Reasons for Gratitude--October 20, 2026

Reasons for Gratitude--October 20, 2026

"We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3)

First things first--and gratitude should always be first.

Note merely as a matter of good manners or refined etiquette, but as our perspective for facing each day and looking out at the world.  It matters to begin from a standpoint of thanks, which requires us also to have our eyes open to see, to notice, and to recognize the things for which we can then give thanks.  Gratitude, then, might actually be a way of seeing as well as a practice of expressing appreciation for the good things we have made a habit of choosing to look for.

I think all of that is there in these few verses from Paul's first letter to the church in Thessalonica, continuing the passage that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  He is starting from a place of gratitude--and that frames the entire letter differently from what would have been written if the apostle took everything for granted.  Seriously, this is the opening greeting of his letter--Paul has just barely gotten through the return address at the top of the page, and he is now actually talking to the people in the congregation.  And his opening words are ones of thanks. He is thankful to the disciples in Thessalonica to be sure, but even more so, he is thankful to God for them.  His opening message is not, "Remember to be good!" or "Please make a donation!" or even some first-century version of the modern internet salutation, "Don't forget to like a subscribe!"  But rather, he begins with, "We always thank God for you."  Imagine getting a letter like that in the mail--to hear that someone else lists you as a reason they are grateful to the Creator of the universe.  It certainly has a way of making your to-do list on an ordinary Tuesday seem a little bit more worth the doing, doesn't it?

One of the things I find so beautiful about this opening passage to Paul's letter is that it would have been so terribly easy for Paul to tell himself that he had no reason to thank his readers.  He could have seen his relationship with them as entirely one-sided, with all the good things being provided by him, and the Thessalonians merely as recipients with open hands.  He, after all, was the apostle. He had come and founded the congregation.  He had been their pastor and teacher. He was the reason that many of them had come to faith in Christ in the first place, and changed their lives forever.  Paul could have simply said, "I did all these great things for you, so you're welcome," and then moved on with his letter. Instead, even though it is true that Paul had done a number of lovely and good things for these folks, he flips the script and begins with appreciation for all that they had done to support him and to endure in lives of faith, hope, and love.

And you know what?  It doesn't come off as being forced or fake to me.  Sometimes you can tell when someone is just being polite or forcing a performed gratitude rather than something genuine.  But I don't think Paul is pretending here.  I think he has cultivated gratitude as a perspective long enough that he really does see the world through the lens of "God has put good things in my life, and I merely need to open my eyes to recognize them." I suspect it is part of what keeps Paul going through the difficult days he often has to endure as he is writing this letter--between shipwrecks, stonings, and imprisonments, he is able to see good and beautiful things that have been put into his life.  He reminds me, in that regard, of that powerful line of Thornton Wilder, who said, "We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of their treasures." I think Paul is more fully alive because he is able to see--and to be grateful for--the good things God has put in his life through the other people around him, including the Thessalonians to whom he is writing.

In that regard, there is good reason for us to follow Paul's example, then.  If you and I want to be more fully alive, we would do well to practice gratitude like Paul models for us here.  We will start to notice things, things that didn't have to be the way they are, but are there nevertheless: the colors of the leaves, the sound of birds, the beauty of the moon... and then also, the kindness of the person who holds the door for you, or the generosity of the friend who gives you an hour of their time, or the neighbor who brought over soup.  These people and these good things around us may well have been there all along, but the choice to practice gratitude helps us not to miss them, and then to express appreciation to the people who show these kindnesses to us and to the God who puts all of them in our lives.

That might be a good place to start a new day.  What are ways you and I can deliberately open our eyes to reasons for gratitude today, and then how can we express it?  What difference might that make in our lives, even just starting with today?

Lord Jesus, we give you thanks for all that you have put in our lives for good; we ask, too, that you would further give us the vision to see more fully all that you do for us.

In on the Divine Conspiracy--October 19, 2026

In on the Divine Conspiracy--October 19, 2026

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace. (1 Thessalonians 1:1)

Everybody in this verse is a conspirator, no exceptions. So were James and John and Peter and Andrew and even old doubting Thomas. So were Mary Magdalene, Priscilla, Tabitha, Mary the mother of Jesus, Joanna, an anonymous woman at a well, and lots of other women. Jesus, too. And truth be told, Paul's wish, if he thought much about people reading his words 2,000 years later, would have been that everybody who ever reads this verse and the letter that follows would become a co-conspirator, too. Their dream was that bold and their vision was that wide.

