In Defiance of the Dark--October 14, 2026

In Defiance of the Dark--October 14, 2026

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice." (Philippians 4:4)

In one of his most well-known poems, the late Wendell Berry offered this contrarian counsel: "Be joyful/though you have considered all the facts."

I don't know if I always know how to do that, not any more than I know how to do the same when Paul the Apostle says to "rejoice in the Lord always" in these words that many of us heard this past Sunday.  But I do think that the letter-writing apostle and the poem-writing mad farmer are onto something.  Part of our calling as Jesus' followers is an invitation into joy, and yet that joy is always with eyes wide open to the actual messes of the world around us, rather than averting our eyes to suffering.

That, I think is the hard part, but what makes this Christlike joy so compelling and needed.  When Paul wrote--and then repeated himself--the call to "rejoice in the Lord always," he wasn't sitting on a beach with a tropical drink in his hand while his portfolio of investments brought in record profits.  He was tethered to a Roman centurion on house arrest in Rome awaiting a trial that would likely end with a death sentence and a cruelly public execution.  This is also the same Paul who had lived through shipwrecks, stoning, flogging and other tortures, and more nights in jail cells than he could keep count of any longer.  And yet, he writes to his dear friends in Philippi, "Rejoice always."

Paul hadn't forgotten all that he had been through, and he wasn't asking the congregation in Philippi to pretend there was no suffering in their world, either.  He was asking them, while being fully aware of the pain, sorrow, and rottenness of the world, to practice joy in defiance of all of that. The Empire, after all, was doing its damnedest to snuff out these troublemaking Christians, or at least to intimidate them into fearful silence that didn't make waves or cause them any hassles.  And on top of that, local lynch-mobs tended to pop up wanting to run these followers of Jesus out of town or kill them on the spot for any number of reasons: we were a threat to their economies, we were beginning to disrupt practices like the slave trade, we were pulling people away from the old respectable gods and goddesses of the Empire, and we were claiming that there was another king to be followed who was not Caesar.  Paul doesn't pretend that these are not the daily realities that both he and his readers in Philippi are facing every day.  He presumes that these fellow disciples are staring those challenges squarely in the eyes every day.  But he wants them to remember that those threats do not get the last word at the end, and they cannot suffocate our joy in the present, either.  As Wendell Berry says, they are to "be joyful, though you have considered all the facts."

At this point, maybe it is worth reminding ourselves that joy is less like the emotional state of "happiness" and more like a virtue which one can practice, grow, and develop.  Being "happy" tends to be dependent on the external circumstances or the amount of certain chemicals in your brain at the moment.  It would be very hard to "consider the facts" of the actual world and all of its heartache and still to be constantly "happy." This, of course, is why so many of our coping mechanisms in life amount to different ways to distract ourselves--social media, drinking, drugs, entertainment, and so on. Those are all ways to block out the unpleasant things so that only the pleasant ones get through to trigger more palatable brain chemistry.  It's also why the old saying is, "Ignorance is bliss"--if I don't have to deal with the difficult stuff of life, I won't be made to feel uncomfortable.  If you want happiness, then, I'd stay away from "considering the facts," because there is plenty in the world to ruin the happiness that comes from external circumstances of the moment.

But joy, on the other hand, is different. Joy can be cultivated even in inhospitable conditions, like growing aster, ironweed, or periwinkle in poor soil.  Joy can thrive in difficult climates because it does not depend on the outward situation to be positive in order to blossom.  Joy can see the brokenness and pain around, acknowledge them and face them, and still offer its own minority report.  Joy, in that sense, can be an act of resistance, as if to say, "I have considered all the facts, and I still will relish what is good and savor it, without denying what is rotten and painful."  I think that is something like what Paul has in mind when he speaks of "rejoicing in the Lord."

