, who has shown mercy to me as well.  If I were in their shoes, I would need compassion shown to me." Being merciful means leaving possible "advantage" on the table unclaimed in order to show favor to someone without concern for whether they have earned it or whether you will get anything out of it.  Being merciful requires being able to see the world in more than merely transactional terms where everything is a deal.

Similarly, to be "pure in heart" will mean a willingness not to always seek your own advantage or your own self-interest in what you do. As Soren Kierkegaard once put it, "purity of heart is to will one thing." And if we are supposed to be committed to seeking God's will and aligning our hearts with God's, that will mean there is no place for a self-interested side-hustle of grabbing for ourselves in addition to that.  And again, that just sounds foolish to the thinking of many.  "You've got to look out for Number One!" the thinking goes.  "It would be crazy NOT to take advantage of every situation you're in for yourself!" they say.  Jesus knows that to many, it seems like common sense to blend our devotion to God with some strategic self-interest. He knows that for a lot of folks, "Me and My Group First" sounds like an article of faith.  He just doesn't agree.  Instead, he points us to a different set of values--where we seek God's will rather than muddying the waters with our own corrupt impulses on the side.

Peacemaking, too, sounds preposterous to the thinking of the Powerful Empires and the Big Shots.  At least, genuine peacemaking does.  Rome, of course, was happy to tell its subjects that it was bringing peace--but what the Empire meant by "peace" was really conquest.  They meant, "If you give in to our demands, we will stop stomping on your neck." And again, history keeps showing us that every empire and strongman since has tried to use the same playbook.  What is really radical is Jesus' call not to use the language of "peace" as a talking point or propaganda, but to actually do the hard work of reconciling with other people, whom we treat as equal dialog partners rather than pawns.  To the world's mindset that thinks of peace as something you can only enforce by intimidating your opponents at the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun, Jesus' call to peacemaking is outlandish.

And those final two statements of blessing--about those who are persecuted, reviled, and defamed for the sake of doing justice (the same word as "righteousness" in Greek) and for being associated with the name and way of Jesus--those are countercultural, too.  You know as well as I do how often conventional wisdom says, "If you just obey what the authorities say and don't make waves, you won't get into trouble." And you know as well how often those who get into such trouble are often blamed as though they brought it on themselves: "They should have complied. They should have kept quiet. They shouldn't have stepped out of line." That was the advice of people in the Roman Empire whose neighbors got crucified or flogged as a public example. It was the same criticism aimed at the ones who worked in the Underground Railroad to help the formerly enslaved get to freedom at great personal risk, just as it was lobbed at the ones who helped Jewish neighbors escape the Reich when they came knocking on doors in the 1930s.  And it was the same conventional wisdom used to condemn the Freedom Riders, sit-in participants, and marchers across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, and throughout the Civil Rights movement.  Criticism was aimed at those who were arrested, beaten, hit with firehoses, or who lost their lives, as though such punishments were only ever doled out to wrongdoers.  Jesus knew better, and he knew full well that sometimes you get vilified for doing the right thing.  Sometimes your faith in Jesus leads you to speak up, stand up, or act up--and when the powers of the day do not like it, not only will they try to stop you, they'll try to inflict pain and cast you as a villain in the process.  Jesus tells us in advance: don't worry about what they say about you--you just stick to pursuing what you know is right, what is just, and what corresponds to the way of Jesus.

If we dare to actually practice this set of values, we will look strange in a world that keeps telling us to keep our heads down and only to look out for our own interests.  We will certainly seem odd and against the grain of what is expected.  But of course, that's the whole point.  Jesus has called us to be a part of the Reign of God, which is always a blessed alternative to the self-serving bullying and calculated cowardice of The Way Things Are.  We are called to be different--to live deliberately out of step--in the ways we practice mercy, the ways we make peace, the ways we keep our integrity, and the ways we risk our reputations for the sake of doing right.

That might just turn some heads if we dared it today.  What do you say?

Lord Jesus, enable us to live as your blessed alternative in the world.