To read this or any letter in the New Testament, and certainly the Gospels, is to be pulled into a concerted effort by an underground movement to turn the world upside down with the new ordering of the God whose power is enemy-love and whose agenda is mercy.

"All right, all right," I can hear you saying to yourself, "isn't this all a bit melodramatic here? I mean, may be Paul himself had a flair for adventure, what with always being on the run or thrown in prison, and getting himself lowered out of city walls in baskets or shipwrecked. And maybe it was an exciting time to be a Christian back in the first century. But a conspiracy? Really--from Saint Paul, the man we name churches and half of the Twin Cities after? And saying that the church today is part of a conspiracy, too? Most people I know think of church as the local community bulletin board and the place where raffles and bake sales are held, not a place of daring adventure, or a revolutionary movement. Can you just cut the drama and let us get back to having a nice plain Bible study, so I can check the 'religious activity' portion of my to-do list and get on with some other errands?"

No, I'm sticking with conspiracy. The church is one--or at least, is supposed to be a part of God's grand conspiracy, and we are all drawn into the thick of it. It's not a cover-up in the style of a Dan Brown novel, where "the Church" is behind a fiendish plan to hide scandalous things about Jesus. It's quite the opposite--we are part of a movement going back two millennia to show and tell the world all about Jesus (including some rather scandalous bits, to be truthful) in our words and actions. And the conspiracy is about how to do it in ways that will catch the world's attention without playing by the world's rules.

I'm also sticking with conspiracy because of the word itself--as plenty of others have pointed out recently, the etymology of this gorgeous word means literally, "breathing together." (Yes, that "spir-" part in the middle of the word is the same as in "respiration" or "inspiriation" and even "spirit." And the "con-" at the beginning is the root for "together" or "with," as in "construction" or "concord.") A conspiracy, then, is those who are breathing the same air, whose sails are caught by the same wind. We are people who breathe the same air, we Christians, or more to the point, who breathe the same Spirit, who has been seen to indwell us. All of us, then, who are filled with the Spirit, are a part of what Dallas Willard calls "the divine conspiracy."

It's not a conspiracy of our invention--it's not a bunch of Christians getting together saying, "Let's become really powerful in political circles and accomplish our own pet agendas." Awful things tend to happen when supposedly Christian folks sell out the Kingdom vision of Jesus and trade it in for a spot at the table of Caesar. The conspiracy comes from the Spirit himself (or herself, if you like, since the Hebrew word for "Spirit" is feminine), who brings to us and breathes into us God's agenda, God's design, and God's vision of a restored creation and of victory over death through Jesus.

All of that brings us full circle--we are all conspirators, we Christians. That's an important part of the Christian message and way of life. We are all players. We are all a part of same world-changing, life-changing movement. We all will play our own roles, and not everyone will go running all over the world like Paul did, but we are all a part of the movement. We are all conspirators. It's the same in our local congregations. Maybe it feels sometimes like we are tucked back in the safety and obscurity of small towns. Maybe we like to imagine that Christianity is just a small compartment of my life that is there to give me warm, fuzzy feelings when I am feeling pouty, but it's always been a movement meant to grip all of us--anybodies and nobodies and everybodies. It's not up to pastors or book-writers to carry the movement forward. It's not up to "youth ministry experts" or "praise bands" to draw people in. We are all a part of the movement--we, in the 21st century, our older brothers and sisters in the faith who lived in 1st century Thessalonica (on modern-day Greece), and Paul, Silas, and Timothy, too. We are all conspirators, breathing the same Spirit.

The real surprise about our conspiracy--or really, God's conspiracy that we get to be a part of--is that, as the last words of this opening verse say, our movement is about filling creation with grace and peace. We're not about getting a political party elected, our economic philosophy carried out at the Fed or on Wall Street, or putting ourselves in power. We should be the first to object when somebody tries to co-opt our faith and brand themselves as the standard-bearers for the Kingdom of God. That's not us. No, we are about infecting (if you can hear that word in a positive sense) a graceless and hostile world with the reconciling grace and peace that come from Jesus. That is the revolution we are caught up in. That is what makes us fellow-breathers, co-conspirators, with the likes of Saint Paul himself.