The point for the apostle, I take it, is that no matter what else is done to us, what else we suffer, what else the powers of the day threaten to do, we belong to the living God who was willing to be swallowed up by death for our sake.  There is no way this God's grip will let go of us.  There is no circumstance which can exhaust or extinguish this God's love for us.  There is no terrible thing that can happen that could prevent God from getting the last word.  There is, in other words, always some reason for joy--even if it feels small and slender like a flickering candle flame in the darkness.  So yes, by all means, acknowledge that there is plenty of dark to go around--but don't let that keep you from seeing the unquenchable fire that comes from Christ.  Joy is the acknowledgement that such a light cannot go out--it burns in defiance of the darkness, and relishing that radiance just might be an act of resistance that keeps us from giving up in the face of the world's suffering and cruelty.

Look, let's be honest. Today, there are countless terrible things out there in the world, and it can feel daunting even to read the day's headlines.  Wars still dragging on in several places in the world at the same time, a hurricane hitting the coast, the struggle to make ends meet, and the constant signs of people's cruelty and meanness to one another, just for starters.  And you and I will each have our own particular heartaches that we bear every day, from struggles with family to dealing with diagnoses to paying the bills when everything feels like it costs more than it did a month ago to the grief and loss we wear on our bodies like scar tissue.  To be a Christian is not to pretend we cannot see or feel these things in the name of "staying positive." Rather, we keep our eyes open. We "consider all the facts," as the poet says.  And at the very same time, we hold to the One who says, "I will not let you go," the same One who always seemed to be the life of the party wherever he went, even if it was washing feet on the night of his betrayal.  And we delight in his love and presence in defiance of the darkness, as our way of telling the rottenness, "You cannot snuff out this light, no matter what you do."

And when a new day comes, full of its own new troubles, we will do it all again.  After all, the apostle tells us, "Rejoice in the Lord always.  Again I will say, Rejoice."  

Today, consider the facts. See the world with open eyes.  And cultivate joy all the same.

Lord Jesus, nurture your kind of joy in us even in the meager soil of a world full of suffering.

How We Work Things Out--October 13, 2026

How We Work Things Out--October 13, 2026

"Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life." (Philippians 4:1-3)

Sometimes, you know, in the midst of the organ music in the background and the candles around the lectern on a Sunday morning, you forget that you are reading someone else's mail here when you read the letters of the New Testament. Many of us, after all, heard these words read in worship just this past weekend. But little passages like this one from Philippians remind me that we Christians have made an odd habit of giving public readings of someone else's correspondence and listening for the voice of God as we eavesdrop on the conversations of saints from millennia ago.

And yet, there is something wonderfully, surprisingly, immediate and relevant revealed as we overhear this ancient conversation. I have to tell you, I didn't always appreciate, or even much like, this odd left turn in the fourth chapter of Philippians; it always felt too... particular, too personal, too entangled with the details and disagreements of people I would never meet this side of glory. This odd little digression about two particular women Paul knew, with the unusual-to-our-ears names "Euodia" and "Syntyche," just seems to come out of nowhere, right in the midst of Paul waxing all sentimental. There are lots of great plaque-worthy, cross-stitch-wall-hanging-ready verses from Philippians, and then there is this very abrupt intrusion into a squabble of some kind between two women who were leaders in the church to whom Paul was writing. Plenty of people know, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me..." and "The One who began a good work in you will be faithful to bring it to completion..." or "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!" Those are A-side tracks from the Philippians Greatest Hits album. But right in the midst of it, Paul stops with his valedictory speech here, and just stops to try and persuade two women with whom he has worked and suffered and struggled in the gospel to work things out with whatever mess is going on in their lives. These are real people with real problems, and Paul goes right into them.

It's a terrible passage to engrave on brass or frame on your wall... but it's perfect for actually living out one's faith, because it is utterly real. Paul tells the truth about the disagreement, even if we don’t know what it was about. At one level, it doesn’t matter what it was about—these two sisters in Christ were going to have to get used to the idea that Jesus had claimed each of them, and that they were going to need to find a way to live together as part of the church, because Jesus wasn’t about to let go of either of them. They were central enough to the congregation, and their disagreement was potentially disruptive enough, that Paul decided he had better get the ball rolling toward their reconciliation. (Just as a sidebar, this seems to be a pretty strong indicator that women had important roles of leadership in the early church, if Paul not only takes the time to weigh in on Euodia and Syntyche’s situation, but also that he calls them “coworkers” who “struggled beside me in the work of the gospel.”)

So in one sentence, Paul names the disagreement—ridding us of any illusions that everybody always got along in the early church, or that Christians are always smiling and pleasant to one another. But at the same time, in the very same sentence, Paul offers up the hope that these two women, who have shown before their ability to work together in a common project, can come to an agreement. Paul is neither pure pessimist (they’ll never agree, those two!) nor wide-eye optimist (and we’ll all just naturally get along with each other because we’re all so pleasant to be around!). He sees truthfully with two points of focus (call Paul the inventor of spiritual bifocals, if you like): on the one hand, the reality of a broken relationship that it would have been easier just to ignore, and on the other hand, the equally true reality that Jesus is still holding onto both of these fellow sisters in Christ, and his claim makes them belong. And that means there is the possibility that these women could find a way to forgive and be forgiven, to come to an agreement, and to live in real community with one another. But it requires first their willingness to be real about the disagreement: they need to own the mess, rather than pretending it's all fine.

So… what does this situation have to do with us living in the twenty-first century? Well, just substitute names of people in your own world, your own family, your own congregation, and the answer is in front of us. We are called to enter into the mess the same way—to be honest about where we have divisions, disagreements, wounds that need to be addressed, and secrets that need to be brought out into the open. And with that comes the other side of Paul’s realism—to take seriously and firmly the claim of Jesus that binds us to one another.

You might not have ever heard the named "Euodia" or "Syntyche" before, but you and I can be people who learn from these women who were leaders in the early church, to enter into the mess of our relationships with one another, rather than thinking it's holier to walk on eggshells all the time.

Today, be real. That's how we begin to work things out with one another.

And from there, we let ourselves be brought in sync because we can see that the folks we are currently having a hard time getting along with might well be Euodia to your Syntyche--someone else who is striving and doing their best to serve Jesus from their perspective, while you are trying to do the same from yours.

Lord Jesus, help us to be able to talk about our disagreements rather than hiding from them, and help us to trust that you can navigate us through the messes we share.

For All? Yes, For All--October 12, 2026

For All? Yes, For All--October 12, 2026

"On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death for ever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation."
(Isaiah 25:6-9)

One day, you and I will find ourselves gathered at a party--a big, fancy, boisterous dinner party--and, as we look around the table and all the faces gathered there, you and I will say to each other with a satisfied smile shared between us as we have the same thought at the same time these words: "At last... this is what we were waiting for."

This is what we have been waiting for all along, and we didn't even know it.

This is what our hearts have been aching for, even when we didn't realize how wide the empty place inside us was that was missing it.

This is what will finally feel "right" in a world that so often feels so terribly wrong: the day when we are gathered at God's grand party for all peoples, and we will see none other than the Lord of all the universe stooping down to wipe the tears from the face of someone, perhaps someone from halfway around the world, and saying, "You are beloved."

One day you and I will find ourselves seated at a party at which the power of death will be cracked open and broken like a piñata, and we will realize in that moment as you and I catch one another's eye, that God's good news was always bigger and more beautiful than we ever even realized.

I can't help but think that God's good news was bigger than the first hearers of Isaiah 25 could have ever imagined. There was something scandalous about the breadth of the vision the prophet dreamed. Do you see it there? Do you see it? He dreams of a dinner party, a big ol' divine backyard cookout, and "all peoples" are there! All peoples! The religious consensus of the day for good loyal Jerusalem-dwelling citizens of Judah like Isaiah was to say, "God loves us...us who belong to this nation." The official policy of both the king's government and the temple's religious spokesmen was: "We are the chosen people of God... and only us. We matter most, and we matter first... because we are chosen." By definition, then, in the official policy of the day, everybody else just must not matter as much to God, because they were all outside the boundaries, outside the right religious structures, outside the right society. All of that is to say, back in Isaiah's day, it would have been easy to get a job as an officially government-sanctioned prophet if your message was "Judah first--God is throwing a special party just for us."