Today, what difference would it make if you saw yourself, not so much as a mild-mannered respectable citizen who fits in religious 'stuff' in between the kids' hockey practice and dance lessons and your favorite TV show, but rather if you and I saw ourselves as the New Testament imagines us: conspirators set on turning the world upside down with the unexpected justice and mercy of the God whose face is Jesus?

O God who is the Source of all life, as you did in the beginning, breathe into us, your people, again, and bring us to life. Give to us the life that really is life--the kind of life offered to us in Jesus, and let us breathe together with all your people of all times and places the same Spirit that drives us forward and sends us out to be your agents of grace and channels of peace. We pray it in the name of Jesus, whose motion began and sustains our movement.

In Three Dimensions--October 16, 2026

In Three Dimensions--October 16, 2026

"Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and heard and received and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you." (Philippians 4:8-9)

It is easy--let's just admit it--it is easy to be in favor of "truth" in the abstract. It is easy to say you are in favor of "justice" as long as it is kept as a vague generic concept that doesn't pinch your wallet or poke your own conscience. It is easy to say you are in favor of "goodness" and "love" and "compassion," so long as those are just words we throw around, and not actually made real where it will change our actual actions, words, beliefs, or attitudes.

But once we actually have a human face giving us a model of what it looks like to practice generosity... or compassion... or justice... things get hard. And we start to back away to the safety of empty talk. Once there is skin on these virtues and we realize that they may well upend our self-centered comfortable little worlds, we retreat to the haze of generalities. All of the farm animals are firmly "pro-bread" in the abstract, but when the Little Red Hen calls them to the hard work of actually making bread with her, all of a sudden, the barnyard is full of "Not I" answers.

That's why I love--or maybe, I should say, I squirm-but-know-I-need-it--that the apostle Paul doesn't leave things in the generic when he lays out his laundry list of virtues. Yes, he directs our attention to "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure," and so on, but Paul is wise enough--and honest enough--to know that we are a bunch of stinkers who have a way of dressing up whatever-we-already-are-doing in those terms of virtue. And so Paul says, before we can pull a fast one on ourselves, "Keep on doing what you have seen in me." In other words, we don't really know what it looks like to practice truth... or justice... or purity... or excellence... or the rest, until we see it with skin on, in the lived life of actual people trying to embody it in real situations.

This isn't really about Paul's ego. It's not that Paul was sure he always got it right--he is honest enough in plenty of places to say that he keeps struggling and often messed up, wanting earnestly to do right, but struggling inside and missing the mark. Paul didn't think he had it all figured out. But he did at least know that big, broad concepts like "truth," and "justice" and "excellent" are like empty vessels waiting to be filled with whatever meaning we want to give them unless they are fleshed out in actual lives of real people.

Paul knew, after all, that we human beings tend to have a rather high opinion of ourselves--we each like to think we are right, and thus that whatever I already want to do is "just," and that whatever I already believe is already "true." We have a way--let's be honest here--of taking what we want to be true, and then inventing reasons to prop that up, rather than daring to look a little closer to the truths that run counter to what is convenient. We have a way of assuming that whatever benefits me is "justice," and of assuming that everybody else is wrong or out to get me. We have a way, in other words, of baptizing what I already wish, or what is comfortable to me, and calling it "truth" and "justice" and "love" and "godliness."

But when I have real human lives to look at, I am forced to come face to face with something solid and real and lived-out. When Paul says, "keep on doing what you have heard and seen in me," it keeps us from letting ourselves off the hook when things get difficult, because Paul forces us to see his own practice of justice and truth and kindness and love and courage in real life.

We would tend to say things like, "Well, of course we all want to be loving, but surely that doesn't mean even being kind to people who have been cruel to you." But then there's Paul, who spared the life of the Philippian jailer who had tortured him, and then baptized him and allowed the torturer to wash his wounds.... and all of a sudden, the practice of "love" becomes painfully (but also beautifully) real.