But... that's not what Isaiah saw, is it? Isaiah dreams this amazing banquet, and the drying of tears, and the end of fear, and the destruction of death... and as God breathed the vision over Isaiah, the old prophet saw it was for "all peoples." The plural there is important. In fact, it is earth-shaking. It is earth-encompassing, as a matter of fact. If Isaiah had just said, "God is making a feast for all people," you could make the case that he MUST have meant "all people... within his country of Judah" or even "all people from the family tree of Israel" perhaps. You could make a case for saying Isaiah must have been in lock-step with the official party that said, "God cares only about us chosen people within the boundaries of Judah." Except that Isaiah does not allow that reading, does he? He doesn't say "a feast for all people" but "a feast for all PEOPLES"! Peoples--as in many, varied, different GROUPS of people. Not just one nation but all nations. Not just one ethnicity or language, but all. Isaiah had a vision of a God who crossed all those lines that the religious so-and-sos had put up, and who went ahead and invited ALL PEOPLES to the resurrection party.

Why would God do such a think, in the face of all the official proclamations of "Judah first" coming out of Jerusalem? Well, in all honesty, because death is a problem plaguing ALL humanity, indeed, all of creation! Death is not limited to "just the chosen people" or "just the people who believe correct facts about the God of Israel" or "just the people who worship God correctly in the temple," but every mother's son, and every father's daughter. All means all. All peoples live under the threat of destruction from death... and therefore, God's concern is for ALL peoples. Every nation. Every group. Every language.

That had to have gotten Isaiah at best laughed out of the room and at worst accused of blasphemy or treason. Isaiah deliberately runs against the prevailing notion of his day that God put one group of people first, or that God's provision and saving was for one nation first. And by offering this vision, Isaiah was deliberately provoking his listeners to think bigger than just self-centered slogans like "Judah First" or "Me and My Group First." Isaiah tells them, in effect, "One day, we'll all be at the party... and we won't realize until we're there that the party wouldn't have been complete unless everybody is there." And in holding out that vision, Isaiah dares us to see the world and our lives NOW in the same terms--to know that God's love reaches out to ALL peoples, and that breaks open the old "me and my group first" thinking that we keep falling for, time and time again.

Look, here's the long and the short of it: if we believe, as we say we do, that we care about what God has spoken in the pages of Scripture and the visions of those ancient prophets like Isaiah... then we are going to actually have to listen to what they say and how they say it. And if we care, as we say we do, about the news of God's defeat of death, as we have been shown that victory in Jesus' empty tomb, then we are going to have to listen to the way the Scriptures actually want us to see that victory: as a gift for all peoples, not just me and my group.

So, on this day, we live in hope. We live leaning into the promise that one day you and I will find ourselves seated across from one another at the table, and at long last we will get to see the end of death, the completion of our resurrection longing, and the nail-marked hands of Jesus wiping away whatever tears remain. And as we picture that table, look around at the faces who are gathered there--notice that, as Isaiah dares to dream it, everybody is there. People you have known in this life, people you and I will meet for the first time there on that day. People who speak your language, and people who speak languages you have never heard of. People like you, and people who are very different. And they will all have been invited there by none other than the living God, who says, "All peoples are invited to my party. All peoples will be freed from the grip of death."

When you and I catch each other on that day, out of the corner of our eyes, would you do me a favor? Would you point my attention to that big, innumerable crowd there, both the faces we have known and loved and the ones gathered from all around the world whom we meet on that day? And there at that table, say to me, just like prophet dreamed of it, "See--this is what we were waiting for."

Lord Jesus, give us the immense vision you gave to your prophets, the deep longing for your resurrection promise to be made real, and the length of commitment to live for your vision and love for all people all our lives long.

Keep On Keeping On--October 9, 2026

Keep On Keeping On--October 9, 2026

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Now that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." (Philippians 3:10-12)

Look--I am the last person you would want to consult for nautical advice, generally speaking. I will grant that. But here's something that's obvious to even a landlubber like me: you won't reach the other side of the lake if you are turning 90 degrees to starboard every five minutes. That's a recipe for going in circles--or, I guess, literally, tiny squares in the water.

That is to say, if you are seriously trying to traverse the straight line between Point A on this side of the lake and Point B on the far side, what you need is a persistent push and consistent compass-orientation. You need, as (of all people!) Nietzsche put it (and which the brilliant Eugene Peterson later riffed on), "a long obedience in the same direction." Or in our own vernacular, you "keep on keeping on."

That's the key for getting somewhere--anywhere, really. You keep going, not just in any old direction, but with faithfulness and diligence to keep aimed in the same direction. The only way we grow in our faith is keeping at it. The only way we get to be more Christ-like... is to keep letting Christ make us like him. The only way we come to reflect more and more fully the character of God's Reign in the world... is to let God's priorities and values shape us. You keep at it, and you keep going in the same direction. In Saint Paul's words, you "press on."

This Christianity thing is not simply having your name on a list of members somewhere, or written in God's golden book up in heaven. It is about movement--constant movement, but also movement in a constant direction. We have struggles, to be sure, and we have days and times when we slow down or seem to come to a grinding halt. But we keep at it. It is, a long obedience in the same direction, not a distraction every few minutes that turns us every which way.

If we are committed to following Jesus with our lives, and if we are invested in bringing all people into the Found Family of Jesus, then we won't be satisfied to have "done enough yesterday." We will keep at it today, and tomorrow, and the next day, too, because we are looking to let Jesus remake us all the way to our core.

Today, what are the distractions in our lives that pull us away from forward momentum? What are the places in our lives that we most deeply need "a long obedience in the same direction?"

What if today, we at least took one step headed that way--the way of Jesus?

Lord Jesus, keep me on course today. Keep me on course.

Borrowing Goodness--October 8, 2026

Borrowing Goodness--October 8, 2026

"...not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith." (Philippians 3:9b)

There is no "I-did-it-My-Way" version of the Christian faith.  

It turns out that the only way to follow Jesus is on his terms, not our own, which also means admitting that we don't bring even our own righteousness to the table. We can only ever borrow Jesus' righteousness, which turns out to be on permanent loan to us as an outright gift from God.  As the apostle Paul tells us in this passage which many of us heard this past Sunday, either we trust in the grace God gives us through Jesus, or we don't have anything to hold onto at all--because there's no way we can do enough rule-keeping, point-earning, or commandment-observing to earn a spot on some sort of heavenly roster.  Even what we like to think of as our own goodness is on loan from Jesus, who tells us that what is his is ours.

This is a difficult thing to hear if we are the sort of people who like to think we are all-stars and that God is lucky to have us on the team.  And, to be quite frank, all too often we are exactly that sort of people: we tend to think we are owed a place in the starting line-up because of our talent, virtue, or devotion, when it turns out that none of our accomplishments came into consideration on God's part.  And while Paul believes that this truth is deeply good news, since it means we are home-free simply by trusting that what Jesus freely gives us is enough, this free gift has a price: we can no longer pretend that we are in control or look down on somebody else for not measuring up to our expectations.

There's the rub: if I can convince myself that my standing before God comes down to rewarding my performance or recognizing my accomplishments, then I've got bargaining chips.  I've got "leverage" with the divine.  And of course, I also have a way to set myself "above" anybody that I don't think is "good enough."  If our status in God's sight depends on comparing scores on our Religious Achievement Tests, we will be forever grading each other and trying to elbow each other out of the way to get to the head of the class.  But if Paul is right (and I dare say he is), then I don't get to judge you, condemn you, or push you out, because we are all here simply by grace.  All of us are borrowing goodness from Jesus. There's no other righteousness around to be found anywhere else anyway.