We would tend to say things like, "Well, of course, we all want justice, but that's mostly about punishing bad guys, right?" But then there's Paul, who says that God's kind of "justice" is what forgives us of our sins, loved us when we were enemies, and shares abundance with those who have nothing... and all of a sudden, we see that "doing justice" will call us to share our resources, forgive those who have wronged us, and love our enemies. That is more than we have likely bargained for.

We would say things like, "All I want is the truth." But Paul shows us in his own life that facing the truth also means sometimes realizing we had it completely wrong, just as Paul had to do when he was so damned sure (and, I mean that--that is not gratuitous profanity) he was right and had all the answers, when he got knocked off his high horse and had to learn how much he didn't know yet. Think about just that bit by itself--Paul had been certain he knew the right answers, and was so confident of his "rightness" that he was willing to arrest, jail, torture, or kill people who disagreed with him... and then the One whom he was persecuting showed up on the road to Damascus and said, "You've got it all wrong... but I still claim you in love." Nobody wants to have their old picture of reality shaken or broken open. Nobody wants to have to admit they were... or are... wrong. And yet Paul himself says, "If you are going to say you care about the truth, you are going to have to be willing to let go of your damned certainty and allow the possibility that love is bigger than you imagined."

So whatever it means to think about "whatever is true, whatever is just..." and all the rest, it will mean holding it up to the real lived experience of people trying to practice these big words with skin on.  We live out our faith, not in the abstract world of thoughts and ideas, but in the actual world of flesh and blood.

The only place that happens is in a community of real, actual people. And that is why Christians believe we have not just been handed a pamphlet, or given a brochure, or bequeathed a set of stone tablets with abstract principles or even been entrusted with a constitution written on parchment. We have a way of taking written words and stretching them to mean whatever we wish them to mean. But when those words and concepts are given shape in actual people--in the beloved community--all of a sudden we have nowhere to run and no way of twisting concepts to mean what we wish them to mean. All or a sudden, we are brought face to face with love... and truth... and justice... incarnate--with skin on and in three dimensions.

Christians believe that Jesus didn't just leave a pamphlet full of generic words behind. Christians believe that all the talk of "whatever is true" and "whatever is just" is made real in the actual, lived, flawed (yes), real lives of a community of actual, living, flawed (yes), real people daring to live them out in light of what we have seen and come to know in Jesus.

Today, let us not settle for vague empty talk. Please, please, please--don't ever just settle for big talk and empty, flowery prose or attention-grabbing headlines. Let us settle for nothing less than real, lived-out, in-the-flesh "truth" and "justice" and "love" in the actions, and words, and thoughts of real people, daring to practice them.

Jesus, don't let us settle for empty talk today. Pull us into the real, lived practice of people seeking to live justice and truth and mercy in little and big actions. And let us learn from the people who have put such things into practice in their own lives, even if imperfectly.

Getting a Reputation--October 15, 2026

Getting a Reputation--October 15, 2026

"Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near." (Philippians 4:5)

Did you ever wonder what words come to mind when other people think of you? Did you ever spend a moment considering what traits, what adjectives, what mental pictures, come to mind when the people who know you give you a thought?  What do you have a reputation for, in other words?

And, now that we’re going down that trail anyway, have you ever given thought to what words you would want to come to mind when your friends, your family, and your co-workers hear your name mentioned? I’m not talking about pretending or puffing yourself up to be something you are not, but honestly, what traits about yourself to you think rise to the surface? When other insightful, perceptive people around you read your life like a book, what kind of book is it?  What would you want your reputation to be, to the extent that you have influence on it?

I ask because Paul has an answer for what he would wish to be toward the top of the list for followers of Jesus. And frankly, it is not always (or even often) at the top of ours. Paul wishes that we Christians would be known for our gentleness--for our kindness, tenderness, and care. And for him, that gentleness is connected with his firm belief that Christ is coming again soon. “The Lord is near,” Paul says, and so therefore, we are to “let your gentleness be known to everyone.” In other words, he is saying, Live your life in such a way that when people think of you, at the top of their description is, “Oh my, what a gentle soul!” Because after all, Jesus’ coming is near.