So that's the trade-off: will we surrender our imagined "right" to judge each other's worthiness (which was never really our "right" to begin with) and discover we have already been given Jesus' own goodness freely, or waste our lives trying to achieve the unachievable while bitterness poisons our relationships with everybody else?  This seems like an obvious choice.  Paul certainly tells us what he recommends, because he has discovered it was his only hope.  After having spent years of his life trying to be "good enough," the apostle finally dared to believe it when Jesus said to him, "I already accept you as you are. My goodness will be yours from now on. You can trust me on that."  Christ says the same to us today, too.

How might it change the way we interact with other people if we follow Paul's example and give up pretending we can earn what only God can give?  How would we be freed from constantly comparing ourselves to each other and endlessly obsessing over our permanent records? Let's dare to live in that freedom right now.

Lord Jesus, open our eyes to see that your own goodness is sitting in our open hands already, given as a gift from you.

Jesus Is For Losers--October 7, 2026

Jesus Is For Losers--October 7, 2026

"More than that, I regard everything as a loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…" (Philippians 3:8-9a)

The blustering voices at podiums and the talking heads who pontificate on television tend to look down on the ones they see as "losers."  But Jesus doesn't.  In fact, you might say that Jesus both looks for losers to follow him and calls his followers to become losers if they weren't already.  Paul at least thinks so.

Let me back up a second.  Follow me down a rabbit hole for a second. In one of my favorite songs by the band Switchfoot (a list which, I will confess, is a long one), Jon Foreman sings, “Only the losers win—they’ve got nothing to prove. They leave the world with nothing to lose,” and then he comes to the chorus, “I’ve got a plan to lose it all. I’ve got a contract pending on eternity. If I haven’t already given it away, I’ve got a plan to lose it all.”

A plan to lose… everything. It hardly sounds sensible.

We usually use the word “lose” to describe something accidental and unintentional, something regrettable and pitiable… not something you have a plan for. We say things like, “I lost my wristwatch again—can someone help me look for it?” or “I have felt just awful since I lost that gift they gave me. What a shame.” We talk about the stock market losing points on the day, when of course everyone would rather see a day when the markets close up for the day. We lament about losing time, losing chances, losing profits, and losing our minds—none of them very positive situations.

And in those rare and precious moments when we do bring ourselves to part with something intentionally, we reach for other verbs than “lose.” Your offering check put in the plate is a donation, or a gift or a tithe, but I don’t know anyone who says, “I lost money to the church today.” Losing sounds like surrender. Losing sounds like defeat. Losing sounds like something you stumbled into because of absent-mindedness (the misplaced wristwatch) or risky investing… not something you set out to accomplish when you get up in the morning.

Unless you have met Jesus, of course. Jesus is the reason that Paul, and the songwriter Jon Foreman, and countless disciples over two thousand years, have been willing to talk about—and sing about, too, I guess—our plans to lose it all.  Jesus, of course, in the Gospels often talks about those who "lose" their lives actually "finding" them, and those who try to hold onto their lives end up forfeiting everything.  And Paul talks about loss the way a personal trainer talks about the extra twenty pounds or so we are all carrying around that we could stand to shed. You do have to consciously plan to lose that kind of weight, which is precisely dead weight. You do have to say, “This is something I need to get rid of, something I need to lose, and something that is only holding me back and comparatively a waste.”

Of course, when we are just picturing twenty pounds of excess weight from our bodies, it’s easy to say, “I want to be rid of that!” The really radical thing about Paul is that he is willing to talk about things he used to think were great, and now to call them “rubbish.” (Actually, he calls them something even more graphic in his original Greek—something that could be politely translated as “dung”).  Paul isn’t talking about spiritual love-handles or a flabby soul—something that anybody might easily say, “This needs to go!” about. Paul is talking about all of who he used to be before Christ was a part of his life. His trophies and medals, his scorecards and gold-stars. All of it is so much garbage that ought to go to the junk heap. All of it requires a plan to lose, and the recognition that Jesus is for losers.

That flies in the face of our natural impulses. We all cling to the things we think give us worth, and here Paul is convinced that the grace of God changes all that. We are much more likely to want to try and preserve whatever we thought of as our accomplishments, rather than to be willing to let go of them. It's the frustrated early retiree, who worked hard at his job, only to be forced out when the business dried up, and all he can do now is lash out in emasculated anger at all the people he blames for his troubles, while he conjures up wishes for reliving his glory days. It's the sad, lonely mogul, who did great in business and made a fortune, but comes to a point where he realizes his money didn't make him happy and all his millions or billions were a waste of a lifetime since he feels empty inside. It's Al Bundy, reliving his high school football career and "that time I scored four touchdowns in a single game" because he is afraid to admit that none of that matters anymore. All of us are like that to some degree--we don't dare say that our best and most important achievements are "rubbish," because we are have a hard time believing that grace really does get the last word, and that in the end there will be no proving of our worth--only the free gift of God's love that is already yours before you've done a thing. It's hard to believe that Jesus really is for losers.

It is hard to do what Paul does here in Philippians, because we are afraid of admitting our best and greatest weren't all that great, and we would much rather clutch onto the things we thought gave us value and worth. It is hard to accept that I am beloved and precious and of infinite worth to God... even if my job went away, even if my industry is disappearing, even if I have had to be on unemployment, even if I need the help of others, even if nobody else remembers the four touchdowns in a single game from high school. But the New Testament does indeed dare us to quit putting our trust and our worth in those accomplishments, and instead to make a plan to lose them all.

Every so often in our lives we have those turning-a-new-chapter rummage-clearing times of our lives, when we sort through the “stuff” that has accumulated and decide what we need to keep and what we do not need. We might fill up a back of clothes for goodwill, or finally get rid of those broken small appliances we had been meaning to get around to. Or we might find something that had gotten buried at the bottom of a closet or storage tub and rediscover something of value. It does happen.

But then there are the markers of achievement. The collected report cards or merit badges from childhood. The certificates of achievement from work or letters of commendation from our supervisors. The actual plastic trophies from childhood wins and school victories. When we win them—the big trophy for the year your team won the championship, or the perfect attendance award from your fourth-grade class—they seem like they are of great value and that we will never want to part with them. Funny, though, how by the time you have to move a couple times in life, you get tired of unboxing and re-boxing the same pieces of tarnished, gaudy plastic with stick-on nameplates. Funny how these things that once seemed so important become one more piece of junk you are willing to part with—to pitch because it is of no use to anybody else, and because your present-tense life doesn’t need it anymore. I remember the day I finally parted with my second-grade Pinewood Derby trophy from my short-lived Cub Scout career—and the way I looked at the yellowing faux-gold of its plastic topper and said to myself, “Who do I think I need to impress with this anymore… and am I really fooling myself to think that it would impress them?” Pitching the trophy was loss, in some sense of the word, but it was also really freeing, because it meant I was losing one more instance of trying to make myself good enough to be acceptable. One more idol dethroned.

There comes a point where the new life you are standing in is worth more than the trophies from your past that mark where you used to be. There comes a point when you realize you would rather have a few more free moments now than the time it takes to dust your old school trophies. And so, at some point… out they go. It’s a loss, but not a pitiable one. Nobody says, “Oh, what a shame—I wish I had more of the faded clutter from my childhood that rewarded me for meaningless contests.” But it does take the conscious action, the chosen willingness, to pitch them when it’s time. It takes a plan.

The Christian life is like that. It is the conscious plan of disciples of Jesus to do an ongoing inventory of our lives and to be free enough to pitch the clutter of personal points and tired trophies which never really earned us anything in the first place. It is the daring plot to pin our whole lives on Christ and to see that in this present moment with Christ we no longer need gold stars to be loved. In fact, we never did.  Because, of course, Jesus really is for losers.

When that becomes real for us—when the reality of grace smacks us upside the head like that—all of a sudden we find ourselves free to lose it all… because we recognize that, more importantly, we have been found.