That is not often how Christians act, to be honest. All too often, our reputation is not for being gentle, but for being, among other things, hypocritical, angry, critical, dour, sour-faced, whiny, power-hungry, judgmental, or ornery. “Gentle” does not often crack the top ten, and "kind" isn't always the impression church folk leave from their social media posts, if we are going to be truthful about things. And especially when “religious” people get to talking about Christ coming again, we often sound especially vitriolic and angry. Listen for very long to the religious voices on TV and radio as they talk about the world going to hell in a handbasket and how “true believers” (meaning people who believe exactly like them) won’t have to worry about the disasters happening on earth because they’ll be watching the carnage from the safety of their seats in some heavenly loge while others get “left behind.” (Never mind for a moment that the whole notion of a secret whisking away of believers is a misreading of the New Testament—the wholesale invention of the “rapture” business is a conversation for another day.)

At any rate, when the watching world thinks about the supposedly Christian voices they know, and especially when those voices are talking about Jesus’ coming again, they don’t usually think of us being “gentle” or "kind," but often rather bloodthirsty-sounding, and using the talk of Jesus’ coming as something frighten people into faith with—as if it were possible to scare someone into salvation.

And yet, there’s Paul, who has the return of Jesus at the forefront of his mind, and he pictures Christians being known for their gentleness in light of how “near” the Lord is. It’s funny, almost, that Paul doesn’t feel any need at all for himself, or for any of the rest of us Christians, to get defensive or bitter or ornery or to play the victim-card, as he thinks about Jesus’ coming. He really seems to think that—in light of Jesus’ imminent return—the best thing for Christians to be known for is not end-times conspiracy-theory diagrams or fearmongering religious scare-tactics, but our way of being gentle with others.

It sort of reminds me of the old saying: How do you defend a lion? You just get out of its way. If there is a lion threatened by poachers, let’s say, you don’t need to stick yourself in the situation and put up your fists trying to make yourself look tough for the lion’s sake. The lion is going to be just fine all by itself. The lion has the power to take defend itself—you can just let it make the call about how or when to use it. And you, in the meantime, can be calm and at ease and relaxed. Or to use Paul’s word for it, gentle.

For us, the followers of Jesus, our hope in Jesus’ coming again means that we don’t have to get ourselves bent out of shape in angry tirades trying to come to Jesus’ defense. He’s the lion—he doesn’t need our fists. And frankly, our attempts to “defend” him probably get in his way more often than not.

Instead, we are called to be witnesses of Christ—yes, the Christ for whom we are waiting to come in glory and triumph—through our gentleness. We are called to point to Christ in the ways our kindness can lessen the anxiety in the room—or at least, not add to it! We are called to be examples of Christ in the ways we can sit in quiet with others in those holy, vulnerable moments of life. We are called to be living pointers to Christ in the way we just “show up” for others when they need us, without making a fanfare or a fuss over ourselves.

And there is a reason for all of this, a reason that we do not need to get ourselves all worked up and tense and harsh for Christ, even besides the fact that the only way to defend a lion is to get out of its way. And the reason is this: even though Jesus is the Lion (indeed, even “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” as the book of Revelation calls him), he is also ultimately “the Lamb who was slain.” And in the scene from Revelation where the voice calls out, “Hey everybody, look, it’s the Lion!” everybody turns their heads, and there is no one there but a Lamb, having been slain, but alive again (see Revelation 5 on this subject). The Lion is announced, but it is a gentle Lamb who shows up, because Jesus’ way of being victorious is through his gentle self-sacrifice and suffering love. We are supposed to be gentle, because the One we are waiting for saves and reigns and rules through gentleness, too. We are called to practice kindness, because the One for whom we hope has shown kindness to us.  Paul wishes for us to have a reputation for gentleness, because the One in whom we have placed our hope is ultimately gentle, too.

So… what will people remember about you today, do you suppose? When they think about the fact that you are associated with this Jesus person, what words will come to mind to describe you? And can we dare today to represent--not defend--the living Christ, in our own peaceable love? Can we dare to be so bold as to be known for our gentleness?  What would it take for us to get that sort of reputation?

Lord Jesus, let our lives today be reflections of your own peaceable, suffering love and your gentle reign.

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.