Lord Jesus, you have claimed us as we are. Let us dare to trust it and plan to lose the dead weight we have been carrying around.

Stepping Off the Hamster Wheel--October 6, 2026

Stepping Off the Hamster Wheel--October 6, 2026

[Paul writes:] "If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ." (Philippians 3:4b-7)

You can spend your entire life racking up achievements, merit badges, and accolades in the relentless quest to prove yourself "good enough," but it's a losing game.

Seriously, it's just not worth it to play, "Prove Your Worthiness to God," for two reasons: for starters, none of us can rack up enough piety points or righteousness rewards to win, and more importantly, because we never needed to earn what God was already giving away for free.

Don't take my word for it--this is from the Apostle Paul himself.  As many of us heard this past Sunday in this passage from his letter to the Philippians, Paul has tried playing that game, and it was Jesus himself who led him to quit playing.  As he recounts some of his former life story to the congregation in Philippi, he starts rattling off his religious credentials, and all the things he used to think were useful for earning him the acceptance of God.  And that was a long list: he had been circumcised according to the Torah's instructions, and came from a good upstanding family in a respectable tribe of Israel.  He was no Johnny-come-lately convert, but had come from generations upon generations of devout and observant members of the covenant people.  He kept the commandments, even to the point of belonging to a particularly zealous and stringent sect called the Pharisees that strove to go above and beyond the bare-minimum requirements of the Law.  He had even gotten swept up in a violent strain of fundamentalism that sought to round up Christians and either put them in prison or put them to death for what they thought were heretical beliefs.  Paul had an impressive resume of biblical bona fides, all of which an earlier version of himself thought were equivalent to a student getting gold-star stickers on his report card.  He didn't know it, but that version of himself was really more like a hamster running forever on a wheel that gets you nowhere.  You wear yourself out constantly trying to play the game of earning your status of acceptability with God, and you don't get anywhere for all the sweating and huffing.

What happened to Paul that led him to get himself off of the hamster wheel of trying to earn his place in God's good graces?  In a word, Jesus.  Jesus happened to him.

The living Christ encountered Paul, even while he was dead-set again the Jesus movement and had blood on his hands from trying to snuff it out like a flame, and it was Christ's gracious embrace that changed things for Paul.  He discovered that not only was the formerly-crucified Nazarene alive again, but he was claiming Paul without holding his track record of persecution against him.  Christ's own enemy-embracing love had already accepted Paul, as he was, and had set aside the list of good and bad deeds on his supposed "heavenly permanent record."  And instead, on the basis of Christ's own goodness, Christ's own love, and Christ's own righteousness, Paul was given the status of belonging in the family of God as a free gift.  

There had never needed to be a list of accomplishments.  

There had never needed to be a proving of worthiness.

There had never needed to be an endless marathon on the hamster wheel.

And of course, Paul's point as he writes these words to the Philippians is that we don't need any of those things, either. Paul's is not a special case: he is made right with God the same way any of us are--as a gift of grace. Not a one of us on God's green earth has to prove we are good enough, or make ourselves look better than someone else by comparison, or present a list of merit badges we have earned.  We have been given all that is Christ's--his own goodness, his own righteousness, his own status as Child of God--as a free gift, regardless of where we were born, which family we come from, how long we have been members of the church, or how well we keep the rules.  And when you realize that this is how God has really operated all along throughout all of history, then all of our attempts to impress, achieve, and earn our way into God's embrace look pretty pathetic.

What if today, we dared to leave behind the hamster wheel we've been on?  What if we dared to trust that God has given us already what a paper full of gold-star-stickers never could?  And what would we be freed for if we didn't have to constantly worry about whether we were getting credit for our good behaviors on some imagined permanent record?

The Apostle Paul is here to tell us, "You don't need to even say the 'What-If?' part.  You are already free."

Lord Jesus, enable us to trust your free gift apart from our earning or achieving, and to step out in the world freely to love like you.